The Book Of Apology Against The Heathen

The Book Of Apology Against The Heathen

THE BOOK OF APOLOGY AGAINST THE HEATHEN

[The Apology was written probably A.D. 198. It was under Severus, because under one of the better Emperors (c. v. p. 13.) before he became a persecutor, (ib. and T. praises him c. 4.) and as the result of old laws, (c. 2–4.) i.e. before A. 202; after the conspiracy of Albinus (c. 35.) A.D. 196, 7., while the remains of the conspirators were being gleaned up, public rejoicings held at Rome, and a largess given, (ib.) as did Severus, upon his victory over Albinus, A. 198. (Herodian, Hist. iii. 8.) upon which he set out on the war against the Parthians (Spartian. in Sever. c. 14.) alluded to, probably, c. 37. (see Mosheim Disq. de æt. Apol.) Lumper, (Hist. S. Patr. t. vi. c. 1. §. 16.) places it A. 199, imagining the “gleaning” c. 25. to be that of the adherents of Niger. S. Clement Al. mentions “copious streams of the blood of martyrs shed daily,” at the same time, before the edict of Severus, (Strom. ii. p. 494.) another proof that the sufferings of the early Christians were not confined to the great persecutions; they were demanded by the populace. Allix infers, from the way in which T. speaks of Rome and the Romans, (c. 9. 21. 35.) that the Apology was not written at Rome; it is addressed to the executive (c. i. 2. 9. 50.) in a Proconsulate, (c. 45. see Bp. Kaye, Tert. p. 52.) so that Eusebius is probably mistaken in saying it was addressed to the Roman Senate. (H. E. v. 5.) S. Jerome says of it, (Ep. 70. ad Magnum, §. 5.) “What more learned than Tertullian, what more acute? His Apology and his Books against the Gentiles comprise the whole range of secular learning.”]

IF it be not allowed you, Lords of the Roman empire, sitting above all, to judge, in an open and exalted spot, at the very summit almost of the city, openly to look about you, and publicly to examine what there be of very truth in the cause of the Christians; if in this instance alone your authority be either afraid or ashamed to make enquiry in public, touching the diligent use of justice; if finally, as hath just now happened, the enmity against this sect, having too much exercised itself in private condemnations, formeth an obstacle to their defence, let the truth be permitted to reach your ears even by the secret way of silent writings. She asketh no favour for her cause, because she feeleth no wonder at her condition. She knoweth that she liveth a stranger upon earth, that among aliens she easily findeth foes; but that she hath her birth, her home, her hope, her favour, and her worth in the heavens. One thing meanwhile she earnestly desireth, that she be not condemned unknown. If she be heard, what loss cometh thereby to the laws, supreme within their own dominion? Will not their power boast the more in this, that they will condemn Truth even when she hath been heard? But if they condemn her unheard, besides the ill-repute of injustice, they will merit also the suspicion of a certain consciousness, as being, namely, unwilling to hear that, which when heard, they could not condemn. This therefore we lay before you as the first argument for the injustice of your hatred towards the name of Christians. Which injustice the same plea, namely, ignorance, which seemeth to excuse it, aggravateth and convicteth. For what more unjust than that men should hate that of which they know nothing, even if the thing deserve their hatred? For then doth it deserve, when it be known whether it do deserve. But when knowledge of the desert be wanting, whence is the justice of the hatred maintained? which ought to be approved, not by the event, but by previous conviction! When then men hate for this reason, because they know not what manner of thing that, which they hate, is, why may it not be of such a sort as that they ought not to hate it? Thus from either point we prove either against them, that they are both ignorant, in that they hate, and hate unjustly, in that they are ignorant. It is an evidence of that ignorance, which, while it is made the excuse, is the condemnation of injustice, when all, who aforetime hated because they were ignorant what it was which they hated, as soon as they cease to be ignorant, cease also to hate. From being such, they become Christians, to wit from conviction, and begin to hate what they were, and to profess what they hated, and are as numerous as indeed we are publicly declared to be. Men cry out that the state is beset, that the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in their islands. They mourn, as for a loss, that every sex, age, condition, and now even rank is going over to this sect. And yet they do not by this very means advance their minds to the idea of some good therein hidden: they allow not themselves to conjecture more rightly, they choose not to examine more closely. Here alone is the curiosity of man dull: they love to be ignorant, where others rejoice to know. How much more would Anacharsis have condemned these, the uninformed judging the informed, than the unmusical the musical! They had rather be ignorant, because they already hate. Thus they determine in the outset that that which they know not, is such as, if they knew, they could not hate; since if no due cause of hatred be found, surely it were best to cease to hate unjustly; but if it be clear that it is deserved, not only is their hatred nothing diminished, but stronger ground is gained for persevering in it, even with the sanction of justice itself. ‘But,’ saith one, ‘it is not therefore at once determined to be good because it converteth many, for how many are remoulded to evil! how many are deserters to the worse cause!’ Who denieth it? Nevertheless, that which is really evil not even those, whom it carrieth away, dare to defend as a good. Nature hath cast over every evil either fear or shame. Finally, evil-doers delight in hiding themselves; shun appearing; are bewildered when discovered; being accused deny; not even when tortured, readily or always confess; certainly mourn when condemned; sum up against themselves, impute either to fate or to the stars the impulses of a wicked mind: for they will not have that to be their own, which they acknowledge to be evil. But what doth the Christian like this? None is ashamed, none repenteth, save indeed that he was not such long ago. If he be marked down, he glorieth; if accused, maketh no defence; being questioned, confesseth even of his own accord; being condemned, giveth thanks. What manner of evil is this, which hath not the natural marks of evil, fear, shame, shrinking, penitence, sorrow? What manner of evil is this, whereof he that is accused, rejoiceth? whereof to be accused is his prayer, and its punishment his happiness? Thou canst not call that madness, of which thou art proved to know nothing.

II. If finally it be certain that we are never so guilty, why even by you are we treated otherwise than our fellows, that is than other guilty men, since for the same guilt the same treatment ought to be introduced? Whatever we be called, when others are called the same, they employ both their own tongue, and hired advocates, to commend their innocency: the liberty of answering, of disputing, is open to them, since it is not even lawful that they should be condemned, undefended and altogether unheard. But the Christians alone are allowed to say nothing which may clear them, which may defend the truth, which may make the judge not unjust: but that alone is looked to, which is needed for the public hatred, a confession of the name, not an examination of the charge: whereas, when ye take cognizance of any criminal, although he confess to the name of a murderer, or a sacrilegious or an incestuous person, or a public enemy, (to speak of our own titles,) ye are not content at once to pronounce him such, without enquiring out also attendant circumstances, the quality of the act, the number of acts, the place, the manner, the time, the accessories, the accomplices. In our case there is nothing like this, although it were equally right that the fact be extorted, whatsoever charge be falsely thrown out; how many murdered infants each hath tasted, how many incests he hath shrouded in darkness; what cooks, what dogs, were present. Oh! how great the glory of that magistrate, if he should hunt out one who hath already eaten an hundred infants! But we find even enquiry into our case forbidden: for the second Pliny, while governor of a province, when some Christians had been condemned, some degraded, being nevertheless troubled by their very numbers, asked of Trajan, then Emperor, what he should do for the future, alleging that, excepting their obstinacy in not sacrificing, he had discovered nothing else touching their religious mysteries, save meetings before day-break to sing to Christ as God, and to form a common bond of discipline, forbidding murder, adultery, fraud, perfidy, and other crimes. Then wrote Trajan back that this sect should not indeed be enquired after, but, when brought before him, must be punished. O sentence necessarily confounding itself! He forbiddeth that they should be enquired after, as though they were innocent, and commandeth that they should be punished, as though guilty! He spareth and rageth, winketh and punisheth! Why, O sentence, dost thou overreach thyself? If thou condemnest, why dost thou not also enquire? if thou enquirest not, why dost thou not also acquit? For tracking robbers through all the provinces, military stations are allotted. Against men accused of treason, and public enemies, every man is a soldier. The enquiry is extended to the accomplices, even to the accessories. The Christian alone may not be enquired after, but may be brought before the court; as though enquiry had any other object than to bring him thither! Ye condemn him therefore when brought before you, whom none would have enquired after, who, I suppose, hath already deserved punishment, not because he is guilty, but because, when not to be enquired after, he was found! So then neither in this do ye act towards us according to the rule of judging malefactors, namely, that to others ye apply tortures, when they deny, to make them confess; to the Christians alone, to make them deny; whereas, if it were a sin, we indeed should deny it, and ye by your tortures would compel us to confess it. Nor could you think that our crimes were therefore not to be enquired of by examinations, because ye were assured by the confession of the name, that they have been committed, seeing that to this day from one who hath confessed himself a murderer, though ye know what murder is, ye nevertheless extort the whole train of circumstances touching the act. Wherefore it is with the greater perverseness that, when ye presume our guilt from the confession of our name, ye compel us by tortures to go back from our confession, that by denying the name we may of course equally deny the crimes also, of which ye presumed us guilty from the confession of the name. But, I suppose, ye do not wish us, whom ye deem the worst of men, to die! For thus (doubtless) ye are wont to say to a murderer, ‘Deny the fact;’ to order the sacrilegious person to be torn with scourges if he persevere in his confession! If ye act not thus towards us as criminals, ye therefore judge us to be most innocent, since, as though we were most innocent, ye will not have us persevere in that confession, which ye know must be condemned by you of necessity, not of right. One crieth out, ‘I am a Christian.’ He sayeth what he is: thou wouldest hear what he is not. Sitting in authority to draw out the truth, from us alone do ye labour to draw out falsehood. ‘I am,’ saith he, ‘that which thou askest, if I am. Why torture me to unsay it? I confess, and thou torturest me: what wouldest thou do if I denied?’ Certainly ye do not easily lend credit to others when they deny: us, if we deny, ye forthwith credit. Let this perverseness be cause of suspicion to you that there may be some power lurking in secret, which maketh you its ministers against all rule, against the very nature of judicial trial, against even the laws themselves. For, if I mistake not, the laws command that malefactors be hunted out, not concealed, prescribe that such as confess be condemned, not acquitted. This the acts of your senate, this the mandates of your princes, this the government, whose servants ye are, determineth. Your rule is civil, not despotic. For with tyrants tortures were used for punishment also: with you they are tempered down to the examination alone. Observe therein your own law as necessary up to the time of confession. Now then, if they be anticipated by confession, they will be superfluous: sentence must needs be given. The culprit must discharge the penalty due, not be discharged from it. Finally, none desireth to acquit him: it is not lawful to wish it: therefore neither is any compelled to a denial. A Christian, thou deemest a man guilty of every crime, an enemy of the Gods, of the Emperors, of Law, of Morals, of all Nature; and thou compellest to deny that thou mayest acquit, whom thou wilt not be able to acquit, unless he deny. Thou quibblest with the laws. Thou wilt have him therefore deny himself guilty, that thou mayest make him not guilty, unwilling too as he now is, and not accounted guilty for the past. Whence this perverseness, not to consider this also, that more credit should be given to one that of his own will confesseth, than to one who from compulsion denieth, or that when compelled to deny, he may not deny in earnest, and being acquitted, may, on the spot, behind the judgment-seat, laugh at your rivalry, a Christian for the second time? Seeing then that in all things ye deal with us otherwise than with other criminals, in striving for this one thing, that we be debarred from this name, (for debarred we are, if we do what those who are no Christians do,) ye may perceive that it is no crime which is called in question, but a name, which a sort of plan of rival agency persecuteth, aiming first at this, that men may be unwilling to know for certain that, which they know for certain that they know not. Therefore also they believe of us things which are not proved, and will not have them enquired into, lest those things be proved not to be, which they had rather should be believed to be; so that the name opposed to that rival plan may, by its own confession alone, be condemned, on the presumption, not on the proof, of crimes. Wherefore we are tortured when we confess, and punished when we persevere, and acquitted when we deny, because it is a war about a name. Finally, why read ye that man a Christian from the tablet? why not a murderer also, if a Christian be a murderer? Why is he not also a committer of incest, or whatever else ye believe us to be? In our case alone ye are ashamed or loth to proclaim the very names of our crimes. If ‘Christian’ be the name of no crime, it is very absurd that there should be crime in the name alone.

III. What when the generality run upon an hatred of this name with eyes so closed, that in bearing favourable testimony to any one, they mingle with it the reproach of the name. ‘A good man Caius Seius, only he is a Christian.’ So another, ‘I marvel that that wise man Lucius Titius hath suddenly become a Christian.’ No one reflecteth whether Caius be not therefore good, and Lucius wise, because a Christian, or therefore a Christian because wise and good. They praise that which they know, they revile that which they know not; and that which they know, they spoil through that which they know not: whereas it were more just to prejudge things unseen by things seen, than to precondemn the seen through the unseen. Others condemn in the very thing, wherein in fact they praise, those whom in time past, before they had this name, they knew as vagabonds, worthless, wicked. In the blindness of their hatred they fall upon commending them. What a woman! how voluptuous! how gay! What a youth! what a rake! what a man of pleasure! They have become Christians. Thus is this name applied to their reformation. Some even barter their own interests for this hatred, being content to suffer injury, so that they have not at home that which they hate. The husband now no longer jealous hath turned out of doors his wife now chaste. The father, patient before, hath disowned his now obedient son. The master, once lenient, hath banished from his sight his now faithful servant. As each is reformed by this name, he offendeth. Virtue is not in such account as hatred of the Christians. Now then if the hatred be of the name, what guilt is there in names? what charge against words? unless it be that any word which is a name have either a barbarous, or an ill-omened, or a scurrilous, or an immodest sound. But the word ‘Christian,’ as far as its meaning is concerned, is derived from ‘anointing.’ And even when it is by you wrongly pronounced, ‘Chreestian,’ (for not even of the name is there any certain knowledge among you,) it is made from ‘sweetness,’ or from ‘kindness.’ Wherefore in innocent men a name, also innocent, is hated. But in truth the sect is hated in the name of its Head. What new thing is it, if any School bring upon its followers a name from its master? Are not Philosophers named from their founders, as Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans? Even from the places of their meetings and stations, as Stoics, Academics? So too Physicians from Erasistratus, and Grammarians from Aristarchus, and even Cooks from Apicius? And yet the profession of a name, handed down together with the institution, from its founder, doth not offend any. Clearly if any hath proved the sect bad, and thus the founder also bad, he will prove the name likewise bad, deserving of hatred from the guilt of the sect and of its founder. And therefore, before hating the name, it were meet, first to judge of the sect from the founder, or of the founder from the sect. But now, all examination and knowledge of either set aside, the name is laid hold of, the name is attacked, and a word alone pre-condemneth a sect unknown, and its founder also unknown, because they bear a name, not because convicted.

IV. And so, having as it were premised these things, that I might set a mark upon the injustice of the public hatred against us, I will now take my stand on the ground of our innocence, and not only refute the charges which are brought against us, but even retort them upon the very men who bring them; that in this also all may know that those things exist not in Christians which they are not ignorant do exist in themselves; and at the same time may blush in accusing—I will not say the best, themselves being the worst, but—those who are now, on their own shewing, their compeers. We will answer touching all the things severally, which we are said to commit in secret, which are openly discovered against us, in which we are accounted wicked, in which foolish, in which to be condemned, in which to be laughed at. But since, when the truth of our cause meeteth you at every turn, the authority of the laws is at last set up against it, so that it either is said that nothing must be reconsidered after the laws have decided, or the necessity of obedience is unwillingly preferred to truth, I will first contend with you about the laws as with the guardians of the laws. And first, when ye harshly determine, saying, ‘It is not lawful that ye should exist,’ and prescribe this law without any gentler reconsideration, ye avow violence, and an unjust despotism from within your strong hold, if ye therefore say it is unlawful because ye will have it, not because it ought to be, unlawful. But if, because it ought not to be, therefore ye will not have it lawful, doubtless that ought not to be lawful, which is ill done, and surely it is, even hereby, already determined that what is well done is lawful. If I shall find that to be good, which your law hath forbidden, is it not by this previous determination, disabled from forbidding me that which, if it were evil, it would justly forbid? If your law hath erred, it was devised, methinks, by man; for it hath not dropped down from the sky. Do we wonder that man could either err in framing a law, or that he should become wiser in disallowing it? Why! did not the amendments by the Lacedæmonians in the laws of Lycurgus himself inflict such pain upon their author, that in retirement he condemned himself to starve to death? Do not even ye, as experience throweth light upon the darkness of antiquity, lop and cut down, with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts, all that old and slovenly forest of laws? Did not Severus, the steadiest of princes, repeal but yesterday, after an old age of such high authority, those most foolish laws of Papius, which enforce the bringing up of children before that those of Julius do the contracting of marriage? but there were laws too aforetime, that men cast in a suit might be cut in pieces by the creditors: yet was this cruelty afterwards erased by public consent, the punishment of death being exchanged for a mark of disgrace. The confiscation of goods resorted to would rather have the suffusion than the effusion of a man’s blood. How many laws still lurk behind needing to be purified! It is not length of years, nor the worth of their founders, which commendeth them, but equity alone; and therefore when they are acknowledged to be unjust, they are justly condemned, although condemning. Why call we them unjust? yea, if they punish a name, we call them foolish also; but if doings, why in our case do they punish doings, on the score of a name alone, which in others they maintain must be proved by the act, not by the name? “I am guilty of incest,”—why do they not examine me? “of child-murder,”—why do they not extort the proof? “I commit some act against the gods, against the Cæsars,”—why am I not heard, who have whereby to clear myself? No law forbiddeth that to be thoroughly sifted, which it forbiddeth to be done; for neither doth a judge punish justly, unless he know that an act, which is not lawful, hath been committed; nor doth a citizen obey the law honestly, not knowing what sort of thing it be which he punisheth. No law ought to satisfy itself merely of its own justice, but those also from whom it expecteth obedience. But the law is suspicious, if it will not have itself proved, and reprobate, if unapproved it domineereth.

