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Estimated Range of Dating: 197-220 C.E. TERTULLIAN CHAP. XXII. And we affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual essences; nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself waiting on a demon's will. Why not? since it is said an evil spirit attached itself specially to him even from his childhood--turning his mind no doubt from what was good. The poets are all acquainted with demons too; even the ignorant common people make frequent use of them in cursing. In fact, they call upon Satan, the demon-chief, in their execrations, as though from some instinctive soul-knowledge of him. Plato also admits the existence of angels. The dealers in magic, no less, come forward as witnesses to the existence of both kinds of spirits. We are instructed, moreover, by our sacred books how from certain angels, who fell of their own flee-will, there sprang a more wicked demon-brood, condemned of God along with the authors of their race, and that chief we have referred to. It will for the present be enough, however, that some account is given of their work. Their great business is the ruin of mankind. So, from the very first, spiritual wickedness sought our destruction. They inflict, accordingly, upon our bodies diseases and other grievous calamities, while by violent assaults they hurry the soul into sudden and extraordinary excesses. Their marvellous subtleness and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature. As spiritual, they can do no harm; for, invisible and intangible, we are not cognizant of their action save by its effects, as when some inexplicable, unseen poison in the breeze blights the apples and the grain while in the flower, or kills them in the bud, or destroys them when they have reached maturity; as though by the tainted atmosphere in some unknown way spreading abroad its pestilential exhalations. So, too, by an influence equally obscure, demons and angels breathe into the soul, and rouse up its corruptions with furious passions and vile excesses; or with cruel lusts accompanied by various errors, of which the worst is that by which these deities are commended to the favour of deceived and deluded human beings, that they may get their proper food of flesh-fumes and blood when that is offered up to idol-images. What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men's minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? And here I explain how these illusions are managed. Every spirit is possessed of wings. This is a common property of both angels and demons. So they are everywhere in a single moment; the whole world is as one place to them; all that is done over the whole extent of it, it is as easy for them to know as to report. Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown. Thus they would have themselves thought 37 sometimes the authors of the things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal His divinations. But the skill with which their responses are shaped to meet events, your Croesi and Pyrrhi know too well. On the other hand, it was in that way we have explained, the Pythian was able to declare that they were cooking a tortoise with the flesh of a lamb; in a moment he had been to Lydia. From dwelling in the air, and their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds, they have means of knowing the preparatory processes going on in these upper regions, and thus can give promise of the rains which they already feel. Very kind too, no doubt, they are in regard to the healing of diseases. For, first of all, they make you ill; then, to get a miracle out of it, they command the application of remedies either altogether new, or contrary to those in use, and straightway withdrawing hurtful influence, they are supposed to have wrought a cure. What need, then, to speak of their other artifices, or yet further of the deceptive power which they have as spirits: of these Castor apparitions, of water carried by a sieve, and a ship drawn along by a girdle, and a beard reddened by a touch, all done with the one object of showing that men should believe in the deity of stones, and not seek after the only true God? CHAP. XXIII. Moreover, if sorcerers call forth ghosts, and even make what seem the souls of the dead to appear; if they put boys to death, in order to get a response from the oracle; if, with their juggling illusions, they make a pretence of doing various miracles; if they put dreams into people's minds by the power of the angels and demons whose aid they have invited, by whose influence, too, goats and tables are made to divine,--how much more likely is this power of evil to be zealous in doing with all its might, of its own inclination, and for its own objects, what it does to serve the ends of others! Or if both angels and demons do just what your gods do, where in that case is the pre-eminence of deity, which we must surely think to be above all in might? Will it not then be more reasonable to hold that these spirits make themselves gods, giving as they do the very proofs which raise your gods to godhead, than that the gods are the equals of angels and demons? You make a distinction of places, I suppose, regarding as gods in their temple those whose divinity you do not recognize elsewhere; counting the madness which leads one man to leap from the sacred houses, to be something different from that which leads another to leap from an adjoining house; looking on one who cuts his arms and secret pans as under a different furor from another who cuts his throat. The result of the frenzy is the same, and the manner of instigation is one. But thus far we have been dealing only in words: we now proceed to a proof of facts, in which we shall show that under different names you have real identity. Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoniacal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden to speak by a follower of Christ, will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god. Or, if you will, let there be produced one of the god-possessed, as they are supposed, who, inhaling at the altar, conceive divinity from the fumes, who are delivered of it by retching, who vent it forth in agonies of gasping. Let that same Virgin Caelestis herself the rain-promiser, let Aesculapius discoverer of medicines, ready to prolong the life of Socordius, and Tenatius, and Asclepiodotus, now in the last extremity, if they would not confess, in their fear of lying to a Christian, that they were demons, then and there shed the blood of that most impudent follower of Christ. What clearer than a work like that? what more trustworthy than such a proof? The simplicity of truth is thus set forth; its own worth sustains it; no ground remains for the least suspicion. Do you say that it is done by magic, or some trick of that sort? You will not say anything of the sort, if you have been allowed the use of your ears and eyes. For what argument can you bring against a thing that is exhibited to the eye in its naked reality? If, on the one hand, they are really gods, why do they pretend to be demons? Is it from fear of us? In that case your divinity is put in subjection to Christians; and you surely can never ascribe deity to that which is under authority of man, nay (if it adds aught to the disgrace)of its very enemies. If, on the other hand, they are demons or angels, why, inconsistently with this, do 38 they presume to set themselves forth as acting the pan of gods? For as beings who put themselves out as gods would never willingly call themselves demons, if they were gods indeed, that they might not thereby in fact abdicate their dignity; so those whom you know to be no more than demons, would not dare to act as gods, if those whose names they take and use were really divine. For they would not dare to treat with disrespect the higher majesty of beings, whose displeasure they would feel was to be dreaded. So this divinity of yours is no divinity; for if it were, it would not be pretended to by demons, and it would not be denied by gods. But since on beth sides there is a concurrent acknowledgment that they are not gods, gather from this that there is but a single race--I mean the race of demons, the real race in both cases. Let your search, then, now be after gods; for those whom you had imagined to be so you find to be spirits of evil. The truth is, as we have thus not only shown from our own gods that neither themselves nor any others have claims to deity, you may see at once who is really God, and whether that is He and He alone whom we Christians own; as also whether you are to believe in Him, and worship Him, after the manner of our Christan faith and discipline. But at once they will say, Who is this Christ with his fables? is he an ordinary man? is he a sorcerer? was his body stolen by his disciples from its tomb? is he now in the realms below? or is he not rather up in the heavens, thence about to come again, making the whole world shake, filling the earth with dread alarms, making all but Christians wail--as the Power of God, and the Spirit of God, as the Word, the Reason, the Wisdom, and the Son of God? Mock as you like, but get the demons if you can to join you in your mocking; let them deny that Christ is coming to judge every human soul which has existed from the world's beginning, clothing it again with the body it laid aside at death; let them declare it, say, before your tribunal, that this work has been allotted to Minos and Rhadamanthus, as Plato and the poets agree; let them put away from them at least the mark of ignominy and condemnation. They disclaim being unclean spirits, which yet we must hold as indubitably proved by their relish for the blood and fumes and foetid carcasses of sacrificial animals, and even by the vile language of their ministers. Let them deny that, for their wickedness condemned already, they are kept for that very judgment-day, with all their worshippers and their works. Why, all the authority and power we have over them is from our naming the name of Christ, and recalling to their memory the woes with which God threatens