C. Dodgson, Tertullian Vol. 1. Apologetic and Practical Treatises. (1842). pp.1-106. Apologeticum.
THE
BOOK OF APOLOGY
AGAINST
THE HEATHEN.
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[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. 396, 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 aet. 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."]
I. 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 1 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 2,
formeth an obstacle to their defence, let the truth be permitted to reach your
ears even by the secret way of silent writings 3. She asketh no favour
for her cause, because she feeleth no |2 wonder at her condition.4 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 5. 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 6. 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 7,
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 |3 islands 8. They mourn, as for a loss, that every sex, age,
condition, and now even rank is going over to this sect 9. 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 10 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 11 to be good because
it converteth many, for how many are remoulded 12 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 13; are bewildered when discovered;
being accused deny; not even when tortured, readily or always confess; certainly
mourn when |4 condemned; sum up against themselves, impute either to fate or to the stars the
impulses of a wicked mind 14: for they will not have that to be their
own, which they acknowledge to be evil 15. 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 16. 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 17? 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 18, 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 19, (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 |5 the act, the number 20 of acts 21, 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 22; what cooks, what dogs 23, 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 24, 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 25, 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 26. 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 27? For tracking robbers through all the provinces, |6 military stations are allotted 28. 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 29; 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 |7 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 30 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 31 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 32. 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 33. 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 34; 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, |8 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 35 persecuteth, aiming first at this, that men may be unwilling to know for certain that, which they know for a 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 36? why not a murderer also, if a Christian be a murderer 37? 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 38.
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 39 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 |9 just to prejudge things unseen by things seen, than to pre-condemn 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 40,' (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, |10 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 41 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 42,' and prescribe this law without any gentler |11 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 43 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 Lacedaemonians 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 44 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 45 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 46? but there were laws too aforetime, that men cast in a suit might be cut in pieces 47 by the creditors: yet was this cruelty afterwards erased 48 by public consent, the punishment of death being exchanged for a mark of disgrace. The confiscation of goods resorted to would |12 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 Caesars,"----why am I not heard, who 49 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 50, unless approved by the Senate. Witness Marcus Aemilius in the case of his own god Alburnus 51. This also maketh for our cause, that with you deity is measured according to the judgment of man 52. 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, |13 things announced to him from Palestine in Syria, which had there manifested the truth of the Divinity of that Person 53. The Senate, because they had not themselves approved it, rejected it 54. Caesar 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 wreck the fury of the sword of the Caesars 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.55 Domitian too, who was somewhat of a Nero 56 in cruelty, had tried it, but forasmuch as he was also a human being, be speedily stopped 57 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 58. As he did not |14 openly take off the penalty from the men of that sect 59, 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 60; which no Adrian, though a clear searcher into all things curious 61, no Vespasian, though the vanquisher of the Jews, no Pius, no Verus 62, 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 63 of the laws and institutions of their fathers answer touching their own fealty, and their respect and |15 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 asses, and no more, should be allowed for a supper 64; and that not more than one fowl, and that not a fatted one 65, should be introduced? which expelled from the Senate a Patrician on grave proof of ambition, because he possessed ten pounds of silver 66? which forthwith pulled down the theatres as they rose for the corruption of morals 67? 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 68, and silver mines wrought out into dishes, (it were a small matter if only for Senators, and not for freed men 69, 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 Lacedaemonians first invented their odious cloak 70, that immodest pleasure might not be chilled even in the winter. I see too no distinction left in dress between matrons and harlots 71. 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 72; when women were so entirely kept from wine, that her own friends starved a matron to death for unsealing the stores of a wine |16 cellar 73; and under Romulus one who had touched wine was slain 74 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 75. Where is that happiness in marriages, favoured doubtless by good morals, through which, during nearly six hundred years 76 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 77, 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 78. 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 79. Serapis, and Isis, and Harpocrates with his dog-headed monster, having been forbidden the Capitol 80, 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 bestowed, 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 |17 ought. Besides 81 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 82 your frantic orgies to the now Italian Bacchus, I will shew in the proper place 83 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 84. This religion dateth, as we have already set forth 85, from Tiberius. Truth set out with being herself hated; as soon as she appeared, she is an enemy 86. As many as are strangers to it, so many are its foes 87: and the Jews indeed appropriately from their rivalry, the soldiers from their violence, even they of our own household from nature 88. 