V. To treat somewhat of the origin of the kind of laws, there was an ancient decree, that no god should be consecrated by the Emperor, unless approved by the Senate. Witness Marcus Æmilius in the case of his own god Alburnus. This also maketh for our cause, that with you deity is measured according to the judgment of man. A god, unless he please man, shall not be a god. Man will now be obliged to be propitious to a god. Tiberius therefore, in whose time the name of Christ entered into the world, laid before the Senate, with his own vote to begin with, things announced to him from Palestine in Syria, which had there manifested the truth of the Divinity of that Person. The Senate, because they had not themselves approved it, rejected it. Cæsar held by his sentence, threatening peril to the accusers of the Christians. Consult your Annals: there ye will find that Nero was the first to wreak the fury of the sword of the Cæsars upon this sect, now springing up especially at Rome. But in such a first founder of our condemnation we even glory. For whoever knoweth him, can understand that nothing save some great good was condemned by Nero. Domitian too, who was somewhat of a Nero in cruelty, had tried it, but forasmuch as he was also a human being, he speedily stopped the undertaking, even restoring those whom he had banished. Such have ever been our persecutors; unjust, impious, infamous, whom even yourselves have been wont to condemn, by whom whosoever were condemned ye have been wont to restore. But out of so many princes thenceforward to him of the present day, who had any savour of religion and humanity, shew us any destroyer of the Christians. But we on the other hand have one to shew who protected them, if the letters of that most august Emperor Marcus Aurelius be enquired of, wherein he testifieth of that drought in Germany removed by the shower obtained by the prayers of the Christians who chanced to serve in his army. As he did not openly take off the penalty from the men of that sect, so in another way he openly made away with it by adding a sentence, and that a more horrid one, against the accusers also. What sort of laws then be those which only the impious, the unjust, the infamous, the cruel, the foolish, the insane, execute against us? which Trajan in part foiled by forbidding that the Christians should be enquired after; which no Adrian, though a dear searcher into all things curious, no Vespasian, though the vanquisher of the Jews, no Pius, no Verus, hath pressed against us? Surely the worst of men, it might be thought, ought to be more readily rooted out by the best, as being their antagonists, than by their own fellows.

VI. Now I would have these most religious guardians and avengers of the laws and institutions of their fathers answer touching their own fealty, and their respect and deference towards the decrees of their ancestors, whether they have fallen off from none, whether they have deviated in none, whether they have not annulled such as are necessary, and in proportion as they are the best fitted, to good discipline. Whither have gone those laws which checked extravagance and ambition? which enacted that an hundred assés, and no more, should be allowed for a supper; and that not more than one fowl, and that not a fatted one, should be introduced? which expelled from the Senate a Patrician on grave proof of ambition, because he possessed ten pounds of silver? which forthwith pulled down the theatres as they rose for the corruption of morals? which suffered not the badges of dignities and honourable birth to be assumed without cause or without a penalty? For I see centenarian suppers, which must now be so named from an hundred sesterces, and silver mines wrought out into dishes, (it were a small matter if only for Senators, and not for freed men, or those who are even now having the whip broken upon them.) I see too that it is not enough that theatres should be single or uncovered. For it was for the games forsooth that the Lacedæmonians first invented their odious cloak, that immodest pleasure might not be chilled even in the winter. I see too no distinction left in dress between matrons and harlots. Touching women indeed, even those rules of their forefathers have dropped, which supported modesty and sobriety, when no woman knew ought of gold, save on the one finger on which her husband had placed the pledge of the nuptial ring; when women were so entirely kept from wine, that her own friends starved a matron to death for unsealing the stores of a wine cellar; and under Romulus one who had touched wine was slain with impunity by her husband Mecenius. Wherefore also they were obliged to offer kisses to their nearest kinsfolk, that they might be judged by their breath. Where is that happiness in marriages, favoured doubtless by good morals, through which, during nearly six hundred years from the founding of the city, no one family wrote a writing of divorcement? In the women, now, owing to their gold, no limb is light, owing to their wine, no kiss is free: and for divorce, it is now even the object of a wish, as though it were the proper fruit of matrimony. As touching even your gods themselves, the decrees, which your fathers had providently enacted, ye, these same most obedient persons, have rescinded. Father Bacchus, with his mysteries, the Consuls by the authority of the Senate, banished not only from the city, but from the whole of Italy. Serapis, and Isis, and Harpocrates with his dog-headed monster, having been forbidden the Capitol, that is, turned out of the palace of the gods, the Consuls Piso and Gabinius (certainly not Christians) renounced, overturning even their altars, thus checking the vices of base and idle superstitions. These ye having restored, have conferred the highest dignity upon them. Where is your religion? Where is the reverence due from you to your ancestors? In dress, food, establishment, income, finally in your very language, ye have renounced your forefathers. Ye are ever lauding the ancients, yet fashioning your lives anew every day. By which it is manifest, that, while ye fall back from the good customs of your ancestors, ye retain and guard those things which ye ought not, while ye guard not those which ye ought. Besides that very thing, which being handed down from your fathers ye seem most faithfully to observe, in which ye mark out the Christians as specially guilty of transgression,—I mean diligence in worshipping the gods, wherein antiquity hath mostly erred,—although ye have rebuilt the altars of the now Roman Serapis, although ye offer your frantic orgies to the now Italian Bacchus, I will shew in the proper place to have been just as much despised and neglected and destroyed by you, contrary to the authority of your ancestors. For I shall now make answer to the evil report touching secret crimes, that I may clear my way to such as are more open.

VII. We are said to be the most accursed of men, as touching a sacrament of child-murder, and thereon a feast, and incest after the feast, where the dogs that overturn the candles, our panders forsooth, procure darkness and an absence of all shame besides, for impious lusts. Yet ‘said to be’ is ever the word, and ye take no care to expose that which we have been so long said to be. Wherefore either expose it, if ye believe it, or be unwilling to believe it, seeing ye have not exposed it. Through your own connivance it is ruled against you, that that hath no existence which even yourselves dare not expose. Far other is the task which ye impose on your executioner against the Christians, not that they should confess what they do, but deny what they are. This religion dateth, as we have already set forth, from Tiberius. Truth set out with being herself hated; as soon as she appeared, she is an enemy. As many as are strangers to it, so many are its foes: and the Jews indeed appropriately from their rivalry, the soldiers from their violence, even they of our own household from nature. Each day are we beset, each day betrayed; in our very meetings and assemblies are we mostly surprised. Who hath ever in this way come upon a screaming infant? Who hath kept for the judge the mouths of these Cyclopses and Sirens, bloody as he found them? Who hath discovered any marks of impurity even in our wives? Who hath concealed such crimes, when he hath discovered them, or hath taken a bribe to do so, while haling the men themselves? If we be always concealed, when was that, which we commit, divulged? Yea, by whom could it be divulged? By the criminals themselves forsooth! Nay, verily: since the fidelity of secresy is, by the very rule of all mysteries, due to them. The Samothracian and Eleusinian are kept secret; how much more such as, being divulged, will in the mean time provoke even the vengeance of man, while that of God is kept in store! If themselves then be not their own betrayers, it followeth that strangers must be. And whence have strangers the knowledge, when even holy mysteries ever exclude the profane, and beware of witnesses? unless it be that unholy men have the less fear! The nature of fame is known to all. It is your own saying,

“Fame is an ill, than which more speedy none.” (VIRG.)

Why “Fame an ill?” because “speedy?” because a telltale? or because mostly false? who, not even at the very time when she beareth any thing true, is without the vice of falsehood, detracting, adding, changing from the truth! What, when her condition is such, that she endureth only while she lieth, and liveth only so long as she proveth not her words? for when she hath proved them, she ceaseth to be; and, as having discharged her office of talebearer, delivereth up a fact. And thenceforward the fact is laid hold of, the fact is named, and no one saith, (for instance,) ‘They say that this happened at Rome,’ or ‘The report is that he hath obtained the province,’ but, ‘He hath obtained the province,’ and ‘This happened at Rome.’ Fame, a name for uncertainty, hath no place when a thing is certain. But would any, but an inconsiderate man, believe Fame? since a wise man believeth not that which is uncertain. All may judge that, over whatever extent it be spread, with whatever assurance framed, it must needs have at some time sprung from some one author, and thence creep into the channels of tongues and ears. And a fault in the first little seed doth so darken the rest of the tale, that none enquireth whether that first tongue have not sown a falsehood, which often happeneth either from the spirit of rivalry, or the wanton humour of suspicion, or that taste for falsehood which in some is not new, but inborn. But it is well that “time revealeth all things,” which even your own proverbs and sayings testify, according to the general law of nature which hath so ordained that nothing long remaineth hidden, even that which fame hath not spread abroad. With good cause then hath Fame been so long the only witness of the crimes of the Christians. This informer ye produce against us, who even to this time hath not been able to prove that which she once threw out, and in so long a period hath strengthened into an opinion.

VIII. That I may appeal to the authority of Nature herself against those who presume that such things are to be believed, lo! we set before you the reward of these crimes. They promise eternal life. Believe it for the moment: for I ask this, whether even thou, who dost believe it, thinkest it worth while to attain to it by such a conscience? Come plunge thy knife into an infant, the foe of none, the accused of none, the child of all. Or, if this be the office of another, only stand by this human being, dying before it hath lived; wait for the young soul’s flight; catch the scarce-matured blood; soak thy bread in it; freely feed upon it. Meanwhile as thou sittest at the meal, calculate the places where thy mother, where thy sister is; note them diligently, so that when the darkness caused by the dogs shall fall upon thee, thou mayest not err; for thou wilt incur pollution if thou commit not incest. Thus initiated and sealed thou livest for ever. I desire thee to answer whether Eternity be worth such a price; or if not, therefore it ought not to be believed to be so. Even if thou shouldest believe it, I say that thou wouldest not do it; even if thou wouldest, I say that thou couldest not. And why should others be able, if ye are not able? Why should ye not be able, if others are able? We, I suppose, are of another nature! Are we Cynopeans or Sciapodes? Have we other rows of teeth? other nerves for incestuous lust? Thou that canst believe these things of a man, canst also do them. Thou thyself also art a man, as is a Christian. Thou that canst not do them, oughtest not to believe them, for a Christian also is a man, and all that thou also art. But (say ye) men while in ignorance are cheated and practised on. Because forsooth they knew not that any such thing was asserted of the Christians, a thing doubtless to have been looked to by them, and investigated with all diligence! But it is the custom, methinks, for those who desire to be initiated, first to go to the master of the mysteries, and to note down what things must be prepared. Then saith he, ‘An infant thou must needs have, still of tender age, who knoweth not what death is, who can smile under thy knife: bread too, with which thou must take up the mess of blood: candlesticks moreover, and candles, and certain dogs, and sops, which may make them stretch forward to overturn the candles: above all, thou wilt be bound to come with thy mother and sister.’ What if they will not come, or if thou hast none? What, in short, must solitary Christians do? A man, I suppose, will not be a regular Christian, unless he be a brother or a son! What now, even if all these things be prepared for men ignorant of them? Surely they know them afterwards, and bear with and pardon them. They fear to be punished! men, who, if they publish them, will deserve to be defended; who should rather even die voluntarily, than exist under such a conscience. Well! grant that they do fear. Why do they still go on? for it followeth that thou canst not wish any longer to be that, which, if thou hadst known it before, thou wouldest not have been.

IX. To refute these charges the more, I will shew that that is done by you, partly in public and partly in secret, through which perchance ye have come to believe them of us also. In the bosom of Africa, infants were publicly sacrificed to Saturn, even to the days of a proconsul under Tiberius, who on the very trees of their temple which shaded their crimes, as on consecrated crosses, hung up, alive, to public view the priests themselves; witness the soldiery of my own country who executed that very office for that proconsul. But even now this consecrated crime is continued in secret. It is not the Christians only who defy you; nor is any crime rooted out for ever, nor doth any god change his character. Since Saturn did not spare his own sons, doubtless he persisted in not sparing those of others, whom indeed their own parents offered of themselves, and willingly paid their vow, and fondled the infants, lest they should be slain weeping. And yet murder by a parent differeth much from manslaying. Among the Gauls a riper age was sacrificed to Mercury. I leave to their own theatres the fables of Tauri. Lo! in that most religious city of the pious descendants of Æneas there is a certain Jupiter, whom, in his own games, they drench with human blood. But, say ye, ‘the blood of one condemned to the beasts:’ and therefore, I suppose, not so bad as that of a man. Is it not therefore worse, because the blood of a bad man? Still in any case it is shed by manslaying. O Christian Jupiter! and ‘the only son of his father’—through cruelty! But since as touching child murder it mattereth not whether it be done from Religion or of mere wanton will, though in the case of murder by a parent there is a difference, I will appeal to the people. Of these who stand around and pant for Christian blood, of your own selves, magistrates most just and most severe against us, how many will ye that I smite in their consciences, as slayers of the children born unto them? If indeed there be a difference too as to the manner of death, surely it is with greater cruelty that ye force out their breath in the water, or expose them to cold and hunger and dogs. For even those of riper age would desire to die by the sword. But to us, manslaying having once been forbidden, it is not lawful to undo even what is conceived in the womb, while the blood is as yet undetermined to form a man. Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder: nor doth it matter whether one take away a life when formed, or drive it away while forming. He also is a man, who is about to be one. Even every fruit already existeth in its seed. Touching the eating of blood, and such like tragic dishes, read whether it be not somewhere related, (it is in Herodotus, I think,) that certain nations have ordained for the making of a treaty the shedding of blood from their arms, and the drinking it the one from the other. Under Catiline also there was some drinking of the same sort. They say too that among some tribes of the Scythians every one that dieth is eaten by his relations. I am travelling too far. In this age, in this country, blood from a wounded thigh, caught in the palm of the hand, and given to eat, sealeth those consecrated to Bellona. They too, who in the games in the theatre have drunk with greedy thirst the fresh blood streaming from the neck of the butchered criminals to cure the falling sickness, where are they? they too, who from the stage sup on the meat of wild beasts, who fetch it from the boar, from the stag? That boar hath from the man, whom he hath covered with blood, in struggling with him, wiped it off. That stag hath lain in the blood of a gladiator. The paunches of the very bears are in request, reeking yet with undigested human entrails. The flesh which hath been fed on a man forthwith riseth in the stomach of a man. Ye that eat these things, how far removed are ye from the feasts of the Christians? And they too, who with brutal appetite seize on human bodies, do they do the less because they devour the living? Are they the less consecrated to filthiness by human blood, because what they take up hath yet to become blood? They feed not indeed on infants, but on those of riper age. Let your sin blush before us Christians, who do not reckon the blood even of animals among meats to be eaten, who for this cause also abstain from things strangled, and such as die of themselves, that we may not be defiled by any blood even buried within their entrails. Finally, among the trials of the Christians, ye offer them also pudding-skins stuffed with blood, as being well assured that that, whereby ye would have them transgress, is unlawful among them. Moreover what manner of thing is it to believe that they, who ye are assured abhor the blood of beasts, pant for human blood? unless perchance ye have found it sweeter! Which very blood too it were meet should be applied as a test of Christians, in like manner as the altar, as the censer. For they would be proved Christians by desiring human blood, as by refusing to sacrifice, and would be to be slain on another ground if they tasted, in the same way as if they had not sacrificed. And surely ye would have no lack of blood in your examination and condemnation of prisoners. Moreover, who are more incestuous than those whom Jupiter himself hath taught? Ctesias relateth that the Persians are connected with their mothers. And the Macedonians also are suspected, because when they first heard the Tragedy of Œdipus, laughing at the grief of the incestuous man they said, ἤλαυνε τὴν μήτερα. Now consider what an opening there is to involuntary sin for the commission of incest, the promiscuousness of your debauchery supplying the materials. In the first place ye expose your children to be taken up by the compassion of any passing stranger, or resign them to be adopted by nobler parents. Of a stock thus alienated, it must needs be that the memory is sometimes lost; and when once a mistake shall have chanced upon them, thenceforward it will go on transmitting the incest, the generation creeping on with the crime. Then, secondly, in whatever place ye be, at home, abroad, across the seas, lust is your companion, whose promiscuous sallies may any where easily make children for men unawares, so that the stock thus scattered, as it were, out of some portion at least of the seed, doth through the intercourse of man meet with its own reflected images, and knoweth them not for mixtures of incestuous blood. Us a most careful and most faithful chastity hath fenced from such a consequence; and in proportion as we are safe from adulteries, and from all transgression after marriage, so are we also from the chance of incest. Some men, much more secure, beat off by a pure continency the whole power of such error, little children to their old age. If ye would consider that these things exist among you, ye would perceive forthwith that they exist not among the Christians. The same eyes would have testified of both. But two sorts of blindness easily unite, so that they who see not things which are, think also that they see things which are not. So I might shew it to be in every case. Now for the open sins.

