' [Tertullian's exposition of this enigmatical fact (see the Phtedo) is better than divers other ingenious theories.]
at Thurii, and Zeno at Priene, ambitious of the supreme power: the Christian does not aspire to the aedileship. If equanimity be the contention, you have Lycurgus choosing death by self-starvation, because the Lacons had made some emendation of his laws: the Christian, even when he is condemned, gives thanks. "^ If the comparison be made in re- gard to trustworthiness, Anaxagoras denied the deposit of his enemies: the Chris- tian is noted for his fidelity even among those who are not of his religion. If the matter of sincerity is to be brought to trial, Aristotle basely thrust his friend Hermias from his place: the Christian does no harm even to his foe. With equal baseness does Aristotle play the sycophant to Alex- ander, instead of exercising to keep him in the right way, and Plato allows himself to be bought by Dionysius for his belly's sake. Aristippus in the purple, with all his great show of gravity, gives way to extravagance; and Hippias is put to death laying plots against the state: no Christian ever attempted such a thing in behalf of his brethren, even when persecution was scattering them abroad with every atrocity. But it will be said that some of us, too, depart from the rules of our discipline. In that case, however, we count them no longer Christians; but the philoso- phers who do such things retain still the name and the honour of wisdom. So, then, where is ] there any likeness between the Christian and the philosopher? between the disciple of Greece and of heaven? between the man whose object is fame, and whose object is life? between the talker and^iie doer? between the man who builds up and the man who pulls down? between the friend and the foe of error? between one who corrupts the truth, and one who restores and teaches it? between its chief and its custodier?
CHAP. XLVII.
Unless I am utterly mistaken, there is noth- ing so old as the truth; and the already proved antiquity of the divine writings is so far of use to me, that it leads men more easily to take it in that they are the treasure-source whence all later wisdom has been taken. And were it not necessary to keep my work to a moderate size, I might launch forth also into the proof of this. What poet or sophist has not drunk at the fountain of the prophets? Thence, accordingly, the philosophers watered their arid minds, so that it is the things they - [John xxi. 19. A pious, habit which long sur\'ived among Christians, wlien learning that death was at hand: as in Shake- speare's ih'nry //'.."Land be to God, ev'n there my life must 52 APOLOGY.
[chap. XLvni.
have from us which bring us into comparison with them. For this reason, I imagine, phi- losophy was banished by certain states — I mean by the Thebans, by the Spartans also, and the Argives— its disciples sought to imitate our doctrines; and ambitious, as I have said, of glory and eloquence alone, if they fell upon anything in the collection of sacred Scrip- tures which displeased them, in their own peculiar style of research, they perverted it to serve their purpose: for they had no adequate faith in their divinity to keep them from changing them, nor had they any sufficient understanding of them, either, as being still at the time under veil — even obscure to the Jews themselves, whose peculiar possession they seemed to be. For so, too, if the truth was distinguished by its simplicity, the more on that account the fastidiousness of man, too proud to believe, set to altering it; so that even what they found certain they made un- certain by their admixtures. Finding a simple revelation of God, they proceeded to dispute about Him, not as He had revealed to them, but turned aside to debate about His prop- erties. His nature. His abode. Some assert Him to be incorporeal; others maintain He has a body, — the Platonists teaching the one doctrine, and the Stoics the other. Some think that He is composed of atoms, others of numbers: such are the different views of Epicurus and Pythagoras. One thinks He is made of fire; so it appeared to Heraclitus. The Platonists, again, hold that He admin- isters the affairs of the world; the Epicureans, on the contrary, that He is idle and inactive, and, so to speak, a nobody in human things. Then the Stoics represent Him as placed out- side the world, and whirling round this huge mass from without like a potter; while the Platonists place Him within the world, as a pilot is in the ship he steers. So, in like manner, they differ in their views about the world itself, whether it is created or uncreated, whether it is destined to pass away or to re- main for ever. So again it is debated con- cerning the nature of the soul, which some contend is divine and eternal, while others hold that it is dissoluble. According to each one's fancy. He has introduced either something new, or refashioned the old. Nor need we wonder if the speculations of philosophers have perverted the older Scriptures. Some of their brood, with their opinions, have even adulterated our new-given Christian revelation, and corrupted it into a system of philosophic doctrines, and from the one path have struck off many and inexplicable by-roads.' And I have alluded [See Iracncus, vol. i. p. 577 tliif; Scries.]
