(Updated July 14, 2025)
This Quote Archive collects pertinent quotes from the Ecclesiastical Writer, Lactantius.
Next to each quote are the topic-based Quote Archives in which they are included.
This Quote Archive is being continuously updated as research continues.
Books
Lactantius, The Divine Institutes (c. 303-311)
- Purgatory | Book 7, Ch. 21
- Abortion | Book 6, Ch. 20
- The Sacrament of Marriage, Divorce, and Contraception | Book 6, Ch. 20; Ch. 23
For when God forbids us to kill, He not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but He warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men…
Therefore let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not given. Can anyone, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even from their own? But these are without any controversy wicked and unjust. What are they whom a false piety [thinking it less sinful to expose their children than strangle them] compels to expose their children? Can they be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as a prey to dogs, and as far as it depends upon themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than if they had strangled them?…It is therefore as wicked to expose as it is to kill. But truly parricides complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children; as though, in truth, their means were in the power of those who possess them, or God did not daily make the rich poor, and the poor rich. Wherefore, if anyone on account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from marriage than with wicked hands to mar the work of God.
(Book 6, Ch. 23)1
It is necessary, therefore, for each one to propose to himself that the union of the two sexes has been given for the sake of generation, and that this law has been set in these living powers that they may prepare for succession. Just as God gave us eyes, not that we might look at and seize pleasure, but that we might see on account of them the actions which pertain to the necessity of life, so the genital parts of the body, which their very name teaches, have been received by us for no other reason than the procreation of offspring. We must obey this divine law with the greatest devotion. Let all who will profess to be the disciples of God be so checked and so trained that they can control themselves. But those who indulge in pleasures, who are subservient to passion, make over their souls to their bodies and condemn them to death, because they have devoted themselves to the body, and death has power over this. Let each one, then, as far as he is able, train himself to modesty, cultivate shame, protect chastity of both conscience and mind. Let him not only obey the public laws, but let him who follows the law of God be above all laws. If 459 | 460 he gets accustomed to these goods, then, he will be ashamed to deviate to worse things. Let only the right and good things please, for these are more pleasant to the better people than depraved and ignoble things are to the worse.
But when He shall have judged the righteous, He will also try them with fire. Then they whose sins shall exceed either in weight or in number, shall be scorched by the fire and burnt: but they whom full justice and maturity of virtue has imbued will not perceive that fire; for they have something of God in themselves which repels and rejects the violence of the flame. So great is the force of innocence, that the flame shrinks from it without doing harm; which has received from God this power, that it burns the wicked, and is under the command of the righteous…
Treatises
Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died (c. 318)
Then were they [the Apostles] dispersed throughout all the earth to preach the Gospel, as the Lord their Master had commanded them; and during twenty-five years, and until the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Nero, they occupied themselves in laying the foundations of the Church in every province and city. And while Nero reigned, the Apostle Peter came to Rome, and, through the power of God committed unto him, wrought certain miracles, and, by turning many to the true religion, built up a faithful and steadfast temple unto the Lord.
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