X. ‘You do not,’ say ye, ‘worship the Gods, and you offer not sacrifices for the Emperors.’ It followeth that we sacrifice not for others for the same reason for which we do not even for ourselves, simply from not worshipping the gods. It is for sacrilege, therefore, and treason that we are arraigned. This is the chief point in the case: nay it is the whole, and certainly worthy of being considered, if neither presumption nor injustice are to judge it, the one despairing to find, the other rejecting, truth. We cease to worship your gods from the time when we discover that they are no gods. This therefore ye ought to require, that we prove that they be no gods, and therefore not to be worshipped, because then only ought they to have been worshipped, if they had been gods. Then also ought the Christians to be punished, if it were proved that those are gods, whom they worshipped not, because they thought them not to be so. ‘But to us,’ ye say, ‘they are gods.’ We challenge this, and appeal from yourselves to your conscience. Let that judge us: let that condemn us, if it shall be able to deny that all these gods of yours were men. If she too herself would go about to deny it, she shall be convicted out of her own documents of Antiquity, from whence she hath learned to know them, which bear witness, to this day, both to the cities in which they were born, and to the countries wherein, having wrought any thing, they have left traces of themselves, nay even those in which they are proved to have been buried. Nor shall I run through all separately, so many as they are and so great, new, old, barbarian, Grecian, Roman, foreign, taken in war, adopted, peculiar, common, male, female, of the country, of the town, of the fleet, of the army. It is idle to go over their very titles. Let me sum up all in brief: and that, not that ye may learn, but be reminded of them; for certainly ye act as though ye had forgotten them. Before Saturn there is, according to you, no god. From him is the date of all Deity, though better or better known than himself. Whatever therefore shall be proved of the origin, the same will also follow of the line. Touching Saturn, therefore, as far as books teach, neither Diodorus the Greek, nor Thallus, nor Cassius Severus, nor Cornelius Nepos, nor any of that class of writers on antiquities, have pronounced him to be ought else than a man. If we measure by the evidence of facts, I no where find any more trust-worthy than in Italy itself, wherein Saturn, after many travels, and after his entertainment in Attica, settled, being received by Janus or Janes as the Salii will have it. The mountain, which he had dwelt in, was called Saturnius: the city which he had planted, is even to this day Saturnia: finally, the whole of Italy, after being called Œnotria, was surnamed Saturnia. From him first came your tablets, and coin stamped with an image, and hence he presideth over the treasury. But if Saturn be a man, surely he is born of a man, and, because of a man, surely not of Heaven and Earth. But it easily came to pass that one, whose parents were unknown, should be called the son of those, of whom we may all be thought to be sons. For who may not call Heaven and Earth his father and mother, in the way of reverence and respect, or according to the custom of men, whereby persons unknown, or unexpectedly appearing, are said to have dropped down upon us from the skies? In like manner it happened to Saturn, coming unexpected every where, to be called heaven-born. For even the vulgar call those, whose birth is uncertain, “sons of Earth.” I say nothing of men being as yet in so rude a condition, that they might be moved by the appearance, as though divine, of any strange man, when even polished as they are at this day, men consecrate as gods those whom a few days before they acknowledged by a public mourning to be dead. Enough now, little as it is, of Saturn. I shall shew that Jupiter also was as well a man as born of a man; and so, in order, that the whole swarm of his descendants were as mortal as they were like the seed whence they sprung.

XI. And since, as ye dare not deny these to have been men, so ye have determined to affirm that they became gods after their death, let us treat of the causes which have worked out this effect. In the first place indeed ye must needs allow that there is some superior God, and some dispenser of Deity, who hath made gods out of men. For neither could they have assumed to themselves that Deity which they had not, nor could any give it to them which had it not, save one who in his own proper right possessed it. But if there were no one to make them gods, in vain do ye presume that they were made gods, when ye refuse them a maker. Surely if they could have made themselves, they would never have been men, to wit as possessing in themselves the power of belonging to an higher state of being. Wherefore if there be one who maketh gods, I return to examine the reasons for making gods out of men, and I find none, unless it be that that great God lacked their services and aid in divine functions. First it is unworthy of Him that He should need the aid of any man, and that a dead one, seeing that He, who was about to lack the aid of a dead man, might more worthily have made some god from the first. But I do not even see any room for such aid: for all this body of the universe, whether, according to Pythagoras, without beginning and without a maker, or, according to Plato, having a beginning and a maker, in any case being once for all, in the very act of its conception, disposed, and furnished, and ordered, was found with a government of perfect reason. That could not be imperfect, which perfected all things. Nothing awaited Saturn and the race of Saturn. Men must be fools, if they be not assured that from the beginning rain hath fallen from heaven, and stars have beamed, and light hath shot forth, and thunders have roared, and Jupiter himself hath feared those bolts which ye place in his hands; that all fruit likewise sprang abundantly from the earth before Bacchus, and Ceres, and Minerva, yea before that first man whosoever he was; because nothing provided, for the maintenance and support of man, could have been introduced after man. Finally they are said to have discovered these necessaries of life, not to have made them: but that which is discovered, was, and that which was, will not be accounted his who discovered, but his who made it: for it was, before it was discovered. Further, if Bacchus be therefore a god, because he first made known the vine, Lucullus, who first introduced cherries generally into Italy, hath been hardly dealt with, because, being the pointer out, he was not thereupon deified as the author of a new fruit. Wherefore if the universe hath existed from the beginning, both ordered and dispensed by fixed laws for the exercise of its functions, there lacketh a cause in this particular for admitting man to the Godhead, because the posts and powers which ye have assigned to them, have existed just as much from the beginning as they would have, even if ye had not created these gods. But ye betake yourselves to another reason, and answer that the conferring Deity upon them was a means of rewarding their merits, and hence ye grant, I suppose, that this god-making God is excellent in justice, one who would not rashly, nor unworthily, nor lavishly, dispense so great a reward. I would therefore recount their merits, whether they be such as should raise them to heaven, and not rather sink them down into “the nethermost hell,” which, when ye choose, ye affirm to be the prisonhouse of eternal punishments. For thither are the wicked wont to be thrust, and such as are unchaste towards their parents, and their sisters, and the debauchers of wives, and the ravishers of virgins, and the corrupters of boys, and they who are of angry passions, and they who kill, and they who steal, and they who deceive, and whosoever are like some god of yours, not one of whom will ye be able to prove free from crime or vice, unless ye shall deny that he was a man. But as ye cannot deny that they were men, ye have, besides, these marks which do not either allow it to be believed that they were afterwards made gods. For if ye sit in judgment for the punishment of such men, if all who among you are honest refuse the intercourse, the conversation, the company, of the evil and the base, and if that God hath admitted their compeers to a fellowship in his own majesty, why then condemn ye those whose fellows ye worship? Your justice is a stigma upon heaven. Make all your worst criminals gods, that ye may please your gods. The deifying of their fellows is an honour to them. But to omit farther discussion of this their unworthiness, grant that they be honest, and pure, and good. Still how many better men have ye left in the shades below! in wisdom a Socrates, in justice an Aristides, in warlike arts a Themistocles, in greatness of soul an Alexander, in good fortune a Polycrates, in wealth a Crœsus, in eloquence a Demosthenes! Which of these gods of yours was more grave and wise than Cato? more just and warlike than Scipio? Which more great of soul than Pompey? more fortunate than Sylla? more wealthy than Crassus? more eloquent than Tully? How much more worthily would he have waited for these to be adopted as gods, foreknowing, as he must, the better men! He was hasty I trow, and shut up heaven once for all, and now blusheth doubtless to see better men grumbling in the shades below.

XII. I say no more now of these, as knowing that, when I have shewn what they are, I shall by the very force of truth shew what they are not. As touching your gods therefore, I see names only, the statues of certain dead men of olden time, and I hear fables, and in their fables I read their mysteries. But as touching the images themselves I find nothing else than materials akin to vessels and instruments of common use, or from these same vessels and instruments, as though changing their destiny by their consecration, the wantonness of art transforming them, and that too most insultingly, and in the work itself sacrilegiously: so that in very truth it may be a consolation to us in our punishments, especially since we are punished on account of these very gods, that they themselves also suffer the same things in order that they may be made. Ye put the Christians upon crosses and stakes. What image doth not the clay first form, moulded upon a cross and a stake? It is on the gibbet that the body of your god is first consecrated! Ye tear the sides of the Christians with claws: but upon your gods hatchets, and planes, and files, are more stoutly laid over all their limbs. We lay down our necks: until lead and glue and pegs have been used, your gods are headless. We are driven to the beasts; those surely which ye attach to Bacchus, and to Cybele, and to Cælestis. We are burned with fire: so too are they in their original mass. We are condemned to the mines: it is thence that your gods are derived. We are banished to islands: in an island also one or other of your gods useth to be born or to die. If by such means any deity is formed, then those who are punished are deified, and your condemned criminals ought to be called gods. But clearly your gods feel not these injuries and insults in the forming of them; as neither do they the honours paid to them. O impious words! O sacrilegious revilings! Gnash your teeth and foam upon us. Ye are the same men who approve of a Seneca declaiming against your superstition in more copious and bitter words. Wherefore if we worship not statues and cold images, very like their dead originals, which the kites, and the mice, and the spiders, well know, did not the renouncing of the discovered error deserve praise rather than punishment? For can we think that we injure those, who we are sure have no being at all? That which is not, suffereth nothing from any, because it is not.

XIII. ‘But,’ sayest thou, ‘they are gods to us.’ And how is it that ye on the other hand are found to be impious, and sacrilegious, and irreligious, towards those gods? neglecting those, whom ye presume to exist; destroying those, whom ye fear, and even mocking those, whom ye avenge! Mark whether I speak falsely. First in that, when ye worship, some one, some another, of course ye offend those whom ye worship not. The preference of one cannot go on without the slight of another, because there is no choice without rejection. Ye despise then at once those whom ye reject; whom ye fear not, by rejecting, to offend. For as we have before shortly hinted, the case of each god depended upon the judgment of the Senate. He was not a god, whom man, after consultation, had refused, and, by refusing, had condemned. Your household gods, whom ye call Lares, ye deal with according to your household rights, by pledging, selling, changing them, sometimes from a Saturn into a chamber vessel, sometimes from a Minerva into a pan, as each hath become worn and battered by being long worshipped, as each man hath found his household need the more sacred god. Your public gods ye equally profane by public right, whom ye have in the register as a source of revenue. Thus the capitol, thus the herb-market is bid for. Under the same proclamation of the crier, under the same spear, in the same catalogue of the quæstor, Deity is consigned and hired. But in truth lands charged with a tribute are of less value: men assessed for a poll-tax are less noble. For these are the marks of villenage. But the gods who pay the highest tribute are the most holy; yea, rather, they who are the most holy pay the highest tribute. Their majesty is made a source of gain: Religion goeth about the taverns begging. Ye exact payment for a footing in the temple, for access to the sacred rite. Ye may not know the gods for nothing: they have their price. What do ye at all to honour them, which ye do not bestow on your dead men also? Temples all the same, altars all the same,—the same dress and badges on the statues. As the dead man hath his age, hath his profession, hath his occupation, so hath the god. How doth the funeral feast differ from the feast of Jupiter? a bowl from a chalice? an embalmer from a soothsayer? for a soothsayer also attendeth on the dead. But rightly do ye offer divine honours to your deceased Emperors, to whom even when living ye assign them. Your gods will count themselves your debtors, yea will be thankful because their masters are made their equals. But when among your Junos, and Cereses, and Dianas, ye worship Larentina, a public harlot, (I would at least it had been Lais or Phryne;) when ye instal Simon Magus with a statue and the title of an holy god; when ye make I know not whom out of the court pages a god of the synod; although your ancient gods be not more noble, yet they will account it a slight on your part that that hath been allowed to others also, which they alone had from the earliest ages preengaged.

XIV. I am unwilling to recount also your sacred rites. I say not what your behaviour is in sacrificing, when ye offer up all your dying, and rotting, and scabbed animals; when from those that are fat and sound ye cut off all the superfluous parts, the heads and the hoofs, which, even in your own houses, ye would have set aside for your slaves and your dogs; when of the tithe due to Hercules ye lay not even one third part upon his altar. I will rather praise your wisdom, for that ye save somewhat of that which is thrown away. But turning to your books, by which ye are instructed in prudence and in honourable duties, what mockeries do I find! gods fighting, on account of the Trojans and Greeks, matched against each other like pairs of gladiators! Venus wounded with an arrow by a man, because she would fain deliver her own son Æneas, lest he should be slain by the same Diomede! Mars almost wasted to death by imprisonment in chains for thirteen months! Jupiter delivered by the aid of a kind of monster, lest he should suffer the same violence from the rest of the gods! and now weeping for the fall of Sarpedon, now foully lusting after his own sister, and recounting to her his mistresses, not loved, for a long time past, so much as her. Thenceforward what poet is not found to be a degrader of the gods, after the example of his master? One assigneth Apollo to King Admetus for feeding his cattle: another letteth out to Laomedon the services of Neptune as a builder: and there is that one among the Lyric Poets, Pindar I mean, who singeth of Æsculapius being punished by a thunderbolt, as the reward of his covetousness, because he had practised medicine sinfully. Wicked Jupiter, if the bolt be his! unnatural towards his grandson! jealous towards his craftsman! These things ought neither to be disclosed if true, nor invented if false, amongst the most religious of all people. Not even the tragic and comic writers spare them; or forbear to cite in their prologues the distresses and the frailties of the family of some one of the gods. Of the philosophers I say nothing, content with Socrates, who, in mockery of the gods, swore by an oak, and a goat, and a dog. But (say ye) Socrates was on that account condemned, because he disparaged the gods. Verily, of old time, indeed at all times, truth is hated. Nevertheless when, in repenting of their sentence, the Athenians both punished afterwards the accusers of Socrates, and set up a golden statue of him in a temple, the reversal of his condemnation bore testimony in behalf of Socrates. But Diogenes too has some jest upon Hercules: and the Roman Cynic Varro introduceth three hundred Joves, or perhaps I should say Jupiters, without heads.

XV. The rest of your licentious wits work even for your amusement through dishonour of the gods. Consider the pretty trifles of the Lentuli and Hostilii, whether in those jokes and tricks ye are laughing at the buffoons, or at your own gods; ‘The adulterer Anubis,’ ‘The male Luna,’ ‘Diana scourged,’ and ‘The will of the deceased Jupiter’ read aloud, and ‘The three starved Herculeses’ turned to ridicule. But the writings also of the stage shew up all their baseness. The Sun mourneth for his son cast down from Heaven, and ye are delighted: and Cybele sigheth for her scornful shepherd, and ye blush not; and ye suffer lampoons on Jupiter to be sung, and Juno, Venus, and Minerva to be judged by the shepherd. Take the very fact, that the mask, representing your god, covers an ignominious and infamous head? of a person impure, and brought to this point of skill by being unmanned, acting a Minerva or a Hercules? Is not their majesty insulted and their divinity defiled, amidst your applause? of a verity ye are more religious in the theatre, where your gods dance forthwith upon human blood, upon the stains of capital punishments, furnishing arguments and stories to wicked wretches, except that those wretches assume the characters of your gods themselves. We have ere now seen Atys, your god from Pessinus, mutilated; and he who was burnt alive, was acting Hercules. We have smiled too, amidst sportive atrocities of the noonday men, at Mercury examining the dead with his red-hot bar. We have seen likewise the brother of Jupiter conducting the dead bodies of the gladiators with his hammer. If these several things, and others which any man might search out, disturb the honour of their divinity, if they level to the ground the crown of their majesty, they must surely be imputed to the contempt both of those who do them, and of those for whom they do them. But let these be mere jests. Nevertheless if I shall add, (what the consciences of all will no less admit,) that adulteries are committed in the temples, that debaucheries are carried on about the altars, chiefly in the very abodes of the ministers and priests, that under the same fillets and caps and purple robes, lust is satisfied while the incense is burning, I know not whether your gods may not complain more of you than of the Christians. Certainly the committers of sacrilege are ever found to be of your party; for the Christians have no dealings with the temples even in the day-time; they too perchance might rob them, if they too worshipped in them. What then do they worship, who worship not such things? Already indeed it is easy to be inferred that they are the worshippers of the Truth, who worship not that which is false; and that they err no longer, in that, by discovering their error in which, they have ceased from it. Receive this first: and hence ye may draw the whole order of our sacred rites, certain false opinions being however first refuted.

XVI. For as some of you have dreamed of an ass’s head being our God; a suspicion of this sort Cornelius Tacitus hath introduced. For in the fifth of his Histories, having begun the account of the Jewish war from the origin of the nation, having also discussed what questions he chose, as well touching the origin itself, as the name and the religion, of the nation, he telleth us that the Jews being delivered, or, as he supposed, banished, from Egypt, when they were pining with thirst in the wastes of Arabia, places most destitute of water, took as their guides to the springs wild asses, which, it was supposed, would perhaps, after feeding, go to seek water, and that for this service they consecrated the image of a like creature. And so, I suppose, it was thence presumed that we, as bordering on the Jewish Religion, were taught to worship such a figure. But yet the same Cornelius Tacitus, (that most un-tacit man forsooth in lies,) relateth in the same history, that Cneius Pompeius, when he had taken Jerusalem, and thereupon had gone up to the temple to examine the mysteries of the Jewish religion, found no image therein. And without doubt, if that were worshipped, which was under any visible image represented, it would be no where more seen than in its own holy place, the rather because the worship, however vain, had no fear of strangers to witness it; for it was lawful for the priests alone to approach thither; the very gaze of the rest was forbidden by a veil spread before them. Yet ye will not deny that beasts of burden and whole geldings, with their own Epona, are worshipped by yourselves. On this account perchance we are disapproved, because, amidst the worshippers of all beasts and cattle, we are worshippers of asses alone. But he also who thinketh us superstitious respecters of the Cross, will be our fellow worshipper, when prayer is made to any wood. No matter for the fashion, so long as the quality of the material be the same; no matter for the form, so long as it be the very body of a god. And yet how doth the Athenian Minerva differ from the body of the Cross? and the Ceres of Pharos, who appeareth in the market, without a figure, made of a rude stake and a shapeless log? Every stock of wood, which is fixed in an upright posture, is a part of a cross; we, if we worship him at all, worship the god whole and entire. We have said that the origin of your gods is derived from figures moulded on a cross. But ye worship victories also, when, in your triumphs, crosses form the inside of the trophies. The whole religion of the camp is a worshipping of the standards, a swearing by the standards, a setting up of the standards above all the gods. All those rows of images on your standards are the appendages of crosses; those hangings on your standards and banners are the robes of crosses. I commend your care: ye would not consecrate your crosses naked and unadorned. Others certainly, with greater semblance of nature and of truth, believe the sun to be our God. If this be so, we must be ranked with the Persians; though we worship not the sun painted on a piece of linen, because in truth we have himself in his own hemisphere. Lastly, this suspicion ariseth from hence, because it is well known that we pray towards the quarter of the east. But most of yourselves too, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies also, move your lips towards the rising of the sun. In like manner, if we give up to rejoicing the day of the sun, for a cause far different from the worship of the sun, we are only next to those, who set apart the day of Saturn for rest and feasting, themselves also deflecting from the Jewish custom, of which they are ignorant. But now a new report of our God hath been lately set forth in this city, since a certain wretch, hired to cheat the wild beasts, put forth a picture with some such title as this, “The God of the Christians conceived of an ass.” This was a creature with ass’s ears, with a hoof on one foot, carrying a book, and wearing a gown. We have smiled both at the name and the figure. But they ought instantly to adore this two-formed god, because they have admitted gods made up of a dog’s and a lion’s head, and with the horns of a goat and a ram, and formed like goats from the loins, and like serpents from the legs, and with wings on the foot or the back. Of these things we have said more than enough, lest we should have passed over any rumour unrefuted, as though from a consciousness of its truth. All which charges we have cleared, and now turn to shew you what our Religion is.