to this, lest any one becoming acquainted with the variety of parties among us, this might seem to him to put us on a level with the phi- losophers, and he might condemn the truth from the different ways in which it is defended. But we at once put in a plea in bar against these tainters of our purity, asserting that this is the rule of truth which comes down from Christ by transmission through His compan- ions, to whom we shall prove that those de- visers of different doctrines are all posterior. Everything opposed to the truth has been got up from the truth itself, the spirits of error carrying on this system of opposition. By them all corruptions of wholesome discipline have been secretly instigated; by them, too, certain fables have been introduced, that, h{^ their resemblance to the truth, they might im- pair its credibility, or vindicate their own higher claims to faith; so that people might think Christians unworthy of credit because the poets or philosophers are so, or might regard the poets and philosopher^ as worthier of confidence from their not being followers of Christ. Accordingly, we get ourselves laughed at for proclaiming that God will one day judge the world. For, like us, the poets and philosophers set up a judgment-seat in the realms below. And if we threaten Ge- henna, which is a reservoir of secret fire under the earth for purposes of punishment, we have in the same way derision heaped on us. For so, too, they have their Pyriphlegethon, a river of flame in the regions of the dead. And if we speak of Paradise, = the place of heavenly bliss appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, severed from the knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure, the Elysian plains have taken pos- session of their faith. Whence is it, I pray you have all this, so like us, in the poets and philosophers? The reason simply is, that they have been taken from our religion. But if they are taken from our sacred things, as being of earlier date, then ours are the truer, and have higher claims upon belief, since even their imitations find faith among you. If they maintain their sacred mysteries to have sprung from their own minds, in that case ours will be reflections of what are later than themselves, which by the nature of things is impossible, for never does the shadow pre- cede the body which casts it, or the image the reality. 3 CHAP. XLVIII.
Come now, if some philosopher affirms, as - [Kluridation X.]
■I'rruf, in the sense that a.shadow cannot be projected by n l>odv not vet existent.
CHAP. XLVII/.J APOLOGY.
53 Laberius holds, following an opinion of Py- thagoras, that a man may have his origin from a mule, a serpent from a >voman, and with skill of speech twists every argument to prove his view, will he not gain acceptance for it, and work in some the conviction that, on ac- count of this, they should even abstain from eating animal food? May any one have the persuasion that he should so abstain, lest by chance in his beef he eats of some ancestor of his? But if a Christian promises the re- turn of a man from a man, and the very actual (iaius from Gains,' the cry of the people will Ue to have him stoned; tiiey will not even so much as grant him a hearing. If there is any ground for the moving to and fro of human souls into different bodies, why may they not return into the very substance they have left, seeing this is to be restored, to be that which l\ad been? They are no longer the very things they had been; for they could not be Avhat they were not, without first ceasing to be what they had been. If we were inclined to give all rein upon this point, discussing into what various beasts one and another might probably be changed, we would need at our leisure to take up many points. But this we would do chiefly in our own defence, as setting forth what is greatly worthier of belief, that a man will come back from a man — any given person from any given person, still re- taining his humanity; s® that the soul, with its qualities unchanged, may be restored to the same condition, thought not to the same outward framework. Assuredly, as the rea- son why restoration takes place at all is the appointed judgment, every man must needs come forth the very same who had once ex- isted, that he may receive at God's hands a judgment, whether of good desert or the op- posite. And therefore the body too will ap- pear; for the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance (that is, the flesh; land for this reason, also) that it is not right khat souls should have all the wrath of God to bear: they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by them. But how, you say, can a substance w^hich has been dis- solved be made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt believe in it! /Reflect on what you were before you came Unto existence. Nothing. For if you had been anything, you would have remembered it. You, then, who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when you cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at the will of the same Creator whose will created you out of nothing ' {i.e., Caius, used (like/aAn Doe with us) in Roman Law.]
