manner, by public law you disgrace your state gods, putting them in the auction-catalogue, and making them a source of revenue. Men seek to get the Capitol, as they seek to get the herb market, under the voire of the crier, under the auction spear, under che reg- istration of the quaestor. Deity is struck off and farmed out to the highest bidder. But indeed lands burdened with tribute are of less value; men under the assessment of a poll- tax are less noble; for these things are the mark* of servitude. In the case of the gods, on the other hand, the sacredness is great in proportion to the tribute which they yield; nay, the more sacred is a god, the larger is the;.-^x he pays. Majesty is made a source of gain. Religion goes about the taverns begging. You demand a price for the privi- lege of standing on temple ground, for access to the sacred services; there is no gratuitous knowledge of your divinities permitted — you must buy their favours with a price. What honours in any w.\y do you render to them that you do not render to the dead? You have temples in the one case just as in the Other; you have altars in the one case as in the other. Their statues have the same dress, the same insignia. As the dead man had his age, his art, his occupation, so it is with the deity. In what respect does the funeral feast differ from the feast of Jupiter? or the bowl of the gods from the ladle of the manes? or the undertaker from the soothsayer, as in fact this latter personage also attends upon the dead? With perfect propriety you give di- vine honours to your departed emperors, as you worship them in life. The gods will count themselves indebted to you; nay, it will be matter of high rejoicing among them that their masters are made their equals. But when you adore Larentina, a public prostitute — I could have wished that it might at least have been Lais or Phryne — among your Junos, and Cereses, and Dianas; when you instal in your Pantheon Simon Magus,' giving him a statue and the title of Holy God; when you make an infamous court page a god of the sacred synod, although your ancient dei- ties are in reality no better, they will still think themselves affronted by you, that the privilege antiquity conferred on them alone, has been allowed to others.
CHAP. XIV.
I wish now to review your sacred rites; and I pass no censure on your sacrificing, when you offer the worn-out, the scabbed, the cor- rupting; when you cut off from the fat and the sound the useless parts, such as the head and the hoofs, which in your house you would have assigned to the slaves or the dogs; when of the tithe of Hercules you do not lay a third upon his altar (I am disposed rather to praise your wisdom in rescuing something from being lost); but turning to your books, from which you get your training in wisdom and the nobler duties of life, what utterly ridic- ulous things I find! — that for Trojans and Greeks the gods fought among themselves like pairs of gladiators; that Venus was wounded by a man, because she would rescue her son ^neas when he was in peril of his life from the same Diomede; that Mars was almost wasted away by a thirteen months' imprisonment; that Jupiter was saved by a monster's aid from suffering the same violence at the hands of the other gods; that he now laments the fate of Sarpedon, now foully makes love to his own sister, recounting (to her) former mistresses, now for a long time past not so dear as she. After this, what poet is not found copying the example of his chief, to be a disgracer of the gods? One gives » [Confirming the statement of Justin Martyr. See Vol. I.. p. 187, note I, and p. 193, this Series.]
\o APOLOGY.
[chap. XVI.
Apollo to king Admetus to tend his sheep; another hires out the building labours of Nep- tune to Laomedon. A well-known lyric poet, too — Pindar, I mean — sings of ^sculapius deservedly stricken with lightning for his greed in practising wrongfully his art. A wicked deed it was of Jupiter — if he hurled the bolt — unnatural to his grandson, and ex- hibiting envious feeling to the Physician. Things like these should not be made public if they are true; and if false, they should not be fabricated among people professing a great respect for religion. Nor indeed do either tragic or comic writers shrink from setting forth the gods as the origin of all family ca- lamities and sins. I do not dwell on the phi- losophers, contenting myself with a reference to Socrates, who, in contempt of the gods, was in the habit of swearing by an oak, and a goat, and a dog. In fact, for this very thing Socrates was condemned to death, that he overthrew the worship of the gods. Plainly, at one time as well as another, that is, always truth is disliked. However, when rueing their judgment, the Athenians inflicted pun- ishment on his accusers, and set up a golden image of him in a temple, the condemnation was in the very act rescinded, and his wit- ness was restored to its former value. Diogenes, too, makes utter mock of Hercules; and the Roman cynic Varro brings forward three hundred Joves, or Jupiters they should be called, all headless.
CHAP. XV.
