prophecy, I think, is the demonstration of its being from above. Hence there is among us an assured faith in regard to coming events as things already proved to us, for they were predicted along with what we have day by day fulfilled. They are uttered by the same voices, they are written in the same books — the same Spirit inspires them. All time is one to prophecy foretelling the future. Among men, it may be, a distinction of times is made while the fulfilment is going on: from being future we think of it as present, and then from be- ing present we count it as belonging to the past. How are we to blame, I pray you, that we believe in things to come as though they already were, with the grounds we have for our faith in these two steps?
CHAP. XXI.
But having asserted that our religion is supported by the writings of the Jews, the oldest which exist, though it is generally known, and we fully admit that it dates from a comparatively recent period — no further 34 APOLOGY.
[chap. XXI.
back indeed than the reign of Tiberius — a question may perhaps be raised on this ground about its standing, as if it were hiding some- thing of its presumption under shadow of an illustrious religion, one which has at any rate undoubted allowance of the law, or because, apart from the question of age, we neither accord with the Jews in their peculiarities in regard to food, nor in their sacred days, nor even in their well-known bodily sign, nor in the possession of a common name, which surely behoved to be the case if we did homage to the same God as they. Then, too, the common people have now some knowledge of Christ, and think of Him as but a man, one indeed such as the Jews condemned, so that some may naturally enough have taken up the idea that we are worshippers of a mere human being. But we are neither ashamed of Christ — for we rejoice to be counted His disciples, and in His name to suffer — nor do we differ from the Jews concerning God. We must make, therefore, a remark or two as to Christ's divinity. In former times the Jews enjoyed much of God's favour, when the fathers of their race were noted for their righteousness and faith. So it was that as a people they flour- ished greatly, and their kingdom attained to a lofty eminence; and so highly blessed were they, that for their instruction God spake to them in special revelations, pointing out to them beforehand how they should merit His favor and avoid His displeasure. But how deeply they have sinned, puffed up to their fall with a false trust in their noble ancestors, turning from God's way into a way of sheer impiety, though they themselves should refuse to admit it, their present national ruin would afford sufficient proof. Scattered abroad, a race of wanderers, exiles from their own land and clime, they roam over the whole world without either a human or a heavenly king, not possessing even the stranger's right to set so much as a simple footstep in their native country. The sacred writers withal, in giving previous warning of these things, all with equal clearness ever declared that, in the last days of the world, God would, out of every nation, and people, and country, choose for Himself more faithful worshippers, upon whom He would bestow His grace, and that indeed in ampler measure, in keeping with the enlarged capacities of a nobler dispensa- tion. Accordingly, He appeared among us, whose coming to renovate and illuminate man's nature was pre-announced by God — I mean Christ, that Son of God. And so the su- preme Head and Master of this grace and discipline, the Enlightener and Trainer of the human race, God's own Son, was announced among us, born — but not so born as to make Him ashamed of the name of Son or of His paternal origin. It was not His lot to have as His father, by incest with a sister, or by violation of a daughter or another's wife, a god in the shape of serpent, or ox, or bird, or lover, for his vile ends transmuting himself into the gold of Danaus. They are your divini- ties upon whom these base deeds of Jupiter were done. But the Son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity; she, whom men suppose to be His mother in the or- dinary way, had never entered into the mar- riage bond.' But, first, I shall discuss His es- sential nature, and so the nature of His birth will be understood. We have already asserted that God made the world, and all which it contains, by His Word, and Reason, and Power. It is abundantly plain that your phi- losophers, too, regard the Logos — that is, the Word and Reason — as the Creator of the uni- verse. For Zeno lays it down that he is the creator, having made all things according to a determinate plan; that his name is Fate, and God, and the soul of Jupiter, and the necessity of all things. Cleanthes ascribes all this to spirit, which he maintains pervades the universe. And we, in like manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and Power, by which we have said God made all, have spirit as their proper and essential substratum, in which the Word has inbeing to give forth utterances, and reason abides to dispose and arrange, and power is over all to execute. We have been taught that He proceeds forth from Gqd, and in that procession He is generated; so that He is the Son of God, and is called God from unity of substance with God., For Gdd, too, is a Spirit. Even when the ray is shot from the sun, it is still part of the parent-mass; the sun will still be in the ray, because it is a ray of the sun — there is no division of sub- stance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light of light is kindled.^ The material matrix re- mains entire and unimpaired, though you derive from it any number of shoots possessed of its qualities; so, too, that which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one. In this way also, as He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, He is made a second in manner of existence — in position, not in nature; and He did not withdraw from the original source, but went forth. This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descending into a certain virgin, and made flesh in her womb, ' [That is, by the consummation of her marriage with Joseph.] 2 [language common among Christians, and adopted afterward* into the Creed.]
