CHAPTER II
Lertultian's Apology for the Christians. feature of wickedness belonging to it?
N othing of fear, or shame, or artifice, or repentance, or the desponding sighs of criminals attending on it.
What a strange-natured evil or reverse of wickedness is this! that makes the guilty rejoice, and ambitious of accusation, and happy in punishment.
Nor can you charge these odd appearances as the effects of madness, since you are altogether unacquainted with the powers of the Christian religion.
CHAPTER II.
CONCERNING THE MALICE AND PERVERSENESS OF THE JUDGES,
THE WAY OF CONDEMNING OR ABSOLVING THE CHRISTIANS.
But if it is resolved we must be guilty, pray what is your reason for treating us differently from other criminals?
For it is a rule in law that where the case is the same, there the procedure of court ought to be the same also.
But when we and heathens are impeached upon the same articles, the heathen shall be allowed the privilege of the council, and of pleading in person for setting off his innocence,' it being against law to proceed to sentence before the defendant has put in his answer ; but a Christian is permitted nothing, not to speak what is necessary, either to justify his cause, defend the truth, or prevent the injustice of his judges.
On the contrary, nothing is attended to in his trial, but how to inflame the mob, and therefore the question is about his name only, and not power of conviction, they despised everything here below for the joy that was set before them.
This argument is likewise prosecuted by Arnobius, adv. Gent, lib. i. p. 21, as a mighty instance of the divinity of the Christian faith, that in so short a time it should be too hard for the wisdom and pleasures of the world, and work so with men of the greatest parts and learning, and of the greatest fortunes,'as to make them part with their notions and estates, and submit to any go = fe _ torments rather than part with the Christian faith ; and that the Gentiles did not think it advisable to venture their skin for their doctrine.
That Plato, in his Academy introduced a dark and ambiguous way of delivering his opinions, for fear of going the way of Socrates, And Origen tells Celsus that Aristotle quitted
Athens, and left his philosophy to shift for itself, as soon as he understood that the Athenians intended to call him to an account.
So little could philosophy prevail against self-preservation.
? Quando pec liceat indefensos et tnauditos damnari.
He alludes to the law de Reguir. Reis, made by Severus a little before the publication of this
Apology. as aay :
i a Tertullian's A [pology for the Christians.
io. the nature of his crime: whereas if you sit in judgment upon another criminal, and he pleads guilty to the indictment, suppose of homicide, sacrilege, incest, or rebellion (to instance the common
__ heads of your libels! against us), upon such confession, I say, it is _ not your method forthwith to proceed to sentence, but you have patience to examine the nature of the fact in all its circumstances,
_ viz.—the place, the time, the manner, and the accomplices of the action: but in the trial of a Christian, all these forms of justice are overruled.
But let me tell you, would you acquit yourselves with any appearance of equity, you ought on both sides to be equally severe in the examination of fact, and see to the bottom of those_ reports, so frequently and so falsely thrust upon us.
For instance, to bring in a true list of how many infants every Christian has killed and eaten, what incests committed in the dark, what cooks we
___ had for the dressing these children's flesh, and what pimping dogs for putting out the candles.?
— Oh! what immortal glory would a proconsul gain among the _ people, could he pull out a Christian by the ears that had ate up a _ hundred children!
But we despair of any such glorious discovery, _ when we reflect upon the edict against searching after us.
For Pliny the second,* in his proconsulship of Asia, having put many Christians to death, and turned others out of their places, and being still astonished at our numbers, sends to the Emperor Trajan for orders about proceeding for the time to come; alleging withal that for his part, after the strictest inquiry, he could find nothing
_ more in our religion, but obstinacy against sacrificing to the gods, _ and that we assembled before day to sing hymns to God and Christ,
1 Ot de vestris Elogids loguar.
Elogium is a civil law term which frequently occurs in this author, particularly lib. ad Scap. de cor. Mil. cap. 5, etc., and is
__ the same among the civilians as Zpistole, Notoria, Relationes, a libel or declara_ tion, setting forth the crimes of the person indicted ; it was provided by the law de custo et exhi. Reorum, ne quisguam puniatur ex Epistolis et Actis Pedanei eé minoris Judicis.
And therefore Pudens, who had a mind to favour the _ Christians, sent back a Christian prisoner because there appeared against him no witness or proof, but the Elogium, or epistle from an inferior judge.
Pudens missum ad se Christianum, in Llogio concussione ejus intellecta dimisit, Scisso eodem Elogio sine accusatore negans se auditurum hominem secundum mandatum.
> Vid. Gab. Albaspin., not. ad Scap.
; _ *For a fuller explication of this passage, and the foundation of this horrid slander, see my notes upon Justin Martyr's Apology, AZo/. i. sec. 35.
The dogs which are said to.be tied to the candlesticks, and to have crusts thrown them
_ just. beyond the reach of their string, in order to make them leap and strain and pull down the candles, are-by-Tertullian, cap. 7, called Luminum Lversores
_ et Lenones, which-to follow his own biting way I translate pimping dogs, See" Ped. Plin, 2fist, lib. x. ep.97.
Tertuthan's Apology for the Christians. and to confirm one another in that way of worship; prohibiting homicide, adultery, fraud, perfidiousness, and all other sorts of — wickedness.
Upon which information Trajan writes back, that such kind of men as these were not to be searched after, but yet to be punished if brought before him.
Oh perplexity between reasons of state and justice! he declares us to be innocent, by forbidding us to be searched after, and at the same time commands
'us to be punished as criminals.
What a mass of kindness and cruelty, connivance and punishment, is here confounded in one act! unhappy edict, thus to circumvent and hamper yourself in ~ your own ambiguous answer!