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, |18 when he hath discovered them, or hath taken a bribe to do so, while haling the men themselves 89? 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 90, 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 |19 first tongue have not sown a falsehood 91, 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 92. 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 93? 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, |20 I suppose, are of another nature! Are we Cynopeans or Sciapodes 94? Have we other rows of teeth? other nerves for incestuous lust? Thou that canst believe these things of a man, canst also do them 95. 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 96. 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 97. 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 |21 sacrificed to Saturn 98, 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 99, hung up, alive 100, 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 101. 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 102. Lo! in that most religious city of the pious descendants of Aeneas there is a certain Jupiter 103, 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 104? 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 |22 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 105. For even those of riper age would desire to die by the sword 106. 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 107: 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 108, 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 109. Under Catiline 110 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 111. 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 112. They too, who in the games in the theatre have drunk 113 with greedy thirst the fresh blood streaming from the neck 114 of the butchered criminals to cure the falling sickness, where are they 115? they too, who from the stage sup on the meat of wild beasts, who fetch it from the boar, from the stag 116? That boar hath |23 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 117. 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 118, who for this cause also abstain from things strangled, and such as die of themselves,119 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 120 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 121. 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 122. And the Macedonians also are suspected, because when they first heard the Tragedy of Oedipus, laughing at |24 the grief of the incestuous man they said, h!laune th_n mh&tera. 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 123 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 124 a mistake shall have chanced upon them, thenceforward it will go on transmitting the incest, the generation creeping on with the crime 125. 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 126, 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 127 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 128. 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 129, and you offer |25 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 130 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 131. 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 132. From him is |26 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 133, nor Thallus 134, nor Cassius Severus 135, 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 nowhere 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 136. The mountain, which he had dwelt in, was called Saturnius 137: the city which he had planted, is even to this day Saturnia 138: finally, the whole of Italy, after being called Oenotria, was surnamed Saturnia 139. From him first came your tablets, and coin stamped with an image 140, and hence he presideth over the treasury. But if Saturn be a man, surely he is born of a man 141, 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 142. 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 143? 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 144." I say nothing of men being as yet in so rude a condition, that they might be |27 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 145. 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 146, 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 147 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 148,disposed, and furnished, and ordered, was found with a government of perfect reason 149. That could not be imperfect, which perfected 150 all things. |28 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 151: 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 152 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 153 into "the nethermost hell," which, when ye choose, ye affirm to be the prisonhouse of eternal punishments 154. 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 |29 god of yours 155, 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 156 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 Croessus, 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 157 of certain dead men of olden time, and 1 hear fables, and in their fables I read their mysteries. But as touching the images themselves I find nothing else than 158 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 |30 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 159. What image doth not the clay first form, moulded upon a cross and a stake 160? It is on the gibbet that the body of your god is first consecrated! Ye tear the sides of the Christians with claws 161: 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 Caelestis 162. 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 163. 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 164. Wherefore if we worship not statues 165 and cold images, very like their dead originals, which the kites, and the mice, and the spiders, well know 166, 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. |31
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 167 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 168, when ye worship, some one, some another, of course ye offend those whom ye worship not 169. 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 170. Under the same proclamation of the crier, under the same spear, in the same catalogue of the quaestor, 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 171. 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? |32 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 172? 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 173, a public harlot, (I would at least it had been Lais or Phryne;) when ye instal Simon Magus 174 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 175; although your ancient |33 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 176 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 177 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 178! Venus wounded with an arrow by a man, because she would fain deliver her own son Aeneas, lest he should be slain by the same Diomede 179! Mars almost wasted to death by imprisonment in chains for thirteen months 180! Jupiter delivered by the aid of a kind of monster 181, lest he should suffer the same violence from the rest of the gods! and now weeping for the fall of Sarpedon 182, now foully lusting after his own sister, and recounting to her his mistresses, not loved, for a long time past, so much as her 183. 