at the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not, 7fwr made; when you cease to be again, you shall be made. Explain, if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you shall be re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surley to make you what you were once, when the very same creative power made you with- out difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts, perhaps, as to the power of God, of Him who hung in its place this huge body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death of emp- tiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all living things, its very self the unmistakable type of the resurrection, that it might be to you a witness — nay, the exact image of the resurrection. Light, every day extinguished, shines out again; and, with like alternation, darkness succeeds light's outgo- ing. The defunct stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew their course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are reproduced. The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and dis- solve away; — all things are preserved by per- ishing, all things are refashioned out of death. Thou, man of nature so exalted, if thou understandest thyself, taught even by the Pythian^ words, lord of all these things that die and rise, — shalt thou die to perish evermore? Wherever your dissolution shall have taken place, whatever material agent has destroyed you, or swallowed you up, or swept you away, or reduced you to nothingness, it shall again restore you. Even nothingness is His who is Lord of all. You ask. Shall we then be al- ways dying, and rising up from death? If so the Lord of all things had appointed, you would have to submit, though unwillingly, to the law of your creation. But, in ^fact. He has no other purpose than that of which He has informed us. The Reason which made the universe out of diverse elements, so that all things might be composed of opposite substances in unity — of void and solid, of animate and inanimate, of comprehensible and incomprehensible, of light and darkness, of life itself and death — has also disposed time into order, by fixing and distinguishing its mode, according to which thi^ first portion of it, which we inhabit from the beginning of the world, flows down by a temporal course to a close; but the portion which succeeds, and to which we look forward continues forever. When, therefore, the boundary - Know thyself. [Juvenal,.\i. 27, on which see great wealth of references in J. E. B. Mayor's Juvenal (.xiii. Satires), and note especially, Bernard, Sfri>r. de Divtrs xl. 3. In Cant. Cantic.
54 APOLOGY.
[chap. l.
and limit, that millennial interspace, has been passed, when even the outward fash- ion of the world itself — which has been spread like a veil over the eternal econ- omy, equally a thing of time — passes away, then the whole human race shall be raised again, to have its dues meted out ac- cording as it has merited in the period of good or evil, and thereafter to have these paid out through the immeasurable ages of ^^^ eternity. Therefore after this there is neither ^eath nor repeated resurrections, but we shall be the same that we are now, and still un- changed— the servants of God, ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of eter- nity; but the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire — that fire which, from its very nature in- deed, directly ministers to their incorrupt- ibility. The philosophers are familiar as well as we with the distinction between a common and a secret fire. Thus that which is in common use is far different from that which we see in divine judgments, whether striking as thunderbolts from heaven, or bursting up out of the earth through mountain-tops; for it does not consume what it scorches, but while it burns it repairs. So the mountains continue ever burning; and a person struck by light- ing is even now kept safe from any destroying flame. A notable proof this of the fire eternal! a notable example of the endless judgment which still supplies punishment with fuel! The mountains burn, and last. How will it be with the wicked and the enemies of God?'
CHAP. XLIX.
These are what are called presumptuous speculations in our case alone; in the phi- losophers and poets they are regarded as sub- lime speculations and illustrious discoveries. They are men of wisdom, we are fools. They are worthy of all honour, we are folk to have the finger pointed at; nay, besides that, we are even to have punishments inflicted on us. But let things which are the defence of vir- tue, if you will, have no foundation, and give them duly the name of fancies, yet still they are necessary; let them be absurd if you will, yet they are of use: they make all who be- lieve them better men and women, under the fear of never-ending punishment and the hope of never-ending bliss. It is not, then, wise to brand as false, nor to regard as ab- surd, things the truth of which it is expedient to presume. On no ground is it right posi- » [Our author's philosophy may be at fault, but his testimony is Dot to be mistaken.]