Others of your writers, in their wantonness, even minister to your pleasures by vilifying the gods. Examine those charming farces of your Lentuli and Hostilii, whether in the jokes and tricks it is the buffoons or the deities which afford you merriment; such farces I mean as Anubis the Adulterer, and Luna of the masculine gender, and Diana under the lash, and the reading the will of Jupiter de- ceased, and the three famishing Herculeses held up to ridicule. Your dramatic literature, too, depicts all the vileness of your gods. The Sun mourns his offspring ' cast down from heaven, and you are full of glee; Cybele sighs after the scornful swain,'' and you do not blush; you brook the stage recital of Jupiter's misdeeds, and the shepherd ^ judging Juno, Venus, and Minerva. Then, again, when the likeness of a god is put on the head of an ig- nominious and infamous wretch, when one impure and trained up for the art in all effem- inacy, represents a Minerva or a Hercules, is ' Phaethon. » Atys or Auis. 3 Paris.
not the majesty of your gods insulted, and their deity dishonored? Yet you not merely look on, but applaud. You are, I suppose, more devout in the arena, where after the same fashion your deities dance on human blood, on the pollutions caused by inflicted punishments, as they act their themes and stories, doing their turn for the wretched criminals, except that these, too, often put on divinity and actually play the very gods. We have seen in our day a representation of the mutilation of Attis, that famous god of Pessinus, and a man burnt alive as Hercules. We have made merry amid the ludicrous cruel- ties of the noonday exhibition, at Mercury examining the bodies of the dead with his hot iron; we have witnessed Jove's brother,* rriallet in hand, dragging out the corpses of the gladiators. But who can go into every- thing of this sort? If by such things as these the honour of deity is assailed, if they go to blot out every trace of its majesty, we must explain them by the contempt in which the gods are held, alike by those who actually do them, and by those for whose enjoyment they are done. This it will be said, however, is al' in sport. But if I add — it is what all knc and will admit as readily to be the fact — tha. in the temples adulteries are arranged, that at the altars pimping is practised, that often in the houses of the temple-keepers and priests, under the sacrificial fillets, and the sacred hats,^ and the purple robes, amid the fumes of incense, deeds of licentiousness are done, I am not sure but your gods have more reason to complain of you than of Christians. It is certainly among the votaries of your re- ligion that the perpetrators of sacrilege are always found, for Christians do not enter your temples even in the day-time. Perhaps they too would be spoilers of them, if they wor- shipped in them. What then do they worship, since their objects of worship are different from yours? Already indeed it is implied, as the corollary from their rejection of the lie, that they render homage to the truth; nor continue longer in an error which they have given up in the very fact of recognizing it to be an error. Take this in first of all, and when we have offered a preliminary refutation of some false opinions, go on to derive from it our entire religious system.
CHAP. XVI.
For, like some others, you are under the delusion that our god is an ass's head.* Cor- 4 Pluto.
5 [" Sacred hats and purple robes and incense fumes " have baen associated with the same crimes, alas! in widely dilTerenl rtlptions.]
* [Caricatures of the Crucifixion are extant which show how greedily the heathen had accepted this profane idea.]
CHAP. XVII.]
APOLOGY.
31 nelius Tacitus first put this notion into people's minds. In the fifth book of his his- tories, beginning the (narrative of the) Jewish war with an account of the origin of the na- tion; and theorizing at his pleasure about the origin, as well as the name and the religion of the Jews, he states that having been de- livered, or rather, in his opinion, expelled from Egypt, in crossing the vast plains of Arabia, where water is so scanty, they were in extremity from thirst; but taking the guid- ance of the wild asses, which it was thought might be seeking water after feeding, they discovered a fountain, and thereupon in their gratitude they consecrated a head of this species of animal. And as Christianity is nearly allied to Judaism, from this, I suppose, it was taken for granted that we too are de- voted to the worship of the same image. But the said Cornelius Tacitus (the very opposite of tacit in telling lies) informs us in the work already mentioned, that when Cneius Pom- peius captured J'erusalem, he entered the tem- ple to see the arcana of the Jewish religion, but found no image there. Yet surely if wor- ship was rendered to any visible object, the '- very place for its exhibition would be the '''' shrine; and that all the more that the worship, ^ however unreasonable, had no need there to fear outside beholders. For entrance to the holy place was permitted to the priests alone, while all vision was forbidden to others by an outspread curtain. You will not, however, deny that all beasts of burden, and not parts of them, but the animals entire, are with their goddess Epona objects of worship with you. It is this, perhaps, which displeases you in us, that while your worship here is universal, we do homage only to the ass. Then, if any of you think we render superstitious adoration to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer with us. If you offer homage to a piece of wood at all, it matters little what it is like when the substance is the same: it is of no consequence the form, if you have the very body of the god. And yet how far does the Athenian Pallas differ from the stock of the cross, or the Pharian Ceres as she is put up uncarved to sale, a mere rough stake and piece of shapeless wood? Every stake fixed in an upright position is a portion of the cross; we render our adoration, if you will have it so, to a god entire and complete. We have shown before that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy.' The camp religion of the Romans is all through a wor- : [A premonition of the Labarum.]