XVII. That which we worship is the One God, Who through the Word by Which He commanded, the Reason by Which He ordained, the Power by Which He was able, hath framed out of nothing this whole material mass with all its furniture of elements, bodies, and spirits, to the honour of His Majesty; whence also the Greeks have applied to the universe the name Κόσμος. He is invisible though seen, incomprehensible though present through His grace, inconceivable though conceived by the sense of man. Therefore He is true; and such is His greatness. Now that which can ordinarily be seen, which can be comprehended, which can be conceived, is less than the eyes by which it is scanned, and the hands by which it is profaned, and the senses by which it is discovered: but that which is immeasurable is known to itself alone. This is it which causeth God to be conceived of, while He admitteth not of being conceived: thus the force of His greatness presenteth Him to men, as both known and unknown. And this is the sum of their offending, who will not acknowledge Him of Whom they cannot be ignorant. Will ye that we prove Him to be, from His own works, so many and such as they are, by which we are maintained, by which we are supported, by which we are delighted, by which also we are made afraid? Will ye that we prove it by the witness of the soul itself, which although confined by the prison of the body, although straitened by evil training, although unnerved by lusts and desires, although made the servant of false gods, yet when it recovereth itself as from a surfeit, as from a slumber, as from some infirmity, and is in its proper condition of soundness, it nameth GOD, by this name only, because the proper name of the true God. ‘Great God,’ ‘Good God,’ and ‘which God grant,’ are words in every mouth. It witnesseth also that He is its Judge. ‘God seeth,’ ‘I commend to God,’ ‘God shall recompense me.’ O testimony of a soul, by nature Christian! Finally, in pronouncing these words, it looketh not to the Capitol, but to Heaven; for it knoweth the dwelling-place of the true God: from Him and from thence it descended.

XVIII. But that we might approach more fully and with deeper impressions, as well to Himself as His ordinances and His counsels, He hath added the instrument of Scripture, if any desireth to enquire concerning God, and having enquired, to find Him, and having found, to believe in Him, and having believed, to serve Him. For He hath from the beginning sent forth into the world men, worthy, by reason of their righteousness and innocency, to know God and to make Him known, overflowing with the Divine Spirit, whereby they might preach that there is One God Who hath created all things, Who hath formed man out of the ground, (for this is the true Prometheus,) Who hath ordered the world by the appointed courses and issues of the seasons; Who hath next put forth the signs of His Majesty in judgment by waters and by fires; Who, for the deserving of His love, hath determined those laws, which ye are ignorant of or neglect, but hath appointed rewards for these who obey them; Who, when this world shall have been brought to an end, shall judge His own worshippers unto the restitution of eternal life, the wicked unto fire equally perpetual and continual; all that have died from the beginning being raised up, and formed again, and called to an account for the recompense of each man’s deservings. These things we also once laughed to scorn. We were of you. Christians are made, not born such. Those, whom we have called preachers, are named Prophets from their office of foretelling. Their words, and the miracles also, which they worked in witness of their being of God, remain in the treasures of writings: nor are those writings now hidden. The most learned of the Ptolemies, whom they surname Philadelphus, and right well skilled in all lore, when, in his zeal for libraries, he was vying, as I think, with Pisistratus, amongst others of those records, which either antiquity or a curious taste recommended to fame, on the advice of Demetrius Phalereus, the most approved, in that day, of grammarians, to whom he had committed the chief care of these things, demanded of the Jews also their books, writings peculiar to themselves and in their own vulgar tongue, which they alone possessed. For the prophets were of that people, and had ever addressed themselves to that people as to the people and family of God, according to the grace given to their forefathers. They who are now Jews were formerly Hebrews: therefore are their writings Hebrew, and their language. But that the understanding of them might not be lacking, this also was granted to Ptolemy by the Jews, by allowing him seventy-two interpreters, whom Menedemus also the philosopher, the assertor of a Providence, looked up to for the agreement of their opinion. This moreover hath Aristeas affirmed unto you, and so hath he left a public record of it in the Greek language. At this day the collections of Ptolemy are shewn in the temple of Serapis with the very Hebrew writings. But the Jews also read them openly; a taxed licence. All have access to them every sabbath day. Whoso heareth shall find God: whoso moreover desireth to understand shall be compelled also to believe.

XIX. Extreme antiquity then in the first place claimeth an authority for these documents. Even with yourselves there is a sort of sacredness in a claim to credit from antiquity. And so all the substances, and all the materials, antiquities, arrangements, veins of each of your ancient writings, most nations moreover, and famous cities, hoary histories and monuments, finally even the forms of letters, those witnesses and guardians of things,—methinks I still am saying too little;—I say your very gods themselves, your very temples, and oracles, and sacred rites; all these, the while, doth the record of a single prophet surpass by centuries, laid up in which are seen the treasures of the Jewish religion, and in like manner consequently of ours also. If ye have ever heard of a certain Moses, he is of the same age with Inachus of Argos; he precedeth by almost four hundred years, (for it is seven years less than this,) Danaus, himself also a very ancient among you: he goeth before the overthrow of Priam by about a thousand years; I could say also, having some authorities with me, that he was five hundred years more before Homer. Our other prophets also, although they come after Moses, yet are not, even the very last of them, found to be later than your first philosophers, and lawgivers, and historians. For me to expound by what train of proofs these things may be established, is a task not so much out of reach as out of compass, not difficult, but at the same time tedious. We must apply closely to many documents and many calculations: unlock the archives of even the most ancient nations, the Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the Phœnicians: call in the aid of their countrymen, by whom such knowledge is supplied, a Manetho from Egypt, a Berosus from Chaldæa, an Iromus king of Tyre moreover from Phœnicia; their followers also, Ptolemy the Mendesian, and Menander of Ephesus, and Demetrius Phalereus, and king Iuba, and Appion, and Thallus, and if any confirmeth or refuteth these, as Josephus the Jew, the native champion of Jewish antiquities. The Greek annalists likewise must be compared with them, and the transactions of the various periods, that the mutual connection of dates may be unfolded, through which the order of the annals may be made clear. We must travel into the histories and literature of the world. And yet we have, as it were, already produced a part of our proof, in dropping these hints of the means by which the proof may be made. But it were better to defer this, lest through haste we pursue it not far enough, or, in pursuing it, stray too far from our course.

XX. To make up for this postponement, we now proffer the more; the majesty of our Scriptures, instead of their antiquity. If it be doubted that they are ancient, we prove them divine. Nor is this to be learned by tedious method, or from foreign sources. The things which shall teach it you, are before your eyes, the world, and time, and its events. Whatsoever is doing was foretold; whatsoever is seen was before heard of: that the earth swalloweth up cities, that the sea stealeth away islands, that wars within and without tear asunder; that kingdoms dash against kingdoms, that famine, and pestilence, and all the special plagues of countries, and deaths for the most part ever haunting, make havoc well nigh of every thing; that the humble are exalted, and the lofty ones abased; that righteousness groweth scant, iniquity increaseth; that the zeal for all good ways waxeth cold: that the offices of the seasons, and the proper changes of the elements are out of course; that the order of natural things is disturbed by monsters and prodigies—all these things have been written of foreknowledge. While we suffer them, we read of them; while we review them, they are proved to us. The truth of the divination is, methinks, sufficient proof that it is divine. Hence therefore we have a sure confidence in the things to come also, as being in truth already proved, because they were foretold at the same time with those things which are proved every day: the same voices utter them, the same writings note them, the same spirit moveth within them. To prophecy, time is but one, the time of foretelling things to come: with men (if they deal with it) it is divided, while it is fulfilling, while from the future it cometh to be reckoned the present, and then from the present the past. What do we amiss, I pray you, in believing in the future also, who have already learned to believe the same things through two stages of time?

XXI. But since we have declared that this sect is supported by the most ancient records of the Jews, although almost all know, and we ourselves also profess, that it is somewhat new, as being of the age of Tiberius, perchance on this account a question may be mooted touching its state, as though it sheltered somewhat of its own presumption under the shadow of a most famous, at least a licensed, religion; or because, besides the point of age, we agree not with the Jews, neither touching the forbidding of meats, nor in the solemnities of days, nor even in their “sign” in the flesh, nor in community of name, which surely we ought to do, if we served the same God; but even the common people knoweth Christ as one among men, such as the Jews judged Him to be, whence one might the more easily suppose us worshippers of a man. But neither are we ashamed of Christ, seeing that we rejoice to be ranked, and condemned, under His Name, nor do we judge otherwise than they, respecting God. We must needs therefore say a few words concerning Christ as God. The Jews alone had favour with God, because of the excellent righteousness and faith of their first fathers; whence the mightiness of their race and the majesty of their kingdom flourished, and so great was their blessedness, that they were forewarned by words of God, whereby they were taught to deserve the favour of God, and not to offend. But how greatly they sinned, puffed up, even to doting, with a vain confidence in their fathers, turning their course from their Religion after the way of the profane, though they themselves should not confess it, the end of them at this day would prove. Scattered abroad, wanderers, banished from their own climate and land, they roam about through the world, with neither man nor God for their king, to whom it is not permitted, even in the right of strangers, to greet their native land so much as with the sole of their foot. While holy voices threatened them aforetime with these things, all the same voices ever added this besides, that it should come to pass, in the ends of the world’s course, that God would henceforward out of every nation, and people, and country, choose unto Himself worshippers much more faithful than they, to whom He should transfer His grace, and that, more abundantly according to the measure of His greatness, Who is the Author of their religion. Of this grace therefore and religion the Son of God was proclaimed the Dispenser and the Master, the Enlightener and the Guide of the human race, not indeed so born as that He should be ashamed of the name of “Son,” or of His descent from His Father; not from the incest of a sister, nor the defilement of a daughter; nor had He for His father a god, the lover of another’s wife, with scales, or horns, or feathers, or transformed into gold; for these are the godheads of your Jupiter. But the Son of God hath no mother, no not of pure wedlock: even she, whom He seemeth to have, had not known her husband. But first I will declare His substance, and then the quality of His birth will be understood. We have already set forth, that God formed this universal world by His Word, and His Reason, and His Power. Among your own wise men also it is agreed, that Λόγος, that is, ‘Word’ and ‘Reason,’ should be accounted the Maker of all things. For Zeno determineth that this Maker, who hath formed all things and ordered them, should also be called Fate, and God, and the Mind of Jupiter, and the Necessity of all things. These titles doth Cleanthes confer upon the Spirit which, he affirmeth, pervadeth the universe. And we also ascribe, as its proper substance, to the Word, and the Reason, and the Power also, through Which we have said that God hath formed all things, a Spirit, in Which is the Word when It declareth, and with Which is the Reason when It ordereth, and over Which is the Power when It executeth. This, we have learned, was forth-brought from God, and by this Forth-bringing, was Begotten, and therefore is called the Son of God, and God, from being “of one substance with” Him; for that God also is a Spirit. Even when a ray is put forth from the sun, it is a part of a whole; but the sun will be in the ray because it is a ray of the sun, and the substance is not divided, but extended. So cometh Spirit of Spirit and “God of God,” as “light” is kindled “of light,” the parent matter remaineth entire and without loss, although thou shouldest borrow from it many channels of its qualities. So likewise that which hath come forth from God is God, and the Son of God, and Both are One. And so this Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, hath become ‘the second’ in mode not in number, in order not in condition, and hath gone forth, not gone out, of the original Source. Therefore this ray of God, as was ever foretold before, entering into a certain virgin, and in her womb endued with the form of flesh, is born Man joined together with God. The flesh stored with the Spirit is nourished, groweth to manhood, speaketh, teacheth, worketh, and is CHRIST. Receive for the moment this tale, (it is like your own,) whilst we shew you whereby Christ is attested. They also among yourselves, who fore-ministered rival tales of this sort for the overthrow of this truth, knew that Christ was to come: the Jews too knew it, since it was to them that the prophets spake. For even now they look for His coming; nor is there any other greater cause of contention betwixt us and them, than that they do not believe that He hath already come. For seeing that two advents of Him are declared, the first, which hath been already fulfilled in the lowliness of the human nature, the second which remaineth yet to come to close this world, in the majesty of the Divine Nature then shewn forth, through not understanding the first, they have regarded, as the only one, the second, for which, being more clearly foretold, they now hope. For their sins deserved that they should not understand the former, since they would have believed, had they understood, and would have obtained salvation, had they believed. They themselves read that it is so written, that they were punished by the taking away of their sense and understanding, and of the use of their eyes and of their ears. Whom therefore they had presumed from His lowliness to be only a man, it followed that they should from His power account a magician; when by a word He cast out devils from men, recovered the sight of the blind, cleansed the lepers, strengthened anew the sick of the palsy, finally by a word restored the dead to life, made the very elements ‘obey Him,’ stilling the storms and walking on the waters, shewing Himself to be the Λόγος of God, that is, the Word, which was in the beginning, the First-Begotten, accompanied by His Power and His Reason, and upheld by His Spirit, the Same Who by a word both did and had done all things. But whereas the rulers and chief men of the Jews were confounded at His doctrine, they were so filled with indignation, chiefly because a great multitude had turned aside after Him, that at length, they brought Him before Pontius Pilate, then governor of Syria on behalf of the Romans, and by the violence of their voices, wrung from him that He should be delivered up unto them to be crucified. He had Himself also foretold that they would do this. This were but a small thing, if the prophets also had not done so before; and at length being nailed to the cross, He shewed many special signs to mark that death. Of Himself He with a word gave up the ghost, preventing the office of the executioner. At the same moment the light of mid-day was withdrawn, the sun veiling his orb. They thought it forsooth an eclipse, who knew not that this also had been foretold concerning Christ: when they discovered not its cause, they denied it; and yet ye have this event, that befel the world, related in your own records. Him being taken down from the cross, and buried in a sepulchre, they caused moreover to be surrounded with great diligence by a guard of soldiers, lest, because He had foretold that He should rise on the third day from the dead, the disciples removing the body by stealth should deceive them, though suspecting it. But, lo! on the third day, the earth being suddenly shaken, and the massive body being rolled away which had closed the sepulchre, and the watch being scattered through fear, and no disciples being to be seen, nothing was found in the sepulchre save the grave clothes only of the buried. Yet the chief men notwithstanding, whom it concerned to spread a wicked tale, and to draw back from the faith the people, their tributaries and dependents, reported that He was stolen away by the disciples. For neither did He shew Himself to all the people, lest the wicked should be delivered from their error, and that the faith which was reserved unto no mean reward should cost some difficulty. But He continued forty days with certain disciples in Galilee, a region of Judæa, teaching them what things they should teach. After that, having ordained them to the office of preaching throughout the world, He was taken from them into Heaven in a cloud which covered Him; an account far better than that which your Proculi are wont to affirm of your Romuli. These things concerning Christ did Pilate, himself also already in his conscience a Christian, report to Tiberius the Cæsar of that day. But the Cæsars also would have believed on Christ, if either Cæsars had not been necessary for the age, or if Christians also could have been Cæsars. Moreover the disciples, spread throughout the world, obeyed the commandment of their Divine Master; who, themselves also, having suffered many things from the persecuting Jews, with good will assuredly, in proportion to their confidence in the truth, did finally at Rome, through the cruelty of Nero, sow the seed of Christian blood. But we will shew that the very beings whom ye worship, are sufficient witnesses to you of Christ. It is a great thing if I can employ, in order that ye may believe the Christians, those very beings on whose account ye believe not the Christians. Meanwhile such is the system of our Religion; such an account have we set forth both of our sect and name with its Founder. Let no man now charge us with infamy, let no one imagine aught besides this, since it is not lawful for any to speak falsely concerning his own Religion. For in that he saith that aught else is worshipped by him than that which he doth worship, he denieth that which he worshippeth, and transferreth his worship to another, and, in transferring it, he already ceaseth to worship that, which he hath denied. We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, ‘We worship God through Christ:’ believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped. To answer the Jews, they themselves also learned to worship God through the man Moses: to meet the Greeks, Orpheus in Pieria, Musæus at Athens, Melampus at Argos, Trophonius in Bœotia, bound mankind by their rites: to look to you also, the masters of the world, Numa Pompilius was a man, who loaded the Romans with the most burthensome superstitions. Let Christ also be permitted to pretend to the divine nature, as a thing proper to Himself, Who did not, as Numa, soften to a state of gentler culture rude and as yet barbarous men, by confounding them with so great a multitude of gods to be propitiated; but Who opened to a knowledge of the truth the eyes of men already polished, and blinded through their very refinement. See then whether this Divine Nature of Christ be real: if it be such that by the knowledge of it any one be changed unto that which is good, it followeth that any other, which is found to be contrary to it, must be pronounced false; specially that, by all means, which, hiding itself under the names and images of the dead, doth by certain signs, and miracles, and oracles, work out the proof of a divine character.

