BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.
—o—

WITHIN the present volume we have given two of the most
interesting and important works of the days of early Christianity.
The one is the great Apology of the most eloquent of the early
Fathers of the Church—" the father of Latin Christianity," as Dean
Milman calls him; the other is the ethical treatise of the pure-
souled Stoic Emperor, the first great general persecutor of the
Christian Church. A few prefatory words are needed upon each,
but the reader is referred to the previous volume of this series—
Bishop Kaye's account of Tertullian—for fuller details about him.

The life of Tertullian is only known to us through his writings.
He was born at Carthage about A.D. 160, and died about 240; but
the precise dates are uncertain. He was trained as a lawyer, but
was converted to Christianity in 192, and became a priest. He
was married, but childless. It was probably about ten years after
his conversion that he became a Montanist, moved, as Bishop
Kaye believes, by the laxity of the clergy that he saw around
him, and the longing to find a stricter life. The same learned
writer shows that his Montanist writings are among the most
valuable, simply because, in his unsparing attacks on what he held
to be faulty in the practices and discipline of the Church, he
unconsciously preserves for our information what these were.

The work before us is the greatest of Tertullian's writings. The
deeply religious heathen Emperor, M. Aurelius, died in 180, and
was succeeded by his unworthy son, Commodus. He was followed
by Septimius Severus, the first of the " Barrack Emperors." in other
words, of those military adventurers who held the Roman Empire
down to the days of Dioclesian, following one another rapidly, and,
with hardly a single exception, dying violent deaths. The golden
age of the Empire was gone, it was the iron age now. But the
Christian Church, after a period of silent growth, after worship in

                                    vii

viii                         Biographical Notices.

caves and catacombs was now a recognised power in the Empire.
It had a new philosophy to offer men, and a nascent literature;
it boldly put forth its claims to obedience, and made converts among
the rich and learned. M. Aurelius had done his utmost to crush
it; Commodus had not done so, some of his courtiers were Christians,
and persuaded him to leave their co-religionists alone. And Sept.
Severus pursued in the main the same policy.

But the African Church was an exception to the general immunity.
Much depended everywhere on the disposition of the several pro-
consuls towards the faith. There had been laws in existence
against it ever since the days of Nero, and it depended altogether
on the various governors whether these laws should stand in abey-
ance or be put in vigorous exercise. There were by this time many
thousands of believers in Africa; and now heathen fanaticism,
which had been long smouldering, broke out. The priestesses of
the " Dea Coelestis " had raised seditious mobs, and allied heathens
and Jews had destroyed Christian churches, and rilled and
desecrated their burial-places. Caricatures of Christ were paraded
through the streets, and the usual ridiculous charges of incest and
cannibalism were brought against his disciples. It was all this
which produced Tertullian's Apology.

He first addresses himself (chaps, i.-vi.) to this general argument,
that the rulers at Carthage are persecuting a body of men, who are
undeserving of condemnation. Trajan's counsel to Pliny, that
Christians were not to be sought out, but if brought before him
were to be punished, as the apologist rightly maintains, was
illogical and confused. But the present action of the governing
power was yet worse ; it was persecuting a religion which confessedly
was a strong agent in tne reformation of popular morals. He then
goes on to state what are the charges brought against Christians,
and to assert their falsity (vii.-ix.), then takes them in detail. First,
"sacrilege" and "treason." He meets the first by declaring that
the gods of the heathen are no gods (x.-xv.), and then by demon-
strating that Christians have a devout worship of their own, and
profound reverence for Him whom they recognise as their God,
and in doing this he refutes certain calumnies which have been
brought against this worship (xvi.-xxiii.). These chapters are full
of information concerning early Church customs. He goes on to
say that it is the heathens and not the Christians who are really the
impious, and that it is not true that Christians are enemies of the
Commonwealth, seeing that the greatness of Rome owes nothing to

                            Biographical Notices.                                     ix

its heathen faith. And he retorts upon them the charge of impiety,
by declaring that they hold Caesar in greater dread than they do
their gods, whilst the Christians pray to their God for Csesnr's
welfare, though they will not pay that Ctcsar lying honour. Then
our apologist, dealing with details, argues passionately and grandly
on behalf of a body of men who do not take vengeance for the
wrongs that they are suffering. It has been many a time within
their power to have raised the whirlwind against the government,
but they have refrained; but they are strong in the knowledge of
their coming victory. And he demands that therefore they should
at once be admitted amongst the licensed "sects." Gathering
strength as he is carried along on the stream of his majestic
eloquence, and with the consciousness that he is gaining the better
of his opponents at every turn, he breaks out into a magnificent
peroration, partly of the deepest feeling, partly of wither'ng scorn,
and ends in a climax of impassioned and confident appeal.

The author of the present translation, as I learn from a letter
sent to me by the present Rector, was Rector of Cranford from
1694 to 1726.

[...]

TERTULLIAN'S¹ APOLOGY

ON BEHALF OF THE CHRISTIANS.
—o—

CHAPTER I.

THAT THE GENTILES' HATRED TO THE CHRISTIANS IS NOTORIOUSLY
UNJUST.

IF you, the guardians of the Roman empire,² presiding in the very
eye of the city, for the administration of public justice ; if you must
not examine the Christian cause, and give it a fair hearing in open
court ; if the Christian cause is the only cause which your lordships
either fear or blush to be concerned for in the public ; or lastly, if

¹ Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. These several appellations suffici-
ently distinguish our Tertullian from Tertullus the consul, Tertylianus the
civilian, and Tertullinus the martyr, with which our apologist is sometimes
confounded. The praenomen Quintus may perhaps be given upon the account
of his being the fifth child of his parents. He was called Septimius, because
descended from the Gens Septimia, a tribe of quality among the Romans, being
first regal, afterwards plebeian, and last of all consular and patrician ; Florens,
from some particular family of that house, so called ; and Tertullianus from
Tertullus, perhaps his father, as Octavianus from Octavius, Septiminus from
Septimius, etc.

² Romani Imperii Antistites in ipso fere vertice Civitatis praesidentes ad
judicandum. Baronius is of opinion, Bar. 201, that this Apology was written at
Rome, and not at Carthage, wherein he is generally followed, but not by
Pamclius, as the author of the notes upon Du Pin too hastily charges him, nor
by Dalix, Du Pin, Dr. Cave, or Tillemont. Baronius's reason for this opinion
is that Tertullian often speaks as being at Rome, and that he addresses in these
words, To the Roman Senate. But these words neither prove it to be written at
Rome, nor presented to the Senate of Rome, for they are with much better reason
applicable to the proconsul and governors of Africa ; for he says they preside in
vertice Civitatis, and our apologist never calls Rome by the name of Civitas but

A

2         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

your odium to this sect has been too much fermented by your late
severities ¹ at home upon your Christian servants, and you bring this
domestic ferment into the courts of judicature;—if these, I say, are
the bars in our way to justice, be pleased at least to tolerate thus
far, to let truth wait upon you in private, and to read the Apology
we are not suffered to speak.

We enter not upon defence in the popular way,² by begging your

Urbs. He speaks likewise of Rome and the Romans as being neither in their
city nor amongst them ; cap. 9, 21, 24, 35, 45. And speaking of the cruel and
sanguinary devotions of the heathen in many places, especially, says he, in
illa Religiosissima Urbe Aeneadarum piorum, etc., by which undoubtedly he
means Rome ; and the manner of the expression plainly determines him not
to be there at the time of his writing; for had he been at Rome at this
time he would have said in hac Urbe, and not in illa Urbe, cap. 9. And
in the same chapter, recounting the bloody rites in the Scythian worship, he
urges,—But I need not go so far as Scythia, for we have now at this day as
barbarous ceremonies at home, that is, at Carthage. Besides, cap. 45, he speaks
of the proconsul as the sovereign magistrate, and every one knows the proconsul
to have been the premier magistrate of Africa, and to have had his residence at
Carthage. Moreover, it is very probable that he addressed to the governors of
Africa, and not to the Senate of Rome,—firstly, because there is not one word of
the senate in this whole Apology ; secondly, because, cap. 45, he lashes those to
whom he wrote, for endeavouring to gain the good graces of the proconsul, by
signalizing their cruelty against the Christians; and thirdly, because he con-
stantly gives them the title of presides, cap. 2, 9, 30, 50, a title very much
aflected by every officer under the proconsul of the province. And neither
presides nor proconsul were titles that did belong to any magistrate of Rome ;
for in danger of war in the provinces, the prrefecti Ccesariis were chosen by the
emperor himself, and sent to reside in the metropolis, but the proconsuls were
chosen by lot after their consulship, into the several provinces. And therefore
Dio expresseth Claudius his restoring Macedonia into the hands of the senate, by
a0pe/doken to&te tw~| klh&rw|, he put it to the choice of the senate again. Dio, His.
lib. lvii. So that we are not to understand Antistities Imperii to be the same with
Pontifices, according to Zephyrus, nor by vertici Civitatis the capitol, according
to Rigaltius ; though it is likely he might mean the Byrsa of Carthage, according
to that of Silius Italicus :

Quaesivitque diu qua tandem ponerit arce
Terrarum fortuna caput——

¹ Domesticis Judiciis. By these words I understand with Rigaltius the
severities exercised at home by the presidents upon their domestics and children
for turning Christians, which private severities contributed very much to prejudice
and exasperate them, even in open court, against the Christians in general.

² Deprecari. It is a law term, and properly signifies to intercede with the
king for pardon, or to plead with a judge in excuse of the criminal, according to
that of Tully, pro Ligario, Ignoscite Judices, erravit, lapsus est, non putavit, etc.
But here the Christian advocate pleads only for rigid justice, as the martyr Justin
had done before him. lie understood the Christian cause too well, to think it
stood in need of oratory, and the arts of excusing. Vid. A. Gell. lib. vi. cap. 16,
concerning the signification of the word Deprecor.