CHAP. XXI.]
APOLOGY.
35 is in His birth Ciod and man united. The flesh formed by the Spirit is nourislied, grows up to manhood, speaks, teaches, works, and is the Christ. Receive meanwhile this fable, if you choose to call it so — it is like some of your own — while we go on to show how Christ's claims are proved, and who the parties are with you by whom such fables have been set agoing to overthrow the truth, which they re- semble. The Jews, too, were well aware that Christ was coming,as those to whom the proph- ets spake. Nay, even now His advent- is expected by them; nor is there any other con- tention between them and us, than that they believe the advent has not yet occurred. For two comings of Christ having been revealed to us: a first, which has been fulfilled in the lowliness of a human lot; a second, which impends over the world, now near its close, in all the majesty of Deity unveiled; and, by misunderstanding the first, they have con- cluded that the second — which, as matter of more manifest prediction, they set their hopes on — is the only one. It was the merited pun- ishment of their sin not to understand the Lord's first advent: for if they had, they would have believed; and if they had believed, they would have obtained salvation. They themselves read how it is written of them that they are deprived of wisdom and understand- ing— of the use of eyes and ears.' As, then, under the force of their pre-judgment, they had convinced themselves from His lowly guise that Christ was no more than man, it fol- lowed from that, as a necessaiy consequence, that they should hold Him a magician from the powers which He displayed, — expelling devils from men by a word, restoring vision to the blind, cleansing the leprous, reinvigorating the paralytic, summoning the dead to life again, making the very elements of nature obey Him, stilling the storms and walking on the sea; proving that He was the Logos of God, -that primordial first-begotten Word, accom- panied by power and reason, and based on Spirit, — that He who was now doing all things by His word, and He who hacf done that of old, were one and the same. But the Jews were so exasperated by His teaching, by which their rulers and chiefs were convicted of the truth, chiefly because so many turned aside to Him, that at last they brought Him before Pontius Pilate, at that time Roman governor of Syria; and, by the violence of their outcries against Him, extorted a sentence giving Him up to them to be crucified. He Himself had predicted this; which, however, would have signified little had not the prophets of old ' Isa. vi. lo.
done it as well. And yet, nailed upon the cross. He exhibited many notable signs, by which His death was distinguished from all others. At His own free-will. He with a word dismissed from Him His spirit, anticipating the executioner's work. In the same hour, too, the light of day was withdrawn, when the sun at the very time was in his meridian blaze. Those who were not aware that this had been predicted about Christ, no doubt thought it an eclipse. You yourselves have the account of the world-portent still in your archives. - Then, when His body was taken down from the cross and placed in a sepulchre, the Jews in their eager watchfulness surrounded it with a large military guard, lest, as He had pre- dicted His resurrection from the dead on the third day. His disciples might remove by stealth His body, and deceive even the in- credulous. But, lo, on the third day there was a sudden shock of earthquake, and the stone which sealed the sepulchre was rolled away, and the guard fled off in terror: without a single disciple near, the grave was found empty of all but the clothes of the buried One. But nevertheless, the leaders of the Jews, whom it nearly concerned both to spread abroad a lie, and keep back a people tributary and submissive to them from the faith, gave it out that the body of Christ had been stolen by His followers. For the Lord, you see, did not go forth into the public gaze, lest the wicked should be delivered from their error; that faith also, destined to a great reward, might hold its ground in difficulty. But He spent forty days with some of His disciples down in Galilee, a region of Judea, instructing them in the doctrines they were to teach to others. Thereafter, having given them com- mission to preach the gospel through the world. He was encompassed with a cloud and taken up to heaven, — a fact more certain far than the assertions of your Proculi concerning Romulus. 3 AJl these things Pilate did to Christ; and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reign- ing Caesar, who was at the time Tiberius. Yes, and the Caesars too would have believed on Christ, if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars. His disciples also, spread- ing over the world, did as their Divine Master bade them; and after suffering greatly them- selves from the persecutions of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith un- doubting in the truth, at last by Nero's cruel sword sowed the seed of Christian blood at 2 Elucidation V.