XXII. And therefore we say that there are certain spiritual substances: nor is the name new. The Philosophers acknowledge dæmons, and Socrates himself looked unto the will of a dæmon. Why not? since it is said that a dæmon clave unto him from childhood, dissuading him: doubtless—from good. The poets acknowledge dæmons; and now the untaught vulgar oft putteth them to the use of cursing. For even Satan the chief of this evil race, doth it, as though from a special consciousness of the soul, name in the same word of execration. Moreover Plato denied not that there be angels also. Even the Magi are at hand to bear witness of both names. But how from certain angels corrupted of their own will a more corrupt race of dæmons proceeded, condemned by God together with the authors of their race, and with that prince of whom we have spoken, is made known in order in the Holy Scriptures. It will suffice at this time to explain the nature of their work. Their work is the overthrow of man. Thus hath spiritual wickedness begun to act from the first for the destruction of man. Wherefore they inflict upon the body both sicknesses and many severe accidents, and on the soul, perforce, sudden and strange extravagances. Their own wondrous subtle, and slight nature furnisheth to them means of approaching either part of man. Much is permitted to the power of spirits, so that, being unseen and unperceived, they appear rather in their effects than in their acts: as when some lurking evil in the air blighteth the fruit or grain in the blossom, killeth it in the blade, woundeth it in its full growth, and when the atmosphere tainted in some secret way poureth over the earth its pestilential vapours. By the same unseen course of contagion therefore doth the blast of dæmons and of angels hurry onward the corruptions of the mind, through foul madness and foolishness, or fierce lusts, with manifold delusions, of which that is the chief, by which it commendeth those gods to the captive and narrowed understandings of men, that they may procure for themselves as their own, the food of sweet savour and of blood offered to statues and images; and what food is more cared for by them, than to turn aside man from the thoughts of the true Divinity by the delusions of a false divination? touching which very delusions I will shew how they work. Every spirit is winged: in this both angels and dæmons agree: therefore in a moment they are every where: the whole world is one spot to them: whatever is done any where they know as easily as they report it. Their swiftness is believed to be divinity, because their substance is unknown. So also they would sometimes be thought the authors of those things which they report; and manifestly of evil things they sometimes are so, but of good never. The counsels also of God they both snatched, at the times when the Prophets were proclaiming them, and now also they cull in the readings which echo them. And so taking from hence also certain of the allotted courses of the future, they ape the power, while they steal the oracles, of God. But in the oracles, with what cunning they shape their double meanings to events, witness the Crœsi, witness the Pyrrhi. But it was in the manner in which I have before spoken of, that the Pythian god sent back the message that a tortoise was being stewed with the flesh of a sheep. They had been in a moment in Lydia. By dwelling in the air, and by being near the stars, and by dealing with the clouds, they are able to know the threatenings of the skies, so that they promise also the rains, which they already feel. They are sorcerers also about the cures of sicknesses; for they first inflict the disease, and then prescribe remedies wonderfully new or of a contrary nature, after which they cease to afflict, and so are believed to have cured. Why then should I speak at large touching the other subtleties or even the powers of spiritual delusion? the apparitions of Castor and Pollux, and the water carried in a sieve, and the ship drawn forward by a girdle, and the beard turned red by a touch, that both stones might be believed to be gods, and the true God not be sought after.

XXIII. Moreover if magicians also produce apparitions and disgrace the souls of the departed; if they entrance children to make them utter oracles; if, by means of juggling tricks, they play off a multitude of miracles; if they even send dreams to men, having, to assist them, the power of angels and dæmons, when once invoked, (through whom both goats and tables have been accustomed to prophesy;) how much the rather would that power study with all its might to work of its own will, and for its own business, that service, which it rendereth to the business-making of another! Or if angels and dæmons do the same works as your gods, where then is the excellence of the Godhead? which we must surely believe to be higher than every power? Will it not then be a more worthy presumption that it is they who make themselves gods, since they shew forth the same works which cause the gods to be believed, than that the gods are on a level with angels and dæmons? A difference of places maketh, I suppose, a distinction, so that ye count those for gods from their temples, whom elsewhere ye call not gods: so that he who rusheth over sacred towers seemeth to be mad after another sort from him who leapeth across the roofs of neighbouring houses, and one kind of influence is declared to be in him who woundeth his secrets or his arms, another in him who cutteth his throat. The end of the madness is alike in both, and the manner of incitement is one. But hitherto it hath been all words: now shall follow a proof of the thing itself, whereby we will shew that the quality of both these classes is the same. Let some one be brought forward here at the foot of your judgment-seat, who, it is agreed, is possessed of a dæmon. When commanded by any Christian to speak, that spirit shall as truly declare itself a dæmon, as elsewhere falsely a god. In like manner let some one be brought forward of those who are believed to be acted upon by a god, who drawing their breath over the altar conceive the deity from its savour, who are relieved by vomiting wind, and prelude their prayer with sobs. That very virgin Cælestis herself who promiseth rains, that very Æsculapius that discovereth medicines, that supplied life to Socordius, and Thanatius, and Asclepiodotus, doomed to die another day—unless these confess themselves to be dæmons, not daring to lie unto a Christian, then shed upon the spot the blood of that most impudent Christian. What can be plainer than this fact? what more to be trusted than this proof? The simplicity of Truth is before you: her own virtue supporteth her. Here will be no room for suspicion. Will ye say that it is done by magic, or some cheat of that sort? Aye! if your eyes and your ears will permit you! But what can be insinuated against that which is shewn forth in undisguised sincerity? If on the one hand they be truly gods, why feign they themselves dæmons? is it to humour us? Then is your deity at once made subject to the Christians, nor can that be accounted Deity, which is subjected to man, and (if this contribute aught to shame) to its own rivals. If on the other hand they be dæmons or angels, why do they take upon themselves elsewhere to act as gods? For as they, who are accounted gods, would not call themselves dæmons, if they were truly gods, lest forsooth they should put themselves down from their majesty, so they also, whom ye plainly acknowledge for dæmons, would not dare elsewhere to act for gods, if those whose names they use, were any gods at all; for they would fear to abase the majesty of beings, without doubt higher than themselves and to be feared. So utterly nought is that deity to which ye hold; for if it were aught, it would neither be affected by dæmons, nor denied by gods. Seeing then that both sides agree in one declaration, affirming that they are no gods, ye must allow that there is but one sort of such beings, namely dæmons. True on both sides. Now look for gods, for, whom ye took to be such, ye find to be dæmons. But by the same help from us, from these same gods of yours, who discover not this only, that neither they themselves nor any others are gods, ye immediately learn this also, Who is really God, and whether it be He, and He Alone, Whom we Christians confess, and whether He ought to be believed and worshipped according to the rule of the faith and discipline of the Christian. Here they will say, “And who is this Christ with His tale of wonders? is He a man of common condition? is He a magician? was He stolen away after His crucifixion from the sepulchre by His disciples? is He even now in hell? is He not in Heaven? and to come quickly from thence also with a quaking of the whole universe, with a shuddering of the world, amidst the wailings of all men save the Christians, as the Power of God, and the Spirit of God, and the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Reason, and the Son of God?” In all your scoffings let them also scoff with you: let them deny that Christ shall judge every soul from the beginning, the body being restored to it. Let them say that Minos and Rhadamanthus (if it be so), as Plato and the poets have agreed, are appointed to fulfil this office from their seat of judgment. Let them at least contradict the stigma of their own disgrace and condemnation. Let them deny that they are unclean spirits, which ought to be concluded even from their food, blood and smoke, and putrifying burnt sacrifices of beasts, and the most filthy tongues of the prophets themselves. Let them deny that they are for their wickedness fore-ordained to condemnation at the same day of judgment, with all their worshippers and agents. But all this rule and power of ours over them standeth in naming the Name of Christ, and in making mention of those things which they look for as hanging over them from God through Christ the Judge. Fearing Christ in God, and God in Christ, they are subjected unto the servants of God and Christ. From our touch therefore and our breath, seized by the thought and lively image of that fire, they even come forth from the bodies of men at our command, unwilling, and grieved, and ashamed, before your presence. Believe these, when they speak the truth of themselves, ye that believe them when they speak falsely. None lieth to abase, but rather to honour, himself. Credit is more readily given to those, who confess against themselves, than to those who deny for themselves. Finally, these testimonies of your own gods are wont to make men Christians, because by believing them to the utmost, we believe in Christ the Lord. They themselves kindle our faith in our Scriptures: they themselves build up the confidence of our hope. Ye worship them, as I know, even with the blood of Christians. If then it were possible for them to speak falsely under the hands of a Christian desiring to prove the truth unto you, they would be unwilling to lose you, so profitable and so serviceable to them, even from the fear of being driven out one day by yourselves perhaps, made Christians.

XXIV. All this confession of theirs whereby they deny themselves to be gods, and whereby they make answer that there is no other God, save this One, Whose servants we are, is quite sufficient to refute the charge of sinning against the public, and especially the Roman, Religion. For if they be certainly no gods, neither certainly is the Religion aught; and if the Religion be nought, because the gods are nought, neither certainly are we guilty of sinning against Religion. But on the contrary your reproach hath really recoiled upon yourselves, who worshipping a lie, not only by neglecting, but moreover by warring against, the true Religion of the true God, commit against the True One the crime of true irreligion. Now then although it were allowed that these were gods, do ye not grant, according to the common belief, that there is some One higher and mightier, as the King of the universe, of perfect power and majesty? For the most part of men also do so apportion the Divine Nature, that they will have the power of chief dominion to belong to One, its offices to many: even as Plato describeth the great Jupiter as accompanied in heaven by an army of gods as well as of dæmons, and therefore that his officers, and his præfects, and his governors, should be alike respected. And yet what crime doth he commit, who directeth rather his labour and his hope to earn the favour of the king himself, and alloweth not the name of god, as he doth not that of emperor, to belong to any save the prince alone? seeing that it is judged to be a capital crime to call any, or to suffer any to be called, Cæsar, save Cæsar himself. Let one worship God, another Jupiter: let one raise his suppliant hands to Heaven, another to the altar of Fides: let one in his prayer, (if ye think this of us,) tell the clouds, another the ornaments of the ceiling: let one devote his own life to his God, another that of a goat. For beware lest this also contribute to the charge of irreligion, to take away the liberty of religion and to forbid a choice of gods, so that I may not worship whom I will, but be constrained to worship whom I will not. No one, not even a mortal, will desire to be worshipped by any against his will; and therefore even to the Egyptians hath been allowed the free use of a superstition, vain as theirs, in consecrating birds and beasts, and in condemning to death those who slay any god of this sort. Every province also and state hath its own god; as, Syria, Atargatis; Arabia, Dusares; the Norici, Belenus; Africa, Cælestis; Mauritania, her own Princes. I have named, methinks, Roman provinces, and yet no Roman gods belonging to them, because they are not more worshipped at Rome than those, who, through Italy itself, are from municipal consecration ranked as gods, as Delventinus the god of the Casinienses; Visidianus, of the Narnienses; Ancharia, of the Æsculani; of the Volsinienses, Nortia; of the Ocriculani, Valentia; of the Sutrini, Hostia, of the Falisci, Juno, who, in honour of her father Curis, hath also received her surname. But we alone are forbidden to have a religion of our own. We offend the Romans, and are not held to be Romans, because we worship not the god of the Romans. It is well that God is the God of all, Whose we all are, whether we will or no. But with you it is lawful to worship any thing except the true God, as though He were not rather the God of all, of Whom we all are.

XXV. Methinks I have proved enough concerning false and true Deity, when I have shewn how the proof consisteth not in discussions only and arguments, but in the testimony of those very beings, whom ye believe to be gods, so that there is now nothing in this question which needs to be treated of again. Yet since the authority of the Roman name specially cometh across us, I will not pass by the controversy which the presumption of those provoketh, who say that the Romans have been raised to such a height of greatness as to be masters of the world, for the merit of their very diligent devotion to Religion; and that they are so fully gods, that those flourish above all others, who above all others render service to them. These forsooth are the wages paid in gratitude by the Roman gods. Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina, have advanced the empire! For I cannot suppose that foreign gods would have wished that favour should be shewn to a foreign nation rather than to their own, and that they would have given up to men beyond the seas the land of their country, in which they were born, grew up, were ennobled, and buried. No matter for Cybele if she loved the Roman city as the memorial of the Trojan race,—her own native race forsooth, which she protected against the arms of the Greeks,—if she foresaw that it would pass to those avengers, who she knew would subdue Greece, the conqueror of Phrygia. A mighty proof hath she thereupon put forth, even in our age, of her majesty conferred upon the city, when, Marcus Aurelius having been, at Syrmium, removed from the state by death on the sixteenth day before the Calends of April, that most holy of arch-eunuchs, on the ninth day before the same Calends, on which he made a libation of impure blood by mutilating his arms also, issued, as before, his accustomed orders on behalf of the health of Marcus, who had been already cut off. O slothful messengers! O sleepy despatches! through whose fault Cybele did not before learn the death of the Emperor! Verily the Christians would laugh at such a goddess. But neither would Jupiter at once have suffered his own Crete to be shaken by the Roman fasces, forgetting that cave of Ida, and the Corybantian cymbals, and the most pleasing odour of his own nurse there. Would not he have preferred this his own tomb to all the Capitol, so that that land should rather be the first in the world, which covered the ashes of Jupiter? Would Juno too be willing that the city of Carthage, which she loved even in preference to Samos, should be utterly destroyed, by the race of Æneas forsooth? Whereas I know,

“Here were her arms,

Here was her chariot, here e’en now she cherished,

(So might Fate will,) the empire of the world.”

This wretched wife and sister of Jupiter prevailed nothing against the Fates. Clearly,

“by Fate e’en Jove himself doth stand.”

And yet the Romans have not offered to those Fates, which gave up Carthage to them contrary to the intent and vow of Juno, as much honour as to that most abandoned she-wolf Larentina. That many gods of yours have reigned, is certain. Wherefore if they hold the power of bestowing empire, from whom, when they reigned themselves, had they received that gift? whom had Saturn and Jupiter worshipped? Some Sterculus, I presume; but that, at Rome afterwards, together with their own native gods. Even if there were any that reigned not, yet was the kingdom ruled by others, not as yet their worshippers, because they were not as yet held to be gods. Wherefore it belongeth to others to bestow the kingdom, seeing that there were kings long before these were inscribed gods. But how vain is it to ascribe the eminence of the Roman name to the merit of their religious zeal! since it was after the establishment of the imperial, or call it still the regal, power, in an advanced state of prosperity, that Religion made progress. For although an exceeding nicety in superstition was adopted by Numa, yet the religious system among the Romans did not as yet consist in images or temples. Religion was thrifty, and her rites needy: and no Capitols were there, vying with the Heavens, but altars of turf thrown together as it chanced, and vessels still of Samian ware, and but scant savour, and the god himself no where; for at that time the talents of the Greeks and Tuscans in framing images had not as yet over-flooded the city. The Romans then were not religious before they were great, and therefore were not great for this cause, because religious. But how could they be great because of their religion, whose greatness proceeded from irreligion? For, if I mistake not, every empire or kingdom is gained by wars, and extended by conquests. Moreover wars and conquests consist for the most part in the taking and overthrow of cities. This business is not without injury to the gods. The same ruin embraceth walls and temples, like massacres citizens and priests, nor doth the plunder of sacred treasures differ from that of the profane. As many therefore as are the trophies of the Romans, so many are their acts of sacrilege; as many as are their triumphs over nations, so many are they over the gods; as many have been their captures, as there yet remain images of captive gods. And therefore do they bear to be worshipped by their enemies, and decree to them an empire without end, whose insults, rather than their fawnings, they ought to have repaid. But they who have no sense of any thing, are as safely injured as they are uselessly worshipped. Surely it cannot consist with belief that they should be thought to have increased in greatness through the merits of their Religion, who, as we have suggested, have either grown great by injuring Religion, or have injured it by growing great. They too, whose kingdoms have together made up the sum of the Roman empire, were not, at the time when they lost those kingdoms, without religions.

XXVI. See then whether He be not the Disposer of kingdoms, Whose is both the world which is ruled, and man himself who ruleth; whether He have not ordered the changes of dominions with their times, in the course of the world, Who was before all time, and made that world, the universe of times. See whether it be not He Who exalteth and putteth down states, under Whom the race of men once lived without states. Why do ye err? Rome in her rude state is more ancient than certain of her own gods; she reigned before so large a compass of Capitol was erected. The Babylonians too reigned before the High Priests, and the Medes before the Fifteen, and the Egyptians before the Salii, and the Assyrians before the Luperci, and the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. Finally, if the religious rites of Rome procure kingdoms, never would Judæa have reigned aforetime, that despiser of those common deities, whose God too ye Romans for some time honoured with sacrifices, and her temple with offerings, and her people with treaties: nor would ye ever have ruled over her, had she not at the last sinned against Christ.

XXVII. A sufficient answer this to the charge of sinning against the gods, because we cannot be thought to sin against that, which we shew does not exist. Wherefore when we are called upon to sacrifice, we take our stand against it on the strength of our conscience, whereby we are assured who those be, to whom these services are paid, under the images which ye publicly expose, and the human names which ye consecrate. But some think it madness that, when we are able at once to sacrifice for the moment and to escape unhurt, our fixed purpose remaining stedfast in our own mind, we prefer to our safety a perverse resistance. Ye give us forsooth counsel whereby we may cheat yourselves! But we know whence such counsels are suggested, who it is that setteth all this in motion, and how at one time by cunning persuasion, at another by harsh violence, he worketh for the overthrowing of our constancy. It is in truth that spirit of dæmoniac and angelic properties, who rivalling us because of our separation from him, and envying us because of the grace of God bestowed upon us, maketh war against us out of your minds, which, by the secret influence of his spirit, are disposed and prompted to all that perverseness in your judgments, and that injustice in your wrath, to which we began at the first to speak. For although all the power of dæmons and spirits of that sort were made subject to us, yet, like naughty servants, they sometimes mingle contumacy with their fear, and delight to injure those, whom at other times they reverence: for even fear inspireth hatred. Besides, also, their desperate state, arising from their previous condemnation, counteth on the comfort of enjoying meantime their malice, while their punishment is yet delayed. And yet, when seized, they are subdued, and submit to their own condition, and entreat, when near at hand, those whom they attack, when afar off. Therefore when, like rebels from the workhouses, or the prisons, or the mines, or any penal service of that sort, they break out against us, in whose power they are, being well assured that they are unequal to us, and thereby the more undone, we are forced to resist them as equals, and we fight against them by persevering in that which they attack; and never do we triumph over them more, than when we are condemned for stedfastness in our faith.