If you condemn us, why do you give orders against searching after us?
And if you think it not well to search after us, why do you not acquit us?
Soldiers are set to patrol in every province for the apprehending of robbers, and every private person justifies taking up arms against traitors and enemies to the commonwealth ; and moreover is obliged to make inquiry
— after all the conspirators; but a Christian only is a criminal of that strange kind, that no inquiry must be made to find him, and yet when found may be brought to the tribunal; as if this inquiry was designed for any other purpose but to bring offenders to justice.
You condemn him therefore when brought, whom the laws forbid to be searched after; not that in your hearts you can think him guilty, but only to get into the good graces of the people,
— whose zeal has transported them to search him out against the intention of the edict. r This also is very extraordinary in your proceedings against us, that you rack others to confess, but torment Christians to deny:
— whereas, was Christianity a wicked thing, we, no doubt, should imitate the wicked in the arts of concealment, and force you to apply your engines of confession.
Nor can you conclude it needless to torture a Christian into a confession of particulars, because you resolve that the very name must include all that is evil.
For when a, murderer has confessed, and you are satisfied as to the fact, yet you constrain him to lay before you the order and circumstances of the whole action, And what makes the thing look worse yet is, that notwithstanding you presume upon our wickedness, merely
— from our owning the name, yet at the same time you use violence — to make us retract that confession, that by retracting the bare name only, we might be acquitted of the crimes fathered upon it.
But perhaps I. am to imagine your excessive tenderness to be such, that you are willing to acquit the very persons you conclude the greatest villains in the world ; and perhaps it may be your custom
q ~ Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
to say to a murderer, "deny the murder," and to command the sacrilegious to be put to the rack for persevering in his confession of sacrilege. a But now, if your process against us and other criminals is _ notoriously different, it is a shrewd sign you believe us innocent ; and that this very belief of our innocence is the spring which sets you at work for our deliverance, by forcing us to deny our name, which though in justice you know you cannot, yet for reasons of State you must condemn.
A man cries out upon the rack, I am _ a Christian; you hear him proclaim to the world what really he is, and you would fain have him say what really he is not.
That __eyer judges, who are commissioned to torture for the confession of truth, should abuse it upon Christians only, for the extortion of a lie!
You demand what I am, and I say I am a Christian; why do you torture me to unsay it?
I confess, and you rack on; if I confess not, what will you do?
If other malefactors deny, it is ___-wWith difficulty you believe them; but if Christians-deny, you acquit he them at a word.
Certainly you must think yourselves in the wrong for such proceedings, and be conscious of a secret bias upon your judgments, that makes you run thus counter to the forms of court, the reasons of justice, and the very intent of the Jaws themselves.
For if I mistake not the laws are very express, that criminals should be discovered, and not concealed ; and that upon confession they should be condemned, and not acquitted.
The acts of the senate and the edicts of the emperors prescribe this.
These are _ the maxims of that government you are ministers of, and your power 1s defined by these laws, and not arbitrary and tyrannical.
Tyrants indeed have no respect to the proportions of justice in the distributions of punishment, but apply tortures at pleasure.
But you are restrained by law; and to apply them only for the confession of truth, preserve this law in full vigour, and for the end it was made.
For if the accused confess, it is absurd to put them to the question; the law of tortures is answered, and you have nothing to do in this case but to consider the nature of the fact, and punish it accordingly.
For'every malefactor is a debtor to the law, and to be wiped out of the public accounts! upon paying his
1 Debito pene nocens expungendus est.
This is a very familiar phrase with our author, and the ground of it is this.
The executioner had a roll of the names of the condemned, and the punishment they were to suffer; and a criminal being a debtor, when he had paid his punishment was expunged, or crossed out of the roll: and so dave Penas is to pay the pain an offender owes to the. public.
; '
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
' punishment, and not discharged merely upon the confession of his fault.
No judge attempts openly to acquit a criminal barely upon his pleading guilty, nor can he justify a thought of so doing; and therefore no one can be justly served with torments to deny, when the law was designed only to make him confess.
You look upon a Christian as the sum total of iniquity, a despiser of the gods, emperors, laws, morality, and, in one word, an enemy of human nature ; and yet this is the man you rack, that you may absolve, because without racking him into a denial of his name you cannot absolve him.
'This, or nothing, is prevaricating with the laws; you would have him plead not guilty, for you to pronounce him innocent, and discharge him from all past crimes, whether he will or no.
But how can men be so perverse as to imagine that he who confesses a thing freely is not more to be credited than he who denies it by compulsion?
Or cannot a man speak truth, without the help of a rack?
And being absolved upon a forced denial of his religion, he must needs conclude such external
'applications of cruelty, very foolish things for the conversion of the mind, when in spite of all these impressions upon his body he finds himself still a Christian in his conscience.
Since therefore you treat us differently in everything from other criminals, and what you chiefly push at is the destruction of our name (and we ourselves destroy this, by doing what the heathens indulge themselves in)—since this, I say, is the main thing you contend for, you cannot but see that our name is the greatest crime in our indictment; in the persecution of which name, men vie hatred, and are ambitious to excel each other in malice; and this emulation is the chief reason why they are so stedfast in ignorance ; therefore they devour all reports of us without chewing, and are so averse to any legal inquiry, for fear these reports should prove to be false, which they would have pass for true, that the hated name of Christian might be condemned upon presumption, without the danger of a proof; and that the confession of this name might serve for a sufficient conviction of the crimes charged against it.
Hence it is that we are tortured against law for confessing, and tormented on for persisting in that confession; and against law absolved for denying, because all the dispute is about our name only.
But after all, when you proceed to judgment, and read over the table or catalogue of crimes you pass sentence against, why do you -