CHAPTER VII
Tertullian's Apology for the Chrestrans.
CHAPTER VII.
THAT COMMON FAME IS BUT AN ILL EVIDENCE.
sy i Ir is the common talk that we are the wickedest of men, that we murder and eat.a child in our religious assemblies,! and when we rise from supper conclude all in the confusions of incest.
It is reported likewise that for this work we have an odd sort of dogs, as ~ officious as bawds in putting out the candles, procurers of darkness for the freer satisfactions of our impious and shameless lust.
This is the common talk, and the report is of long standing, and yet not a man attempts to prove the truth of the fact.~ Either, therefore, if you believe report, examine the grounds, or if you will not examine, give nocredit to the report.
And this dissembled carelessness of yours against being better informed plainly speaks that you yourselves believe nothing of it; you seem to care not to examine, only in truth because you dare not; for were you of opinion that these reports were true, you would never give such orders as you do about the torturing of Christians ; which you prescribe, not to make them confess the actions of their life, but only to deny the religion they profess.
But the Christian religion, as I have already intimated, began to spread in the reign of Tiberius; and the truth pulled down a world of hatred in its very cradle; for it had as many enemies as men without the pale of revelation, and even those within, the very Jews, the most implacable of any, out of a blind passion for the law.
The soldiers from dragooning our persons, come to hate our religion, and from a baseness of spirit, our very domestics are as much bent upon 'our destruction as they.
Thus are we continually invested on every side, and continually betrayed— nay, very often we are surprised and taken in our public meetings and assemblies ; and yet did ever any one come upon us when the infant was crying under the sacrificers hand?2
Who ever catched 1 Disimur -sceleratissimt de Sacramento Infanticidii.
That this charge of a child in the sacrament was by the heathens commonly laid upon the Christians is evident, because Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Minutius, and the rest of the apglogists insist so much upon it.
'The nature of the institution and the practice of Simon \Magus, Menander, Basilides, Carpocrates, and other
— heretics, who pagged under the name of Christians, most probably gave rise to this horrid story, as.-Xave\ shown at large in my notes upon Justin's Apology.
2 Quis unguam talitervagienti Infanti supervenit.
'he Christian sacrifice of bread and wine was never ae! in the first ages of the Church in their public
Ti ertullian's Apology for the Christians.
us, like a Cyclops or Siren, with mouths besmeared in human blood, and carried us in that cruel pickle before a judge?
And as for incest, who ever discovered any relic of immodesty in his wife after she became a Christian?
And who can think that a heathen would -connive at wickednesses of this monstrous size in any Christian, had
F oar | he eyes to spy them out?
Or that he can be bribed in our favour, who seems never so well pleased as when he is hauling us to
FS See _ punishment?
If you say that these abominations are always done in secret, pray when and by whom came you to this knowledge?
;. is Not by the guilty themselves, for you know that' the persons admitted into the mysteries of all religions are by the very form of admission? under the severest obligations to secrecy ; the 4 3 * _ Samothracian and Eleusinian? mysteries you know are covered in profound silence, how much more reasonable is it therefore to think that such as these will be kept in the dark, which not only treasure up divine wrath against the day of judgment, but if once
'discovered will whet human justice to the highest pitch of vengeance?
If, therefore, Christians betray not themselves, it follows that they must be betrayed by those of another religion ; but how shall strangers be able to inform against us, when even the _ most pious mysteries* are defended from. the approaches of the worship; they looked upon their service as not so perfectly Christian and acceptable without it, that the Holy Spirit did in an especial manner descend upon the consecrated elements, that God was better pleased with their prayers
- for this commemoration of His Son, and that this was the principle of union between a Christian and the ever Blessed Trinity ; and, therefore, whenever the heathens broke into their assemblies, they would be sure to find this sacrifice ofa child, was there any such thing.
1 Ex Formé omnibus Mysteriis silentit Fides debeatur.
What silence was thought due to sacred rites we may understand by Horace's Favete linguis ; by Ovid's Ore favent Populi nunc cum venit aurea Pompa; by Virgil's Fida
_ Silentia Sacris; by Festus's Linguam pascito, 1.€. coerceto ; by the Egyptians setting up the image of Harpocrates in the entrance of their temples, and by the Romans placing the statue of Angerona on the altar of Volupia,
VidBrisson, de Formutlis, lib. i. p. 8.
® Eleusinia reticentur.
Horace protests that he would not stay in the house, or sail in the ship, with a person that should divulge the mysteries of Ceres—
Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum Vulsdrit arcane, sub tisdem Sit trabibus fragilemque mecum Solvat phaselum.
Alcibiades and his companions for exposing the rites of Ceres were not only excommunicated all religious and civil intercourse at Athens, but solemnly cursed by the priests, and priestesses—a practice not unlike to the Jewish
Anathema, Vid, Plutar. Adcibiad.