them at the hands of Christ as Judge, and which they expect one day to overtake them. Fearing Christ in God, and God in Christ, they become subject to the servants of God and Christ. So at our touch and breathing, overwhelmed bY the thought and realization of those judgment fires, they leave at our command the bodies they have entered, unwilling, and distressed, and before your very eyes put to an open shame. You believe them when they lie; give credit to them, then, when they speak the truth about themselves. No one plays the liar to bring disgrace upon his own head, but for the sake of honour rather. You give a readier confidence to people making confessions against themselves, than denials in their own behalf. It has not been an unusual thing, accordingly, for those testimonies of your deities to convert men to Christianity; for in giving full belief to them, we are led to believe in Christ. Yes, your very gods kindle up faith in our Scriptures, they build up the confidence of our hope. You do homage, as I know, to them also with the blood of Christians. On no account, then, would they lose those who are so useful and dutiful to them, anxious even to hold you fast, lest some day or other as Christians you might put them to the rout,--if under the power of a follower of Christ, who desires to prove to you the Truth, it were at all possible for them to lie. CHAP. XXIV. This whole confession of these beings, in which they declare that they are not gods, and in which they tell you that there is no God but one, the God whom we adore, is quite sufficient to clear us from the crime of treason, chiefly against the Roman religion. For if it is certain the gods have no existence, there is no religion in the case. If there is no religion, because there are no gods, we are assuredly not guilty of any offence against religion. Instead of that, the charge recoils on your own head: worshipping a lie, you are really guilty of the crime you charge on us, not merely by refusing the true religion of the true God, but by going the further length of persecuting it. But now, granting that these objects of your worship are really gods, is it not generally held that there is one higher and more potent, as it were the world's chief ruler, endowed with absolute power and majesty? For the common way is to apportion deity, giving an imperial and supreme domination to one, while its offices are put into the hands of many, as Plato describes great Jupiter in the 39 heavens, surrounded by an array at once of deities and demons. It behooves us, therefore, to show equal respect to the procurators, prefects, and governors of the divine empire. And yet how great a crime does he commit, who, with the object of gaining higher favour with the Caesar, transfers his endeavours and his hopes to another, and does not confess that the appellation of God as of Emperor belongs only to the Supreme Head, when it is held a capital offence among us to call, or hear called, by the highest title any other than Caesar himself! Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one--if you choose to take this view of it--count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it. Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him; and so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, nay, to condemn to death any One who kills a god of their sort. Every province even, and every city, has its god. Syria has Astarte, Arabia has Dusares, the Norici have Belenus, Africa has its Caelestis, Mauritania has its own princes. I have spoken, I think, of Roman provinces, and yet I have not said their gods are Roman; for they are not worshipped at Rome any more than others who are ranked as deities over Italy itself by municipal consecration, such as Delventinus of Casinum, Visidianus of Narnia, Ancharia of Asculum, Nortia of Volsinii, Valentia of Ocriculum, Hostia of Satrium, Father Curls of Falisci, in honour of whom, too, Juno got her surname. In, fact, we alone are prevented having a religion of our own. We give offence to the Romans, we are excluded from the rights and privileges of Romans, because we do not worship the gods of Rome. It is well that there is a God of all, whose we all are, whether we will or no. But with you liberty is given to worship any god but the true God, as though He were not rather the God all should worship, to whom all belong. CHAP. XXV. I think I have offered sufficient proof upon the question of false and true divinity, having shown that the proof rests not merely on debate and argument, but on the witness of the very beings whom you believe are gods, so that the point needs no further handling. However, having been led thus naturally to speak of the Romans, I shall not avoid the controversy which is invited by the groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward of their singular homage to religion, the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to have become masters of the world; and that so certainly divine are the beings they worship, that those prosper beyond all others, who beyond all others honour them. This, forsooth, is the wages the gods have paid the Romans for their devotion. The progress of the empire is to be ascribed to Sterculus, the Mutunus, and Larentina! For I can hardly think that foreign gods would have been disposed to show more favour to an alien race than to their own, and given their own fatherland, in which they had their birth, grew up to manhood, became illustrious, and at last were buried, over to invaders from another shore! As for Cybele, if she set her affections on the city of Rome as sprung of the Trojan stock saved from the arms of Greece, she herself forsooth being of the same race,--if she foresaw her transference to the avenging people by whom Greece the conqueror of Phrygia was to be subdued, let her look to it (in regard of her native country's conquest by Greece). Why, too, even in these days the Mater Magna has given a notable proof of her greatness which she has conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after, impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the emperor already dead. O tardy messengers! O sleepy despatches! through whose fault Cybele had not an earlier knowledge of the imperial decease, that the Christians might have no occasion to ridicule a goddess so unworthy. Jupiter, again, would surely never have permitted his own Crete to fall at once before the Roman Fasces, forgetful of that Idean cave and the Corybantian cymbals, and the sweet odour of her who nursed him there. Would he not have exalted his own tomb above the entire Capitol, that the land which covered the ashes of Jove might rather be the mistress 40 of the world? Would Juno have desired the destruction of the Punic city, beloved even to the neglect of Samos, and that by a nation of AEneadae? As to that I know, "Here were her arms, here was her chariot, this kingdom, if the Fates permit, the goddess tends and cherishes to be mistress of the nations." Jove's hapless wife and sister had no power to prevail against the Fates! "Jupiter himself is sustained by fate." And yet the Romans have never done such homage to the Fates, which gave them Carthage against the purpose and the will of Juno, as to the abandoned harlot Larentina. It is undoubted that not a few of your gods have reigned on earth as kings. If, then, they now possess the power of bestowing empire, when they were kings themselves, from whence had they received their kingly honours? Whom did Jupiter and Saturn worship? A Sterculus, I suppose. But did the Romans, along with the native-born inhabitants, afterwards adore also some who were never kings? In that case, however, they were under the reign of others, who did not yet bow down to them, as not yet raised to godhead. It belongs to others, then, to make gift of kingdoms, since there were kings before these gods had their names on the roll of divinities. But how utterly foolish it is to attribute the greatness of the Roman name to religious merits, since it was after Rome became an empire, or call it still a kingdom, that the religion she professes made its chief progress! Is it the case now? Has its religion been the source of the prosperity of Rome? Though Numa set agoing an eagerness after superstitious observances, yet religion among the Romans was not yet a matter of images or temples. It was frugal in its ways, its rites were simple, and there were no capitols struggling to the heavens; but the altars were offhand ones of turf, and the sacred vessels were yet of Samian earthen-ware, and from these the odours rose, and no likeness of God was to be seen. For at that time the skill of the Greeks and Tuscans in image-making had not yet overrun the city with the products of their art. The Romans, therefore, were not distinguished for their devotion to the gods before they attained to greatness; and so their greatness was not the result of their religion. Indeed, how could religion make a people great who have owed their greatness to their irreligion? For, if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars, and are extended by victories. More than that, you cannot have wars and victories without the taking, and often the destruction, of cities. That is a thing in which the gods have their share of calamity. Houses and temples suffer alike; there is indiscriminate slaughter of priests and citizens; the hand of rapine is laid equally upon sacred and on common treasure. Thus the sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their trophies. They boast as many triumphs over the gods as over the nations; as many spoils of battle they have still, as there remain images of captive deities. And the poor gods submit to be adored by their enemies, and they ordain illimitable empire to those whose injuries rather than their simulated homage should have had retribution at their hands. But divinities unconscious are with impunity dishonoured, just as in vain they are adored. You certainly never can believe that devotion to religion has evidently advanced to greatness a people who, as we have put it, have either grown by injuring religion, or have injured religion by their growth. Those, too, whose kingdoms have become part of the one great whole of the Roman empire, were not without religion when their kingdoms were taken from them. CHAP. XXVI. Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all. How do you allow yourselves to fall into such error? Why, the Rome of rural simplicity is older than some of her gods; she reigned before her proud, vast Capitol was built. The Babylonians exercised dominion, too, before the days of the Pontiffs; and the Medes before the Quindecemvirs; and the Egyptians before the Salii; and the Assyrians before the Luperci; and the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. And to add another point: if the religions of Rome give empire, ancient Judea would never have been a kingdom, despising as it did one and all these idol deities; Judea, whose God you Romans once honoured with victims, and its temple with gifts, and its people with treaties; and which would never have been beneath your sceptre but for that last and crowning offence against God, in rejecting and crucifying Christ. CHAP. XXVII. Enough has been said in these remarks to confute the charge of treason against your re 41 ligion; for we cannot be held to do harm to that which has no existence. When we are called therefore to sacrifice, we resolutely refuse, relying on the knowledge we possess, by which we are well assured of the real objects to whom these services are offered, under profaning of images and the deification of human names. Some, indeed, think it a piece of insanity that, when it is in our power to offer sacrifice at once, and go away unharmed, holding as ever our convictions we prefer an obstinate persistence in our confession to our safety. You advise us, forsooth, to take unjust advantage of you; but we know whence such suggestions come, who is at the bottom of it all, and how every effort is made, now by cunning suasion, and now by merciless persecution, to overthrow our constancy. No other than that spirit, half devil and half angel, who, hating us because of his own separation from God, and stirred with envy for the favour God has shown us, turns your minds against us by an occult influence, moulding and instigating them to all that perversity in judgment, and that unrighteous cruelty, which we have mentioned at the beginning of our work, when entering on this discussion. For, though the whole power of demons and kindred spirits is subject to us, yet still, as ill-disposed slaves sometimes conjoin contumacy with fear, and delight to injure those of whom they at the same time stand in awe, so is it here. For fear also inspires hatred. Besides, in their desperate condition, as already under condemnation, it gives them some comfort, while punishment delays, to have the usufruct of their malignant dispositions. And yet, when hands are laid on them, they are subdued at once, and submit to their lot; and those whom at a distance they oppose, in close quarters they supplicate for mercy. So when, like insurrectionary workhouses, or prisons, or mines, or any such penal slaveries, they break forth against us their masters, they know all the while that they are not a match for us, and just on that account, indeed, rush the more recklessly to destruction. We resist them, unwillingly, as though they were equals, and contend against them by persevering in that which they assail; and our triumph over them is never more complete than when we are condemned for resolute adherence to our faith. CHAP. XXVIII. But as it was easily seen to be unjust to compel freemen against
their will to offer sacrifice (for even in other acts of religious
service a willing mind is required), it should be counted quite absurd
for one man to compel another to do honour to the gods, when he ought
ever voluntarily, and in the sense of his own need, to seek their
favour, lest in the liberty which is his right he should be ready to
say, "I want none of Jupiter's favours; pray who art thou? Let Janus
meet me with angry looks, with whichever of his faces he likes; what
have you to do with me?" You have been led, no doubt, by these same
evil spirits to compel us to offer sacrifice for the well-being of the
emperor; and you are under a necessity of using force, just as we are
under an obligation to face the dangers of it. This brings us, then,
to the second ground of accusation, that we are guilty of treason
against a majesty more august; for you do homage with a greater dread
and an intenser reverence to Caesar, than Olympian Jove himself. And
if you knew it, upon sufficient grounds. For is not any living man
better than a dead one, whoever he be? But this is not done by you on
any other ground than regard to a power whose presence you vividly
realize; so that also in this you are convicted of impiety to your
gods, inasmuch as you show a greater reverence to a human sovereignty
than you do to them. Then, too, among you, people far more readily
swear a false oath in the name of all the gods, than in the name of
the single genius of Caesar.
CHAP. XXX.
For we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal,
the true, the living God, whose favour, beyond all others, they must
themselves desire. They know from whom they have obtained their power;
they know, as they are men, from whom they have received life itself;
they are convinced that He is God alone, on whose power alone they are
entirely dependent, to whom they are second, after whom they occupy
the highest places, before and above all the gods. Why not, since they
are above all living men, and the living, as living, are superior to
the dead? They reflect upon the extent of their power, and so they come
to understand the highest; they acknowledge that they have all their
might from Him against whom their might is nought. Let the emperor make
war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put
guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. Just
because he is less than heaven, he is great. For he himself is His to
whom heaven and every creature appertains. He gets his sceptre where
he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life.
Thither we lift our eyes, with hands outstretched, because free from
sin; with head uncovered, for we have nothing whereof to be ashamed;
finally, without a monitor, because it is from the heart we supplicate.
Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life
prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial
house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the
world at rest, whatever, as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish.
These things I cannot ask from any but the God from whom I know I shall
obtain them, both because He alone bestows them and because I have
claims upon Him for their gift, as being a servant of His, rendering
homage to Him alone, persecuted for His doctrine, offering to Him, at
His own requirement, that costly and noble sacrifice of prayer
despatched from the chaste body, an unstained soul, a sanctified spirit,
not the few grains of incense a farthing buys--tears of an Arabian
tree,--not a few drops of wine,--not the blood of some worthless ox to
which death is a relief, and, in addition to other offensive things, a
polluted conscience, so that one wonders, when your victims are
examined by these vile priests, why the examination is not rather of
the sacrificers than the sacrifices. With our hands thus stretched out
and up to God, rend us with your iron claws, hang us up on crosses,
wrap us in flames, take our heads from us with the sword, let loose
the wild beasts on us,--the very attitude of a Christian praying is
one of preparation for all punishment. Let this, good rulers, be your
work: wring from us the soul, beseeching God on the emperor's behalf.
Upon the truth of God, and devotion to His name, put the brand of
crime.
CHAP. XXXI.
But we merely, you say, flatter the emperor, and feign these prayers
of ours to escape persecution. Thank you for your mistake, for you give
us the opportunity of proving our allegations. Do you, then, who think
that we care nothing for the welfare of Caesar, look into God's
revelations, examine our sacred books, which we do not keep in hiding,
and which many accidents put into the hands of those who are not of us.
Learn from them that a large benevolence is enjoined upon us, even so
far as to supplicate God for our enemies, and to beseech blessings on
our persecutors. Who, then, are greater enemies and persecutors of
Christians, than the very parties with treason against whom we are
charged? Nay, even in terms, and most clearly, the Scripture says,
"Pray for kings, and rulers, and powers, that all may be peace with
you." For when there is disturbance in the empire, if the commotion
is felt by its other members, surely we too, though we are not thought
to be given to disorder, are to be found in some place or other which
the calamity affects.
CHAP. XXXII.
There is also another and a greater necessity for our offering
prayer in behalf of the emperors, nay, for the complete stability of
the empire, and for Roman interests in general. For we know that a
mighty shock im 43
pending over the whole earth--in fact, the very end of all things
threatening dreadful woes---is only retarded by the continued existence
of the Roman empire. We have no desire, then, to be overtaken by these
dire events; and in praying that their coming may be delayed, we are
lending our aid to Rome's duration. More than this, though we decline
to swear by the genii of the Caesars, we swear by their safety, which
is worth far more than all your genii, Are you ignorant that these
genii are called "Daemones," and thence the diminutive name "Daemonia"
is applied to them? We respect in the emperors the ordinance of God,
who has set them over the nations. We know that there is that in them
which God has willed; and to what God has willed we desire all safety,
and we count an oath by it a great oath. But as for demons, that is,
your genii, we have been in the habit of exorcising them, not of
swearing by them, and thereby conferring on them divine honour.
CHAP. XXXIII.