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 184: another letteth out to Laomedon the services of Neptune as a builder 185: and there is that one among the Lyric Poets, Pindar I mean, who singeth of Aesculapius 186 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 |34 towards his craftsman! These things ought neither to be disclosed if true, nor invented if false, amongst the most religious of all people. Not 187 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 188. 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 189 statue of him in a temple, the reversal of his condemnation bore testimony in behalf of Socrates. But Diogenes 190 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 191 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 192,' 'Diana 193 scourged,' and 'The will of the deceased Jupiter' read aloud, and 'The three starved Herculeses 194' turned to ridicule. But the writings also of the stage shew up all their baseness 195. The Sun mourneth for his son cast down |35 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 196, that the mask, representing your god, covers an ignominious 197 and infamous head 198? 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 199 god from Pessinus, mutilated; and he who was burnt alive, was acting Hercules. We have smiled too, amidst sportive atrocities of the noonday men 200, 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 201. 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 202, 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. |36 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 203 have dreamed of an ass's head being our God 204; a suspicion of this sort Cornelius Tacitus hath introduced. For in the fifth of his Histories 205, 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 206, 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 207, 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 |37 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 itwas 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 208, 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 follow worshipper 209, 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 |38 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 210. The whole religion of the camp is a worshipping of the standards 211, a swearing by the standards 212, a setting up of the standards above all the gods 213. All those rows of images 214 on your standards 215 are the appendages of crosses; those hangings on your standards and banners are the robes 216 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 217. 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 |39 of the sun, we are only next to those, who set apart the day of Saturn 218 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 219, 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 cars, with a hoof on one foot 220, 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 221 and a lion's head 222, and with the horns of a goat 223 and a ram 224, and formed like goats from the loins 225, and like serpents from the legs, and with wings on the foot 226 or the back 227. 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 228, 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 Ko&smoj. He is invisible though seen, |40 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 229, it nameth GOD, by this name only, because the proper name of the true God. 'Great God,' 'Good God 230,' and 'which God grant 231,' are words in every mouth. It witnesseth also that He is its Judge. 'God seeth 232,' '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. |41
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 233,) 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 234; 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 235 them; Who, when this world shall have been brought to an end, shall judge His own worshippers unto the restitution 236 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 237. 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 238, of grammarians, to whom he had committed the chief care |42 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 239, 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 240. 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 241 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 242, 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 243, 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 |43 like manner consequently 244 of ours also. If ye have ever heard of a certain Moses, he is of the same age with Inachus of Argos 245; he precedeth by almost four hundred years, (for it is seven years less than this 246,) Danaus, himself also a very ancient among you: he goeth before the overthrow of Priam by about a thousand years 247; I could say also, having some authorities with me 248, 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 249. 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 Chaldaeans, the Phoenicians: call in the aid of their countrymen, by whom such knowledge is supplied, a Manetho from Egypt, a Berosus from Chaldaea, an Iromus king of Tyre moreover from Phoenicia; their followers also, Ptolemy the Mendesian, and Menander of Ephesus, and Demetrius Phalereus, and king Iuba 250, and Appion, and Thallus, and if any 251 confirmeth or refuteth these, as Josephus 252 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 |44 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 253: 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 254, make havoc well nigh of every thing; that the humble are exalted, and the lofty ones abased; that righteousness groweth scant 255, 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 256. 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 257: 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 |45 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 258. 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 259 to deserve the favour of God, and not to offend. But how greatly they sinned, puffed up, even to doting260, with a vain confidence in their fathers, turning their course 261 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 262. |46 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 263, 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 264. But the Son of God hath no mother, no not of pure wedlock 265: 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 Lo&goj, 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 266, 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 267, |47 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 268 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 269," the parent matter 270 remaineth entire and without loss, although thou shouldest borrow from it many channels of its qualities 271. |48 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 272' in mode not in number 273, in order not in condition 274, and hath gone forth, not gone out, of the original Source 275. Therefore this ray of God 276, 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 277. The flesh |49 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 278 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 279; 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 280. For their sins deserved 281 that they should not understand the former, since they would have believed, had they understood, and would have obtained salvation, had they believed.282 They themselves |50 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 283; when by a word He cast out devils from men, recovered the sight of the blind, cleansed the lepers,284 strengthened anew the sick of the palsy, finally by a word restored the dead to life, made the very elements 'obey Him,'285 stilling the storms and walking on the waters, shewing Himself to be the Lo&goj of God, that is, the Word, which was in the beginning,286 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 287. 