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         3

favour, and moving your compassion, because we know the state
of our religion too well to wonder at our usage. The truth we
profess, we know to be a stranger upon earth, and she expects not
friends in a strange land; but she came from heaven, and her abode
is there, and there are all our hopes, all our friends, and all our
preferments. One thing indeed this heavenly stranger warmly pleads
for in arrest of judgment, and it is only this, that you would vouchsafe
to understand her well before you condemn her. And what can the
laws suffer in their authority by admitting her to a full hearing?
Will not their power rise in glory for the justice of a hearing ? But
if you condemn her unheard, besides the odium of flaming injustice,
you will deservedly incur the suspicion of being conscious of some-
thing that makes you so unwilling to hear—what, when heard, you
cannot condemn.

First, therefore, we lay before you ignorance as the chief root
of your unjustifiable bitterness to the Christian name; and this very
ignorance, which you may flatter yourselves with as a title to excuse,
is the very thing that loads your charge, and binds the heavier
guilt upon you. For show me a grosser piece of iniquity than for
men to hate what they understand not, supposing the thing in
itself deserves to be hated; for then only can a thing deserve from
us to be hated when we are apprised of its deserts. If not acquainted
with the merits of the cause, what can we possibly urge in the
defence of hatred which is not to be justified by the event, or
because the passion may happen to be right, but by the principle
of conscience upon which it is founded ?

When, therefore, men will thus be hating in the dark, why may
not the blind passion fall foul upon virtue as well as vice ? So that
we argue against our adversaries upon two articles, for hating us
ignorantly, and, consequently, for hating us unjustly. And that
you hate us ignorantly (which still, I say, does but aggravate your
crime) I prove from hence, because all who hated us heretofore
did it upon the same ground, being no longer able to continue our
enemies than they continued ignorant of our religion ; their hatred
and their ignorance fell together.

Such are the men you now see Christians manifestly overcome
by the piety of our profession, and who now reflect upon their lives
past with abhorrence, and profess it to the world; and the numbers
of such professors are not less than they are given in; for the
common cry is, the city is infested, town and country overrun with

4         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

Christians. And this universal revolt in all ages, sexes, and qualities
is lamented as a public loss; and yet this prodigious progress of
Christianity is not enough to surprise men into a suspicion that
there must needs be some secret good, some charming advantage
at the bottom, thus to drain the world and attract from every
quarter. But nothing will dispose some men to juster thoughts,
or to make a more intimate experiment of our religion. In this
alone human curiosity seems to stagnate, and with as much com-
placency to stand still in ignorance as it usually runs on in the
discoveries of science.

Alas! how would poor Anacharsis¹ have been struck at such
proceedings, to see the very judges of religion entirely ignorant of
the religion they condemn, who looked upon it so absurd for the
rewards of a fiddler to be adjudged by any but the masters of the
science. But such are our enemies, that they choose to indulge
their ignorance merely for the growth of their hatred; foreboding
within themselves that what they hate without knowledge may
chance to be a thing of so lovely a nature, that should they come
to know it, they would be in danger of losing their hatred ; whereas
hatred is not to be kept a moment longer than it has justice on its
side: if so, spare not, not only give a present loose to your re-
sentments, but also persevere in a passion thus seconded and
strengthened by the authority of justice.

But it is objected that the number of Christians is no argument
of the goodness of their cause. For how many change from better
to worse ? How many deserters to the wrong side ? And who
denies this ? But yet, are any of those men, who are pressed away
to sin by the violence of appetites, are they hardy enough to appear
in the defence of wickedness, or appeal to public justice for the
patronage of notorious evil ? For every evil is by nature dyed in grain
with shame and fear. The guilty hunt for refuge in darkness, and
when apprehended, tremble ; when accused, deny; and are hardly
to be tormented into a confession ; when condemned, they sink
down in sadness, and turn over their number of sins in confusions
of conscience, and charge the guilt upon the stars or destiny; -

¹ Anacharsis. See his life in Diog. Laertius.

² Fato vel Astris imputant. Guilt is an ugly, frightful, and uneasy thing ; and
this it was that put men at first upon contriving an expedient how to satisfy their
conscience, in spite of their sin ; and the expedient was this, to lay the blame
upon fate, or the stars, or anything but themselves. Predestination in the rigid
sense is not one jot better than fate in the sense of the Stoics. And though it

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         5

unwilling to acknowledge that as their own act which they acknow-
ledge to be criminal.

But do you see anything like this in the deportment of
Christians ? Not one Christian blushes or repents, unless it be for
not having been a Christian sooner. If a Christian goes to trial,
he goes like a victor, with the air of a triumph ; if he is impeached,
he glories in it; if indicted, he makes no defence at bar; when
interrogated he frankly confesses, and when condemned returns
thanks to his judges.

What a monster of wickedness^J is this, that has not one shape or

occasioned at one time so much feud and bitterness all about us, and the con-
troversy ordered by authority to die, yet it is now again revived,¹ as the ramparts
and bulwarks of Christianity, and the rarest contrivance in the world, to make
us not only almost but altogether one kirk ; for which, no doubt, the doctor
expects the thanks of the united nations. The generality of the clergy he stig-
matizes apostates, for being assertors of free will ; and if so, what will become
of the Fathers of the first four centuries, I cannot tell. Sure I am, poor Justin
Martyr is an apostate with a witness, Apol. i. sec. 54. But if the doctor would
but follow his own advice, that is, in one word, let us be moderate, and give his
brethren hard reasons instead of hard names, it would make much more for
union, I dare say, than his doctrine of predestination ; which should it take
effect, we should not have one criminal that goes to be hanged, but, as Tertullian
says, would be cursing his stars, and laying all the fault upon destiny, that is,
God.

¹ Quid hoc mali est, quod naturalia mali non habet? Naturalia, is the same
here as Natura, for he says, Quod hoc malum est in quo natura mali cessat ? ad
Nat, p. 461. But that which is more remarkable is, that here we have an
admirable description, and a most sensible proof, both of the truth and the
power of the Christian religion ; for did ever any impostor set up a religion so
ill calculated to the passions and relish of mankind ? Did he ever propose a
doctrine to the world, without one worldly motive to recommend it, without one
external comfort to hope for, or one arm to defend it ? Did Judas discover the
secret when he betrayed his Master ? or had it been a cheat, would the traitor
have hanged himself for his treason? Was there ever such a noble army of
martyrs, who died so calmly and deliberately, and expressed so much innocence,
so much joy and assurance in their sufferings, as they did? So that either we
must suppose Christ to have been the shallowest of impostors (which the wisdom
of His precepts will not admit) to set up a religion so ungrateful to flesh and
blood, without any visible force or reward to maintain it; and withal, that good
part of the world, of all sorts and sizes, happened luckily to be stark staring mad
for suffering, and to continue so for above 300 years together; or else we must
suppose that Christ came down from heaven, and that the sufferers had all the
reason imaginable to believe it, and therefore by help of divine grace, and the
_________________

¹ John Edwards, D.D., his sermon upon the Union, May 1, 1707, entitled One
Nation and one King.

6         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

feature of wickedness belonging to it ? Nothing of fear, or shame,
or artifice, or repentance, or the desponding sighs of criminals
attending on it. What a strange-natured evil or reverse of wicked-
ness is this! that makes the guilty rejoice, and ambitious of
accusation, and happy in punishment. Nor can you charge these
odd appearances as the effects of madness, since you are altogether
unacquainted with the powers of the Christian religion.

                                   —o—

                               CHAPTER II.

CONCERNING THE MALICE AND PERVERSENESS OF THE JUDGES, IN
    THE WAY OF CONDEMNING OR ABSOLVING THE CHRISTIANS.

BUT if it is resolved we must be guilty, pray what is your reason for
treating us differently from other criminals ? For it is a rule in law
that where the case is the same, there the procedure of court ought
to be the same also. But when we and heathens are impeached
upon the same articles, the heathen shall be allowed the privilege
of the council, and of pleading in person for setting off his inno-
cence,¹ it being against law to proceed to sentence before the
defendant has put in his answer; but a Christian is permitted
nothing, not to speak what is necessary, either to justify his cause,
defend the truth, or prevent the injustice of his judges. On the
contrary, nothing is attended to in his trial, but how to inflame the
mob, and therefore the question is about his name only, and not

power of conviction, they despised everything here below for the joy that was
set before them. This argument is likewise prosecuted by Arnobius, adv. Gent,
lib. ii. p. 21, as a mighty instance of the divinity of the Christian faith, that in
so short a time it should be too hard for the wisdom and pleasures of the world,
and work so with men of the greatest parts and learning, and of the greatest
fortunes, as to make them part with their notions and estates, and submit to any
torments rather than part with the Christian faith ; and that the Gentiles did not
think it advisable to venture their skin for their doctrine. That Plato, in his
Academy introduced a dark and ambiguous way of delivering his opinions, for
fear of going the way of Socrates. And Origen tells Celsus that Aristotle quitted
Athens, and left his philosophy to shift for itself, as soon as he understood that
the Athenians intended to call him to an account. So little could philosophy
prevail against self-preservation.

¹ Quando nec liceat indefensos et inauditos damnari. He alludes to the
law de Requir. Reis, made by Severus a little before the publication of this
Apology.