But why dwell longer on the reverence and sacred respect of
Christians to the emperor, whom we cannot but look up to as called by
our Lord to his office? So that on valid grounds I might say Caesar is
more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him. Therefore, as
having this propriety in him, I
do more than you for his welfare, not merely because I ask it of Him
who can give it, or because I ask it as one who deserves to get it,
but also because, in keeping the majesty of Caesar within due limits,
and putting it under the Most High, and making it less than divine,
I commend him the more to the favour of Deity, to whom I make him alone
inferior. But I place him in subjection to one I regard as more
glorious than himself. Never will I call the emperor God, and that
either because it is not in me to be guilty of falsehood; or that
I dare not turn him into ridicule; or that not even himself will desire
to have that high name applied to him. If he is but a man, it is his
interest as man to give God His higher place. Let him think it enough
to bear the name of emperor. That, too, is a great name of God's
giving. To call him God, is to rob him of his title. If he is not a
man, emperor he cannot be.
Even when, amid the honours t of a triumph, he sits on that lofty
chariot, he a is reminded that he is only human. A voice t at his back
keeps whispering in his ear, n "Look behind thee; remember thou art
but u a man." And it only adds to his exultation, that he shines with
a glory so surpassing as to require an admonitory reference to his
condition. It adds to his greatness that he needs such a reminiscence,
lest he should think himself divine.
CHAP. XXXIV.
Augustus, the founder of the empire, would not even have the title
Lord; for that, too, is a name of Deity. For my part, I am willing to
give the emperor this designation, but in the common acceptation of
the word, and when I am not forced to call him Lord as in God's place.
But my relation to him is one of freedom; for I have but one true Lord,
the God omnipotent and eternal, who is Lord of the emperor as well.
How can he, who is truly father of his country, be its lord? The name
of piety is more grateful than the name of power; so the heads of
families are called fathers rather than lords. Far less should the
emperor have the name of God. We can only profess our belief that he
is that by the most unworthy, nay, a fatal flattery; it is just as if,
having an emperor, you call another by the name, in which case will
you not give great and unappeasable offence to him who actually
reigns?--an offence he, too, needs to fear on whom you have bestowed
the title. Give all reverence to God, if you wish Him to be propitious
to the emperor. Give up all worship of, and belief in, any other being
as divine. Cease also to give the sacred name to him who has need of
God himself. If such adulation is not ashamed of its lie, in addressing
a man as divine, let it have some dread at least of the evil omen
which it bears. It is the invocation of a curse, to give Caesar the
name of god before his apotheosis.
CHAP. XXXV.
This is the reason, then, why Christians are counted public enemies:
that they pay no vain, nor false, nor foolish honours to the emperor;
that, as men believing in the true religion, they prefer to celebrate
their festal days with a good conscience, instead of with the common
wantonness. It is, forsooth, a notable homage to bring fires and
couches out before the public, to have feasting from street to street,
to turn the city into one great tavern, to make mud with wine, to run
in troops to acts of violence, to deeds of shamelessness to lust
allurements! What! is public joy manifested by public disgrace? Do
things unseemly at other times beseem the festal days of princes? Do
they who observe the rules of virtue out of reverence for Caesar, for
44 his sake turn aside from them? Shall piety be a license to immoral
deeds, and shall religion be regarded as affording the occasion for
all riotous extravagance? Poor we, worthy of all condemnation! For why
do we keep the votive days and high rejoicings in honour of the Caesars
with chastity, sobriety, and virtue? Why, on the day of gladness, do
we neither cover our door-posts with laurels, nor intrude upon the day
with lamps? It is a proper thing, at the call of a public festivity,
to dress your house up like some new brothel. However, in the matter
of this homage to a lesser majesty, in reference to which we are
accused of a lower sacrilege, because we do not celebrate along with
you the holidays of the Caesars in a manner forbidden alike by modesty,
decency, and purity,--in truth they have been established rather as
affording opportunities for licentiousness than from any worthy
motive;--in this matter I am anxious to point out how faithful and
true you are, lest perchance here also those who will not have us
counted Romans, but enemies of Rome's chief rulers, be found themselves
worse than we wicked Christians! I appeal to the inhabitants of Rome
themselves, to the native population of the seven hills: does that
Roman vernacular of theirs ever spare a Caesar? The Tiber and the wild
beasts' schools bear witness. Say now if nature had covered our hearts
with a transparent substance through which the light could pass, whose
hearts, all graven over, would not betray the scene of another and
another Caesar presiding at the distribution of a largess? And this at
the very time they are shouting, "May Jupiter take years from us, and
with them lengthen like to you,"--words as foreign to the lips of a
Christian as it is out of keeping with his character to desire a change
of emperor. But this is the rabble, you say; yet, as the rabble, they
still are Romans, and none more frequently than they demand the death
of Christians. Of course, then, the other classes, as befits their
higher rank, are religiously faithful. No breath of treason is there
ever in the senate, in the equestrian order, in the camp, in the
palace. Whence, then, came a Cassius, a Niger, an Albinus? Whence they
who beset the Caesar between the two laurel groves? Whence they who
practised wrestling, that they might acquire skill to strangle him?
Whence they who in full armour broke into the palace, more audacious
than all your Tigerii and Parthenii. If I mistake not, they were
Romans; that is, they were not Christians. Yet all of them, on the
very eve of their traitorous outbreak, offered sacrifices for the
safety of the emperor, and swore by his genius, one thing in profession,
and another in the heart; and no doubt they were in the habit of
calling Christians enemies of the state. Yes, and persons who are now
daily brought to light as confederates or approvers of these crimes
and treasons, the still remnant gleanings after a vintage of traitors,
with what verdant and branching laurels they clad their door-posts,
with what lofty and brilliant lamps they smoked their porches, with
what most exquisite and gaudy couches they divided the Forum among
themselves; not that they might celebrate public rejoicings, but that
they might get a foretaste of their own votive seasons in partaking of
the festivities of another, and inaugurate the model and image of
their hope, changing in their minds the emperor's name. The same homage
is paid, dutifully too, by those who consult astrologers, and
soothsayers, and augurs, and magicians, about the life of the
Caesars,--arts which, as made known by the angels who sinned, and
forbidden by God, Christians do not even make use of in their own
affairs. But who has any occasion to inquire about the life of the
emperor, if he have not some wish or thought against it, or some hopes
and expectations after it? For consultations of this sort have not the
same motive in the case of friends as in the case of sovereigns. The
anxiety of a kinsman is something very different from that of a
subject.
CHAP. XXXVI.
If it is the fact that men bearing the name of Romans are found to
be enemies of Rome, why are we, on the ground that we are regarded as
enemies, denied the name of Romans? We may be at once Romans and foes
of Rome, when men passing for Romans are discovered to be enemies of
their country. So the affection, and fealty, and reverence, due to the
emperors do not consist in such tokens of homage as these, which even
hostility may be zealous in performing, chiefly as a cloak to its
purposes; but in those ways which Deity as cerainly enjoins on us, as
they are held to be necessary in the case of all men as well as emperors.
Deeds of true heart-goodness are not due by us to emperors alone. We
never do good with respect of persons; for in our own interest we
conduct ourselves as those who take no payment either of praise or
premium 45
from man, but from God, who both requires and remunerates an impartial
benevolence. We are the same to emperors as to our ordinary neighbors.
For we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to
think ill of all men. The thing we must not do to an emperor, we must
not do to any one else: what we would not do tO anybody, a fortiori,
perhaps we should not do to him whom God has been pleased so highly to
exalt.
CHAP. XXXVII.
If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked
above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate,
lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands?
