CHAPTER XXIV
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. 7
/ / j CHAPTER XXIV.
THAT THE ROMANS ARE THE CRIMINALS
IN POINT OF
RELIGION, AND NOT THE CHRISTIANS,
Turis universal confession of the evil spirits, whereby they disclaim the title of gods, and whereby they declare that there is no other
God but one, whose servants we profess to be ; this confession, I say, is argument enough with a witness to discharge Christians from the crime of irreligion, especially towards the Roman gods; for if the Roman gods for a certain are no gods, then their religion for a certain is no religion; and if theirs be no religion, because theirs be no gods, then certainly we cannot be justly charged upon the article of irreligion, with respect to the worship of the Roman deities.
But this reproach rebounds upon yourselves, for you who worship a lie, and not only neglect the true religion of the true God, but moreover join all your forces to fight it out of the world, are intruth guilty of that which is most properly irreligion.
For should I grant those you worship to be gods, do not you likewise subscribe to the common opinion that there is one most high and powerful
Deity, who is the Author and Sovereign of the world, of infinite majesty and perfection?
For thus many among you have ranged the gods, so as to vest the supreme power in one only, and make the rest subaltern gods, and under-officers merely of this Almightiest of deities ; and thus Plato! describes great Jove as attended above © by an heavenly host of inferior gods and demons.
Can you say, then, that we must pay the same honours to his procurators and prefects and presidents, as to the emperor himself?
And pray now, where is the crime to be ambitious of getting into the good graces of Czesar only? and to acknowledge the title of God like that of the emperor, His due alone who has the sovereign authority ? since by your laws it is capital to call any one Cesar who is not supreme, or to hear him so called by any other. I will grant you there is a difference in the modes of worship between a worshipper of God and a worshipper of Jove.
Let us then suppose that one 1 Ut Plato Fovem magnum in calo comitum exercitu describit Deorum pariter et Demonum, This passage we have in Greek in Athenagoras, thus—'O 2: és nytuay eb obparva Leds trutvay arnvey apua wparos wopevera, dianocuay révra, xe iorierovjesvos ; 7H OF Exerce orpariaz O:avre xal dauovwy.
Athenat. Legal. pro Christian, The supremacy of one deity is what you will find by Minutius Felix proved at large from all the philosophers, see:
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
man worships the true supreme*God, another Jove; one prays with suppliant hands lifted up to heaven, another lays them upon the altar of Fides,! another (if you will think them deities) prays looking upon the clouds,? others upon the stately roofs of the temple; one devotes his own life to his god, another the life of a goat.
But you had best see to it whether this does not concur to the making up of another article of irreligion against you—namely, to deprive men of the liberty of worshipping after their own way, and to interdict them the option of théir deity; so that I must not worship the god I would, but am forced to worship the god I would not; and yet it is agreed upon on all hands, that forced or unwilling services are not grateful either to God or man; and for this reason even the Egyptians are tolerated in their superstition, which is the very
_ yanity of vanities: they are permitted to make gods of birds and beasts, and to make it capital to be the death of any of these kinds of deities.
Evéry province and city has its proper gods, as Syria the god Ashtaroth,? Arabia has Disares, Bavaria Belinus, Africa the Celestial Virgin,t and Mauritania their kings.
Now these pro1 Avram Fidei, Tully in his Offices, lib. iii., has these words—Fidem in Capitolio vicinam Jovi Opt. Max. Majores nostri esse voluerunt,
Hence that of Silius— Tile etiam qua prisca Fides stat Regia, nobis Aurea Tarpeia ponet Capitolia rupe.
There was likewise one Fidius, a Sabine god, whose temple was upon the Mons -Quirinalis.
He was the god who took care of oaths, hence that of Plautus in Asinar, Per Divum Fidium queris.
This oath was afterwards contracted into one word, Mediusfidius, though Festus Pompeius expounds it otherwise, guas?
3.6; filius, lib. xi.
2"Nubes numeret orans.
The wise and good Socrates was lashed by Aristophanes in his Mudibus for a worshipper of the clouds, because he worshipped the one true God with eyes lifted up to heaven like the Christians, who having in a Gentile sense neither temple, image, nor altar, as the heathen in Minutius objects, were charged, as Tertullian intimates, for adoring clouds; but how that in Minutius is to be understood, I refer the reader to my notes upon that passage.
Scaliger understands this of Juvenal of the Christians, and reads it thus— .
Nil preter Nubes, et Celi Numen adorant.
-3 Syrie Astartes.
Eusebius from Sanchoniathon will have it to be Venus, Euseb. Prep. Evang. lib. i. cap. 10, p. 38.
Suidas says this—'Acrdprn h wep'
"Eaancw Agpodirn Asyowtvn, Otis >wviev.
This was the goddess of the Sidonians whom Solomon himself went after, and to whom he built an house.
1 Kings xi, 5; 2 Kings xxiii. 13.
And in the house of Ashtaroth called by the LXX.
Aoréprn did the Philistines hang up Satl's armour after his death, 1 Sam. xxxi. 10.
4 Celestis, This celestial virgin was peculiarly honoured at Carthage, and is supposed by some to be Juno, though there is huge controversy about it.
And the rest of the idols here mentioned are so obscure, and so much disputed, that I believe the reader will thank me if I say no more about them,