XXVIII. But as it would readily seem unjust for free men to be forced against their will to sacrifice, (for elsewhere also, in doing religious service, a willing mind is enjoined,) assuredly, for any one to be compelled by another to honour gods, whom, for his own sake, he ought of his own accord to appease, would be thought absurd, lest (in the right of free choice) he have his answer ready; “I will not have Jupiter propitious to me: who art thou? let Janus meet me in wrath with whichever of his faces he will: what have I to do with thee?” Ye are framed, of course by these same spirits to compel us to do sacrifice for the health of the Emperor; and the necessity of compelling us is as much forced on you, as is the duty of perilling ourselves on us. We come then to the second count in the charge of offending against more august majesty, if indeed ye respect Cæsar with greater dread and with a more trembling ardour than Jupiter of Olympus himself. And with good cause, if ye know why. For who is he? is not any one among the living better than any dead? But neither do ye this on the score of reason so much as from respect to a presentaneous power, and thus in this also ye are found to be irreligious towards your gods, seeing that ye shew more of awe towards a human power. Finally, among you, men more readily swear falsely by all the gods than against the single Genius of Cæsar.

XXIX. Let it then first appear whether those, to whom sacrifice is offered are able to impart health to the Emperor, or to any human being, and so adjudge us guilty of high treason. If angels or dæmons, in substance the worst of spirits, work any good deed, if the lost save, if the condemned deliver, if finally, as is within your own knowledge, the dead defend the living, then assuredly would each first defend his own statues, and images, and temples, which, as I think, the soldiers of the Cæsars keep in safety through their watches. But methinks these very materials too come from the mines of the Cæsars, and the entire temples stand according to the nod of Cæsar. Finally many gods have had Cæsar in wrath with them; it maketh for my argument if some too have found him propitious, when he conferreth any bounty or privilege upon them. How then shall they, who are in Cæsar’s power, whose also they wholly are, have the health of Cæsar within their power, so that they may be thought to bestow that which they more readily themselves obtain from Cæsar? For therefore do we sin against the majesty of the Emperors, because we subject them not to their own creatures! because we make not a mockery of our services for their health’s sake, not thinking it to be in hands soldered with lead! But ye are religious, who seek it where it is not, ask it of those by whom it cannot be given, passing Him by, in Whose power it is! moreover ye put down by force those who know how to ask it, and, in that they know how to ask it, are able also to obtain it.

XXX. For we pray for the health of the Emperors to the eternal God, the true God, the living God, Whom even the Emperors themselves would rather have propitious to them than all the rest. They know Who hath given them their kingdom: they know, as human beings, Who hath given them also their life. They feel that this is the only God, in Whose power alone they are, to Whom they are the second in power, after Whom they are the first, before all, and above all gods. And why not? since they are above all men, who, as living, surely stand before the dead. They reflect how far the powers of their empire avail, and thus they understand God. They acknowledge that they prevail through Him, against Whom they cannot prevail. In a word let the Emperor conquer Heaven, carry Heaven captive in his triumph, send his guards to Heaven, lay on Heaven his taxes. He cannot. Therefore is he great because he is less than Heaven; for he himself is of Him, of Whom is both Heaven and every creature. Thence is he an Emperor, whence he was also a man, before he was an Emperor; thence cometh his power, whence also came his breath. Thither we Christians, looking up with hands spread open, because without guilt, with head uncovered, because we are not ashamed, finally without a prompter, because we pray from the heart; are ever praying for all kings, that they may have a long life, a secure dominion, a safe home, valiant armies, a faithful senate, a righteous people, a world at peace, and whatever be the desire both of the man and of the king. These things I cannot ask of any other than Him, from Whom I know that I shall obtain them; since it is He Who alone giveth them, and it is I to whom the obtaining of them is due, I His servant who alone give Him reverence, who for His Religion am put to death, who offer to Him a sacrifice rich and of the highest rank, which He Himself hath commanded, the prayer that proceedeth from a chaste body, from a soul that sinneth not, from the Holy Spirit; not a single penny’s worth of grains of frankincense, the droppings of an Arabian tree, nor two drops of wine, nor the blood of a discarded beast that longeth to die, and after all these foul things a filthy conscience also, so that I marvel, when the victims are being tried before you by the most wicked priests, why the heart of the beasts rather than of the sacrificers themselves are examined. Whilst then we are thus spread forth before God, let your claws of iron pierce us, your crosses hang us up, your fires play about us, your swords cut off our necks, your beasts trample on us; the very posture of the praying Christian is prepared for every punishment. This do, ye worthy rulers, tear from us that breath which is praying to God for your Emperor. Here will be the crime, where is truth and devotion to God.

XXXI. Now (ye will say) we have been flattering the Emperor, and have feigned these prayers, of which we have spoken, that we may escape forsooth your violence. Much profit clearly doth the deceit bring us! for ye allow us to prove whatsoever we maintain. Thou therefore, that thinkest that we care nothing for the health of Cæsar, look into the oracles of God, our writings, which we do not ourselves suppress, and which very many accidents transfer to the hands of strangers. Learn from them, that it is commanded us, in the overflowing of kindness, to entreat God even for our enemies, and to pray for blessings on our persecutors. And who more the enemies and persecutors of us Christians, than those, concerning whose majesty we are charged with guilt? But even by name, and in plain words: Pray, saith the Scripture, for kings, and for princes, and for powers, that ye may have all things in quietness. For when the kingdom is shaken, all its other members being shaken with it, surely we also, although we stand aloof from tumults, are found to have some place in the misfortune.

XXXII. We have also another and a greater need to pray for the Emperors, and moreover for the whole estate of the Empire, and the fortunes of Rome, knowing, as we do, that the mighty shock which hangeth over the whole world, and the end of time itself, threatening terrible and grievous things, is delayed because of the time allowed to the Roman Empire. We would not therefore experience these things, and while we pray that they may be put off, we favour the long continuance of Rome. But moreover as we swear not by the Genii of the Cæsars, so we do swear by their health, which is of greater dignity than all Genii. Ye know not that Genii are called “Dæmones,” and hence by a diminutive title, “dæmonia.” We in the Emperors reverence the judgment of God, Who hath set them over the nations. We know that in them is that which God hath willed, and therefore we would have that safe which God hath willed, and this we hold to be a great oath; but as to the dæmons, that is, the genii, we are wont to adjure them that we may cast them out of men, not to swear by them, so as to confer on them the honour pertaining to God.

XXXIII. But why should I say more of the Religion and the reverential affection of the Christians towards the Emperor, whom we needs must look up to as the man whom our Lord hath chosen? I might even say with good cause, Cæsar is rather ours, being appointed by our God. Wherefore in this also I do him more service towards his welfare, not only because I ask it from Him, Who is able to grant it, nor because I that ask it am such an one as to deserve to obtain it, but also because, by keeping down the majesty of Cæsar beneath God, I commend him the more unto God to Whom alone I subject him. But I subject him to one to whom I make him not equal. For I will not call the Emperor a god, both because I cannot speak falsely, and because I dare not mock him, and because he himself will not desire to be called a god. If he be a man, it concerneth a man to yield to a god. He hath enough in being called an Emperor: this also is a great name which is given him of God. He who calleth him a god, denieth that he is an Emperor. Unless he be a man, he is not an Emperor. Even when triumphing in that most lofty chariot, he is warned that he is a man, for he is prompted from behind, “Look behind thee—remember that thou art a man.” And, in truth, his joy is on this very account the greater, for that he glittereth with so much glory, as to need reminding of his proper nature. He were not so great, if he were then called a god, because he would not be truly called so; he is greater, in that he is reminded not to think himself a god.

XXXIV. Augustus, the founder of the Empire, would not even have himself called Lord; for this also is a name of God. I will by all means call the Emperor lord, but only when I am not compelled to call him lord in the stead of God. Nevertheless to him I am a freeman, for there is One that is my Lord, the Almighty and eternal God, the Same who is his Lord also. He that is the father of his country, how is he its lord? But a title of natural affection is more pleasing also than one of power. Even of a family men are rather called the fathers than the lords. So far is it from being due to the Emperor to be called a god, (which cannot be believed,) with a flattery not only most disgraceful, but dangerous also, as though when thou hast one Emperor, thou wert to call another so. Wilt thou not incur the highest and most implacable displeasure of him whom thou hadst for thine Emperor, a displeasure to be feared even by him to whom thou gavest the title? Be religious towards God, thou that wouldest have Him propitious to the Emperor. Cease to believe any other to be God, and so likewise to call him god who hath need of God. If flattery of such sort blusheth not for its falsehood in calling a man a god, let it at least fear for its evil omen: it is ill-augured to call Cæsar a god before he be deified.

XXXV. It is on this account then that the Christians are public enemies, because they offer to the Emperors neither vain, nor lying, nor unconsidered honours; because, being men of true religion, they celebrate even their solemn days with honest hearts rather than wanton acts. A mighty service truly! to drag out into public view fireplaces and couches, to feast from street to street, to bury the whole city under the disguise of a tavern, to make mud with wine, to run about in companies to violent and shameless deeds, to the enticements of lust. Is it thus that public joy is expressed by public disgrace? do these things become the holydays of princes, which become not other days? shall they who observe the right rules of life out of respect for Cæsar, abandon them for Cæsar’s sake, and shall piety be a licence for immorality? shall Religion be deemed an occasion of wantonness? and how justly do we deserve condemnation! for why do we discharge our vows and our rejoicings for the Cæsars, in chastity and sobriety and righteousness? Why do we not on the festal day overshadow our door-posts with laurels, and encroach on the day with our candlelight? It is a righteous act, when a public solemnity requireth it, to dress up your house in the guise of some new brothel!

I would, however, touching this reverencing a secondary majesty also, concerning which we Christians are called to answer a second charge of sacrilege, for not celebrating with you the holydays of the Cæsars in a manner in which neither modesty, nor shame, nor decency permit, but the opportunity of pleasure rather than any fitting reason hath advised, I would give proof of your own faithfulness and truth, in case they should in this instance also perchance be found worse than the Christians, who would not that we should be accounted Romans, but enemies of the kings of Rome. I call on the Romans themselves, on the native populace of the seven hills themselves, to answer whether that Roman tongue of theirs spareth one of their own Cæsars. The Tiber is my witness and the theatre of the beasts. Now if nature had covered the breasts of men with some transparent material, so that they might shine through, whose heart would not be found graven with the picture of another and another new Cæsar presiding over the division of the royal donative? even in that hour in which they cry

“Jove multiply thy years by lessening ours.”

These words a Christian is as incapable of pronouncing as of wishing for a new emperor. “But these be mobs,” sayest thou? Mobs let them be; they are Romans notwithstanding, and none are more noisy clamourers for the punishment of the Christians than the mob. The other classes no doubt are, in proportion to their authority, sincere in their pious reverence; no hostile spirit is breathed from the senate itself, from the knighthood, from the camp, from the very palace! Whence pr’ythee came your Cassii, and your Nigers, and your Albini? whence come they, who beset a Cæsar between two laurels? whence they, who exercise their art of wrestling in strangling him? whence they, who break into the palace in arms with more boldness than all the Sigerii and Parthenii? From the Romans, if I mistake not, that is from men not-Christians. And so all these, even when their wickedness was on the point of bursting forth, were both offering their sacrifices for the health of the Emperor, and swearing by his Genius, one kind of men without, another within, and doubtless were giving to the Christians the name of public enemies. But even they who are every day detected as accomplices or abettors of wicked parties, the gleaning that still remaineth after the gathering in of the vintage of parricides, how did they face their doors with the freshest and the most luxuriant laurels! how did they overcast their porches with vapour of candles, the tallest and the brightest! how did they portion out the forum among them, filling it with the richest and most superb couches! not that they might solemnize the public rejoicings, but that they might even now utter their own private vows in another’s solemnity, and, by changing mentally the name of the prince, might enthrone a proxy and a representative of him for whom they hoped. The same services do they also pay, who consult astrologers, and soothsayers, and augurs, and magicians, touching the life of Cæsar; which arts, as being put forth by rebel angels, and forbidden by God, the Christians do not employ, even in their own behalf. But who hath need of such curious enquiry about the life of Cæsar, unless it be one, who is plotting or desiring something against it, or is hoping and waiting for something after it? For men consult not with the same feelings about their friends and their masters: the anxiety of the kinsman is busy on other grounds than that of the slave.

XXXVI. If these things be so, that those are proved to be enemies, who were wont to be called Romans, why are we who are but thought to be enemies denied to be Romans? May we not both be Romans and not be enemies, when those are found to be enemies, who were accounted Romans? The piety then, and religious reverence, and faith due to the Emperors standeth not in such services as these, which even enmity may more zealously perform as a cloak for itself, but in that moral course of life, by which a kindly feeling must needs be as truly shewn towards the Emperor as towards all mankind. For these works of good-will are not due from us to Emperors alone. In doing good to others we make no exception of persons, for we do it at the same time to ourselves, seeking our measure of praise or reward not from man, but from God, Who requireth and recompenseth an impartial charity. We are the same to the Emperors that we are to our neighbours, for we are equally forbidden with respect to every one, to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to think ill. That which we may not do to an Emperor, neither may we do to any man: that which we may do to no man, the less, perhaps, may we to him, who, through God, is so great a man.

XXXVII. If, as we have said above, we are commanded to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? And if again when injured we are forbidden to repay the injury, lest we ourselves be equally guilty, whom have we power to hurt? For reflect, yourselves, on this matter. How often do ye spend your fury on the Christians, partly from your own proper inclinations, partly in obedience to the laws! How often also, passing you by, doth the hostile mob attack us, on its own score, with stones and fire! With the very phrenzy of Bacchanals, they spare not the Christians even when dead; but they must needs drag them out from the repose of the grave, the sanctuary in some sort of death, and cut and tear them in pieces, no longer what they were, no longer even entire. And yet what retaliation for injury have ye ever marked in men so banded together, so bold in spirit even unto death? though a single night might with a few torches work out an ample vengeance, if it were lawful, with us that evil should be balanced by evil. But God forbid that the divine character of the sect should be vindicated by human fire, or should grudge to suffer that wherein it is tried. For if we wished to act the avowed enemy, not the secret avenger only, would strength of numbers and forces be wanting to us? The Moors and the Marcomans, and the Parthians themselves, or any other people, however great, yet a people nevertheless of one spot, and of their own boundaries, are, I suppose, more numerous than one of the whole world! We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum! We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies: our numbers in a single province will be greater. For what war should we not be sufficient and ready, even though unequal in numbers, who so willingly are put to death, if it were not in this Religion of ours more lawful to be slain than to slay? We could fight against you even unarmed and without rebelling, but only disagreeing with you, by the mere odium of separation. For if so large a body of men as we, were to break away from you into some remote corner of the globe, surely the loss of so many citizens, of whatever sort they might be, would cover your kingdom with shame, yea, and would punish you by their very desertion of you. Doubtless ye would tremble at your own desolation, at the silence of all things, at the death-like stupor of the whole world. Ye would have to seek whom to govern. More enemies would remain to you than citizens: for now ye have fewer enemies by reason of the multitude of Christians, almost all, citizens, ye having almost all your citizens Christians. But ye have preferred to call us enemies of the human race. And who would snatch you from those hidden foes, who are every where making havoc of your minds and your bodily health, from the inroads, I mean, of dæmons, which we drive away from you without reward, without pay? This alone would be enough, for our vengeance, that ye should henceforth lie open, a vacant tenement for unclean spirits. And now not even thinking of compensation for so great a protection, ye have preferred judging as enemies a race not only harmless, but even necessary to you, who are in truth enemies, yet not of men but of their errors.

XXXVIII. Wherefore it were meet that this sect should be accounted (and that with much more kindly feelings) among lawful factions, a sect, by which no such thing is done, as is wont to be apprehended from unlawful factions. For, if I mistake not, the cause of prohibiting factions is to be found in a provident care for the temperate condition of the public, lest the state be divided into parties, a thing which might easily disquiet your assemblies, your councils, your courts, your public meetings, even your public shows, by the rival conflicts of party zeal, when men had already begun to make a trade of selling and hiring out their services for acts of violence. But we who are insensible to all that burning for glory and greatness, have no need of banding together, nor is any thing more foreign to our taste than public affairs. We acknowledge one commonwealth of all mankind, the world. Equally do we renounce your spectacles, as much as the matters which gave rise to them, which we know to be conceived of superstition, in that we have got clear of the very things about which these performances are concerned. We have no concern, in speaking, seeing, hearing, with the madness of the circus, with the immodesty of the theatre, with the cruelty of the arena, with the folly of the wrestling gallery. The Epicureans were permitted to determine for themselves certain pleasures to be real. Wherein do we offend you if we take other than yours to be pleasures? If we will not know how to be pleased, the loss, if it be one, is our’s not your’s. But we reject those things which please you, nor are ye delighted with our pleasures.