3 Proculus was a Roman senator who affirmed that Romuliu had appeared to him after bis death.
3^ APOLOGY.
[CHAP. XXII.
Rome.' Yes, and we shall prove that even your own gods are effective witnesses for Christ. It is a great matter if, to give you faith in Christians, I can bring forward the authority of the very beings on account of whom you refuse them credit. Thus far we have carried out the plan we laid down. We have set forth this origin of our sect and name, with this account of the Founder of Christian- ity. Let no one henceforth charge us with infa- mous wickedness; let no one think that it is otherwise than we have represented, for none may give a false account of his religion. For in the very fact that he says he worships another god than he really does, he is guilty of deny- ing the object of his worship, and transferring his worship and homage to another; and, in the transference, he ceases to worship the god he has repudiated. We say, and before all men we say, and torn and bleeding under your tortures, we cry out, " We worship God through Christ." Count Christ a man, if you please; by Him and in Him God would be known and be adored. If the Jews object, we answer that Moses, who was but a man, taught them their religion; against the Greeks we urge that Orpheus at Pieria, Musgeus at Athens, Melampus at Argos, Trophonius in Bceotia, imposed religious rites; turning to yourselves, who exercise sway over the na- tions, it was the man Numa Pompilius who I'aid on the Romans a heavy load of costly superstitions. Surely Christ, then, had a right to reveal Deity, which was in fact His own es- sentia/ possession, not with the object of bringing boors and savages by the dread of multitudinous gods, whose favour must be won, into some civilization, as was the case with Numa; but as one who aimed to enlighten men already civilized, and under illusions ■from their very culture, that they might come to the knowledge of the truth. Search, then, and see if that divinity of Christ be true. If it be or such a nature that the acceptance of it transforms a man, and makes him truly good, cnere is implied in that the duty of re- nouncing what is opposed to it as false; es- pecially and on every ground that which, hiding itself under the names and images of dead, the labours to convince men of its divin- ity by certam signs, and miracles, and oracles.
CHAP. XXII.
And we amrm indeed the existence of cer- tain spiritual essences; nor is their name un- familiar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself waiting on a » [Chapter 1. at close. " The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church."]
demon's will. Why not? since it is said an evil spirit attached itself specially to him even from his childhood — turning his mind no doubt from what was good. The poets are all acquainted with demons too; even the ig- norant common people make frequent use of them in cursing. In fact, they call upon Satan, the demon-chief, in their execrations, as though from some instinctive soul-knowledge of him. Plato also admits the existence of angels. The dealers in magic, no less, come forward as witnesses to the existence of both kinds of spirits. We are instructed, more- over, by our sacred books how from certain angels, who fell of their own free-will, there sprang a more wicked demon-brood, con- demned of God along with the authors of their race, and that chief we have referred to. It will for the present be enough, however, that some account is given of their work. Their great business is the ruin of mankind. So, from the very first, spiritual wickedness sought our destruction. They inflict, accordingly, upon our bodies diseases and other grievous calamities, while by violent assaults they hurry the soul into sudden and extraordinary ex- cesses. Their marvellous subtleness and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature. As spiritual, they can do no harm; for, invisible and intangible, we are not cog- nizant of their action save by its effects, as when some inexplicable, unseen poison in the breeze blights the apples and the grain while in the flower, or kills them in the bud, or destroys them when they have reached ma- turity; as though by the tainted atmosphere in some unknown way spreading abroad its pestilential exhalations. So, too, by an in- fluence equally obscure, demons and angels breathe into the soul, and rouse up its corrup- tions with furious passions and vile excesses; or with cruel lusts accompanied by various errors, of which the worst is that by which these deities are commended to the favour of deceived and deluded human beings, that they may get their proper food of flesh-fumes and blood when that is offered up to idol-images. What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men's minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? And here I explain how these illusions are man- aged. Every spirit is possessed of wings. This is a common property of both angels and demons. • So they are everywhere in a single moment •, the whole world is as one place to them; all that is done over the whole extent of it, it is as easy for them to know as to re- port. Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown. Thus they would have themselves thought CHAP. XXIIl.]
