Chapter Xxxvii
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
therefore which is due' to emperors, does not consist in the forementioned shows of duty, which even rebellion cloaks herself in to pass undiscovered, but in such virtues as civil society finds necessary to be practised sincerely towards prince and people.
Nor are these actions of a virtuous mind looked upon by us asa tribute due to Cesar only ;-for we have no respect of persons in doing good, because by so doing we do good to ourselves, who catch at no applause or reward from men, but from God only, who keeps a faithful register of our good works, and has ample rewards instore for this universal charity ; for we have the same good wishes for emperors as for our nearest friends.
To wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, or to think ill of any one, we are equally forbidden without exception.
What is injusticé to an emperor is injustice to his _ Slave; and that which is unlawful against the meanest is much more so against the greatest of men; and him too especially who came to this greatness by the appointment of God.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A CONTINUATION OF THE UNLIMITED LOVE OF CHRISTIANS.
Ir then (as I have elsewhere declared) we Christians are expressly commanded by our Master to love our enemies, whom then have we left to hate?
And if when hurt we must not return the evil, for fear of being like the rest of the world, where shall we find a man to hurt?
How well we practise this command of our Master, - you yourselves can tell with a witness ; for how many times, partly in compliance with a brutish passion, partly in obedience to the laws, have you judges showed a most savage cruelty to Christians !
How often without your authority has the hostile mob of their own mere motion invaded us with showers of stones and fire!
The ~ mob, I say, who acted with the furies of a Bacchanal spare not even a dead Christian, but tear him from the quiet of a tomb, the _ sacred refuge of death, and mangle the body, hideously deformed already, and rotting to pieces; and in this rueful condition drag it about the streets.
But now in all this conspiracy of evils against us, in the midst of these mortal provocations, what one evil have you observed to have been returned by Christians?
Whereas we could in a night's time with links and firebrands in our hands have
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. made ourselves ample satisfaction by returning evil for evil, had we not thought it unlawful to quit the score of one injury with another.
But God forbid that any of this divine sect should seek revenge by fire, after the manner of men, or grudge to suffer what is sent to refine them.
But if we would not revenge ourselves in the dark, but as professed enemies engage you in the open field, do you think we could want forces?
The Moors, and Marcomans, and Parthians, which 'you have lately conquered, or any other people within the bounds of a country, are more numerous perhaps than those who know no other bounds than the limits of the world.
We are but of yesterday, and by to-day are grown up, and overspread your empire ; your cities, your islands, your forts, towns, assemblies, and your very camps, wards, companies, palace, senate, forum, all swarm with Christians.
Your temples indeed we leave to yourselves, and they are the only places you can name without Christians.
What war can we now be unprepared for?!
And supposing us unequal 1 Cuz bello non Idonei, etc.?
In the preliminary discourse to this Apology, I have shown at large from this and the foregoing chapters that it was not for want either of strength or courage that the primitive Christians sat still and suffered ; but purely the reverence they bore to the character of God in the emperor, tied their hands, and secured their passions, and perfectly got the better of self-preservation.
It was the doctrine and example of their suffering Master which made them content to go this rugged way to heaven; and I cannot but think this extraordinary, supernatural patience, a mighty, strong, and moving argument for the truth of Christianity, to see its professors in such numbers, and for some ages, so willingly comply with a religion which, as Tertullian says, taught men they must choose rather to be killed than to kill.
But because the measures of Christian obedience to the supreme powers are nowhere better argued and more clearly stated both from Scripture and antiquity, and from these passages, than by the Right Reverend and learned Bishop of Sarum himself in his four Conferences, printed at Glasgow in the year 1673, I _ recommend the reader for fuller satisfaction on this head to those excellent dialogues.. However, for fear they should be out of print, I shall give hima taste for his encouragement to read the whole.
Thus then he expresses his zeal with a justifiable primitive warmth, p. 17—'"' Whatever other cases allow of, certainly the defence of religion by arms is never to be admitted ; for the nature of the Christian religion is such that it excludes all carnal weapons from its defence.
And when I consider how expressly Christ forbids His disciples to resist evil, Matt. xxv. 39, how severely that resistance is condemned by St. Paul, and that condemnation is declared the punishmént of it, I am forced to cry out, Oh! what times are we fallen in, in which men dare against the express laws of the gospel defend that practice upon which God hath passed this condemnation—' If ~ whosoever break the least of these commandments, and téach men so to do shall be called the least in the kingdom of God,' what shall their portion be who teach men to break one of the greatest of these commandments, such as are the laws of peace and subjection?