XXXIX. I will now set forth on my own part the employments of the Christian society, that since I have disproved that which is evil, I may shew somewhat that is good, if so be I have also unfolded the truth. We are a body formed by our joint cognizance of Religion, by the unity of discipline, by the bond of hope. We come together in a meeting and a congregation as before God, as though we would in one body sue Him by our prayers. This violence is pleasing unto God. We pray also for Emperors, for their ministers and the powers, for the condition of the world, for the quiet of all things, for the delaying of the end. We come together to call the sacred writings to remembrance, if so be that the character of the present times compel us either to use admonition or recollection in any thing. In any case, by these holy words we feed our faith, raise our hopes, establish our confidence, nor do we the less strengthen our discipline by inculcating precepts. Here too are exercised exhortations, corrections, and godly censure. For our judgment also cometh with great weight, as of men well assured that they are under the eye of God; and it is a very grave forestalling of the judgment to come, if any shall have so offended as to be put out of the communion of prayer, of the solemn assembly, and of all holy fellowship. The most approved elders preside over us, having obtained this honour not by money, but by character; for with money is nothing pertaining unto God purchased. Even if there be with us a sort of treasury, no sum is therein collected, discreditable to Religion as though she were bought. Every man placeth there a small gift on one day in each month, or whensoever he will, so he do but will, and so he be but able; for no man is constrained, but contributeth willingly. These are as it were the deposits of piety; for afterwards they are not disbursed in feasting and in drinking, and in disgusting haunts of gluttony, but for feeding and burying the poor, for boys and girls without money and without parents, and for old men now house-ridden, for the shipwrecked also, and for any who in the mines, or in the islands, or in the prisons, become their Creed’s pensioners, so that it be only for the sake of the way of God. But it is the exercise of this sort of love which doth, with some, chiefly brand us with a mark of evil. ‘See,’ say they, ‘how they love each other;’ for they themselves hate each other: and ‘see how ready they are to die for each other;’ for they themselves are more ready to slay each other. But whereas we are denoted by the title of ‘The Brethren,’ on no other ground, as I think, do they brand this name, than because among themselves every title of consanguinity is, from affectation, falsely assumed. But brethren we are even of your own, by the law of Nature, our one mother, although ye have but little of the man in you because ye are ill brethren. Now how much more worthily are they both called and esteemed brethren, who acknowledge one Father, that is God, who have drunk of One Spirit of holiness, who from the one womb of their common ignorance have started at the one light of Truth! But perchance we are on this account thought to be not true-born brothers, because no tragedy noiseth abroad our brotherhood, or because we are brethren in our family property, which with you mostly dissolveth brotherhood. We therefore, who are united in mind and soul, doubt not about having our possessions in common. With us all things are shared promiscuously, except our wives. In that alone do we part fellowship, in which alone others exercise fellowship; who not only use the wives of their friends, but most patiently also lend to their friends their own, according, I suppose, to the rule of those ancient and exceeding wise men, Socrates the Greek, and Cato the Roman, who shared with their friends the wives whom they had married, for the sake of having children, even elsewhere begotten: whether indeed against the will of the wives, I know not; for what could they care for that chastity, which their husbands had so readily resigned? O example of Attic wisdom and of Roman steadiness! A Philosopher and a Censor turned pimp! What wonder then if such our love be social? for even our little suppers ye revile as extravagant also, besides being disgraced by vice. It was of us, I suppose, that the saying of Diogenes was spoken, “The Megarians feast, as though they were to die to-morrow, and build, as though they were never to die.” But each beholdeth the mote in another’s eye, rather than the beam in his own. The whole air is turned sour with the crude breathings of so many tribes, and curiæ, and decuriæ. When the Salii are about to feast, one must needs lend money for it. Your accomptants will calculate the expenses of the tithes and the feasts dedicated to Hercules. For the Apaturian and Bacchanal festivals, and for the Athenian mysteries, a levy of cooks is ordered; at the smoke of the feast of Serapis the firemen will be aroused. It is the supping-room of the Christians alone that men carp at. Our feast sheweth its nature in its name. It is named by the word by which ‘love’ is among the Greeks. Whatever expense it costeth, expense incurred in the name of piety is a gain; if we aid every poor man by this refreshment, not, according as the parasites among you, aspire to the glory of enslaving their liberty, and, for their hire, filling their bellies in the midst of insults, but, according as with God, more thought is taken for men of low degree. If the cause of the feast be good, judge ye what the rest of the course of our rules is, according to the duties of Religion. It alloweth nothing vile, nothing immodest. Men sit not down to meat before tasting, in the first place, of prayer to God. They eat as much as hungry men desire; they drink as much as is profitable for chaste men; they are so filled, as men who remember that during the night also they must pray to God; they so discourse, as those who know that God heareth. After that water for the hands and lights are brought, according as each is able, out of the Holy Scriptures, or of his own mind, he is called upon to sing publicly to God. Hence it is proved in what degree he hath drunken! In like manner prayer breaks up the feast. Thence they separate, not into bands for violence, nor into groups for running to and fro, nor for the outbreakings of lasciviousness, but to be as chary as before of modesty and chastity, as men who have fed not so much upon meats as upon instruction in righteousness. This coming together of Christians would deservedly be unlawful, if it were like those things which are unlawful; deservedly to be condemned, if it were not at variance with those things which are to be condemned. If any complain of it on the ground that factious parties are complained of, for whose hurt have we at any time assembled? We are the same when gathered together as when scattered, the same in the mass as single, offending no one, vexing no one. When the honest, when the good come together, when the pious, when the chaste meet, it must not be called a faction, but a court.

XL. But on the contrary the name of faction must be applied to those, who are banded together in enmity against the good and the honest, who join together their cry against the blood of the innocent, pretending forsooth, in defence of their enmity, that vain excuse also, that they think the Christians to be the cause of every public calamity, of every national ill. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood still, if the earth hath been moved, if there be any famine, if any pestilence, “The Christians to the lion,” is forthwith the word. What! so many to one? Before the age of Tiberius, that is before the coming of Christ, how many calamities, I pray you, afflicted the world and the City? We read that Hiera, Anaphe, and the islands Delos, and Rhodes, and Cos, were with many thousand men utterly destroyed. Even Plato relateth that a land larger than Asia and Africa was snatched away by the Atlantic ocean. An earthquake moreover hath drained the Corinthian sea; and the force of the waves hath separated Lucania from Italy, and banished it, to bear the name of Sicily. Surely these things could not happen without harm to the inhabitants. But where were, I will not say the Christians the despisers of your gods, but your gods themselves at that time, when the flood overwhelmed the whole world, or, as Plato supposed, the plain country only; for that they were of later date than the catastrophe of the deluge the very cities bear witness, in which they were born and died, and those also which they founded; for they would not otherwise have remained unto this day, if they themselves also had not been of later date than that catastrophe. Palestine had not yet received that swarm of Jews from Egypt, nor had that seminary of the Christian sect, as yet settled there, when the shower of fire burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah, places on its borders. The land still smelleth of the burning; and, if any fruits of the trees there struggle into life, so as to be seen by the eyes, nevertheless, when touched, they crumble into ashes. But neither did Tuscany nor Campania complain of the Christians, at that early day, when fire was poured over Vulsinii from Heaven, and over Tarpeii from its own mountain. No one at Rome as yet worshipped the true God, when Hannibal at Cannæ, in the slaughter which himself had made, measured out by the bushel the rings of the Romans. All your gods were worshipped by all, when the Senones seized upon the Capitol itself. And it is well, that when any adverse accident befalleth cities, there hath been the same overthrow of the temples as of the walls, so that I may at once prove against you that the evil cometh not from the gods, because it cometh upon themselves as well as others. Mankind hath even deserved ill of God, first in that they were undutiful towards Him, Whom though they knew in part, they not only sought not after Him to fear Him, but devised for themselves others besides, to worship them; next because, by not seeking after the Teacher of good, and the Judge and Avenger of evil, they grew in all trespasses and sins. But if they had sought after Him, it followed of necessity, that Whom they sought, they should know, and Whom they knew, honour, and Whom they honoured, find rather propitious than wrathful. They ought therefore to know that the same God is now also angry with them, Who was ever so in times past, before that any bore the name of Christians. He, Whose good gifts, produced before they devised gods for themselves, they enjoyed, why can they not understand that evils also come from Him, Whose they perceived not that the good things were? To Him they are amenable, to Whom also they are ungrateful. And yet if we compare the former catastrophes, lighter evils now occur since the world hath received the Christians from God. For from that time, their innocence hath tempered the wickednesses of the age, and they have begun to be intercessors with God. Finally, when summer hindereth winter of its showers, and the year is in anxious plight, ye indeed, daily fed to the full and about forthwith to dine, with your baths, and your taverns, and your brothels, all at work, offer to Jupiter sacrifices for rain, order your people to go barefoot, seek Heaven in the Capitol, look for clouds from your ceilings, turning yourselves away from God Himself and from Heaven. But we, dried up with fasting, and pinched by every sort of abstinence, kept from every enjoyment of life, prostrating ourselves in sackcloth and ashes, put Heaven to shame by our importunity, touch God, and when we have painfully obtained mercy, Jupiter is honoured by you, God neglected!

XLI. Ye therefore are they that trouble the world, ye are guilty of the national calamities, ye that are ever inviting evils, among whom God is despised, images worshipped. For surely it must be thought more credible that He should be angry Who is neglected, than they who are worshipped; or else they must indeed be most unjust, if, on account of the Christians, they injure their own worshippers also, whom they ought to except from the deserts of the Christians. This, say ye, is to make the argument recoil upon your own God also, seeing that He also suffereth His own worshippers to be harmed on account of the wicked. Learn first His counsels, and ye will not thus retort. For He, Who hath once ordained an everlasting judgment after the end of the world, hasteneth not the separation, which is a necessary part of that judgment, before the end of the world. Meanwhile He is without partiality towards the whole human race, both in blessing and in chastening them; He hath willed that good things should be shared by the wicked, and evil things by His own people, that by an equal participation we all might know both His kindness and His severity. Because we have been thus taught by Himself, we love kindness, we fear severity. Ye on the other hand despise both, and it followeth therefore that all the afflictions of the age come from God upon us (if they do so) for our admonition, upon you for your punishment. But in truth we are in no wise harmed; for we have in this world no concern but to depart out of it as quickly as we may. Next because if any evil be inflicted, it is ascribed to your deservings. But although some evils slightly touch us also, as being joined together with you, we rather rejoice in acknowledging therein the divine prophecies, as confirming our assurance and the confidence of our hope. But if all your misfortunes come upon you from those whom ye worship, for our faults, why persist ye in worshipping beings so ungrateful, so unjust, who ought rather to assist and abet you in afflicting the Christians?

XLII. But we are called to account on another charge of wrong, and are said to be unprofitable in the common concerns of life. How can this be said of men who live with you, have the same food, dress, furniture, the same wants of daily life? For we are not Brachmans, or the naked philosophers of the Indians, dwelling in the woods, and outcasts from life. We remember that we owe gratitude to God our Lord and our Maker. We put not away from us any enjoyment of His works; certainly we refrain from using them immoderately or wrongfully. Wherefore we live with you in this world, not without a forum, not without shambles, not without your baths, taverns, shops, inns, markets, and other places of traffic. We voyage moreover with you, serve in your armies, labour with you in the fields, and trade with you. Besides this, we join our crafts with yours. Our acquirements, our services, we lend to the public for your profit. How we can be thought to be unprofitable to you in your concerns, you with whom and by whom we live, I know not. But if I attend not the solemnities of your holyday, I am nevertheless on that day also a man. I do not wash at nightfall, or at the Saturnalian festival, lest I should waste both night and day; yet I wash at a proper and a wholesome hour, such as may save both my warmth and my colour; cold and pale after bathing I can be, when dead. On the feast of Bacchus I sit not down to meat in public, as is the custom of those who are condemned to the beasts, when they take their last meal: but wheresoever I do eat, I eat of your abundance. I buy no garland for my head: nevertheless, since I do buy flowers, how doth it concern you in what manner I use them? I use them, as I think, more agreeably when free, and loose, and straying out of all order. But if we must have them gathered together in a wreath, we have our wreath for the nose. Let those please themselves who smell with their hair! We come not together to your public shows; but if I need any things that are sold at those meetings, I would procure them more freely at their proper places. We buy certainly no frankincense: if the Arabias complain of this, the Sabæans will witness that more, and more costly, merchandise of theirs is lavished in the burials of Christians than in burning incense to the gods. ‘Without doubt,’ say ye, ‘they are daily melting away the revenues of our temples: how few now throw in their offering! Why! we cannot afford to relieve men and your begging gods too, nor do we think that we ought to give, save to those that ask: briefly, let Jupiter put out his hand and take of us, while mean time our compassion expendeth more in each street than your religion doth in each temple. But your other taxes will be grateful to the Christians, who pay their dues with that faithfulness with which we abstain from defrauding others, so that if an account were taken, how much is lost to the taxes through the deceitfulness and falsehood of your declarations, the reckoning might easily be made, the complaint under one head being compensated by the profit gained to the other accounts.

XLIII. I will fully admit that there are some, who may, if any may, justly complain of the unfruitfulness of the Christians. First then will be the pimps, the procurers, and their bath-furnishers. Next, the assassins, the poisoners, the magicians; after them, the soothsayers, the diviners, the astrologers. To be unprofitable to these, is a great profit. And yet whatever loss to your finances come from this our sect, may be balanced by at least some protection from them. At what price do ye value, I do not now say those who cast out devils from you, I do not say those who fall down before the true God in prayer for you as well as for themselves, but those of whom ye can have no fear?

XLIV. Yet here there is a loss to the state, great as it is real, which no one turneth to look upon; here is an injury to the citizens, which no one weigheth, when in our persons so many righteous men are expended, when so many innocent men are squandered away. For now we call to witness your own acts, you who preside daily at the trials of prisoners, and dispose of the charges by your sentences. So many criminals are reckoned up by you under various charges of guilt. What assassin among them, what cut-purse, what sacrilegious person, or seducer, or plunderer of bathers, is entitled also a Christian? In like manner when the Christians are brought to trial under their own head, who even of these is such as all these criminals are? It is ever from your own people that the prison is steaming: it is ever from your own people that the mines are breathing sighs; it is ever on your own people that the beasts are fattened; it is ever of your own people that the masters of the shows find flocks of criminals to feed. No Christian is there, unless it be only as a Christian; or if he be any thing else, he is forthwith no longer a Christian.

XLV. We alone then are innocent? What wonder if this be so of necessity? and truly of necessity it is so. Taught innocence by God, we both know it perfectly, as being revealed by a perfect Master; and we keep it faithfully, as being committed to us by an Observer that may not be despised. But to you human opinion hath handed down the rule of innocence, and human authority hath commanded it. Hence ye belong to a discipline which for the attaining of true innocence is neither perfect nor so greatly to be feared. What is the wisdom of man in shewing what is really good? What his authority in exacting it? The one is as readily deceived, as the other disregarded. And hence, which is the more full commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” or, “Be not even angry?” Which the more perfect, to forbid adultery, or to keep men even from the secret lust of the eyes? which the more refined, to forbid evil doing, or even evil speaking? which the more complete, not to permit an injury, or not to suffer even the requital of an injury? Meanwhile, however, know that even your own laws, which seem to tend to innocence, are borrowed from the law of God, as the more ancient. I have already spoken of the age of Moses. But what is the authority of human laws, when it is in the power of man both to evade them, being generally undiscovered in his misdoings, and sometimes to set them at nought, as sinning from chance or necessity? Consider it also in respect of the shortness of the punishment inflicted, which, whatever it be, nevertheless continueth not after death. So also Epicurus holdeth cheap all torment and pain, by pronouncing slight ones despicable, and great ones shortlived. But we of whom an account is taken by the God Who looketh upon all, and who see before us an eternal punishment at His hands, we are with good cause the only men who attain unto innocence, both from the fulness of our knowledge, and the difficulty of concealment, and the greatness of the punishment, which continueth, not for a long time, but for ever; fearing Him Whom even that man, who judgeth those that fear, will himself be obliged to fear—fearing God and not the Proconsul.

