MANNAFEST

The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius

?–325

Early Church voice, d. ~325

The life

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (d. ~325). Early Church voice from the church's historical commentary tradition, present in MannaFest's quote pool with source citations. Full profile pending.

In their own words

  • “Let men therefore learn and understand why the Most High God, when He sent His ambassador and messenger to instruct mortals with the precepts of His righteousness, willed that He should be clothed with mortal flesh, and be afflicted with torture, and be sentenced to death. For since there was no righteousness on earth, He sent a teacher, as it were a living law, to found a new name and temple, that by His words and example He might spread throughout the earth a true and holy worship. But, however, that it might be certain that He was sent by God, it was befitting that He should not be born as man is born, composed of a mortal on both sides; but that it might appear that He was heavenly even in the form of man, He was born without the office of a father. For He had a spiritual Father, God; and as God was the Father of His spirit without a mother, so a virgin was the mother of His body without a father. He was therefore both God and man, being placed in the middle between God and man. From which the Greeks call Him Mesites, that He might be able to lead man to God-that is, to immortality.”

    The Divine Institutes Book 4, Chapter XXV · on the verse

  • “Let those who are hungry come, that being fed with heavenly food, they may lay aside their lasting hunger; let those who are athirst come, that they may with full mouth draw forth the water of salvation from an ever-flowing fountain.”

    Commentary (church-history corpus) · on the verse

  • “The last and greatest office of piety is the burying of strangers and the poor; which subject those teachers of virtue and justice have not touched upon at all. For they were unable to see this, who measured all their duties by utility. Moreover, there have not been wanting those who esteemed burial as superfluous, and said that it was no evil to lie unburied and neglected; but their impious wisdom is rejected alike by the whole human race, and by the divine expressions which command the performance of the rite.”

    The Divine Institutes Book 6 (Chapter XII) · on the verse