CHAPTER III
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
II mention the Christian only? Why do not you mention the murder, the incest, and the rest of that train commonly imputed to us?
We alone are the persons you are ashamed to condemn, without signifying the actions you condemn us for; if a Christian is accused of no crime, the name surely must be of a strange nature to be criminal in itself only !
CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING THE ODIOUS TITLE OF CHRISTIAN.
WHAT an unaccountable thing is it for so many men to blindfold themselves on purpose to fall foul upon Christianity!
And to such a degree that they cannot talk about the noted probity of any Christian without allaying his character with a dash of his religion !
Cajus Sejus (says one) is a very good man, but—he is a Christian.
I will tell you what (says another), I wonder that Lucius the philo- -sopher is all of a sudden turned Christian.
And none has sense enough in his passion to put the question right, and argue in this manner.
Is not Caius so good, and Lucius so wise, merely from the influence of their religion?
Or was it not the probity of one, and the wisdom of the other, that prepared the way, and brought them over to be Christians ?
Thus indeed they praise what they know, but vilify what they know not; they blot the fairest examples of virtue shining in their very eyes, because of a religion they are entirely in the dark about ; whereas certainly, by all the rules of reason, we ought to judge of the nature of causes we see not, by the effects we see, and not -pre-condemn apparent goodness for principles we understand not.
Others, discoursing of some persons, whom they knew to be vagrants, and infamously lewd before they came over to our religion, drop their praises upon them in such a manner, that they stigmatize them with their very compliments ; so darkened are they with prejudice that they blunder into the commendation of the thing they would condemn.
For (say they) how wanton, and how witty was such a woman! how amorous and frolicsome was such a young gentleman ! but now they are Christians: thus undesignedly they fix the amendment of their lives upon the alteration of their religion. é
ertullian's Apology for the Christians.
Some others are arrived to that pitch of aversion to the very name of Christian, that they seem to have entered into covenant with hatred, and bargained to-gratify this passion at the expense of all the satisfactions of human life, acquiescing in the grossest of injuries rather than the hated thing of Christian should come within their doors.
'The husband, now cured of all his former jealousy by his wife's conversion to Christianity, turns her and her ~ new modesty out of doors together, choosing to dwell with an adulteress sooner than.a Christian; the father, so tender of the undutiful son in his Gentile state, disinherits him now when he becomes obedient by becoming a Christian; the master, heretofore so good to his unfaithful slave, discards him now upon his fidelity and his religion.
So that the husband had rather have his wife false, the father his son a rebel, the master his servant a rogue, than
Christians and good: so much is the hatred of our name above all the advantages of virtue flowing from it.
Now, therefore, if-all this odium arises purely upon the account of our name, pray tell me how a poor name comes to be thus to blame, or a simple word to be a criminal?
Unless it be that the word is barbarous, or sounds ominously, reproachfully, or obscenely.
But Christians is a Greek word, and means nothing more than a _ disciple of Christ, which by interpretation is the Anointed; and when you misname it Chrestian! (for so far are you from under-. standing our religion, that as yet you know not our true name), even then.it implies nothing worse than a benignity and sweetness of temper; thus outrageous are you at the sound of a name as Jinoffe/.sive and harmless as those who bear it.
But do men use to let loose their passions at this rate against any sect merely from the name of its founder?
Is it a new thing for scholars to be named from their masters?
Is it not from hence that philosophers are called Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, etc.?
Donot the Stoics and academics derive their names from the porch or academy,? the places where they meet and discourse together?
And do not \ 1 Sed et cum perperam Chrestianus pronunciatur a vobis.
See the notes upon Justin's ivst Apol, sec, 3, concerning the word Chrestus ; I only add here that Marcellus Donatus conjectures this Chrestus to have been some seditious
Jew called by that name, for which he produces several inscriptions wherein that name occurs, but not one wherein it is given to a Jew, which ought first to have been produced to justify his conjecture; but the Christian apologists prove it a mistake beyond dispute.
Vid. Donat.
Dilucid. in Sueton. in .Claud. cap, ~ * Stoics from rez, a porch or gallery.