3 Cum etiam pie Initiationes arceant Prophanos.
I know nothing more
Tertultian's Apology for the Christians. stranger and the profane?
Unless you conclude the Christian rites to be the wickedest of any, and withal conclude that the wicked are less cautious about the divulging of such rites than those of a better religion.
And thus you must be forced to acknowledge you know nothing of our profession, but by common fame; and the "nature of fame is too well known by every one to be credited in haste.
Your own Virgil tells you, Fama malum, quo non aliud veloctus ullum.: Fame is an ill, the swiftest ill that flies.
Why does he call fame an ill?
Because of her swiftness?
Or because she is an-informer?
Or because she is a common liar?
For the last reason without question.
For she never lets even truth come out of her mouth without being sophisticated, without detracting, adding, or brewing it with one falsehood or another.
Moreover, the nature of fame is such that she cannot keep herself upon the wing without the assistance of lies; for she lives by not proving ; when she proves, she destroys her being.
She hoyers no practised all the heathen world over, than the excommunicating profane persons from all holy mysteries.
Hence that of Virgil— Procul, 6 procul este Prophani Conclamat Vates.
And that of Horace also— Odi Prophanum Vulgus et arceo, The Flamens had a commentaculum, a kind of rod in their hands to keep off impure persons.
Vid. Brisson, de Formulis, lib. i.; Selden, de Syned. lib. i. cap.
10.
Among the Greeks that old form from Orpheus continued, —?xas leas ters Bibnr0, At Athens the herald cried out ss 77s—Who is here?
To which the people answered, s0AAo} xa} ayatol—Many and good men, Vd. Suid. in os cfs.
And we read in Livy, Decad. 4, lib. i., of two young men of Arcanania, who for not being initiated and crowded into the Eleusinian mysteries, were slain ; for it was a capital crime to be present without due purification ; and such purifying rites. were men of all ranks and qualities obliged to perform before they could approach the altars and statues.
Not Nero himself could prevail with his conscience to let him be present at these rites of Ceres, after the Herald had made the usual proclamation for the wicked to depart. Vid. Sueton. Wer. cap. 34.
But Antoninus the philosopher, to show his innocence, went to the temple of Ceres, and into the very Sacrarium by himself.
Vd, Capitolin. in vit. Antonin.
Philos, And was there but a little more of the natural reverence of heathens to ~ holy things among Christian people, and did Christian priests exert the power that God has given them with as much vigour as the idol priests did, men even as wicked as Nero would not dare to approach our altars merely upon the invitation of a place.
But as matters stand, it might go hard with the priest to make a notorious offender lose his preferment, by refusing him the sacrament, and the common law might go near to nail the canon,
~ Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
as we Christians are; but if you feel this impossible in nature, you ought to give no credit' to the report, because Christians and or __ heathens have the same humanity.
le ar _ But you pretend that the ignorant only are decoyed and tricked.
_ into our religion, such as have not met with any of these stories against us, but are catched before they have time to consider and examine with that accuracy which every man is obliged to upon changing his religion.
But allowing it possible for a man to be ignorant of common fame, yet if any one is desirous to be initiated, it is the constant custom, as I take it, for such a person to go to the avy he e _ chief priest, to be instructed in what is necessary for such an — initiation.
And then, if these stories are true, he will instruct him _ in this manner: Friend, in order to communicate with us you must
_ provide a child tender and good, too young for any sense or notice of death; such a child as will smile into my face under the fatal knife.
You are likewise to provide bread to suck up the blood, _ and candlesticks and candles, and some dogs with some morsels to __ throw to those dogs just out of their reach, that by striving to come
_ at them they may pull down the candles and candlesticks to which _ they are tied.
Above all things, you must be sure not to come - without your mother and sister.
But what if they will not comply, or suppose the convert has no sister or mother, nor any relation of our religion?
Why, he cannot be admitted ; for to have a sister or » a mother are necessary qualifications, no doubt, to make a Christian.
_ But if you will suppose all this furniture got ready beforehand, without the knowledge of him who is to communicate, yet certainly after he
_ has communicated he must needs know all; and yet he still continues firm in our communion without a word of the imposture.
_ But he dares not discover perhaps, for fear of punishment, when such a discovery would be meritorious.
Whereas a man of probity, a after he had found himself thus abused, and tricked into so horrid a religion, would rather choose to die than live longer with such a _ conscience.
After all, I will grant that such a man dares not discover _ for fear of punishment; but pray then give me a reason why the _ same person should persevere in defiance of torments 3 for I think it natural to conclude that you would not continually stick close to a religion under such disadvantages, which you-would never have embraced had you but known it before you embraced it,