Divinae institutiones

…the Latin Church Fathers, whose Divinae institutiones (“Divine Precepts”), a classically styled philosophical refutation of early-4th-century anti-Christian tracts, was the first systematic Latin account of the Christian attitude toward life. Lactantius was referred to as the “Christian Cicero” by Renaissance humanists.

His most ambitious work, the Divine Institutes, attempted, against increasingly formidable pagan attacks, to portray Christianity as the true form of religion and life and is in effect the first systematic presentation of Christian teaching in Latin. The later On the Death of Persecutors, now generally recognized as his, describes…