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 288; and at length being nailed to the cross, He shewed many special signs to mark that death 289. Of Himself 290 He with a word gave up the ghost, preventing the office of the executioner. At the same moment the light of mid-day 291 was withdrawn, the sun veiling his orb. They thought it forsooth an eclipse, who knew not that this also had been foretold 292 concerning Christ: when they discovered not its cause, they denied it; and yet ye have this event, that befel |51 the world, related in your own records 293. 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 294. Yet the chief men notwithstanding, whom it concerned to spread a wicked tale, and to draw back from the faith 295 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,296 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 Judaea, 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 |52 into Heaven in a cloud which covered Him; an account far better than that which your Proculi 297 are wont to affirm of your Romuli. These things concerning Christ did Pilate, himself also already in his conscience a Christian 298, report to Tiberius the Caesar of that day. But the Caesars also would have believed on Christ, if either Caesars had not been necessary for the age, or if Christians also could have been Caesars. 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 Home, through the cruelty of Nero, sow the seed of Christian blood 299. But we will shew 300 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, Musaeus at Athens, Melampus at Argos, Trophonius in Boeotia, 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 |53 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 301, 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 daemons, and Socrates himself looked unto the will of a daemon. Why not? since it is said that a daemon clave unto him from childhood, dissuading him 302: doubtless----from good. The poets acknowledge daemons 303; 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 304. Moreover Plato 305 denied not that there |54 be angels also. Even the Magi 306 are at hand to bear witness of both names. But how from certain angels corrupted of their own will a more corrupt race of daemons 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 307. 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 308 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 |55 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 309. By the same unseen course of contagion therefore doth the blast of daemons and of angels hurry onward the corruptions of the mind, through foul madness and foolishness, or 310 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 311; 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 312? touching which very delusions I will shew how they work. Every spirit is winged: in this both angels and daemons 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 313. 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 314, 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 |56 cunning they shape their double meanings to events, witness the Croesi 315, witness the Pyrrhi 316. 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 317. They 318 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 319 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 320. Why then should I speak at large touching the other subtleties or even the powers of spiritual delusion? the apparitions of Castor and Pollux 321, and the water carried in a sieve 322, and the ship drawn forward by a girdle 323, and the beard turned red by a touch 324, 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 325; 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 daemons, when once invoked, (through whom both goats 326 and tables 327 have been accustomed to |57 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 daemons 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 daemons? 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 daemon. When commanded by any Christian to speak, that spirit shall as truly declare itself a daemon, as elsewhere falsely a god 328. In like manner let some one |58 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 329 by vomiting wind, and prelude their prayer with sobs 330. That very virgin Caelestis 331 herself who promiseth rains, that very Aesculapius that discovereth medicines, that supplied life to Socordius, and Thanatius, and Asclepiodotus, doomed to die another day----unless these confess themselves to be daemons, 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. |59 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 daemons? 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 daemons or angels, why do they take upon themselves elsewhere to act as gods? For as they, who are accounted gods, would not call themselves daemons, if they were truly gods, lest forsooth they should put themselves down from their majesty, so they also, whom ye plainly acknowledge for daemons, 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 daemons, 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 daemons. True on both sides. Now look for gods 332, for, whom ye took to be such, ye find to be daemons. 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 333 is this Christ with His tale of wonders? is He a man of common condition? is He a magician 334? was He stolen away after His crucifixion 335 from the sepulchre by His disciples? is He even now in hell? is He not in Heaven? and to come quickly 336 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, |60 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 337. 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 338, 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, |61 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 339 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 340 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 341 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 342 describeth the great Jupiter as accompanied in heaven by an army of gods as well as of daemons, and therefore that his officers, and his praefects, 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 343 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, Caesar, save Caesar himself. Let one worship God, another Jupiter: let one raise his suppliant hands to Heaven, another to the altar of Fides 344: let one in his prayer, (if ye |62 think this of us,) tell the clouds 345, another the ornaments of the ceiling: let one devote his own life to his God 346, another that of a goat 347. For beware lest this also contribute to the charge of irréligion, 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 348. Every province also and state hath its own god; as, Syria, Atargatis 349; Arabia, Dusares 350; the Norici, Belenus 351; Africa, Caelestis 352; Mauritania, her own Princes 353. 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 Aesculani; of the Voisinienses, Nortia 354; of the Ocriculani, Valentia; of the Sutrini, Hostia 355, of the Falisci, Juno, who, in honour of her father Curis, hath also received her surname 356. But we alone are forbidden to have a religion of our own 357. 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 |63 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 358, 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 359; 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 360, 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 361, 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 |64 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 362 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 363 be willing that the city of Carthage, which she loved even in preference to S