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         7

the nature of his crime : whereas if you sit in judgment upon
another criminal, and he pleads guilty to the indictment, suppose
of homicide, sacrilege, incest, or rebellion (to instance the common
heads of your libels¹ against us), upon such confession, I say, it is
not your method forthwith to proceed to sentence, but you have
patience to examine the nature of the fact in all its circumstances,
viz.—the place, the time, the manner, and the accomplices of the
action: but in the trial of a Christian, all these forms of justice are
overruled. But let me tell you, would you acquit yourselves with
any appearance of equity, you ought on both sides to be equally
severe in the examination of fact, and see to the bottom of those
reports, so frequently and so falsely thrust upon us. For instance,
to bring in a true list of how many infants every Christian has
killed and eaten, what incests committed in the dark, what cooks we
had for the dressing these children's flesh, and what pimping dogs
for putting out the candles.²

Oh ! what immortal glory would a proconsul gain among the
people, could he pull out a Christian by the ears that had ate up a
hundred children ! But we despair of any such glorious discovery,
when we reflect upon the edict against searching after us. For
Pliny the second,³ in his proconsulship of Asia, having put many
Christians to death, and turned others out of their places, and
being still astonished at our numbers, sends to the Emperor Trajan
for orders about proceeding for the time to come; alleging withal
that for his part, after the strictest inquiry, he could find nothing
more in our religion, but obstinacy against sacrificing to the gods,
and that we assembled before day to sing hymns to God and Christ,

¹ Ut de vestris Elogiis loquar. Elogium is a civil law term which frequently
occurs in this author, particularly lib. ad Scap. de cor. Mil. cap. 5, etc., and is
the same among the civilians as Epistolae, Notoria, Relationes, a libel or declara-
tion, setting forth the crimes of the person indicted ; it was provided by the law
de custo et exhi. Reorum, ne quisquam puniatur ex Epistolis et Actis Pedanei
et minoris Judicis. And therefore Pudens, who had a mind to favour the
Christians, sent back a Christian prisoner because there appeared against him
no witness or proof, but the Elogium, or epistle from an inferior judge. Pudens
missum ad se Christianum, in Elogio concussions ejus intellecta dimisit, Scisso
codem Elogio sine accusatore negans se auditurum hominem secundum mandatum.
Vid. Gab. Altaspin., not. ad Scap.

² For a fuller explication of this passage, and the foundation of this horrid
slander, see my notes upon Justin Martyr's Apology, Apol. i. sec. 35. The dogs
which are said to be tied to the candlesticks, and to have crusts thrown them
just beyond the reach of their string, in order to make them leap and strain
and pull down the candles, are by Tertullian, cap. 7, called Luminum Eversores
et Lenones, which to follow his own biting way I translate pimping dogs.

³ Vid. Plin. Epist. lib. x. ep. 97.

8         Tertullian s Apology for the Christians.

and to confirm one another in that way of worship; prohibiting
homicide, adultery, fraud, perfidiousness, and all other sorts of
wickedness. Upon which information Trajan writes back, that
such kind of men as these were not to be searched after, but yet
to be punished if brought before him. Oh perplexity between
reasons of state and justice! be declares us to be innocent, by
forbidding us to be searched after, and at the same time commands
us to be punished as criminals. What a mass of kindness and
cruelty, connivance and punishment, is here confounded in one
act! unhappy edict, thus to circumvent and hamper yourself in
your own ambiguous answer ! If you condemn us, why do you give
orders against searching after us? And if you think it not well to
search after us, why do you not acquit us ? Soldiers are set to
patrol in every province for the apprehending of robbers, and every
private person justifies taking up arms against traitors and enemies
to the commonwealth; and moreover is obliged to make inquiry
after all the conspirators; but a Christian only is a criminal of
that strange kind, that no inquiry must be made to find him, and
yet when found may be brought to the tribunal; as if this inquiry
was designed for any other purpose but to bring offenders to
justice. You condemn him therefore when brought, whom the
laws forbid to be searched after; not that in your hearts you can
think him guilty, but only to get into the good graces of the people,
whose zeal has transported them to search him out against the
intention of the edict.

This also is very extraordinary in your proceedings against us,
that you rack others to confess, but torment Christians to deny :
whereas, was Christianity a wicked thing, we, no doubt, should
imitate the wicked in the arts of concealment, and force you to
apply your engines of confession. Nor can you conclude it need-
less to torture a Christian into a confession of particulars, because
you resolve that the very name must include all that is evil. For
when a murderer has confessed, and you are satisfied as to the fact,
yet you constrain him to lay before you the order and circumstances
of the whole action. And what makes the thing look worse yet
is, that notwithstanding you presume upon our wickedness, merely
from our owning the name, yet at the same time you use violence
to make us retract that confession, that by retracting the bare name
only, we might be acquitted of the crimes fathered upon it. But
perhaps I am to imagine your excessive tenderness to be such,
that you are willing to acquit the very persons you conclude the
greatest villains in the world ; and perhaps it may be your custom

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         9

to say to a murderer, " deny the murder," and to command the
sacrilegious to be put to the rack for persevering in his confession
of sacrilege.

But now, if your process against us and other criminals is
notoriously different, it is a shrewd sign you believe us innocent;
and that this very belief of our innocence is the spring which sets
you at work for our deliverance, by forcing us to deny our name,
which though in justice you know you cannot, yet 'or reasons of
state you must condemn. A man cries out upon tne rack, I am
a Christian ; you hear him proclaim to the world what really he
is, and you would fain have him say what really he is not. That
ever judges, who are commissioned to torture for the confession of
truth, should abuse it upon Christians only, for the extortion of a
lie ! You demand what I am, and I say I am a Christian; why do
you torture me to unsay it ? I confess, and you rack on; if I
confess not, what will you do? If other malefactors deny, it is
with difficulty you believe them ; but if Christians deny, you acquit
them at a word. Certainly you must think yourselves in the wrong
for such proceedings, and be conscious of a secret bias upon your
judgments, that makes you run thus counter to the forms of court,
the reasons of justice, and the very intent of the laws themselves.
For if I mistake not the laws are very express, that criminals
should be discovered, and not concealed; and that upon confession
they should be condemned, and not acquitted. The acts of the
senate and the edicts of the emperors prescribe this. These are
the maxims of that government you are ministers of, and your
power is defined by these laws, and not arbitrary and tyrannical.

Tyrants indeed have no respect to the proportions of justice in
the distributions of punishment, but apply tortures at pleasure.
But you are restrained by law; and to apply them only for the
confession of truth, preserve this law in full vigour, and for the end
it was made. For if the accused confess, it is absurd to put them
to the question; the law of tortures is answered, and you have
nothing to do in this case but to consider the nature of the fact,
and punish it accordingly. For every malefactor is a debtor to the
law, and to be wiped out of the public accounts^: upon paying his

¹ Debito poenae nocens expungendus est. This is a very familiar phrase with
our author, and the ground of it is this. The executioner had a roll of the
names of the condemned, and the punishment they were to suffer; and a
criminal being a debtor, when he had paid his punishment was expunged, or
crossed out of the roll: and so dare Poenas is to pay the pain an offender owes
to the public.

10        Tertullian's  Apology for the Christians.

punishment, and not discharged merely upon the confession of his
fault. No judge attempts openly to acquit a criminal barely upon
his pleading guilty, nor can he justify a thought of so doing;
and therefore no one can be justly served with torments to deny,
when the law was designed only to make him confess.

You look upon a Christian as the sum total of iniquity, a despiser
of the gods, emperors, laws, morality, and, in one word, an enemy
of human nature; and yet this is the man you rack, that you may
absolve, because without racking him into a denial of his name
you cannot absolve him. This, or nothing, is prevaricating with
the laws; you would have him plead not guilty, for you to pro-
nounce him innocent, and discharge him from all past crimes,
whether he will or no. But how can men be so perverse as to
imagine that he who confesses a thing freely is not more to be
credited than he who denies it by compulsion ? Or cannot a man
speak truth, without the help of a rack ? And being absolved upon
a forced denial of his religion, he must needs conclude such external
applications of cruelty, very foolish things for the conversion of the
mind, when in spite of all these impressions upon his body he
finds himself still a Christian in his conscience.

Since therefore you treat us differently in everything from other
criminals, and what you chiefly push at is the destruction of our
name (and we ourselves destroy this, by doing what the heathens
indulge themselves in)—since this, I say, is the main thing you con-
tend for, you cannot but see that our name is the greatest crime
in our indictment; in the persecution of which name, men vie
hatred, and are ambitious to excel each other in malice; and this
emulation is the chief reason why they are so stedfast in ignorance;
therefore they devour all reports of us without chewing, and are so
averse to any legal inquiry, for fear these reports should prove to
be false, which they would have pass for true, that the hated name
of Christian might be condemned upon presumption, without the
danger of a proof; and that the confession of this name might
serve for a sufficient conviction of the crimes charged against it.
Hence it is that we are tortured against law for confessing, and
tormented on for persisting in that confession; and against law
absolved for denying, because all the dispute is about our name
only.

But after all, when you proceed to judgment, and read over the
table or catalogue of crimes you pass sentence against, why do you

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         11

mention the Christian only ? Why do not you mention the murder,
the incest, and the rest of that train commonly imputed to us?
We alone are the persons you are ashamed to condemn, without
signifying the actions you condemn us for; if a Christian is accused
of no crime, the name surely must be of a strange nature to be
criminal in itself only !

                                   —o—

                              CHAPTER III.

                 CONCERNING THE ODIOUS TITLE OF CHRISTIAN.

WHAT an unaccountable thing is it for so many men to blindfold
themselves on purpose to fall foul upon Christianity ! And to such
a degree that they cannot talk about the noted probity of any
Christian without allaying his character with a dash of his religion !
Cajus Sejus (says one) is a very good man, but—he is a Christian.
I will tell you what (says another), I wonder that Lucius the philo-
sopher is all of a sudden turned Christian. And none has sense
enough in his passion to put the question right, and argue in this
manner. Is not Caius so good, and Lucius so wise, merely from
the influence of their religion ? Or was it not the probity of one,
and the wisdom of the other, that prepared the way, and brought
them over to be Christians ?

Thus indeed they praise what they know, but vilify what they
know not; they blot the fairest examples of virtue shining in their
very eyes, because of a religion they are entirely in the dark about;
whereas certainly, by all the rules of reason, we ought to judge of
the nature of causes we see not, by the effects we see, and not
pre-condemn apparent goodness for principles we understand not.
Others, discoursing of some persons, whom they knew to be
vagrants, and infamously lewd before they came over to our
religion, drop their praises upon them in such a manner, that they
stigmatize them with their very compliments; so darkened are they
with prejudice that they blunder into the commendation of the
thing they would condemn. For (say they) how wanton, and how
witty was such a woman ! how amorous and frolicsome was such
a young gentleman ! but now they are Christians : thus undesignedly
they fix the amendment of their lives upon the alteration of their
religion.