In regard to this, recall your own experiences. How often you inflict
gross cruelties on Christians, partly because it is your own
inclination, and partly in obedience to the laws! How often, too, the
hostile mob, paying no regard to you, takes the law into its own hand,
and assails us with stones and flames! With the very frenzy of the
Bacchanals, they do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them,
now sadly changed, no longer entire, from the rest of the tomb, from
the asylum we might say of death, cutting them in pieces, rending
them asunder. Yet, banded together as we are, ever so ready to
sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you
able to point to, though, if it were held right among us to repay evil
by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample
vengeance? But away with the idea of a sect divine avenging itself by
human fires, or shrinking from the sufferings in which it is tried. If
we desired, indeed, to act the part of open enemies, not merely of
secret avengers, would there be any lacking in strength, whether of
numbers or resources? The Moors, the Marcomanni, the Parthians
themselves, or any single people, however great, inhabiting a distinct
territory, and confined within its own boundaries, surpasses, forsooth,
in numbers, one spread over all the world! We are but of yesterday,
and we have filled every place among you--cities, islands, fortresses,
towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate,
forum,--we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For
what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces,
we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion
it were not counted better to be slain than to slay? Without arms even,
and raising no insurrectionary banner, but simply in enmity to you, we
could carry on the contest with you by an ill-willed severance alone.
For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you, and betake
themselves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of
so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with
shame; nay, in the very forsaking, vengeance would be inflicted. Why,
you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find
yourselves, at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of
a dead world. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would
have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense
number of Christians which makes your enemies so few,--almost all the
inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ. Yet you
choose to call us enemies of the human race, rather than of human
error. Nay, who would deliver you from those secret foes, ever busy
both destroying your souls and ruining your health? Who would save
you, I mean, from the attacks of those spirits of evil, which without
reward or hire we exorcise? This alone would be revenge enough for us,
that you were henceforth left free to the possession of unclean spirits.
But instead of taking into account what is due to us for the important
protection we afford you, and though we are not merely no trouble to
you, but in fact necessary to your well-being, you prefer to hold us
enemies, as indeed we are, yet not of man, but rather of his error.
CHAP. XXXVIII.
Ought not Christians, therefore, to receive not merely a somewhat
milder treatment, but to have a place among the law-tolerated societies,
seeing they are not chargeable with any such crimes as are commonly
dreaded from societies of the illicit class? For, unless I mistake the
matter, the prevention of such associations is based on a prudential
regard to public order, that the state may not be divided into parties,
which would naturally lead to disturbance in the electoral assemblies,
the councils, the curiae, the special conventions, even in the public
shows by the hostile collisions of rival parties; especially when now,
in pursuit of gain, men have begun to consider their violence an
article to be bought and sold. But as those in whom all ardour in the
pursuit of glory and honour is dead, we have no pressing inducement to
take part in your public meetings; nor is there aught more entirely
foreign to us than affairs of state. We ac 46
knowledge one all-embracing commonwealth--the world. We renounce all
your spectacles, as strongly as we renounce the matters originating
them, which we know were conceived of superstition, when we give up
the very things which are the basis of their representations. Among
us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in
common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theatre,
the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the
wrestling-ground. Why do you take offence at us because we differ from
you in regard to your pleasures? If we will not partake of your
enjoyments, the loss is ours, if there be loss in the case, not yours.
We reject what pleases you. You, on the other hand, have no taste for
what is our delight. The Epicureans were allowed by you to decide for
themselves one true source of pleasure--I mean equanimity the Christian,
on his part, has many such enjoyments--what harm in that?
CHAP. XXXIX.
I shall at once go on, then, to exhibit the peculiarities of the
Christian society, that, as I have refuted the evil charged against
it, I may point out its positive good. We are a body knit together as
such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by
the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and
congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we
may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights
in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in
authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace,
for the delay of the final consummation. We assemble to read our
sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either
forewarning or reminiscence needful. However it be in that respect,
with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we
make our confidence more stedfast; and no less by inculcations of God's
precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations
are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a
great gravity is the work of judging carried on among us, as befits
those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you
have the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has
sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer,
in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse. The tried men of
our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase,
but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any
sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is
not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price.
On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but
only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no
compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety's
deposit fund. For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and
drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people,
to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents,
and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have
suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or
banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but
their fidelity to the cause of God's Church, they become the nurslings
of their confession. But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble
that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love
one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they
are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will
sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, because we call
each other brethren; for no other reason, as I think, than because
among themselves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence
of affection. But we are your brethren as well, by the law of I our
common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so
unkind. At the same time, how much more fittingly they are called and
counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their
common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the
same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of
truth! But on this very account, perhaps, we are regarded as having
less claim to be held true brothers, that no tragedy makes a noise
about our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally
destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us. One in
mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one
another. All things are common among us but our wives. We give up our
community where it is practised alone by others, who not only take
possession of the wives of their friends, but most tolerantly also
accommodate their friends with theirs, following the example, I believe,
47 of those wise men of ancient times, the Greek Socrates and the Roman
Cato, who shared with their friends the wives whom they had married,
it seems for the sake of progeny both to themselves and to others;
whether in this acting against their partners' wishes, I am not able
to say. Why should they have any care over their chastity, when their
husbands so readily bestowed it away? O
noble example of Attic wisdom, of Roman gravity--the philosopher and
the censor playing pimps! What wonder if that great love of Christians
towards one another is desecrated by you! For you abuse also our
humble feasts, on the ground that they are extravagant as well as
infamously wicked. To us, it seems, applies the saying of Diogenes:
"The people of Megara feast as though they were going to die on the
morrow; they build as though they were never to die!" But one sees
more readily the mote in another's eye than the beam in his own. Why,
the very air is soured with the eructations of so many tribes, and
curioe, and decurioe. The Salii cannot have their feast without going
into debt; you must get the accountants to tell you what the tenths of
Hercules and the sacrificial banquets cost; the choicest cook is
appointed for the Apaturia, the Dionysia, the Attic mysteries; the
smoke from the banquet of Serapis will call out the firemen. Yet about
the modest supper-room of the Christians alone a great ado is made.
Our feast explains itself by its name The Greeks call it agape, i.e.,
affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain,
since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as
it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their
licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all
disgraceful treatment,--but as it is with God himself, a peculiar
respect is shown to the lowly. If the object of our feast be good,
in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an
act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The
participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much
is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as
befits the chaste. They say it is enough, as those who remember that
even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who
know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution,
and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing,
as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one
of his own composing,--a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the
feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed. We go from
it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to
break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty
and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a
banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it
unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means
let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it,
such as lies against secret factions. But who has ever suffered harm
from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are
when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are
individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright,
when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure
assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but
a curia-- [i.e., the court of God.]
CHAP. XL.
On the contrary, they deserve the name of faction who conspire to
bring odium on good men and virtuous, who cry out against innocent
blood, offering as the justification of their enmity the baseless plea,
that they think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of
every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises
as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up
over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake,
if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, "Away with
the Christians to the lion!" What! shall you give such multitudes to
a single beast? Pray, tell me how many calamities befell the world and
particular cities before Tiberius reigned--before the coming, that
is, of Christ? We read of the islands of Hiera, and Anaphe, and Delos,
and Rhodes, and Cos, with many thousands of human beings, having been
swallowed up. Plato informs us that a region larger than Asia or
Africa was seized by the Atlantic Ocean. An earthquake, too, drank up
the Corinthian sea; and the force of the waves cut off a part of
Lucania, whence it obtained the name of Sicily. These things surely
could not have taken place without the inhabitants suffering by them.
