CHAPTER XL
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. are met together, and regulated with so much discipline and order, such a meeting, I say, is not to be called factious, but as orderly an assembly as any of your courts. ay
CHAPTER XL.
THAT THE CAUSES OF PUBLIC EVILS ARE MOST MALICIOUSLY
THROWN UPON THE CHRISTIANS.
On the contrary, faction is a name which belongs to those only who conspire in the hatred of the good and virtuous, and remonstrate full cry for innocent blood, sheltering their malice under this vain pretence, that they are of opinion, forsooth, that the Christians are the occasion of all the mischief in the world.
If Tiber overflows,' and Nile does not; if heaven stands still and withholds its rain, and the earth quakes ; if famine or pestilence take their marches through the country, the word is, Away with these Christians to the lion!
Bless me! what, so many people to one lion!
Pray tell me what havoc, what a mighty fall of people has been made in the world and Rome before the reign of Tiberius, that is, before the advent of Christ?
We read of Hierannape, and Delos, and Rhodes, and Co, islands swept away with many thousands of their inhabitants.
Plato tells of a tract of land bigger than Asia and Africa together, devoured by the Atlantic Ocean.
Besides, an earthquake drank up the Corinthian Sea, and an impetuous force of water tore off Lucania from Italy, and banished it into an island, which goes
_now by the name of Sicily.
Now these devastations of whole Countries I hardly believe you will deny to be public calainities.
1 $i Tiberius ascendit in Mania, statim Christianos ad Leones.
The overflowing of Tiber was looked upon as an ill omen, as we see by that of Horace,
Vidimus flavum Tiberim retortis, etc.
That it was the hard fate of the Christians to be continually charged as the cause of all the public calamities, we find by St. Cypr. ad Demetr. p. 197; and in the very first page of Arnobius adv. Gent.
Nay, so hot and lasting was this calumny, that when the Goths and Vandals broke in upon the Roman empire, St. Austin was obliged to write his books de Czvzt. Det, to silence this objection.
And so likewise for the same reason did Orosius at St. Austin's request write his seven books of history.
And Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in that fragment of his oration which we have in Eusebius, pursues the same design.
Vid. Eus. H. Eccl. iv. cap. 26, pp. 119, 120.
Whoever has a mind to be more particularly acquainted with the history of the following calamities will meet with references in abundance in Pamelius, and therefore I shall say nothing to them.
Tertullian' s Apology for the Christians. a 5 But where now, I do not ask, were the Christians, the professed despisers of your gods?' But where, I trow, were your gods themselves when the deluge blotted out the whole world, or, as Plato will have it, the plains only?
For that your gods were not in being in the time of the deluge, the cities wherein they breathed their first and their last, as well as those they founded, are a proof with a "witness ; for had they existed before the flood, they had not continued to this day, but been overwhelmed in the general ruin.
As yet, the Jews, the original of the Christian sect, were not gone from Egypt into Palestine when the adjacent countries of Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by a storm of fire ; the land smells of burning to this day, and the apples that grow there are agreeable to the eye only, but turn to ashes upon the touch.
Besides, we have not a word of complaint against the Christians from Tuscany or Campania, when
_ Heaven shot his flames upon Volsinium, and. Vesuvius discharged _ his upon Pompeium.
Was there any worshipper of the true God at Rome when Hannibal made such havoc of the Romans at Canne, and computed the numbers of the slaughtered gentry by bushels of rings picked up after the battle?
Were not all your gods everywhere in worship when the Gauls surprised the capitol?
And it is really - worth observing that in all these public evils the towns and temples both are involved in the same misfortune; which would not be, methinks, had your gods anything to do in the matter, because they would hardly have a hand in doing themselves a mischief.
But would you know the true reason of such judgments, you _ must know that mankind has always served God very ill ; first by a stupid neglect of Him ; for when they might have understood the _ divine nature in some measure, they would not pursue after it with their understanding, but let their vain imaginations go after gods of their own invention ; and secondly, because that when God had' been at the expense of revelation, they would not be at the pains of inquiring after it, nor be ruled by that Master He had sent to teach them righteousness ; and to take vengeance ors their sins, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to work all uncleanness with greediness.
But had: they went on as far as the light of nature, that candle of the Lord, would have led them, they had certainly found the God they looked for, and consequently would have served Him only, whom they found to be the only God; and by this means have experienced His mercies rather than His judgments.
But . now they lie under His just judgments, and which too they have felt long before the name of Christian had a being in the world, and whose goods man enjoyed lohg before he had made himself any