12         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

Some others are arrived to that pitch of aversion to the very name
of Christian, that they seem to have entered into covenant with
hatred, and bargained to gratify this passion at the expense of all
the satisfactions of human life, acquiescing in the grossest of
injuries rather than the hated thing of Christian should come
within their doors. The husband, now cured of all his former
jealousy by his wife's conversion to Christianity, turns her and her
new modesty out of doors together, choosing to dwell with an
adulteress sooner than a Christian; the father, so tender of the
undutiful son in his Gentile state, disinherits him now when he
becomes obedient by becoming a Christian; the master, heretofore
so good to his unfaithful slave, discards him now upon his fidelity
and his religion. So that the husband had rather have his wife
false, the father his son a rebel, the master his servant a rogue, than
Christians and good : so much is the hatred of our name above all
the advantages of virtue flowing from it.

Now, therefore, if all this odium arises purely upon the account
of our name, pray tell me how a poor name comes to be thus to
blame, or a simple word to be a criminal ? Unless it be that the
word is barbarous, or sounds ominously, reproachfully, or obscenely.
But Christians is a Greek word, and means nothing more than a
disciple of Christ, which by interpretation is the Anointed; and
when you misname it Chrestian¹ (for so far are you from under-
standing our religion, that as yet you know not our true name), even
then it implies nothing worse than a benignity and sweetness of
temper; thus outrageous are you at the sound of a name as inoffen-
sive and harmless as those who bear it. But do men use to let
loose their passions at this rate against any sect merely from the
name of its founder ? Is it a new thing for scholars to be named
from their masters? Is it not from hence that philosophers are
called Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, etc.? Do not the Stoics
and academics derive their names from the porch or academy,²
the places where they meet and discourse together ? And do not

¹ Sed et cum perperam Chrestianus pronunciatur a vobis. See the notes
upon Justin's First Apol. sec. 3, concerning the word Chrestus ; I only add here
that Marcellus Donatus conjectures this Chrestus to have been some seditious
Jew called by that name, for which he produces several inscriptions wherein that
name occurs, but not one wherein it is given to a Jew, which ought first to have
been produced to justify his conjecture ; but the Christian apologists prove it
a mistake beyond dispute. Vid, Donat. Dilucid. in Sueton. in Claud, cap.
25.

² Stoics from Stoa\, a porch or gallery.

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         13

physicians glory in the title of their Erasistratus,¹ and grammarians
in that of Aristarchus ?² And are not even cooks themselves not a
little proud of the name of Apicius ?³ Nor in any of these instances
are you offended with the name transmitted from the founder of
the sect; but if you could prove any sect to be vicious in principle,
and consequently the author of it to be so too, there is reason enough
to hate the name upon the account of both. In a word, before we
give entertainment to hatred against any sect whatever, upon
account of its name, we ought in the first place to have competently
examined the nature of the institution, and traced out its qualities
from the author, or the author from them ; but both these ways of
inquiry are quite neglected, and our enemies storm and fire at a
word only. Our heavenly Master and His heavenly religion are
both unknown, and both condemned, without any other considera-
tion but that of the bare name of Christian.

                                   —o—

                                CHAPTER IV.

                THAT HUMAN LAWS MAY ERR, AND THEREFORE MAY
                                           BE MENDED.

THUS far I have been something severe, as it were, by way of
preface, to make men sensible if I could of the injustice of the

¹ Erasistratus. This physician is mentioned by our Tertullian, lib. de an.
cap. 15 ; Pliny fixes his life, An. urb. cond. 450, lib. xiv. cap. 7, and mentions
his school, lib. xx. cap. 9, and again, lib. xxix. cap. 2, makes him the disciple
of Chrysippus, and Aristotle's daughter's son, who for the cure of King Antiochus
had of his son Ptolemy a fee of an hundred talents.

² Aristarchus. A noted grammarian of Alexandria, Aristotle's contemporary,
tutor to the son of Ptolemy Philometer, celebrated by Tully, ad Appium
Pulchrum, lib. iii. epist. n, for distinguishing the genuine verses of Homer,
and so likewise by Ovid :—

Corrigere at res est tanto magis ardua, quanta
      Magnus Aristarcho major Homerus erat. Ov. Pont.

And so again by Horace, ad Pisones,

Arguet ambigue dictum, mutanda notabit,
Fiet Aristarchus.

³ Apicius. An epicure of famous memory, styled by Pliny Nepotum omnium
altissimus Gurges ; and so again by Juvenal:—

Quid enim majore cachinno
Excipitur vulgi, quam pauper Apicius ?

14         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

public odium against us; and now I shall stay awhile upon the
subject of our innocence. And here I shall not only refute the
objections against us, but retort those very objections against the
objectors themselves, to let the world see that Christians are not
the men they take them to be, nor sullied with those crimes they
are conscious of in themselves; and to sec also whether I can
make our accusers blush, not by charging them in general, as the
worst of men accusing the best, but supposing us both upon the
level of iniquity. I shall touch upon all the particulars we are
taxed with for committing in private, and for which we are publicly
branded as immoral, superstitious, damnable, and ridiculous;
these very crimes, I say, which you grant we have not the forehead
to do without the protection of darkness, we find our enemies
hardy enough to commit in the face of the sun.

But because we meet you with unanswerable truth at all your
turnings, your last resort is to the authority of the laws, as more
inviolable than truth itself; and it being so frequently in your
mouths, either that nothing ought to be revoked after once con-
demned by law; or that your sworn obedience is a necessity upon
your actions, weightier than that of justice. I shall first enter
upon the obligation due to human laws with you who are the sworn
protectors of them.

First then, when you rigidly insist upon this, that Christianity
is against law, and prescribe against dispensing one jot with the
letter upon any considerations of equity, this, I say, is acting
iniquity by law; and you sit rather like tyrants than judges of a
court, willing a thing to be unlawful, because you will, and not
because it is so. But if your will is regulated by the measures of
good and evil, and you forbid a thing because it ought to be
forbidden, then certainly, by this rule of right reason, you cannot
license evil, nor forbid the obligations of doing good. If I find
a prohibition issued out against the laws of nature, do not I
conclude such a prohibition to be invalid? Whereas, if the matter
of it be lawful, I never dispute my obedience,¹ nor think it strange

¹ Quod si malum esset, jure prohiberet. Here we have the measures of obedience
due to human laws briefly stated byTertullian : " For," says he, " where nothing
is commanded, either against the law of nature, or the positive law of God, I
never dispute my obedience." Had the primitive Christians refused obedience
to the civil magistrate, in matters indifferent, Christianity, humanly speaking,
had never been a national religion, and if our dissenting brethren would be
decided by this rule, and, according to Tertullian, comply with the magistrate's
commands, in everything not unlawful in itself, or with respect to the plain

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         15

if your laws are sometimes in the wrong, since they are but the
composures of men, and not the commands of God. Is it so
strange to see mortals out of the way in making laws, and wiser
upon experience, and repealing what they once approved ? Did
not the laws even of Lycurgus suffer amendments? Was not their
severity sweetened by the Spartans, and better accommodated to
civil use ? And did not this alteration go so near the great law-
giver's heart that he quitted his country in a pet, and pined himself
to death, being his own judge and his own executioner ? Does not
your experience light you every day to the mistakes and rubbish of
antiquity? And have you not cut down a huge and horrid wood of
old laws, and planted the new edicts and rescripts of the emperors
in their stead? Did not Severus, of all the emperors least given to
change, lately alter the Papian law,¹ vainly solicitous about the
propagation of children before the time allowed for matrimony by
the Julian law without any respect to the venerableness of antiquity?
And insolvent debtors, by the laws, were to be chopped in pieces
by their creditors;² but these sanguinary statutes were by succeed-
ing ages repealed, and the capital punishment commuted into a
mark of infamy, together with the sale of their goods, it being

Word of God, they would then, and not till then, fulfil the apostle's injunction of
doing all that is possible, and as much as lieth in them to live peaceably with all
men. But if the magistrate cannot lawfully command in things where neither
the natural nor the positive law of God interpose to the contrary, he can
command in nothing, because such things only can be subject to his disposal.

¹ Vanissinias Papias leges quae ante liberos suscipi cogunt, quam Jul. Matr.
contr. Concerning these laws, see Rigaltius and Pamelius upon this place.
But that which I remark is, that Scaliger would infer from the following words
that this Apology was not composed till a little after the death of Severus, because
it is said, heri Severus, etc., exclusit; but I confess I cannot see why lately
repealing may not agree to a living prince as well as a dead one. But I shall
show this opinion to be evidently a mistake of Scaliger in the sequel of this
Apology.

² Judicatos retro in partes secari a Creditoribus Leges erant. Here he evi-
dently alludes to the law of the twelve tables, cap. viii. de nexis; for thus it
runs, Tertiis nundinis capite poenas luito, aut trans Tiberim peregre ilo, est si
plures erunt rei, tertiis nundinis. Partis. secanto. si. plus minus. ve. secuerunt. sc.
fraude. esto. The meaning of which, as it is explained by A. Gellius, Noct. Att.
lib. xx., is this: Debt was a captital crime by law, and the creditor might either
have the life of the insolvent, or send him beyond Tibur to be sold for a slave ;
but if the insolvent was indebted to more than one, the creditors might cut him
into pieces in proportion to every one's debt. And this barbarity he justifies
only by the end and design of the lawgivers, which was not so much to punish
as to prevent men from running into debt by the severity of the punishment, for
he tells us he never read of one debtor dissected, Quoniam saevitia ista Poenae
contemni non quita est; but for bonds and imprisonment rogues value them not,
and run in debt continually.