And what may we not look for from such
Tertulhan's Apology for the Christians.
105. in strength, yet considering our usage, what should we not attempt readily ? we whom you see so ready to meet death in all its forms of cruelty, was it not agreeable to our religion to be killed rather than to. kill.
| We could also make a terrible war upon you without arms, or fighting a stroke, by being so passively revengeful as only to leave you; for if such a numerous host of Christians should but retire from the empire into some remote region of the world, the loss of _ so many men of all ranks and degrees would leave a hideous gap, and a shameful scar upon the government ; and the very evacuation would be abundant revenge. You would stand aghast at your desolation, and be struck dumb at the general silence and horror of nature, as if the whole world was departed.
You would be at a loss for men to govern, and in the pitiful remains you would find more enemies than citizens; but now you exceed in friends, because you exceed in Christians.
| Besides, whom would you have left to deliver you from the incursions of your invisible enemies, who lay waste both body and soul?
From the devils I mean, from whose depredations we defend you gratis; and had we a spirit of revenge, it would make the passion full amends only to abandon you freely to the mercy of ' those impure beings; but without the least touch of gratitude for the benefit of so great a protection, you declare a sect of men, which are not only not burdensome, but necessary, to be public enemies ; as we are indeed, but not in your sense, enemies not of human kind but of human errors only. teachers, who dare tax that glorious doctrine of patient suffering, as brutish and irrational; and though it be expressly said, 1 Pet. ii, 21, that Christ by suffering for us left us His example how to follow His steps, which was followed by a glorious cloud of witnesses, yet in these last days, what a brood hath sprung up 'of men who are lovers of their own selves, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, butdenying the power thereof, who creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins!'
It is our sins that provoked God to open the bottomless pit, and let loose such locusts; but were we turning to God, and repenting of the works of our own hands, we might hope that their power should be taken from them, and that their folly should be made known unto all men."
Thus that great prelate.
Tertulhan's Apology for the Christians.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THAT CHRISTIANS CAN NEVER BE JUSTLY SUSPECTED OF DESIGNS
AGAINST THE STATE.
THE Christian sect therefore for a certain ought to. meet with kinder treatment than it does, and to be tolerated among other lawful societies,' because it is a sect from whom nothing hostile ever comes, like the dreadful issue of other unlawful 'factions.
For, if I mistake not, such a multiplicity of sects is suppressed upon reasons ~ of State, that the city should not be split into parties, for such breaches would let in a general disorder into all your popular elections, councils, courts, assemblies, and public sights, by the ambitious clashings of the contending factions; and never more reason to provide against such disorders than now, when the parties are sure not to want violent hands for any design ; if they want not money to pay them.
But for us who are stark cold and dead to all the glories upon earth, what occasion can we have for caballings?
And in good truth nothing is further from our soul than the thoughts of mixing in State affairs, or in any private designs ; for we look upon ourselves as citizens of the world.
We renounce your.sports as much as we condemn their original,?
* Inter licttas Factiones.
The politicians and statesmen troubled not their heads much about any religion, but only to support that which was by law established, and there being a law against the Heteriz already mentioned, they prosecuted the Christians under the notion of a society dangerous to the State, among the rest without distinction.
These Christian meetings, wd2 congregabantur oraturi, — et verbt divint tnterpretationem accepturt, ac sacras Synaxes, habituri, they called Conventicula, saith Heraldus.
Vid. Observat. i. Arnod. lib. iv.
> Spectaculis vestris in tantum renunciamus, etc.
This charge of sequestering themselves from the public sports and pleasures is urged against the Christians by the heathen in Minutius ; and it is certain they thought themselves obliged so to do by their baptismal vow, which was an engagement upon their admission to renounce the devil and all his works, pomps, and pleasures, that is, saith St.
Cyril, Cat. Myst. i. p. 510, the sights and sports of the theatre, and such like
vanities.
They looked in good truth upon these public pastimes, not only as scenes of folly and lewdness, but of idolatry ; as places where the devil eminently ruled, and reckoned all his own who came there ; and accordingly Tertullian, de
Spect. cap. 26, p. 83, tells us of a Christian woman who, going to the theatre, was there possessed by an evil spirit, who upon his ejectment being demanded
. how he durst set upon a Christian, immediately replied, 'I did but what was just and fitting, for I found her upon my own ground,"