ship of the standards, a setting the standards above all gods. Well, as those images deck- ing out the standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your standards and banners are robes of crosses. I praise your zeal: you would not consecrate crosses un- clothed and unadorned. Others, again, cer- tainly with more information and greater veri- similitude, believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself every- where in his own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer.' But you, many of you, also under pretence sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direc- tion of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sun-day to rejoicing, from a far differ- ent reason than Sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed they are ignorant. But lately a new edition of our god has been given to the world in that great city: it originated with a certain vile man who was wont to hire himself out to cheat the wild beasts, and who exhibited a picture with this inscription: The God of the Christians, born of an ass.* He had the ears of an ass, was hoofed in one foot, carried a book,3 and wore a toga. Both the name and the figure gave us amusement. But our op- ponents ought straightway to have done hom- age to this biformed divinity, for they have acknowledged gods dog-headed and lion- headed, with horn of buck and ram, with goat-like loins, with serpent legs, with wings sprouting from back or foot. These things we have discussed ex abundantly that we might not seem willingly to pass by any rumor against us unrefuted. Having thoroughly cleared ourselves, we turn now to an exhibi- ition of what our religion really is.
CHAP. XVII.
The object of our worship is the One God,* He who by His commanding word. His ar- ranging wisdom. His mighty power, brought forth from nothing this entire mass of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the glory of His majesty; whence also the Greeks have bestowed on it the name of K(5(T//of. The eye cannot see Him, though He is (spiritually) visible. He is incompre- 1 [As noted by Clement of Alexandria. See p. 535, Vol. II, and note.]
2 Onocoites. If with Oehler, Onochoietes, the meaning is '*aa» nanus sacerdos " (Oehler).
3 Referring evidently to the Scriptures; and showing vrhat th« Bible was to the early Christians.
4 [Kaye, p. 168. Remarks on natural religion.]
32 APOLOGY.
[chap. XVIII.
hensible, though in grace He is manifested. He is beyond our utmost thought, though our human faculties conceive of Him. He is therefore equally real and great. But that which, in the ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is inferior to the eyes by which it is taken in, and the hands by which it is tainted, and the faculties by which it is discovered; but that which is infinite is known only to itself. This it is which gives some notion of God, while yet beyond all our con- ceptions— our very incapacity of fully grasp- ing Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness, as at once known and unknown. And this is the crowning guilt of men,' that they will not recognize One, of whom they cannot possibly be ignorant. Would you have the proof from the works of His hands, so numerous and so great, which both contain you and sustain you, which min- ister at once to your enjoyment, and strike you with awe; or would you rather have,it from the testimony of the soul itself? Though under the oppressive bondage of the body, though led astray by depraving customs, though enervated by lusts and passions, though in slavery to false gods; yet, whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or a sleep, or a sickness, and attains something of its natural soundness, it speaks of God; using no other word, because this is the peculiar name of the true God. "God is great and good" — "Which may God give," are the words on every lip. It bears witness, too, that God is judge, exclaiming, "God sees," and, " I commend myself to God," and, "Godwin repay me." O noble testimony of the soul by nature ' Christian! Then, too, in using such words as these, it looks not to the Capitol, but to the heavens. It knows that there is the throne of the living God, as from Him and from thence itself came down.
CHAP. XVIII, But, that we might attain an ampler and more authoritative knowledge at once of Him- self, and of His counsels and will, God has added a written revelation for the behoof of every one whose heart is sefon seeking Him, that seeking he may find, and finding believe, and believing obey. For from the first He sent messengers into the world, — men whose stainless righteousness made them worthy to know the Most High, and to reveal Him, — men abundantly endowed with the Holy Spirit, that they might proclaim that there is one ' ^Though we are not by nature good, in our present estate; this ' is elsewhere demonstrated by Tertullian, as see cap. zviii.]