16         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

looked upon better to put the offender to open shame than to let
out his blood for debt. And how many laws think you are still
behind which want revising, that are not valuable for their number
of years, or the dignity of their founder, but upon the account of
justice only? And therefore if they are found not to be according
to this standard arc deservedly condemned, although we are con-
demned by them. And if they punish for a mere name, they are
not only to be exploded for their iniquity, but to be hissed off the
world for their folly. But if the laws are to take cognizance of
actions only, why are we punished for the name of our sect, when
no others are so punished ? I am guilty of incest, or have killed a
child, suppose, why don't you make inquiry after my crimes, and
extort them from me by confession upon the rack? I have injured
the gods or emperors, why am I not to be heard on these points ?
Surely no law can forbid the discussion of what it is to condemn,
because no judge can justly proceed to sentence before he is well
apprised of the illegality of the fact; nor can a citizen justify his
obedience to a law, while he apprehends not the quality of the
action it is to punish ; for it is by no means sufficient that a law be
good in itself, but that goodness also must be made appear to him
who is to put it in execution ; and that law is much to be suspected
that does not care to be looked into, but is notoriously tyrannical, if
after it is looked into would reign a law still in defiance of reason.

                                       —o—

                                  CHAPTER V.

            THAT THE WISEST OF THE EMPERORS HAVE BEEN PROTECTORS
                                      OF THE CHRISTIANS.

BUT to see the rashness and injustice of the laws against us, let us
cast an eye back upon their original, and we shall find an old
decree,¹ whereby the emperor himself was disabled from consecrat-

¹ Vetus erat Decretum ne qui Deus ab Imperatore consecraretur nisi a Senatu
probatus. Rigaltius mentions something like this extant in the fragments of
Ulpian, and Pamelius gives the decree itself from Crinitus de hon. discipl. lib.
x. cap. 3. Separatim nemo sit habeas Deos novos sive Advenas, nisi publice
adscitos privatim colunto. By virtue of this ancient decree it was that the
people, notwithstanding any edicts of the emperors to the contrary, persecuted
the Christians. Vid. Euseb. Hist. lib. ii. cap. 2. Where upon the account given
by Pontius Pilate, Tiberius applied to the senate to make him a god.

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         17

ing a new god, without the approbation of the senate. M. Aemilius
learnt this with a witness, in the case of his god Alburnus.¹ And
this makes not a little for the honour of Christianity, to see the
heathens in consult about making gods; and if the god is not
such a deity as they like, he is like to be no God for them.
Strange ! That the god is first to pray the man to be propitious,
before the man will allow of his godship. By virtue of this old
decree it was that Tiberius,² in whose reign Christianity came into
the world, having received intelligence from Judea about the
miracles of Christ, proposed it to the senate, and used his pre-
rogative for getting Him enrolled among the number of their gods.
The senate, indeed, refused the proposal, as having not maturely
weighed His qualifications for a deity; but Caesar stood to his
resolution, and issued out severe penalties against all who should
accuse the worshippers of Christ.

Consult your annals,³ and there you will find Nero⁴ the first
emperor who dyed his sword in Christian blood, when our religion
was but just arising at Rome ; but we glory in being first dedicated
to destruction by such a monster: for whoever knows that enemy
of all goodness will have the greater value for our religion, as
knowing that Nero could hate nothing exceedingly, but what was
exceedingly good. A long time after, Domitian, a limb of this
bloody Nero, makes some like attempts against the Christians; but
being not all Nero, or cruelty in perfection, the remains of struggling
humanity stopped the enterprize, and made him recall the Christians
he banished. The Christian persecutors have been always men of
this complexion, divested of justice, piety, and common shame;

¹ De Deo suo Alburno. This Alburnus is mentioned, lib. adv. Marcion, cap.
18, and seems to have been consecrated in the consulship of M. Aemilius, an.
urb. cond. 638. He was called Alburnus from a mountain in Lucania of the
same name.

Est Lucus silari circum, ilicibusq.; virentem
Plurimus Alburnum volitans, etc. Virg. Geo. 3.

² Tiberius ergo, cujus tempore nomen Christianum in saeculum introivit. This
is to be understood of the resurrection of Christ, when the Christian faith first
began to be published to the Gentile world.

³ Consulite commentarios vestros. He alludes to the annals of Tacitus, lib. xv.,
or rather to Suetonius in the Life of Nero.

⁴ Caesariano gladio primum ferocisse. It is agreed upon by all writers, that
the first general persecution began under Nero, as likewise that the second did
under Domitian ; for that in Judea and Samaria, mentioned in the Acts,
cap. viii., was but a particular persecution in some parts only, and not set on
foot by the Gentiles but the Jews.

18         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

upon whose government you yourselves have set a brand, and
rescinded their acts,¹ by restoring those whom they condemned.

But of all the emperors down to this present reign, who under-
stood anything of religion or humanity, name me one who perse-
cuted the Christians. On the contrary, we show you the excellent
M. Aurelius for our protector and patron ; for if you look into his
letters,² you will find him there testifying that his army in Germany
being just upon perishing with thirst, some Christian soldiers which
happened to be in his troops, did by the power of prayer fetch
down a prodigious shower to the relief of the whole army; for
which the grateful prince, though he could not publicly set aside
the penal laws, yet he did as well, he publicly rendered them in-
effectual another way, by discouraging our accusers with the last of
punishments, viz. burning alive.

Reflect a little now, I pray you, upon the nature of these laws,
which only the most consummate villains in impiety, injustice,
filthiness, folly, and madness ever put in execution against us ;
which laws Trajan ³ in part evacuated by his edict against searching
for Christians; and neither Hadrian⁴ the inquisitive, whose genius

¹ Quos et ipsi damnare consuestis. The edicts of Nero and Domitian both
were rescinded by the senate, and Nerva their successor. But the old law was
still in force, which forbade the worshipping of any new god, without the
approbation of the senate.

² Si Litere Marci Aurelii requirantur This rescript of Marcus Aurelius you
will find annexed to Justin's First Apology; and though it is disputable whether
that rescript be genuine, yet it is evident beyond dispute, both from Justin and
Tertullian, that there was such a rescript in favour of the Christians.

³ Quas Trajanus ex parte frustratus est. It is not without good reason that
Tertullian says in part evacuated, for the third persecution commenced under
Trajan. It is true, indeed, he published no general edict against the Christians,
but the manner of his answer to Pliny (viti. Plin. lib. x. ep. 103, p. 633,
wherein, as Tertullian smartly remarks, the rescript did combat, and contradict
itself, in forbidding Christians to be searched after, and yet punished when
found) was abundantly sufficient to reinflame magistrate and people, who were
ready to take tire upon the least encouragement against the Christians. Besides,
he issued out solemn edicts to his officers to suppress all private cabals and
associations; and this occasioned fresh searches after Christians, and prevented
their ordinary assemblies. Vid. Plin. ep. 35, 99, 123 ; cp. 104, p. 632. In
this reign, strict inquisition was made after all the descendants from David, and
Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, was therefore taken up and murdered. Euseb. lib.
iii. cap. 32, p. 104. And though this was a very grievous persecution, yet was
it not universal. Euseb. lib. iii. cap. 33, p. 105, cap. 32, p. 103.

⁴ Quas nullus Adrianus. Sulpicius Severus, and he alone, places the fourth
persecution under Adrian. Vid, Sulp. lib. ii. cap. 45, p. 150. But whatever
this persecution was, it is plain from Tertullian and Melito, bishop of Sardis,

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         19

no doubt led him into the curiosities of our religion, nor Vespasian,¹
who must know something of it too by conquering the Jews, nor
Pius,² nor Verus ³ ever took the advantage of the laws against us;
and therefore were we Christians, in truth, the worst of men, you
cannot think we should have been thus spared, and protected

vid. Euseb. lib. iv. cap. 26, p. 148, that it was not occasioned by any imperial
edict. Adrian was initiated in all the Graecian rites, and especially in the
Eleusinian Mysteries, which St. Jerome remarks as the principal cause of this
persecution, Adr. vit. p. II. He was extremely addicted to judicial astrology,
and to all sorts of divination, even to magic, Dio, lib. 69, p. 793, insomuch that
he is severely censured by the heathens themselves for his extravagant supersti-
tion, Amm, lib. xxv. p. 294. And if magic raised a persecution under Valeri-
anus, who in the beginning of his reign was so great a friend to Christians, and
whose family so abounded with men of piety, that his house seemed to be the
church of God, Euseb. lib. vii. cap. 10, we need not wonder that this black art
should have the same influence upon Adrian. But this persecution was happily
put an end to, by the Apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, Euseb. lib. iii.
cap. 37, p. 209. The eloquence and reason of these two apologists was
seconded by a letter from Serenius Granianus, proconsul of Asia, Euseb. lib. iv.
cap. 8, p. 122, and many other governors followed this example, Euseb. lib. iv.
cap. 13, p. 127. Adrian, unable to resist these just and pressing solicitations,
wrote to Minucius Fundanus, Granianus's successor, not to punish a Christian
but upon good proof of some crime against the public; and to punish the false
accuser just as the Christian should have been had he been found guilty. This
rescript was very famous among the ancients; it is celebrated as very advantage-
ous to the Christian cause, not only by Eusebius in his Chronic., but by S. Severus
lib. ii. cap. 45, p. 150, by Orosius, lib. vii. cap. 12, and annexed by Justin to his
Apology, and translated into Greek by Eusebius, lib. iv. cap. 9, p. 123.

¹ Nullus Vespasianus. Vid. Joseph. deBell.Jud. lib. iii. iv. v. vi. vii.

² Nullus Pius. This was Antoninus, to whom Justin Martyr addresses his First
Apology, and whose rescript to the commons of Asia he annexes to it, and is
translated into Greek by Euseb. lib. cap. 13. And though there was no edict of
Pius out against the Christians, yet by the authority of 'he old decree, they
suffered very much in many places, which occasioned Justin's First Apology.