XLVI. We have maintained our ground, methinks, against all that criminal charge, which calleth for the blood of the Christians. We have shewn you, our whole condition, and by what means we can prove it to be such as we have shewn—by the truth, that is, and the antiquity of the Divine Scriptures, and moreover by the confession of the spiritual powers. Let him come forth who shall venture to refute us. He will be bound to strive against us on the ground of truth, not by skill of words, but in the same form in which we have established our proof. But while our truth is made manifest to every man, unbelief meantime, confounded as it is by the goodness of this sect, (which hath now become well known to experience of it, and by intercourse with it,) regardeth it forsooth not as a work of God, but rather as a kind of philosophy. ‘The philosophers,’ it saith, ‘advise and profess the same things, innocence, justice, patience, sobriety, chastity.’ Why then, when we are likened to them in discipline, are we not made equal to them in the freedom and impunity of their discipline? Or why are not they also, as being our equals, forced to the same offices, which we, not fulfilling, are put in peril? For who compelleth a philosopher to sacrifice, or to take an oath, or at noon-day to parade abroad useless candles? Nay they even openly demolish your gods, and in treatises accuse your superstitions, with your own approbation: most of them likewise bark against your princes, and ye suffer it, and they are more readily rewarded by statues and pensions, than sentenced to the beasts. And with good cause, for they bear the name of philosophers, not of Christians. This name of philosophers putteth not the dæmons to flight: why should it, seeing that the philosophers rank the dæmons next to the gods? It is the saying of Socrates, “If the dæmon so please.” And he also, even when he savoured somewhat of truth in denying the gods, yet just at the close of life ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius, I suppose in honour of his father, because Apollo declared Socrates to be the wisest of all men. O ill-advised Apollo! he hath borne testimony to the wisdom of that man, who denied the being of the gods! Whatever hatred the truth kindleth against itself, so much doth he incur, who faithfully setteth it forth, while he who corrupteth and affecteth it, gaineth favour on this account especially, from those that attack the truth. Philosophers affect, inasmuch as they are both its mockers and despisers, the truth in mimicry, and, in affecting, corrupt it, as men who catch at praise. The Christians both seek it as of necessity, and fulfil it entirely, as men who care for their own salvation. Wherefore neither in respect of knowledge, nor, as ye imagine, in respect of discipline, are we on a level. For what certain report did Thales, that earliest of natural philosophers, give to Crœsus, when he questioned him concerning the nature of the gods, after being oft allowed in vain farther time for deliberation? Every Christian labourer both findeth out God and sheweth Him, and hence really ascribeth to God all that in God is looked for, notwithstanding that Plato affirmeth that the Maker of the world is both hard to be found out, and, when found out, hard to be declared unto all. But if we be challenged on the ground of chastity, I read a part of the sentence given at Athens against Socrates; he is declared to be a corrupter of young men: the Christian doth not even change the natural use of the woman. I know also that the harlot Phryne ministered to the lustful embraces of Diogenes. I hear too that a certain Speusippus of the school of Plato died in the act of adultery. The Christian is by nature a lover to his wife alone. Democritus by putting out his eyes because he could not look upon women without desire, and was pained if he possessed them not, doth, by this very self-correction, make confession of incontinence. But the Christian, still keeping his eyes, looketh not at all upon women. It is in his heart that he is blinded against lust. If I must defend our cause as touching righteous dealing, behold Diogenes, his feet soiled with mud, trampling with a pride of his own on the proud couches of Plato. The Christian doth not vaunt himself against even a poor man. If I am to contend as touching modesty, behold Pythagoras at Thurium, and Zeno at Priene, aspiring to the tyranny. But the Christian doth not aspire even to the ædileship. If I am to join issue as touching evenness of mind, Lycurgus chose obstinately to starve himself to death because the Lacedæmonians had amended his laws. The Christian, even when condemned, giveth thanks. If I am to make a comparison as touching good faith, Anaxagoras refused to restore a pledge to his guests; the Christian is called faithful even to strangers. If I am to take my stand on the ground of simplicity, Aristotle basely displaced his own familiar friend Hermias; the Christian doth not hurt even his enemy. The same Aristotle flattereth Alexander, who ought rather to have been directed by him, as unbecomingly as Plato was sold by Dionysius for his belly’s sake. Aristippus in his purple, under a vast surface of outward gravity, liveth the life of a profligate; and Hippias is put to death while laying a snare for the state. This hath no Christian ever attempted on behalf of his own friends, though scattered abroad with every sort of cruelty. But some men will say that certain even of our own people depart from our rule of discipline. Then do they cease to be accounted Christians amongst us. But these philosophers, with such deeds upon their hands, continue to hold among you the name and the honour of wisdom. What likeness then is there between the philosopher and the Christian? the disciple of Greece and of Heaven? the trafficker for fame and for salvation? the doer of words and of works? the builder and the destroyer of things? the foister in of error, and the restorer of truth? its plunderer and its guardian?

XLVII. For the antiquity of the Holy Scriptures, already established, yet again serveth me in making it very credible that this was the store-house of all the wisdom of later times. And were it not that I now desire to moderate the bulk of my book, I would go at large into the proof of this also. Which of the poets, which of the sophists is there, who have not drunk from the fountain of the Prophets? Hence, therefore, have the philosophers also watered the dryness of their own understanding. For because they have certain things of ours, therefore they liken us to them. Hence also methinks hath philosophy been by law cast out by some, the Thebans, for example, the Spartans, and the Argives. While they strive to come at what is ours, being men, who (as we have said) lust after fame and eloquence only, if they have met with any thing in the sacred writings, they have straightway re-written it according to the bent of their nice research, and have perverted it to their own purpose, neither sufficiently believing them to be divine, not to corrupt them, nor sufficiently understanding them, as being, even then, somewhat obscure, and seen darkly even by the Jews themselves, whose own they seemed to be. For even where the truth was in simple form, the more on that account did that cavilling spirit of men, which despiseth faith, waver, whence they confounded in uncertainty even that which they had found certain. For having found only that there was a God, they questioned of Him not as they had found Him, but so as to dispute about His character, and His nature, and His dwelling-place. Some affirm that He is without body, some that He hath a body, as do the Platonists and the Stoics; some that He cometh of atoms, some of numbers, as Epicurus and Pythagoras; some of fire, as was thought by Heraclitus. Again the Platonists hold that He careth for the world, the Epicureans on the other hand that He is inactive, unemployed, and, if I may say so, a non-entity as respecteth the affairs of men; the Stoics again, that He is placed without the universe, turning about, like a potter, this mass of matter from without; the Platonists, that he is placed within the universe, abiding like a pilot within that which he directeth. So also concerning the world itself, they are not agreed, whether it had or had not a beginning, whether it shall have an end, or abide for ever. So also of the state of the soul, which some contend is divine and eternal, others that it can be dissolved: each hath, according to his own sentiment, brought in a new doctrine, or reformed the old. And no wonder if the wit of philosophers hath perverted the ancient document. Some of their race have by their own opinions corrupted this our novel body of writings also, after the views of the philosophers, and from the one way have cut out many devious and inextricable mazes. Which remark I have offered for this reason, lest the notorious variety of opinions in this our sect should seem to any one to place us in this respect also on a level with the philosophers, and condemn truth, because variously defended. But for those who corrupt our doctrines we briefly rule, that the canon of truth is that which cometh from Christ, handed down through those who have companied with Him, long after whom these different commentators will be proved to have existed. All contradictions to the truth have been framed out of the truth itself, the spirits of error thus exercising their rivalry. By them have the corruptions of this wholesome kind of discipline been privily introduced; by them also have certain fables been let in, which, from their likeness to it, might weaken the credit of the truth, or rather gain it over to their own side; so that a man may think that he must put no faith in the Christians, because he can put none in poets or philosophers; or suppose that he ought to put the more faith in poets and philosophers, because he can put none in the Christians. Therefore we are laughed at, when we preach that God shall judge the world, for so do the poets also, and the philosophers feign a judgment-seat in the shades below; and if we threaten men with Hell, which is a store-house of hidden fire beneath the earth, for the punishing of men, we are forthwith borne down by jeers, for so is there also a river among the dead called Pyriphlegethon. And if we speak of Paradise, a place of heavenly pleasantness appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, separated from the knowledge of the world in general by a sort of wall formed by the zone of fire, the Elysian plains have preoccupied their belief. Whence, I pray you, have your poets and philosophers these doctrines so like to ours? it can only be from our mysteries. If it be from our mysteries, as being older than their own, then are ours more to be trusted and believed than theirs, seeing that even the copies of them gain belief. If it be from their own minds, then must our mysteries be regarded as the copies of things later than themselves, which the law of nature suffereth not, for never doth the shadow go before the substance, or the image before the reality.

XLVIII. Come now, if any philosopher affirmeth (as doth Laberius after the opinion of Pythagoras) that a man is made out of a mule, a serpent out of a woman, and shall, by the force of eloquence, wrest every argument to this opinion, will he not gain the consent of men, and fixedly persuade them ever to abstain from animal food? and will not each on this account be persuaded, lest in supping on ox-flesh he eat one of his own ancestors? But the Christian, if he promiseth that man shall be made again of man, and that of Caius the very same Caius shall be refashioned, will be driven out by the people, not merely by blows, but rather by stones, as though whatever be the governing argument for the restoration of human souls to material bodies, do not itself require, that they return to the same bodies, seeing that this it is to be restored, to become what it was before. For if they be not what they were, endued, that is, with a human, and that the self-same, body, then will they not be the very same which they were, because they could not be what they were not, without ceasing to be what they had been. Moreover, how shall they be said to be restored, which are no longer to be the same? Either, being made another thing, they will not be themselves, or, remaining themselves, will not be from another source. We should need many jests and much leisure, if we chose to sport with this question, into what beast each man may be thought to have been changed. But let us rather keep to the defence of ourselves, who lay it down as a thing certainly more worthy of belief, that a man should be refashioned from a man, (who you will coming in place of whom you will, so it be only a man,) so that the same sort of soul may be restored to the same rank of beings, though not to the same likeness. Surely, since the cause of the restoration is the appointed future judgment, each will of necessity be presented the very same man that he was before, that he may receive judgment from God for his good deservings or the contrary. And therefore will the bodies also be again presented, both because the soul can suffer nothing by itself without connection with a material substance, that is the flesh, and because what thing soever souls are doomed to suffer from the judgment of God, they have deserved it, not without the flesh, within which they have done all things. But, thou sayest, how can matter, which hath been dissolved, be made to appear? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt find how to believe this thing. Think what thou wast before thou hadst a being: simply nothing: for hadst thou been any thing thou wouldest have remembered it. Thou therefore that wast nothing before thou didst exist, and that becomest also nothing when thou ceasest to exist, why canst thou not begin to exist again from nothing, by the Will of that selfsame Creator Who hath willed that thou shouldest come into being out of nothing. What new thing will happen unto thee? thou that wast not, wast made: when again thou shalt not be, thou shalt be made. Declare, if thou canst, the manner in which thou wast made, and then seek to know how thou shalt be made. And yet surely thou shalt be more easily made that which thou once hast been, seeing that thou wast made, equally without difficulty, that which thou never hadst at any time been. There will be a doubt, I suppose, as to the power of God, Who hath framed out of that which was not before, not less than out of a death-like void and nothingness, this vast body of the universe, animated by that Spirit which animateth all souls, stamped too by Himself as an emblem of the resurrection of man, for a testimony unto you. The light which is extinct every day, shineth forth again, and the darkness in like manner departeth and succeedeth in its turn; the stars that have died away, revive again; the seasons when they end, begin anew; the fruits are consumed and again return; the seeds assuredly spring not up with new fruitfulness, except they be first corrupted and dissolved; all things are by dying preserved; all things are formed again from death. Shalt thou a man, (a name so great,) thou who (if thou knowest thyself, as thou mayest learn to do even from the Pythian inscription) art the lord of all things that die and rise again, shalt thou die to perish for ever? Wheresoever thy elements shall be scattered, whatsoever matter shall destroy, absorb, abolish, waste thee to nothing, it shall restore thee again. “Nothing” itself is in the hands of Him, in Whose hands is “The Whole.” ‘Then,’ say ye, ‘we must be ever dying and ever rising again!’ If the Lord of all things had so determined, thou wouldest experience, even against thy will, this law of thy creation. But now He hath not determined otherwise than He hath declared unto us. The same Mind which from diversity of parts hath framed one whole, so that all things consist of rival substances in unity, of the void and the solid, of the animate and the inanimate, of the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, of light and darkness, yea even of life and death, hath made time also to consist of two states so determinate and distinct, that the first part of it, measured from the beginning of all things, in which we now live, runneth out to its end in this mortal life, but the next, which we wait for, is continued to a never-ending eternity. When therefore the end, and that middle space of time, which lieth open between, shall have come, so that the visible face of the universe itself is removed, which is equally temporal, and hath been spread like a curtain before that eternal dispensation, then shall the whole human race be restored, to determine the account of their good or evil deservings in this world, and then to pay the debt through the boundless series of everlasting ages. Therefore, there shall neither be an absolute death, nor another and another resurrection, but we shall be the same that we now are, and no other thereafter; the worshippers of God ever with God, clothed upon with their proper substance of eternity, but the wicked, and they who live not entirely unto God, for the punishment of an equally eternal fire, receiving from the very nature of that fire, being, as it is, divine, the supply of their own incorruption. The philosophers also know the difference between the hidden and the common fire. So that which ministereth to the uses of men is widely different from that which ministereth to the judgment of God, whether drawn out in lightning from Heaven, or bursting up from the earth through the tops of mountains; for it consumeth not that which it burneth, but reneweth while it destroyeth. Wherefore the mountains, though ever burning, still remain, and he who is stricken by fire from Heaven, is thenceforth safe from being consumed by any other fire. And this will be a witness of the eternal fire, this an example of that everlasting judgment, which feedeth its own pains. Mountains are burned and yet endure. What shall we say of wicked men and the enemies of God?

XLIX. These are the things which in us alone are called vain presumptions, in the poets and philosophers consummate knowledge and notable genius. They are wise, we foolish; they to be honoured, we derided, yea more than this, to be punished likewise. Let now the doctrines which we maintain be false, and justly styled presumptions, yet are they necessary; let them be foolish, yet are they profitable, if those who believe them are constrained to become better men, by the fear of eternal punishment, and the hope of eternal refreshment. It is not therefore expedient that those things should be called false, or accounted foolish, which it is expedient should be presumed to be true. In like manner, on no ground whatsoever may those things be condemned, which are profitable. In you then is this very presumption, which condemneth things useful. Wherefore neither can they be foolish. Assuredly, though they be both false and foolish, yet they are hurtful to none; for they are like many other things, to which ye award no punishments, things vain and fabulous, unaccused and unpunished, because harmless. But in things of this sort, if ye must needs punish, ye ought to punish by derision, not by swords, and fires, and crosses, and wild beasts; in the iniquity of which cruelty, not only doth this blind mob exult and insult, but even some of yourselves, who through iniquity catch at the favour of the mob, boast of it. As if all that ye can do against us were not of our own free choice! Assuredly I am, only if I will, a Christian. Thou wilt therefore only condemn me, if I will to be condemned. But since whatever thou canst do to me, thou canst not do unless I will, that which thou canst do is necessarily of my own will, not of thy power. Wherefore also the mob vainly rejoiceth in our hurt, for the joy, which they claim to themselves, is ours, who would rather be condemned than fall away from God. On the contrary, they who hate us ought to grieve, and not to rejoice, at our gaining that which we have ourselves chosen.

L. ‘Why then,’ ye say, ‘do ye complain that we persecute you, if it be your own will to suffer, seeing that ye ought to love us, through whom ye suffer that which ye will?’ Certainly it is our will to suffer, but in the same manner in which, though no one willingly suffereth the ills of war, (since he must needs be harassed and endangered,) yet he fighteth with all his strength, and he who complained of the battle, rejoiceth, when he conquereth in the battle, because he gaineth both the glory and the spoils. We have a battle, in that we are summoned to the tribunals, that we may then, at the hazard of our life, contend for the truth. But to obtain that for which thou hast contended, is victory. This victory hath both the glory of pleasing God, and the spoils of eternal life. Yet still we are crushed! yea, after that we have won the battle. Therefore when we are slain, we conquer, and in fine when we are crushed we escape. Ye may now call us faggot-men and half-axle-men, because being bound to the wood of half-an-axle we are burnt by a circle of faggots enclosing us. This is the garb of our conquest, this our robe of victory; in such a chariot do we triumph. With good cause therefore are we displeasing to the conquered, for therefore are we worthily thought desperate and reckless men! But this desperation and recklessness in the cause of glory and fame doth, even in your own eyes, exalt the standard of virtue. Mucius of his own act left his right hand upon the altar. Oh! loftiness of spirit! Empedocles freely gave his whole body to the flames of Ætna at Catana. Oh! strength of mind! Some woman, who founded Carthage, gave herself to the funeral pile, her second marriage. Oh! proclamation of chastity! Regulus, that he might not save his life,—a single man exchanged for many enemies,—suffereth crucifixion in every part of his body. Oh! brave man, and a conqueror even in captivity! Anaxarchus, when he was brayed with a pestle like barley, said, ‘Pound, pound the shell of Anaxarchus, for thou poundest not Anaxarchus himself.’ O the greatness of the philosopher’s soul, who even jested on his own death, and such a death! I pass over those, who with their own sword, or some other milder kind of death, have bartered life for glory; for, lo! even those who overcome in the trial of tortures are crowned by you. A certain Athenian harlot, when the torturer was now wearied, at last spit out her tongue, which she had bitten off, into the face of the furious tyrant, that she might spit out her voice too, and be unable to betray the conspirators, even though, at length overcome, she should wish it. Zeno of Elea being asked by Dionysius what philosophy could give him, and having answered, “to become insensible to suffering through contempt of death,” being put under the lash of the tyrant, sealed his doctrine even by his death. Assuredly the scourgings of the Lacedæmonians, embittered even under the eyes of their encouraging friends, confer on their house as much honour for endurance as they shed blood. Oh! glory, licensed because of earthly mould! to which no reckless presumption, no desperate determination is attributed, in despising death and every sort of cruelty; which hath a privilege for men to suffer for country, for lands, for empire, for friendship, that which they may not for God! And yet for all these ye cast statues, and inscribe images, and carve titles to continue for ever. As far as ye can by means of monuments, ye yourselves in some sort grant a resurrection to the dead, while he, who hopeth for the true resurrection from God, if he suffer for God, is mad. But go on, ye righteous rulers,—much more righteous in the eyes of the people if ye sacrifice the Christians to them—rack, torment, condemn, grind us to powder: for your injustice is the proof of our innocence. It is for this that God permitteth us to suffer these things. For, in condemning just now a Christian woman to the bawd rather than the lion, ye have confessed that the stain of chastity upon us is accounted more dreadful than any punishment, and any death. Nor yet doth your cruelty, though each act be more refined than the last, profit you any thing. It is rather the allurement to our sect. We grow up in greater number as often as we are cut down by you. The blood of the Christians is their harvest seed. Many among yourselves exhort men to endure pain and death, as Cicero in his Tusculans, Seneca in his treatise “on chances,” Diogenes, Pyrrho, Callinicus; and yet their words do not gain as many disciples, as the Christians do in teaching by their acts. That very obstinacy, with which ye upbraid us, is the teacher. For who is not stirred up by the contemplation of it to enquire what there is in the core of the matter? who, when he hath enquired, doth not join us? when he hath joined us, doth not desire to suffer, that he may purchase the whole grace of God, that he may gain from Him perfect forgiveness at the price of his own blood? for all crimes are pardoned for the sake of the work. Therefore is it that we, at the same time that we are judged, thank you for your judgment. Such enmity is there between the things of God and the things of men; when we are condemned by you, we are absolved by God.

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