APOLOGY.
Z1 sometimes the authors of the things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some in- timations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal His divinations. But the skill with which their responses are shaped to meet events, your Croesi and Pyrrhi know too well. On the other hand, it was in that way we have ex- plained, the Pythian was able to declare that they were cooking a tortoise ' with the flesh of a lamb; in a moment he had been to Lydia. From dwelling in the air, and their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds, they have means of knowing the prepara- tory processes going on in these upper regions, and thus can give promise of the rains which they already feel. Very kind too, no doubt, they are in regard to the healing of diseases. For, first of 'all, they make you ill; then, to get a miracle out of it, they command the ap- plication of remedies either altogether new, or contrary to those in use, and straightway withdrawing hurtful influence, they are sup- posed to have wrought a cure. What need, then, to speak of their other artifices, or yet further of the deceptive power which they have as spirits: of these Castor apparitions,^ of water carried by a sieve, and a ship drawn along by a girdle, and a beard reddened by a touch, all done with the one object of showing that men should believe in the deity of stones, and not seek after the only true God?
CHAP. XXIII.
Moreover, if sorcerers call forth ghosts, and even make what seem the souls of the dead to appear; if they put boys to death, in order to get a response from the oracle; if, with their juggling illusions, they make a pretence of doing various miracles; if they put dreams into people's minds by the power of the angels and demons whose aid they have invited, by whose influence, too, goats and tables are made "to divine, — how much more likely is this power of evil to be zealous in doing with all its might, of its own inclination, and for its own objects, what it does to serve the ends of others! Or if both angels and demons do just what your gods do, where in that case is the pre-eminence of deity, which we must surely think to be above all in might? Will ' Herodotus, I. 47. [See Wilberforce's Fh>e Empires, p. 67.] ■'[Castor and Pollux. Imitated in saint worship.]
it not then be more reasonable to hold that these spirits make themselves gods, giving as they do the very proofs which raise your gods to godhead, than that the gods are the equals of angels and demons? You make a distinc- tion of places, I suppose, regarding as gods in their temple those whose divinity you do not recognize elsewhere; counting the mad- ness which leads one man to leap from the sacred houses, to be something different from that which leads another to leap from an ad- joining house; looking on one who cuts his arms and secret parts as under a different furor from another who cuts his throat. The result of the frenzy is the same, and the man- ner of instigation is one. But thus far we have been dealing only in words: we now proceed to a proof of facts, in which we shall show that under different names you have real identity. Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoni- acal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden to speak by a follower of Christ, ^ will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a de- mon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god. Or, if you will, let there be pro- duced one of the god-possessed, as they are supposed, who, inhaling at the altar, conceive divinity from the fumes, who are delivered of it by retching, who vent it forth in agonies of gasping. Let that same Virgin Caelestis her- self the rain-promiser, let yEsculapius dis- coverer of medicines, ready to prolong the life of Socordius, and Tenatius, and Asclepiodo- tus, now in the last extremity, if they would not confess, in their fear of lying to a Chris- tian, that they were demons, then and there shed the blood of that most impudent follower of Christ. What clearer than a work like that? what more trustworthy than such a proof? The simpHcity of truth is thus set forth; its own worth sustains it; no ground remains for the least suspicion. Do you say that it is done by magic, or some trick of that sort? You will not say anything of the sort, if you have been allowed the use of your ears and eyes. For what argument can you bring against a thing that is exhibited to the eye in its naked reality? If, on the one hand, they are really gods, why do ttiey pretend to be de- mons? Is it from fear of us? In that case your divinity is put in subjection to Christians; and you surely can never ascribe deity to that which is under authority of man, nay (if it adds aught to the disgrace) of its very ene- mies. If, on the other hand, they are demons or angels, why, inconsistently with this, do