³ Nullus Verus. It is a matter of some difficulty to determine who this
emperor was, for the cognomen Verus was given to M. Aurelius as well as to
Lucius. Vid. Jul. Capitol, in vit. M. Aurelii. But it is most probable that M.
Aurelius was the emperor, especially if Lucius Verus was dead before the per-
secution, as some imagine, Nicephor. lib. iii. cap. 14. And it is observable, that
Athenagoras dedicates his Apology to M. Aurelius and Lu. Commodus, and not
to Lucius Verus. However this be, certain it is that this was a most bloody
persecution, in which Polycarp and Justin, and the martyrs of Vienna and Lyons
were put to death ; the reading of the prophets, and the sibyls, and whatever
else might serve the Christian cause was forbidden, says Justin, upon pain of
death, Apol. i. sec. 59. This is counted the fourth persecution by all but
S. Severus, who calls it the fifth. But then it is observed by Eusebius, lib. v.
cap. I, that it was set on foot, not by any edict of Aurelius, but by popular
tumult. If we read Severus instead of Verus, as Pamelius is most inclined to,
then is it evident that when this Apology was written, Severus had issued out
no edict against the Christians.

if)

2O         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

against law, by the best of princes, and struck at root and branch
only by our brethren in iniquity.

                                       —o—

                                  CHAPTER VI.

                 THAT THE ROMANS ARE MIGHTY PRAISERS OF THE ANTIQUITY OF
                      THEIR RELIGION, AND YET ADMIT OF NOVELTIES INTO IT
                                             EVERY DAY.

BUT now I would argue the case a little with these scrupulous
gentlemen who are such mighty sticklers for the observation of old
laws; I would know whether they themselves have religiously
adhered to their forefathers in everything, whether they quitted no
law, nor have gone one step out of the ancient way. Nay, whether
they have not made ineffectual some of the most necessary and
proper rules of government; if not, what is become of those
excellent laws for the bridling luxury and ambition ? Those laws
which allowed not above a noble¹ for an entertainment, and but
one hen, and that not a crammed one, for a supper. Those laws
which excluded a senator the house, as a man of ambitious designs,
for having but ten pound weight of silver plate in his family; which
levelled the rising theatres - to the ground immediately, as semin-
aries only of lewdness and immorality; and which under severe
penalties forbade the commons to usurp the badges and distinctions
of the nobility. But now I see the enormous entertainments, with

¹ Centum aera non amplius This was the Lex Licinia vel Fannia called
Centussis, according to that of Lucilius, Fanni Centussique, misellos. Vid. A.
Gell. lib. ii. cap. 24. To what Zephirus in his paraphrase, and Pamelius in his
notes, have said concerning the sumptuary laws, and against canvassing for places,
I add, that C. Orchius the third year before Cato was censor, preferred a law to
moderate the number of guests only. Twenty-two years after, C. Fannius being
consul, enacted another for moderating the expenses of ordinary feasts, allowing
not more denis assibus. Licinius Crassus revived the Fannian law. The Lex
Cornelia, and the Lex Antia, were to the same purposes of frugality. Whoso-
ever desires to see more de Legibus Sumptuariis ct de Ambitu, may read Stuc.
conviv, lib. i. cap. 3 ; A. Gell. lib. ii. cap. 24; Macrob. Saturn, lib. iii. cap.
17 ; Alex. ab Alexan. Genial. Di. lib. iii. cap. 2, p. 685, tom, i., and likewise cap.
17, p. 755.

¹ Theatra stuprandis moribus orientia statim destruebant. P. Cornius Nasica
after the second Punic war demolished the theatre as the school of wickedness
and effeminacy. Vid. Alexand. ab Alex.. tom. i. lib. iv. cap. 25, p. 1193.

        Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         21

new names from their extravagance ; a centenarian supper, so called
from the hundred sestertias expended on it, that is about seven
hundred and eighty-one pounds five shillings for a meal.; and I see
mines of silver melted into dishes, not for the table of senators
only, for that would be tolerable, but for such fellows as are but
just made free, and hardly out of the lash of slavery. I see also
theatres in abundance,¹ and all indulgingly covered over. The
hardy Lacedemonians, I suppose, were the first authors of this soft
invention, for fear Venus should take cold in the winter without a
covering; and that odious heavy cloak of frieze, which in time
of war was to screen the Spartans from the injuries of weather,
was chiefly designed no doubt to defend the Romans at the
enjoyment of their sports. Moreover, I see now no difference in
habit between a lady of quality and a common strumpet;² all
those wise institutions about women are fallen to the ground,
wherein your ancestors made such provisions for modesty and
temperance; when a woman was to wear no more gold about her
than the wedding-ring upon her finger;³ when women were so
strictly prohibited to the use of wine, that a matron was starved to

¹ Video Theatra nec singula satis esse. In the time of Augustus there were
hut three theatres, and one amphitheatre; but as they grew in vices, they
increased in theatres; and then we read of the theatre of Marcellus, and one of
Scaurus so capacious that Pliny affirms it large enough to hold 80,000 men.
Plin. lib. xxxvi. cap. 15. Concerning the number of theatres, vid. Just. Lipsii
Amphitheatrum, et Tertull. de Spectac. et Vitruv. lib. v. cap. 3.

² Inter Matronas Clique Prostibulas nullum de habitu discrimen. The Stola,
Flammeum, Vitta, and Reticulum were the distinctions of matrons of repute,
from prostitutes who had the Toga, and were not allowed the Flammeum and
Vitta. More of this you may see in Alex. ab Alexand. tom. ii. lib. v. p. 216.

³ Cum aurum nulla norat praeter unico digito quem sponsus oppignorasset
pronubo annulo. The ring in matrimony has been a very general and ancient
ceremony: Digito pignus fortasse dedisii, Juven. sat. 6. This nuptial ring was
put upon the finger next the least, on the left hand, out of an imagination that
there was a particular vein there which went directly to the bottom of the
heart. Aul. Gell. lib. x. cap. 10, Macrob. lib. vii. cap. 13. And this, I sup-
pose, may be the Unicus Digitus in Tertullian. The primitive Christians made
no scruple of complying with this ancient ceremony of the ring in matrimony,
for, says Tertullian, de Idol. de nullius Idoli honore descendit, it did not arise from
any honour given to an idol. And Clemens Alexandrinus sets forth, not only the
rite, but the reason of it, Clem. Alex. Paed. lib. iii. cap. 2. St. Ambrose brings in
St. Agnes, mentioning the wedding-ring, Amb. lib. iv. ep. 34. In the year
611, Isidore Hispalensis, Etymol. lib. xx. and de devin. Off. lib. ii., proves it to be
in use, and all the offices of the Western Churches since that time prove the
same. As to the Greek Churches, we find by the Eucologicon, that they used
two rings, one of gold, which was given to the man, another of silver, which
was given to the woman. Vid. ord. Sponsalior. And therefore it was not
without good authority that our wise reformers did retain this innocent, ancient
ceremony, approved of even by Bucer himself. Buceri Censur. p. 48.

22         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

death by her friends for breaking the seals of a cellar where the
wine was kept ;¹ and Mecenius in the reign of Romulus was acquitted
for killing his wife far the same attempt; and for the same reason
parents were by law obliged to kiss their children, in order to dis-
cover them by their breath. Where is now the happiness of a
conjugal state, maintained of old by rugged virtue, in so long and
perfect harmony, that from the foundation of the city for almost
six hundred years together,² we read not of a divorce in any family ?
But now, instead of wedding-rings only, women are so begolded
over, that every limb labours under the burthen; and so addicted
to wine, that you shall not receive a salute without a smack of the
bottle; and divorces are now become the object of your desires,
and looked upon as the constant fruit of matrimony. But this is
not all, for what your fathers have bravely decreed, even about the
worship of the gods, you with all your obedience have rescinded.
The consuls with the authority of the senate banished father Bacchus³

¹ Cum mulieres usque adeo vino abstinerentur, ut matronam ob resignatos cellae
vinariae loculos sui inedia necarint. This story, and almost the very words, are
taken out of Pliny's Natural History, lib. iv. cap. 13, where he says likewise that
Egnatius Metellus (here called Mecenius) killed his wife with a club for drinking
wine. The drinking of wine was interdicted women under the severest penalty.
Vid. Dionys. Halicarn. lib. ii., Polyb. lib. vi., Cicer. lib. de nat. Deor. It was as
capital a crime for a woman to be taken in wine as in adultery. It was by the
law of Romulus made one of the conditions for a divorce. Cneus Domitius
deprived a woman of her dowry for drinking more liberally than her health
required. The law mentioned here by Tertullian, which obliged relations to
salute women to find whether they did not smell of wine, was overruled by an
edict of Tiberius Caesar. Via. Sueton. vit. Tiber. See more to this purpose in
Alexand. ab Alex. tom. i. lib. iii. cap. 2, pp. 672 and 673.

² Per annos ferme sexcentos ab urbe condita, nulla repudium domus scripsit.
P. Carvillius Ruga, or Spurius Carbilius, as he is called by Valer. Maximus, lib.
ii. cap. I, was the first who divorced his wife upon pretence of barrenness,
though divorces afterwards upon the most trifling occasions came to be a common
practice. L. Antonius was noted by the censors, and turned out of the senate
for putting away his wife upon no reason but his humour. Vid. Val. Max.
lib. it. cap. 4. Tiberius Caesar degraded a censor upon the like occasion, Sueton.
in vit. Tib. Q. Antistius and C. Sulpitius divorced their wives merely upon a
pet. Val. Max. lib. vi. cap. 3. And Maecenas is severely taxed by Seneca upon
the like occasion, Sen. lib. de Divin. Provid. So that it is not without reason
that Tertullian affirms divorces in his time to be the constant fruit of matrimony.
By the laws of Romulus a man could not divorce his wife, but either for adultery,
for attempting to poison him, for false keys, or for drinking of wine. The form
of divorces between parties only contracted was in these words—Conditione tua
non utar. This was properly Repudium ; that between a married couple was
called Divortium, and ran in this form—Res tuas tibi habeto.