tively to condemn as bad what beyond all doubt is profitable. Thus, in fact, you are guilty of the very presumption of Vi^hich you accuse us, in condemning what is useful. It is equally out of the question to regard them as nonsensical; at any rate, if they are false and foolish, they hurt nobody. For they are just (in that case) like many other things on which you inflict no penalties — foolish and fab- ulous things, I mean, which, as quite innocu- ous, are never charged as crimes or punished. But in a thing of the kind, if this be so in- deed, we should be adjudged to ridicule, not to swords, and flames, and crosses, and wild beasts, in which iniquitous cruelty not only the blinded populace exults and insults over us, but in which some of you too glory, not scrupling to gain the popular favour by your injustice. As though all you can do to us did not depend upon our pleasure. It is as- suredly a matter of my own inclination, being a Christian. Your condemnation, then, will only reach me in that case, if I wish to be condemned; but when all you can do to me, you can do only at my will, all you can do is dependent on my will, and is not in your power. The joy of the people in our trouble is therefore utterly reasonless. For it is our joy they appropriate to themselves, since we would far rather be condemned than aposta- tize from God; on the contrary, our haters should be sorry rather than rejoice, as we have obtained the very thing of our own choice.
CHAP. L.
In that case, you say, why do you complain of our persecutions? You ought rather to be grateful to us for giving you the sufferings you want. Well, it is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in th$ way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers will- ingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of life eternal. But we are overcome. Yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore we conquer in dying; ■' we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. Call us, if you like, Sarmenticii and Semaxii, because, bound to a half-axle stake, CHAP. L.]
APOLOGY.
.ID we are burned in a circle-heap of fagots. This is the attitude in which we conquer, it is our victory-robe, it is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished; on account of this, indeed, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and reckless- ness you object to in us, among yourselves lift high the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucins of his own will left his right hand on the altar: what sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of ^-Etna: what mental resolution! A certain foundress of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile: what a noble witness of her chastity! Regulus, not wishing that his one life should' count for the lives of many enemies, endured these crosses over all his frame: how brave a man — even in captivity a conqueror! Anaxarchus, when he was being beaten to death by a barley-pounder, cried out, " Beat on, beat on at the case of Anaxarchus; no stroke falls on Anaxarchus himself. " O mag- nanimity of the philosopher, who even in such an end had jokes upon his lips! I omit all reference to those who with their own sword, or with any other milder form of death, have bargained for glory. Nay, see how even torture contests are crowned by you. The Athenian courtezan, having wearied out the executioner, at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the face of the raging tyrant, that she might at the same time spit away her power of speech, nor be longer able to confess her fellow-conspirators, if even overcome, that might be her inclination. Zeno the Eleatic, when he was asked by Dionysius what good philosophy did, on answering that it gave con- tempt of death, was all unquailing, given over to the tyrant's scourge, and sealed his opin- ion even to the death. We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty under the very eyes of friends en- couraging, confers on those who bear it honor proportionate to the blood which the young men shed. O glory legitimate, because it is human, for whose sake it is counted neither reckless foolhardiness, nor desperate obsti- nacy, to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment; for whose sake you may for your native place, for the empire, for friendship, endure all you are forbidden to do for God! And you cast statues in honour of persons such as these, and you put in- scriptions upon images, and cut out epitaphs on tombs, that their names may never perisli. In so far you can by your monuments, you yourselves afford a sort of resurrection to the dead. Yet he who expects the true resurrec tion from God, is insane, if for God he suffers I But go zealously on, good presidents, you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injus- tice is the proof that we are innocent. There- fore God suffers that we thus suffer; for but very lately, in condemning a Christian woman to the leno rather than to the leo you made confession that a taint on our purity is con- sidered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death.' Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. ^ Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the THScula?is, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that con- templates it, is not excited to inqdire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God's grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. On this account it is that we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the Highest.