But where--I do not say were Christians, those despisers of your
gods--but where were your gods themselves in those days, when the
flood poured its destroying waters over all the world, or, as Plato
thought, merely the level portion of it? For that they are of later
date 48
than that calamity, the very cities in which they were born and died,
nay, which they founed, bear ample testimony; for the cities could
have no existence at this day unless as belonging to postdiluvian
times. Palestine had not yet received from Egypt its Jewish swarm
(of emigrants), nor had the race from which Christians sprung yet
settled down there, when its neighbors Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed
by fire from heaven. The country yet smells of that conflagration;
and if there are apples there upon the trees, it is only a promise
to the eye they give--you but touch them, and they turn to ashes. Nor
had Tuscia and Campania to complain of Christians in the days when
fire from heaven overwhelmed Vulsinii, and Pompeii was destroyed by
fire from its own mountain. No one yet worshipped the true God at
Rome, when Hannibal at Cannae counted the Roman slain by the pecks
of Roman rings. Your gods were all objects of adoration, universally
acknowledged, when the Senones closely besieged the very Capitol. And
it is in keeping with all this, that if adversity has at any time
befallen cities, the temples and the walls have equally shared in the
disaster, so that it is clear to demonstration the thing was not the
doing of the gods, seeing it also overtook themselves. The truth is,
the human race has always deserved ill at God's hand. First of all,
as undutiful to Him, because when it knew Him in part, it not only
did not seek after Him, but even invented other gods of its own to
worship; and further, because, as the result of their willing
ignorance of the Teacher of righteousness, the Judge and Avenger of
sin, all vices and crimes grew and flourished. But had men sought,
they would have come to know the glorious object of their seeking;
and knowledge would have produced obedience, and obedience would have
found a gracious instead of an angry God. They ought then to see that
the very same God is angry with them now as in ancient times, before
Christians were so much as spoken of. It was His blessings they
enjoyed--created before they made any of their deities: and why can
they not take it in, that their evils come from the Being whose
goodness they have failed to recognize? They suffer at the hands of
Him to whom they have been ungrateful. And, for all that is said, if
we compare the calamities of former times, they fall on us more lightly
now, since God gave Christians to the world; for from that time virtue
put some restraint on the world's wickedness, and men began to pray for
the averting of God's wrath. In a word, when the summer clouds give
no rain, and the season is matter of anxiety, you indeed--full of
feasting day by day, and ever eager for the banquet, baths and taverns
and brothels always busy--offer up to Jupiter your rain-sacrifices;
you enjoin on the people barefoot processions; you seek heaven at the
Capitol; you look up to the temple-ceilings for the longed-for
clouds--God and heaven not in all your thoughts. We, dried up with
fastings, and our passions bound tightly up, holding back as long as
possible from all the ordinary enjoyments of life, rolling in sackcloth
and ashes, assail heaven with our importunities--touch God's heart--and
when we have extorted divine compassion, why, Jupiter gets all the
honour!
CHAP. XLI.
You, therefore, are the sources of trouble in human affairs; on you
lies the blame of public adversities, since you are ever attracting
them--you by whom God is despised and images are worshipped. It should
surely seem the more natural thing to believe that it is the neglected
One who is angry, and not they to whom all homage is paid; or most
unjustly they act, if, on account of the Christians, they send trouble
on their own devotees, whom they are bound to keep clear of the
punishments of Christians. But this, you say, hits your God as well,
since He permits His worshippers to suffer on account of those who
dishonour Him. But admit first of all His providential arrangings,
and you will not make this retort. For He who once for all appointed
an eternal judgment at the world's close, does not precipitate the
separation, which is essential to judgment, before the end. Meanwhile
He deals with all sorts of men alike, so that all together share His
favours and reproofs. His will is, that outcasts and elect should have
adversities and prosperities in common, that we should have all the
same experience of His goodness and severity. Having learned these
things from His own lips, we love His goodness, we fear His wrath,
while both by you are treated with contempt; and hence the sufferings
of life, so far as it is our lot to be overtaken by them, are in our
case gracious admonitions, while in yours they are divine punishments.
We indeed are not the least put about: for, first, only one thing in
this life greatly concerns us, and that is, to get quickly out of it;
and next, if any adversity befalls us, it is laid to the door of your
transgressions. Nay, though we are likewise involved in troubles
because of our close connection with you, we are rather glad of it,
because we recognize in it divine foretellings, which, in fact, go
to confirm the confidence and faith of our hope. But if all the 49
evils you endure are inflicted on you by the gods you worship out of
spite to us, why do you continue to pay homage to beings so ungrateful,
and unjust; who, instead of being angry with you, should rather have
been aiding and abetting you by persecuting Christians--keeping you
clear of their sufferings?
CHAP. XLII.
But we are called to account as harm-doers on another ground, and
are accused of being useless in the affairs of life. How in all the
world can that be the case with people who are living among you, eating
the same food wearing the same attire, having the same habits, under
the same necessities of existence? We are not Indian Brahmins or
Gymnosophists, who dwell in woods and exile themselves from ordinary
human life. We do not forget the debt of gratitude we owe to God, our
Lord and Creator; we reject no creature of His hands, though certainly
we exercise restraint upon ourselves, lest of any gift of His we make
an immoderate or sinful use. So we sojourn with you in the world,
abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth, nor
workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce.
We sail with you, and fight with you, and till the ground with you;
and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings--even in the
various arts we make public property of our works for your benefit.
How it is we seem useless in your ordinary business, living with you
and by you as we do, I am not able to understand. But if I do not
frequent your religious ceremonies, I
am still on the sacred day a man. I do not at the Saturnalia bathe
myself at dawn, that I may not lose both day and night; yet I bathe
at a decent and healthful hour, which preserves me both in heat and
blood. I can be rigid and pallid like you after ablution when I am
dead. I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, after the
manner of the beast-fighters at their final banquet. Yet of your
resources I partake, wherever I may chance to eat. I do not buy a
crown for my head. What matters it to you how I use them, if
nevertheless the flowers are purchased? I think it more agreeable to
have them free and loose, waving all about. Even if they are woven
into a crown, we smell the crown with our nostrils: let those look
to it who scent the perfume with their hair. We do not go to your
spectacles; yet the articles that are sold there, if I need them,
I will obtain more readily at their proper places.
We certainly buy no frankincense. If the Arabias complain of this,
let the Sabaeans be well assured that their more precious and costly
merchandise is expended as largely in the burying of Christians as in
the fumigating of the gods. At any rate, you say, the temple revenues
are every day falling off: how few now throw in a contribution! In
truth, we are not able to give alms both to your human and your
heavenly mendicants; nor do we think that we are required to give any
but to those who ask for it. Let Jupiter then hold out his hand and
get, for our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in
the temples. But your other taxes will acknowledge a debt of gratitude
to Christians; for in the faithfulness which keeps us from fraud upon
a brother, we make conscience of paying all their dues: so that, by
ascertaining how much is lost by fraud and falsehood in the census
declarations--the calculation may easily be made--it would be seen
that the ground of complaint in one department of revenue is
compensated by the advantage which others derive.
CHAP. XLIII.
I will confess, however, without hesitation, that there are some
who in a sense may complain of Christians that they are a sterile
race: as, for instance, pimps, and panders, and bath-suppliers;
assassins, and poisoners, and sorcerers; soothsayers, too, diviners,
and astrologers. But it is a noble fruit of Christians, that they
have no fruits for such as these. And yet, whatever loss your
interests suffer from the religion we profess, the protection you have
from us makes amply up for it. What value do you set on persons, I do
not here urge who deliver you from demons, I do not urge who for your
sakes present prayers before the throne of the true God, for perhaps
you have no belief in that--but from whom you can have nothing to fear?
CHAP. XLIV.
