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 wickednessJ 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, parricide being worse than mere

homicide), since this, I say, is so, I shall now apply myself upon

this subject unto the people of all ranks and conditions. How

many about me might I justly reproach upon this head, not only

of the mob continually blooded with Christians, and continually

1 Major aetas apud Gallos Mercurio prosecatur. Cicero in Orat proM. Fonteio,

speaking of the Gauls, has these words:—Quis enim ignorat eos usque ad hanc

diem retinere illam immanent ac barbaram consuetudinem hominum unmo-

landorum? And in his third book, de Divinat., he mentions five Mercurys

and makes Mercury Theutates the fifth who slew Argos, and for that flew into

Egypt, and there instructed the Egyptians in laws and letters, from which

Theutates the first month of their year, that is September, was called Theuth.

This was the Mercury the Gauls sacrifice to, and which Lucan in his first book

refers to. Ex quibus immitis placatur sanguine diro

Thentates, horrensque feris Altaribus Hesus, See more in Lactantius, lib. i. sec. 21, 50, Liv. 3, dec. lib. vi., Caesar, lib. vi.,

de bell. Gall.

2 Remitto Tauricas Fabulas. Herodotus in his fourth book says it was a

custom among the Tauri to sacrifice every year the hundredth captive to Diana ;

and Lucan having spoken of Theutates and Hesus, adds :— Et Taranis Scythicae non mitior ara Diana. See P. Orosius in his preface to his fifth book, and Lactan. lib. i. sec. 21, p. 50,

concerning the bloody rite of sacrificing strangers to Diana Taurica.

3 Jupiter quidam. Vid. Lactan. lib. i. sec. 21, p. 50. This was Jupiter

Latiaris.

32 Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.

gaping for more, but also of you, presidents of cities and provinces,

who have been the severest against us upon this very score? How

many, I say, of both sorts might I deservedly charge with infant-

murder? And not only so, but among the different kinds of death,

for choosing some of the cruellest for their own children, such as

drowning, or starving with cold or hunger, or exposing to the mercy

of dogs, dying by the sword being too sweet a death for children,

and such as a man would choose to fall by sooner than by any

other ways of violence.

But Christians now are so far from homicide, that with them it

is utterly unlawful to make away a child in the womb, when nature

is in deliberation about the man; for to kill a child before it is

born is to commit murder by way of advance; and there is no

difference whether you destroy a child in its formation, or after it

is formed and delivered. For we Christians look upon him as a

man, who is one in embryo; for he is in being, like the fruit in

blossom, and in a little time would have been a perfect man, had

nature met with no disturbance.

As for the inhuman customs of banqueting upon blood, and such

tragical dishes, you may read (for it is related by Herodotus,1 I

think) how that certain nations having opened a vein in their arm,

solemnly drank of each other's blood for the confirmation of treaties ;

and something like this Catiline2 put in practice in his conspiracy.

1 Est apud Herodotum opinor, etc. Herodotus in his first book reports that

it was the solemn way among the Medes and Lydians in making of leagues to

strike each other on the shoulders with a naked sword, and then for the parties

mutually to lick up the blood ; and in his fourth book he tells us that the

Scythian rite of entering into league was to fill a large cup of blood and wine

mixed together (the blood of both the parties confederating), and having dipped

their swords and arrows into it, to pledge each other in it, and so by turns drink

it off. And Possidonius, and from him Athenaeus, lib. ii. cap. 2, relates that

the Germans at their banquets opened a vein in their face, and the parties mutu-

ally drinking up each other's blood, mixed with wine, was the ratification of the

treaty. So much human blood was there spilt, especially in sacrificing to devils,

till Christ came and redeemed us from the powers of darkness, and put an end to

all bloody sacrifices, by that of Himself once made upon the cross.

2 Nescio quid et sub Catilina degustatum est. The words of Sallust concerning

Catiline are these—Fuere ea Tempestate, qui dicerent Catilinam oratione habitu,

cum ad jusjurandum Populares sceleric sui addicerent, Humani Corporis sanguinem

vino permistum in pateris circumtulisse ; inde cum post execrationem omnes degustas-

sent, sicuti in solemnibus sacris fieri consuevit, dicitur aperuisse consilium, etc.

I have set down this of Sallust at large, because as it stands in the notes of

Pamelius it is printed or quoted false in two places, and the last part quite

omitted, which shows it to be a customary rite in some countries.

Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. 33

It is likewise reported that in some Scythian families the surviving

friends eat up the dead ones.1 But I need not go so far as Scythia,

for we have now at this day as barbarous ceremonies at home;

Bellona's priests 2 lancing their thighs, and taking up their own sacred

blood in the palms of their hands, and giving it their communicants

to drink. Those epileptic persons also who flock to the amphi-

theatres for the cure of their disease, intercept the reeking blood as

it comes gushing from the gladiators' throats, and swill it off with

greediness. What shall we say of those who gorge themselves with

the beasts they kill upon the stage, who demand a piece of the boar,

or the stag that is covered over with their own blood in the combat ?

Nay, the very paunches3 of boars stuffed with the crude indigested

entrails of men are dishes much in vogue ; and so man belches up

man by surfeiting upon beasts fed with men. You who eat thus,

bless me, how differently do you eat from Christians ? But what

can we think of men so perfectly brutish as to lick up the very first

principles of life and blood, and so diet upon child and parent both

at the same time ? For shame therefore blush when you meet a

Christian, who will not endure a drop of the blood of any animal

among his victuals, and therefore for fear any should be lodged

among the entrails, we abstain from things strangled, and such as

die of themselves.

Lastly, among other experiments for the discovery of Christians

this is one, to present them with blood puddings, as very well

knowing our opinion about the unlawfulness of eating blood. This,

I say, is the stumbling-block and offence you lay in the way of

Christians; and what a strange thing is it, that you who are confi-

dent that the Christians are so religiously averse to t