God only who made all things, who formed man from the dust of the ground (for He is the true Prometheus who gave order to the world by arranging the seasons and their course), — these have further set before us the proofs He has given of His majesty in His judgments by floods and fires, the rules ap- pointed by Him for securing His favour,' as well as the retribution in store for the ignor- ing, forsaking and keeping them, as being about at the end of all to adjudge His wor- shippers to everlasting life, and the wicked to the doom of fire at once without ending and without break, raising up again all the dead from the beginning, reforming and renewing them with the object of awarding either recom- pense. Once these things were with us, too, the theme of ridicule. We are of your stock and nature: men are made, not born, Chris- tians. The preachers of whom we have spoken are called prophets, from the office which be- longs to them of predicting the future. Their words, as well as the miracles which they per- formed, that men might have faith in their divine authority, we have still in the literary treasures they have left, and which are open to all. Ptolemy, surnamed PhiladelphuSj, the most learned of his race, a man of vast ac- quaintance with all literature, emulating, I imagine, the book enthusiasm of Pisistratus, among other remains of the past which either their antiquity or something of peculiar inter- est made famous, at the suggestion of Deme- trius Phalereus, who was renowned above all grammarians of his time, and to whom he had committed the management of these things, applied to the Jews for their writings — I mean the writings peculiar to them and in their tongue, which they alone possessed, for from themselves, as a people dear to God for their fathers' sake, their prophets had ever sprung, and to them they had ever spoken. Now in ancient times the people we call Jews bare the name of Hebrews, and so both their writ- ings and their speech were Hebrew. But that the understanding of their books might not be wanting, this also the Jews supplied to Ptolemy; for they gave him seventy-two in- terpreters— men whom the philosopher Mene- demus, the well-known asserter of a Provi- dence, regarded with respect as sharing in his views. The same account is given by Aris- taeus. So the king left these works unlocked to all, in the Greek language.^ To this day, at the temple of Serapis, the libraries of Ptol- em)'^ are to be seen, with the identical Hebrew originals in them. The Jews, too, read them publicly. Under a tribute-liberty, they are CHAP. XXI.]
APOL()(iY.
33 in the habit of going to hear them every Sab- bath. Whoever gives ear will find God in them; whoever takes pains to understand, will be compelled to believe.
CHAP. XIX.
Their high antiquity, first of all, claims au- thority for these writings. With you, too, it is a kind of religion to demand belief on this very ground. Well, all the substances, all the materials, the origins, classes, contents of your most ancient writings, even most nations and cities illustrious in the records of the past and noted for their antiquity in books of annals, — the very forms of your letters, those revealers and custodiers of events, nay (I think I speak still within the mark), your very gods themselves, your very temples and ora- cles, and sacred rites, are less ancient than the work of a single prophet, in whom you have i\vQ thesaurus of the entire Jewish reli- gion, and therefore too of ours. If you hap- pen to have heard of a certain Moses, I speak first of him: he is as far back as the Argive Inachus; by nearly four hundred years — only seven less — he precedes Danaus, your most ancient name; while he antedates by a mil- lennium the death of Priam. I might affirm, too, that he is five hundred years earlier than Homer, and have supporters of that view. The other prophets also, though of later date, are, even the most recent of them, as far back as the first of your philosophers, and legisla- tors, and historians. It is not so much the difficulty of the subject, as its vastness, that stands in the way of a statement of the grounds on which these statements rest; the matter is not so arduous as it would be tedious. It would require the anxious study of many books, and the fingers' busy reckoning. The histories of the most ancient nations, such as the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Phoeni- cians, would need to be ransacked; the men of these various nations who have information to give, would have to be called in as wit- nesses. Manetho the Egyptian, and Berosus the Chaldean, and Hieromus the Phoenician king of Tyre; their successors too, Ptolemy the Mendesian, and Demetrius Phalereus, and King Juba, and Apion, and Thallus, and their critic the Jew Josephus, the native vindicator of the ancient history of his people, who either authenticates or refutes the others. Also the Greek censors' lists must be compared, and the dates of events ascertained, that the chron- ological connections may be opened up, and thus the reckonings of the various annals be made to give forth light. We must go abroad into the histories and literature of all nations. And, in fact, we have already brought the 3 proof in part before you, in giving those hints as to how it is to be effected. But it seems better to delay the full discussion of this, lest in our haste we do not sufficiently carry it out, or lest in its thorough handling we make too lengthened a digression.
CHAP. XX.
To make up for our delay in this, we bring under your notice something of even greater importance; we point to tlie majesty of our Scriptures, if not to their antiquity. If you doubt that they are as ancient as we say, we offer proof that they are divine. And you may convince yourselves of this at once, and without going very far. Your instructors, the world, and the age, and the event, are all be- fore you. All that is taking place around you was fore-announced; ail that you now see with your eye was previously heard by the ear. The swallowing up of cities by the earth; the theft of islands by the sea; wars, bringing external and internal convulsions; the collis- ion of kingdoms with kingdoms; famines and pestilences, and local massacres, and widespread desolating mortalities; the exalt- ation of the lowly, and the humbling of the proud; the decay of righteousness, the growth of sin, the slackening interest in ail good ways; the very seasons and elements going out of their ordinary course, monsters and portents taking the place of nature's forms — it was all foreseen and predicted before it came to pass. While we suffer the calamities, we read of them in the Scriptures; as we ex- amine, they are proved. Well, the truth of a