Yes, and no one considers what the loss is to the common weal,--a
loss as great as it is real, no one estimates the injury entailed upon
the state, when, men of virtue as we are, we are put to death in such
numbers; when so many of the truly good suffer the last penalty. And
here we call your own acts to witness, you who are daily presiding at
the trials of prisoners, and passing sentence upon crimes. Well, in
your long lists of those ac 50
cased of many and various atrocities, has any assassin, any cutpurse,
any man guilty of sacrilege, or seduction, or stealing bathers' clothes,
his name entered as being a Christian too? Or when Christians are
brought before you on the mere ground of their name, is there ever
found among them an ill-doer of the sort? It is always with your folk
the prison is steaming, the mines are sighing, the wild beasts are fed:
it is from you the exhibitors of gladiatorial shows always get their
herds of criminals to feed up for the occasion. You find no Christian
there, except simply as being such; or if one is there as something
else, a Christian he is no longer.
CHAP. XLV.
We, then, alone are without crime. Is there ought wonderful in that,
if it be a very necessity with us? For a necessity indeed it is.
Taught of God himself what goodness is, we have both a perfect
knowledge of it as revealed to us by a perfect Master; and faithfully
we do His will, as enjoined on us by a Judge we dare not despise. But
your ideas of virtue you have got from mere human opinion; on human
authority, too, its obligation rests: hence your system of practical
morality is deficient, both in the fulness and authority requisite
to produce a life of real virtue. Man's wisdom to point out what is
good, is no greater than his authority to exact the keeping of it; the
one is as easily deceived as the other is despised. And so, which is
the ampler rule, to say, "Thou shalt not kill," or to teach, "Be not
even angry?" Which is more perfect, to forbid adultery, or to restrain
from even a single lustful look?
Which indicates the higher intelligence, interdicting evil-doing,
or evil-speaking? Which is more thorough, not allowing an injury, or
not even suffering an injury done to you to be repaid? Though withal
you know that these very laws also of yours, which seem to lead to
virtue, have been borrowed from the law of God as the ancient model.
Of the age of Moses we have already spoken. But what is the real
authority of human laws, when it is in man's power both to evade them,
by generally managing to hide himself out of sight in his crimes, and
to despise them sometimes, if inclination or necessity leads him to
offend? Think of these things, too, in the light of the brevity of any
punishment you can inflict--never to last longer than till death. On
this ground Epicurus makes light of all suffering and pain, maintaining
that if it is small, it is contemptible; and if it is great, it is not
long-continued. No doubt about it, we, who receive our awards under
the judgment of an all-seeing God, and who look forward to eternal
punishment from Him for sin,--we alone make real effort to attain a
blameless life, under the influence of our ampler knowledge, the
impossibility of concealment, and the greatness of the threatened
torment, not merely long-enduring but everlasting, fearing Him, whom
he too should fear who the fearing judges,--even God, I
mean, and not the proconsul.
CHAP. XLVI.
We have sufficiently met, as I think, the accusation of the various
crimes on the ground of which these fierce demands are made for
Christian blood. We have made a full exhibition of our case; and we
have shown you how we are able to prove that our statement is correct,
from the trustworthiness, I mean, and antiquity of our sacred writings,
and from the confession likewise of the powers of spiritual wickedness
themselves. Who will venture to undertake our refutation; not with
skill of words, but, as we have managed our demonstration, on the basis
of reality? But while the truth we hold is made clear to all, unbelief
meanwhile, at the very time it is convinced of the worth of Christianity,
which has now become well known for its benefits as well as from the
intercourse of life, takes up the notion that it is not really a thing
divine, but rather a kind of philosophy. These are the very things,
it says, the philosophers counsel and profess--innocence, justice,
patience, sobriety, chastity. Why, then, are we not permitted an equal
liberty and impunity for our doctrines as they have, with whom, in
respect of what we teach, we are compared? or why are not they, as so
like us, not pressed to the same offices, for declining which our lives
are imperilled? For who compels a philosopher to sacrifice or take an
oath, or put out useless lamps at midday? Nay, they openly overthrow
your gods, and in their writings they attack your superstitions; and
you applaud them for it. Many of them even, with your countenance,
bark out against your rulers, and are rewarded with statues and
salaries, instead of being given to the wild beasts. And very right
it should be so. For they are called philosophers, not Christians.
This name of philosopher has no power to put demons to the rout. Why
are they not able to do that too? since philosophers count demons
inferior to gods. Socrates used to say, "If the demon grant permission."
Yet 51
he, too, though in denying the existence of your divinities he had a
glimpse of the truth, at his dying ordered a cock to be sacrificed to
Aesculapius, I
believe in honour of his father, for Apollo pronounced Socrates the
wisest of men. Thoughtless Apollo! testifying to the wisdom of the man
who denied the existence of his race. In proportion to the enmity the
truth awakens, you give offence by faithfully standing by it; but the
man who corrupts and makes a mere pretence of it precisely on this
ground gains favour with its persecutors. The truth which philosophers,
these mockers and corrupters of it, with hostile ends merely affect to
hold, and in doing so deprave, caring for nought but glory, Christians
both intensely and intimately long for and maintain in its integrity,
as those who have a real concern about their salvation. So that we are
like each other neither in our knowledge nor our ways, as you imagine.
For what certain information did Thales, the first of natural
philosophers, give in reply to the inquiry of Croesus regarding Deity,
the delay for further thought so often proving in vain? There is not a
Christian workman but finds out God, and manifests Him, and hence
assigns to Him all those attributes which go to constitute a divine
being, though Plato affirms that it is far from easy to discover the
Maker of the universe; and when He is found, it is difficult to make
Him known to all. But if we challenge you to comparison in the virtue
of chastity, I turn to a part of the sentence passed by the Athenians
against Socrates, who was pronounced a corrupter of youth. The
Christian confines himself to the female sex. I have read also how
the harlot Phryne kindled in Diogenes the fires of lust, and how a
certain Speusippus, of Plato's school, perished in the adulterous act.
The Christian husband has nothing to do with any but his own wife.
Democritus, in putting out his eyes, because he could not look on
women without lusting after them, and was pained if his passion was
not satisfied, owns plainly, by the punishment he inflicts, his
incontinence. But a Christian with grace-healed eyes is sightless in
this matter; he is mentally blind against the assaults of passion. If
I maintain our superior modesty of behaviour, there at once occurs to
me Diogenes with filth-covered feet trampling on the proud couches of
Plato, under the influence of another pride: the Christian does not
even play the proud man to the pauper. If sobriety of spirit be the
virtue in debate, why, there are Pythagoras at Thurii, and Zeno at
Priene, ambitious of the supreme power: the Christian does not aspire
to the aedileship. If equanimity be the contention, you have Lycurgus
choosing death by self-starvation, because the Lacons had made some
emendation of his laws: the Christian, even when he is condemned, gives
thanks. If the comparison be made in regard to trustworthiness,
Anaxagoras denied the deposit of his enemies: the Christian is noted
for his fidelity even among those who are not of his religion. If the
matter of sincerity is to be brought to trial, Aristotle basely
thrust his friend Hermias from his place: the Christian does no harm
even to his foe.
With equal baseness does Aristotle play the sycophant to Alexander,
instead of exercising to keep him in the right way, and Plato allows
himself to be bought by Dionysius for his belly's sake. Aristippus in
the purple, with all his great show of gravity, gives way to
extravagance; and Hippias is put to death laying plots against the
state: no Christian ever attempted such a thing in behalf of his
brethren, even when persecution was scattering them abroad with every
atrocity. But it will be said that some of us, too, depart from the
rules of our discipline. In that case, however, we count them no longer
Christians; but the philosophers who do such things retain still the
name and the honour of wisdom. So, then, where is there any likeness
between the Christian and the philosopher? between the disciple of
Greece and of heaven?
between the man whose object is fame, and whose object is life? between
the talker and he doer? between the man who builds up and the man who
pulls down?
between the friend and the foe of error? between one who corrupts
the truth, and one who restores and teaches it? between its chief and
its custodier?