³ Liberum Patrem cum mysteriis suis. The Bacchanalia or Nyctileia grew to
that excessive lewdness, that they were forbid in all parts of Italy under a severe
penalty. Vid. Alex. ab Alex. tom. i. lib. vi. cap. 7, p. 650.

         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         23

and his mysteries, not out of Rome only, but all Italy, and Serapis,¹
and Isis, and Harpocrates, with his dog's head of a god Cynocephalus,
were excluded the capitol, the palace of your deities, during the
consulship of Piso and Gabinius, who were not Christians, and all
their altars levelled to the ground, in order to suppress this rabble
of deities, and the abominable filthincsses attending on them; but
these gods you have recalled from banishment, and restored them
to their original worship. Where now is your old religion, and the
great veneration you pretend to have for your ancestors ? You
have degenerated from them in your habit, in your modes of living,
in your furniture,² and in the riches and revenues you allow to the
different ranks of men, and in the very delicacy of your language.
You are eternal praisers of antiquity, and yet every day in a new
fashion ; which is a plain proof that it is your peculiar talent to be
in the wrong, to forsake your ancestors where you should follow,
and to follow where you should forsake them. And although you
may take yourselves for zealous defenders of the traditions of your
fathers, especially in those things for the neglect of which you
principally accuse the Christians, namely, the worship of the gods,
in which point your ancestors have been the most unhappily
mistaken; although you have rebuilt the altars of Serapis, and
made him now a Roman god; although Bacchus now has his
frantic sacrifices offered him in Italy;—notwithstanding all this, I
say, I will show in its proper place that you have not in truth this
warm affection for the gods of your forefathers, but that you have
despised, slighted, and destroyed them, in spite of all your loud
pretences to the obligations of antiquity. In the meantime, I shall
return an answer to those infamous objections against our actions
in secret, in order to make way for the vindication of those things
we do in the face of the world.

¹ Serapidem et Isidem, et Harpocratem cum suo Cynocephalo, etc. Serapis
and Isis were celebrated idols of Egypt. Harpocrates is said to be born of Isis
and Osiris, and coming unluckily before his time, was born mute, and for that
reason made the god of silence, according to that of Ovid—Quinque premit
vocem, digitoq.; silentia suadet. Cynocephalus was an Egyptian god with a
dog's head, under which shape Mercury is said to have been worshipped,
according to that of Virgil, Aenead. 8, Omnigenumq.; Deum monstra, et
Latrator Anubis. See more of this and their expulsion out of Italy in Alex. ab
Alex. tom. i. lib. ii. cap. 19, p. 431.

² Censu. I conclude this word should be written with a c, and I have
translated it accordingly; but if it is to be written with an s, as it is both in
Rigaltius and Pamelius, I would translate it opinion; but Rigaltius in his
Animadversions has corrected his text, and writes Censu, Vid. Rigal. Anim-
adver. juxta fin.

24          Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

                               CHAPTER VII.

                          THAT COMMON FAME IS BUT AN ILL EVIDENCE.

It is the common talk that we are the wickedest of men, that we
murder and eat a child in our religious assemblies,¹ and when we rise
from supper conclude all in the confusions of incest. It is reported
likewise that for this work we have an odd sort of clogs, as
officious as bawds in putting out the candles, procurers of darkness
for the freer satisfactions of our impious and shameless lust. This
is the common talk, and the report is of long standing, and yet not
a man attempts to prove the truth of the fact. Either, therefore, if
you believe report, examine the grounds, or if you will not examine,
give no credit to the report. And this dissembled carelessness of
yours against being better informed plainly speaks that you your-
selves believe nothing of it; you seem to care not to examine, only
in truth because you dare not; for were you of opinion that these
reports were true, you would never give such orders as you do
about the torturing of Christians ; which you prescribe, not to make
them confess the actions of their life, but only to deny the religion
they profess. But the Christian religion, as I have already intimated,
began to spread in the reign of Tiberius; and the truth pulled
down a world of hatred in its very cradle ; for it had as many
enemies as men without the pale of revelation, and even those
within, the very Jews, the most implacable of any, out of a blind
passion for the law. The soldiers from dragooning our persons,
come to hate our religion, and from a baseness of spirit, our very
domestics are as much bent upon our destruction as they. Thus
are we continually invested on every side, and continually betrayed—
nay, very often we arc surprised and taken in our public meetings
and assemblies; and yet did ever any one come upon us when the
infant was crying under the sacrificer's hand ? - Who ever catched

¹ Dicimur sceleratissimi de Sacramento Infanticidii. That this charge of
devouring a child in the sacrament was by the heathens commonly laid upon
the Christians is evident, because Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Minutius, and the
rest of the apologists insist so much upon it. The nature of the institution and
the practice of Simon Magus, Menander, Basilides, Carpocrates, and other
heretics, who passed under the name of Christians, most probably gave rise to
this horrid story, as I have shown at large in my notes upon Justin's Apology.

² Quis unquam taliter vagienti Infanti supervenit. The Christian sacrifice of
bread and wine was never omitted in the first ages of the Church in their public

         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         25

us, like a Cyclops or Siren, with mouths besmeared in human blood,
and carried us in that cruel pickle before a judge? And as for
incest, who ever discovered any relic of immodesty in his wife after
she became a Christian ? And who can think that a heathen would
connive at wickednesses of this monstrous size in any Christian, had
he eyes to spy them out ? Or that he can be bribed in our favour,
who seems never so well pleased as when he is hauling us to
punishment? If you say that these abominations are always done
in secret, pray when and by whom came you to this knowledge ?
Not by the guilty themselves, for you know that the persons
admitted into the mysteries of all religions are by the very
form of admission¹ under the severest obligations to secrecy; the
Samothracian and Eleusinian² mysteries you know are covered in
profound silence, how much more reasonable is it therefore to
think that such as these will be kept in the dark, which not only
treasure up divine wrath against the day of judgment, but if once
discovered will whet human justice to the highest pitch of
vengeance ? If, therefore, Christians betray not themselves, it
follows that they must be betrayed by those of another religion ;
but how shall strangers be able to inform against us, when even the
most pious mysteries³ are defended from the approaches of the

worship: they looked upon their service as not so perfectly Christian and
acceptable without it, that the Holy Spirit did in an especial manner descend
upon the consecrated elements, that God was better pleased with their prayers
for this commemoration of His Son, and that this was the principle of union
between a Christian and the ever Blessed Trinity; and, therefore, whenever the
heathens broke into their assemblies, they would be sure to find this sacrifice of
a child, was there any such thing.

¹ Ex Forma omnibus Mysteriis silentii Fides debeatur. What silence was
thought due to sacred rites we may understand by Horace's Favete linguis ;
by Ovid's Ore favent Populi nunc cum venit aurea Pompa ; by Virgil's Fida
Silentia Sacris; by Festus's Linquam pascito, i.e. coerceto ; by the Egyptians
setting up the image of Harpocrates in the entrance of their temples, and by the
Romans placing the statue of Angerona on the altar of Volupia. Vid. Brisson,
de Formulis, lib. i. p. 8.

² Elensinia reticentnr. Horace protests that he would not stay in the house,
or sail in the ship, with a person that should divulge the mysteries of Ceres—

Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum
Vulgarit arcanae, sub iisdem
Sit trabibus fragilemque mecum
Solvat phaselum.

Alcibiades and his companions for exposing the rites of Ceres were not only
excommunicated all religious and civil intercourse at Athens, but solemnly
cursed by the priests, and priestesses — a practice not unlike to the Jewish
Anathema. Vid. Plutar. Alcibiad.

³ Cum etiam piae Initiationes arceant Prophanos. I know nothing more

26         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

stranger and the profane ? Unless you conclude the Christian rites
to be the wickedest of any, and withal conclude that the wicked are
less cautious about the divulging of such rites than those of a
better religion. And thus you must be forced to acknowledge you
know nothing of our profession, but by common fame; and the
nature of fame is too well known by every one to be credited in
haste. Your own Virgil tells you, Fama malum quo non aliud
velocius ullum: Fame is an ill, the swiftest ill that flies.

Why does he call fame an ill ? Because of her swiftness ? Or
because she is an informer ? Or because she is a common liar ?
For the last reason without question. For she never lets even
truth come out of her mouth without being sophisticated, without
detracting, adding, or brewing it with one falsehood or another.
Moreover, the nature of fame is such that she cannot keep herself
upon the wing without the assistance of lies; for she lives by not
proving; when she proves, she destroys her being. She hovers no

practised all the heathen world over, than the excommunicating profane persons
from all holy mysteries. Hence that of Virgil—

Procul, o procul este Prophani
Conclamat Vates,

And that of Horace also—

Odi Prophanum
Vulgus et arceo.

The Flamens had a commentaculum, a kind of rod in their hands to keep off
impure persons. Vid. Brisson, de Formulis, lib. i.; Selden, de Syned. lib. i. cap.
10. Among the Greeks that old form from Orpheus continued,—e3kaj e3kaj e4ste
be/bhloi. At Athens the herald cried out tij th~de—Who is here? To which the
people answered, polloi\ kai\ a0gaqoi\—Many and good men. Vid. Suid. in tij th~de.
And we read in Livy, Decad. 4, lib, i., of two young men of Arcanania, who for
not being initiated and crowded into the Eleiisinian mysteries, were slain ; for it
was a capital crime to be present without due purification ; and such purifying
rites were men of all ranks and qualities obliged to perform before they could
approach the altars and statues. Not Nero himself could prevail with his
conscience to let him be present at these rites of Ceres, after the Herald had
made the usual proclamation for the wicked to depart. Vid. Sueton. Ner, cap. 34.
But Antoninus the philosopher, to show his innocence, went to the temple of
Ceres, and into the very Sacrarium by himself. Vid. Capitolin. in vit. Antonin.
Philos. And was there but a little more of the natural reverence of heathens to
holy things among Christian people, and did Christian priests exert the power
that God has given them with as much vigour as the idol priests did, men even
as wicked as Nero would not dare to approach our altars merely upon the invita-
tion of a place. But as matters stand, it might go hard with the priest to make
a notorious offender lose his preferment, by refusing him the sacrament, and the
common law might go near to nail the canon.