CHAP. XLVII.
Unless I am utterly mistaken, there is nothing so old as the truth;
and the already proved antiquity of the divine writings is so far of
use to me, that it leads men more easily to take it in that they are
the treasure-source whence all later wisdom has been taken. And were
it not necessary to keep my work to a moderate size, I might launch
forth also into the proof of this. What poet or sophist has not drunk
at the fountain of the prophets? Thence, accordingly, the philosophers
watered their arid minds, so that it is the things they 52
have from us which bring us into comparison with them. For this reason,
I imagine, philosophy was banished by certain states--I mean by the
Thebans, by the Spartans also, and the Argives--its disciples sought
to imitate our doctrines; and ambitious, as I have said, of glory and
eloquence alone, if they fell upon anything in the collection of
sacred Scriptures which displeased them, in their own peculiar style
of research, they perverted it to serve their purpose: for they had no
adequate faith in their divinity to keep them from changing them, nor
had they any sufficient understanding of them, either, as being still
at the time under veil--even obscure to the Jews themselves, whose
peculiar possession they seemed to be. For so, too, if the truth was
distinguished by its simplicity, the more on that account the
fastidiousness of man, too proud to believe, set to altering it;
so that even what they found certain they made uncertain by their
admixtures. Finding a simple revelation of God, they proceeded to
dispute about Him, not as He had revealed to them, but turned aside
to debate about His properties, His nature, His abode. Some assert Him
to be incorporeal; others maintain He has a body,--the Platonists
teaching the one doctrine, and the Stoics the other. Some think that
He is composed of atoms, others of numbers: such are the different
views of Epicurus and Pythagoras. One thinks He is made of fire; so
it appeared to Heraclitus. The Platonists, again, hold that He
administers the affairs of the world; the Epicureans, on the contrary,
that He is idle and inactive, and, so to speak, a nobody in human
things. Then the Stoics represent Him as placed outside the world, and
whirling round this huge mass from without like a potter; while the
Platonists place Him within the world, as a pilot is in the ship he
steers. So, in like manner, they differ in their views about the world
itself, whether it is created or uncreated, whether it is destined to
pass away or to remain for ever. So again it is debated concerning the
nature of the soul, which some contend is divine and eternal, while
others hold that it is dissoluble. According to each one's fancy, He
has introduced either something new, or refashioned the old. Nor need
we wonder if the speculations of philosophers have perverted the older
Scriptures. Some of their brood, with their opinions, have even
adulterated our new-given Christian revelation, and corrupted it into
a system of philosophic doctrines, and from the one path have struck
off many and inexplicable by-roads. And I have alluded to this, lest
any one becoming acquainted with the variety of parties among us, this
might seem to him to put us on a level with the philosophers, and he
might condemn the truth from the different ways in which it is defended.
But we at once put in a plea in bar against these tainters of our
purity, asserting that this is the rule of truth which comes down from
Christ by transmission through His companions, to whom we shall prove
that those devisers of different doctrines are all posterior.
Everything opposed to the truth has been got up from the truth itself,
the spirits of error carrying on this system of opposition. By them
all corruptions of wholesome discipline have been secretly instigated;
by them, too, certain fables have been introduced, that, by their
resemblance to the truth, they might impair its credibility, or
vindicate their own higher claims to faith; so that people might think
Christians unworthy of credit because the poets or philosophers are
so, or might regard the poets and philosophers as worthier of
confidence from their not being followers of Christ. Accordingly, we
get ourselves laughed at for proclaiming that God will one day judge
the world. For, like us, the poets and philosophers set up a
judgment-seat in the realms below. And if we threaten Gehenna, which
is a reservoir of secret fire under the earth for purposes of
punishment, we have in the same way derision heaped on us. For so,
too, they have their Pyriphlegethon, a river of flame in the regions
of the dead. And if we speak of Paradise, the place of heavenly bliss
appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, severed from the
knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure,
the Elysian plains have taken possession of their faith. Whence is it,
I pray you have all this, so like us, in the poets and philosophers?
The reason simply is, that they have been taken from our religion. But
if they are taken from our sacred things, as being of earlier date,
then ours are the truer, and have higher claims upon belief, since
even their imitations find faith among you. If they maintain their
sacred mysteries to have sprung from their own minds, in that case
ours will be reflections of what are later than themselves, which by
the nature of things is impossible, for never does the shadow precede
the body which casts it, or the image the reality.
CHAP. XLVIII.
Come now, if some philosopher affirms, as 53
Laberius holds, following an opinion of Pythagoras, that a man may
have his origin from a mule, a serpent from a woman, and with skill
of speech twists every argument to prove his view, will he not gain
acceptance for and work in some the conviction that, on account of
this, they should even abstain from eating animal food? May any one
have the persuasion that he should so abstain, lest by chance in his
beef he eats of some ancestor of his? But if a Christian promises the
return of a man from a man, and the very actual Gaius from Gaius, the
cry of the people will be to have him stoned; they will not even so
much as grant him a hearing. If there is any ground for the moving to
and fro of human souls into different bodies, why may they not return
into the very substance they have left, seeing this is to be restored,
to be that which had been? They are no longer the very things they
had been; for they could not be what they were not, without first
ceasing to be what they had been. If we were inclined to give all rein
upon this point, discussing into what various beasts one and another
might probably be changed, we would need at our leisure to take up many
points. But this we would do chiefly in our own defence, as setting
forth what is greatly worthier of belief, that a man will come back
from a man--any given person from any given person, still retaining
his humanity; so that the soul, with its qualities unchanged, may be
restored to the same condition, thought not to the same outward
framework. Assuredly, as the reason why restoration takes place at
all is the appointed judgment, every man must needs come forth the
very same who had once existed, that he may receive at God's hands a
judgment, whether of good desert or the opposite. And therefore the
body too will appear; for the soul is not capable of suffering without
the solid substance (that is, the flesh; and for this reason, also)
that it is not right that souls should have all the wrath of God to
bear: they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by
them. But how, you say, can a substance which has been dissolved be
made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt believe
in it! Reflect on what you were before you came into existence. Nothing.
For if you had been anything, you would have remembered it. You, then,
who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when you
cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at
the will of the same Creator whose will created you out of nothing at
the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not,
were made; when you cease to be again, you shall be made. Explain,
if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you
shall be re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surley to make
you what you were once, when the very same creative power made you
without difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts,
perhaps, as to the power of God, of Him who hung in its place this huge
body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death
of emptiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all
living things, its very self the unmistakable type of the resurrection,
that it might be to you a witness--nay, the exact image of the
resurrection. Light, every day extinguished, shines out again; and,
with like alternation, darkness succeeds light's outgoing. The defunct
stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew their
course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are reproduced.
The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and
dissolve away;--all things are preserved by perishing, all things are
refashioned out of death.
These are what are called presumptuous speculations in our case
alone; in the philosophers and poets they are regarded as sublime
speculations and illustrious discoveries. They are men of wisdom, we
are fools. They are worthy of all honour, we are folk to have the finger
pointed at; nay, besides that, we are even to have punishments inflicted
on us. But let things which are the defence of virtue, if you will,
have no foundation, and give them duly the name of fancies, yet still
they are necessary; let them be absurd if you will, yet they are of
use: they make all who believe them better men and women, under the
fear of never-ending punishment and the hope of never-ending bliss.
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