         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         27

longer like fame, but being as it were out of her office, certainty
succeeds in the place of report. And then it is no longer said, for
example, that such a thing is famed to have been acted at Rome,
or such a person to have got the government of such a province,
but that such things are actually so and so. Fame is a doubtful
sound, and lodges only among uncertainties; and would ever any
man of common reflection build much upon this uncertain puff?
For let a story be never so general and diffusive, and never so
confidently asserted, it is always to be remembered that it had a
beginning, and from that time has crept into a world of ears, and
out of a world of mouths; and so the story very little at its first
planting, and naughty perhaps in the very seed, comes at length to
be so overgrown and darkened by variety of rumours, that men
care not to be at the pains of tracing it up to the original mouth,
and to see whether it came not first into the world a very lie ; which
often happens, either from the disposition and genius of hatred, or
the licence men usurp of improving suspicions, or which is no new
thing, the very pleasure of lying, which some people seem marvel-
lously turned for, even by nature.

Well is it, therefore, I am sure, for Christians, what is so
proverbially in the mouth of heathens, that time brings everything
to light, according to that order of nature which will permit nothing
to lie long hid; no, not even that which never came within the lips
of fame. I shall leave it to you, therefore, to judge whether you
have reason to proceed with this severity against Christians merely
upon the testimony of fame; for this is the only witness you
produce against us, and which looks so much the worse, because
of all the stories she has been sowing about the world, and been
so long a-watering and nourishing up into credit, she has not to
this day been able to prove one.

                                           —o—

                                    CHAPTER VIII.

             THAT THE CRIMES CHARGED UPON THE CHRISTIANS ARE NEITHER
                                      POSSIBLE NOR PROBABLE.

I SHALL now appeal to the testimony of nature, and argue whether
it is credible that she is capable of such inhumanities as common
fame charges upon Christians ; and for argument sake, I will

28          Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

suppose a Christian promising you eternal life, and tying caution
for the performance, upon consideration of your obedience. I will
suppose likewise that you believe this promise, and the question
now is, whether upon such a belief you could find in your hearts to
be barbarous enough in spite of nature to accept of eternal life at
this inhuman price. Imagine, therefore, a Christian addressing you
in this manner: Come hither, friend, and plunge your dagger into
the heart of this innocent, who can deserve no punishment, who
can be no man's foe, and who may be every man's son, considering
our indiscriminate embraces. Or if another is to officiate in this
bloody service, suppose yourself applied to after this sort: Come
hither, and stand by only while I make the sacrifice; behold me
despatching an infant off the stage in the very first act of life ; see
me sending the new soul flying out of the body before it was well
in; do you gather up the rude indigent blood, and sop your bread
liberally in that wine, and indulge freely upon the flesh ; and while
you arc at supper be sure to cast a wishful eye upon your mother
and sister; mark exactly where they sit, that you are guilty of no
mistake when the clogs have put out the candles. For it is as much
as our immortality is worth if you should miss of incest; if you are
thus initiated, and continue firm in the practice of these rules, you
shall live for ever. Answer me now to the question proposed, Can
you purchase heaven upon these terms? If not, if you feel nature
recoil, and your soul shrink at the proposal of such things, you can
never think them credible in us. Did you but believe them, I am
confident you would not do them ; but did you believe them, and
had an inclination to do them, I am of opinion that your very
humanity would not suffer you to perpetrate such facts ; and if you
find too many misgivings in yourselves for the performance of such
commands, why do you not conclude the same reluctance in others ?
Or if you cannot be unnatural enough for these things, why should
you judge others can?

But Christians, I suppose, are not men. What! do you take us
for monsters like the Cynopse or Sciapodes,¹ with different rows of
teeth for devouring, and different instruments for incest, from all
other men ? Certainly, if you believe such actions possible for
others, you may believe them possible for yourselves, you being men,

¹ The Cynopae, or Cynopes or Cynocephali, are reported to be a sort of wild
men in the mountains of India, with heads like a dog, Plin. vii. 2 ; and the
Sciapodes of Aethiopia to be a people of such a monstrous make, that in hot
broiling days lie upon their backs, and cover their whole bodies from the sun
with the shadow of the bottoms of their feet, Plin. vii. 1.

         Tertullian's  Apology for the Christians.         29

as we Christians are ; but if you feel this impossible in nature, you
ought to give no credit to the report, because Christians and
heathens have the same humanity.

But you pretend that the ignorant only are decoyed and tricked
into our religion, such as have not met with any of these stories
against us, but are catched before they have time to consider and
examine with that accuracy which every man is obliged to upon
changing his religion. But allowing it possible for a man to be
ignorant of common fame, yet if any one is desirous to be initiated,
it is the constant custom, as I take it, for such a person to go to the
chief priest, to be instructed in what is necessary for such an
initiation. And then, if these stories are true, he will instruct him
in this manner : Friend, in order to communicate with us you must
provide a child tender and good, too young for any sense or notice
of death; such a child as will smile into my face under the fatal
knife. You are likewise to provide bread to suck up the blood,
and candlesticks and candles, and some dogs with some morsels to
throw to those dogs just out of their reach, that by striving to come
at them they may pull down the candles and candlesticks to which
they are tied. Above all things, you must be sure not to come
without your mother and sister. But what if they will not comply,
or suppose the convert has no sister or mother, nor any relation of
our religion ? Why, he cannot be admitted; for to have a sister or
a mother are necessary qualifications, no doubt, to make a Christian.
But if you will suppose all this furniture got ready beforehand. without
the knowledge of him who is to communicate, yet certainly after he
has communicated he must needs know all; and yet he still con-
tinues firm in our communion without a word of the imposture.
But he dares not discover perhaps, for fear of punishment, when
such a discovery would be meritorious. Whereas a man of probity,
after he had found himself thus abused, and tricked into so horrid a
religion, would rather choose to die than live longer with such a
conscience. After all, I will grant that such a man dares not discover
for fear of punishment; but pray then give me a reason why the
same person should persevere in defiance of torments; for I think
it natural to conclude that you would not continually stick close to
a religion under such disadvantages, which you would never have
embraced had you but known it before you embraced it,

                                           —o—

30          Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

                                    CHAPTER IX.

       THAT THE PAGANS ARE GUILTY BOTH IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC
             OF THE SAME CRIMES THEY CHARGE UPON CHRISTIANS.

BUT for a fuller confutation I come now to prove that the heathens
are guilty both in the dark, and in the face of the sun, of acting the
same abominations they charge upon Christians, and their own
guiltiness, perhaps, is the very thing which disposes them to believe
the like of others. Infants have been sacrificed to Saturn publicly
in Africa,¹ even to the proconsulship of Tiberius, who devoted the
very trees about Saturn's temple to be gibbets for his priests, as
accomplices in the murder, for contributing the protection of their
shadow to such wicked practices. For the truth of this I appeal
to the militia of my own country, who served the proconsul in the
execution of this order. But these abominations are continued to
this day in private. Thus you see that the Christians are not the
only men who act in defiance of your laws; nor can all your
severity pull up this wickedness by the roots, nor will your immortal
alter his abominable worship upon any consideration; for since
Saturn could find in his heart to eat up his own children, you may
be sure he would continue his stomach for those of other people
who are obliged to bring their own babes, and sacrifice them with
their own hands, giving them the tenderest of words, when they
are just upon cutting their throats, not out of any bowels of com-
passion, but for fear they should unhollow the mystery, and spoil
the sacrifice with tears. And now, in my opinion, this parricide of

¹ Infantes penes Africam Saturno palam immolabantur, etc. The heathens had
a notion (however they came by it is not to my present purpose to conjecture) that
repentance alone was not sufficient to atone the Divine wrath without a bloody
sacrifice, and therefore the blood of man and beast was brought in to supply the
deficiency. Accordingly among the Phoenicians and Carthaginians it had been
an ancient custom to choose by lot some children of the best quality for a sacrifice,
and for those upon whom the lot fell there was no redemption. And they were
likewise dressed according to their quality in the richest apparel to make the
sacrifice more splendid. And having omitted these human sacrifices for some
time, and during that omission being overcome by Agathocles, they offered two
hundred sons of the nobility upon their altars to atone the deity for the neglect
of human sacrifices. Vid. Plat. dial, entitled Minos Dionys. Halicar. lib. i.,
Diodor. Sic. lib. xx., Lactan. lib. i. cap. 21, Euseb. Praepar. Evang. lib. iv.,
and Silius Ital. at the end of the fourth book speaks thus of Carthage :—

Mos fuit in populis, quos conditit advena Dido.
(Infandum dictu) Parvos iinponere natos.

         Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.         31

yours, or slaughtering your own children, outdoes the simple
homicide charged upon us by many degrees of barbarity. But
infants are not the only offerings, for the Gauls cut a man to
pieces upon the altars of Mercury,¹ in the flower of his strength. I
omit the human sacrifices at Diana's Temple² in Taurica Chersone-
sus, which are the arguments of your tragedies, and which you seem
to countenance by being so often at the theatres. But behold ! in
that most religious city of the pious descendants of pious Aeneas,
there is a certain Jupiter,³ whom at your religious games you pro-
pitiate with human blood in abundance. But these, say you, are
bestiarian men, criminals already condemned to die by beasts.
Alas-a-day ! these are not men, I warrant ye, because they are
condemned men; and are not your gods wonderfully beholden to
you for offering to them such vile fellows ? However that be, this
is certain, it is human blood. O brave Christian Jove! your
father's only son and heir in cruelty, worshipped with human blood,
as the God of the Christians is falsely reported to be. But because,
if you kill a child, it is not a farthing difference whether you kill it
for a sacrifice, or for your own will (for killing a child will be always
a crime, though not always equal, parric