Tertullian: Apology
1. APOLOGY
[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL,
LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST’S
COLLEGE, CANTAB.]
CHAPTER 1
Rulers of the Roman Empire, if, seated for the administration of justice on
your lofty tribunal, under the gaze of every eye, and occupying there all
but the highest position in the state, you may not openly inquire into and
sift before the world the real truth in regard to the charges made against the
Christians; if in this case alone you are afraid or ashamed to exercise your
authority in making public inquiry with the carefulness which becomes
justice; if, finally, the extreme severities inflicted on our people in recently
private judgments, stand in the way of our being permitted to defend
ourselves before you, you cannot surely forbid the Truth to reach your
ears by the secret pathway of a noiseless book. She has no appeals to
make to you in regard of her condition, for that does not excite her wonder.
She knows that she is but a sojourner on the earth, and that among
strangers she naturally finds foes; and more than this, that her origin, her
dwelling-place, her hope, her recompense, her honors, are above. One
thing, meanwhile, she anxiously desires of earthly rulers — not to be
condemned unknown. What harm can it do to the laws, supreme in their
domain, to give her a hearing? Nay, for that part of it, will not their
absolute supremacy be more conspicuous in their condemning her, even
after she has made her plea? But if, unheard, sentence is pronounced
against her, besides the odium of an unjust deed, you will incur the merited
suspicion of doing it with some idea that it is unjust, as not wishing to
hear what you may not be able to hear and condemn. We lay this before
you as the first ground on which we urge that your hatred to the name of
Christian is unjust. And the very reason which seems to excuse this
injustice (I mean ignorance) at once aggravates and convicts it. For what is
there more unfair than to hate a thing of which you know nothing, even.26
though it deserve to be hated? Hatred is only merited when it is known to
be merited. But without that knowledge, whence is its justice to be
vindicated? for that is to be proved, not from the mere fact that an
aversion exists, but from acquaintance with the subject. When men, then,
give way to a dislike simply because they are entirely ignorant of the
nature of the thing disliked, why may it not be precisely the very sort of
thing they should not dislike? So we maintain that they are both ignorant
while they hate us, and hate us unrighteously while they continue in
ignorance, the one thing being the result of the other either way of it. The
proof of their ignorance, at once condemning and excusing their injustice, is
this, that those who once hated Christianity because they knew nothing
about it, no sooner come to know it than they all lay down at once their
enmity. From being its haters they become its disciples. By simply getting
acquainted with it, they begin now to hate what they had formerly been,
and to profess what they had formerly hated; and their numbers are as
great as are laid to our charge. The outcry is that the State is filled with
Christians — that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands: they
make lamentation, as for some calamity, that both sexes, every age and
condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the
Christian faith; and yet for all, their minds are not awakened to the thought
of some good they have failed to notice in it. They must not allow any
truer suspicions to cross their minds; they have no desire to make closer
trial. Here alone the curiosity of human nature slumbers. They like to be
ignorant, though to others the knowledge has been bliss. Anacharsis
reproved the rude venturing to criticize the cultured; how much more this
judging of those who know, by men who are entirely ignorant, might he
have denounced! Because they already dislike, they want to know no
more. Thus they prejudge that of which they are ignorant to be such, that,
if they came to know it, it could no longer be the object of their aversion;
since, if inquiry finds nothing worthy of dislike, it is certainly proper to
cease from an unjust dislike, while if its bad character comes plainly out,
instead of the detestation entertained for it being thus diminished, a
stronger reason for perseverance in that detestation is obtained, even under
the authority of justice itself. But, says one, a thing is not good merely
because multitudes go over to it; for how many have the bent of their
nature towards whatever is bad! how many go astray into ways of error!
It is undoubted. Yet a thing that is thoroughly evil, not even those whom it.
carries away venture to defend as good. Nature throws a veil either of fear
or shame over all evil. For instance, you find that criminals are eager to
conceal themselves, avoid appearing in public, are in trepidation when
they are caught, deny their guilt, when they are accused; even when they
are put to the rack, they do not easily or always confess; when there is no
doubt about their condemnation, they grieve for what they have done. In
their self-communings they admit their being impelled by sinful
dispositions, but they lay the blame either on fate or on the stars. They
are unwilling to acknowledge that the thing is theirs, because they own
that it is wicked. But what is there like this in the Christian’s case? The
only shame or regret he feels, is at not having been a Christian earlier. If he
is pointed out, he glories in it; if he is accused, he offers no defense;
interrogated, he makes voluntary confession; condemned he renders
thanks. What sort of evil thing is this, which wants all the ordinary
peculiarities of evil — fear, shame, subterfuge, penitence, lamenting?
What! is that a crime in which the criminal rejoices? to be accused of which
is his ardent wish, to be punished for which is his felicity? You cannot call
it madness, you who stand convicted of knowing nothing of the matter.
CHAPTER 2
If, again, it is certain that we are the most wicked of men, why do you
treat us so differently from our fellows, that is, from other criminals, it
being only fair that the same crime should get the same treatment? When
the charges made against us are made against others, they are permitted to
make use both of their own lips and of hired pleaders to show their
innocence. They have full opportunity of answer and debate; in fact, it is
against the law to condemn anybody undefended and unheard. Christians
alone are forbidden to say anything in exculpation of themselves, in
defense of the truth, to help the judge to a righteous decision; all that is
cared about is having what the public hatred demands — the confession of
the name, not examination of the charge: while in your ordinary judicial
investigations, on a man’s confession of the crime of murder, or sacrilege,
or incest, or treason, to take the points of which we are accused, you are
not content to proceed at once to sentence, — you do not take that step
till you thoroughly examine the circumstances of the confession — what is.
the real character of the deed, how often, where, in what way, when he has
done it, who were privy to it, and who actually took part with him in it.
Nothing like this is done in our case, though the falsehoods disseminated
about us ought to have the same sifting, that it might be found how many
murdered children each of us had tasted; how many incests each of us had
shrouded in darkness; what cooks, what dogs had been witness of our
deeds. Oh, how great the glory of the ruler who should bring to light some
Christian who had devoured a hundred infants! But, instead of that, we
find that even inquiry in regard to our case is forbidden. For the younger
Pliny, when he was ruler of a province, having condemned some Christians
to death, and driven some from their steadfastness, being still annoyed by
their great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan, the reigning
emperor, as to what he was to do with the rest, explaining to his master
that, except an obstinate disinclination to offer sacrifices, he found in the
religious services nothing but meetings at early morning for singing hymns
to Christ and God, and sealing home their way of life by a united pledge to
be faithful to their religion, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, and
other crimes. Upon this Trajan wrote back that Christians were by no
means to be sought after; but if they were brought before him, they should
be punished. O miserable deliverance, — under the necessities of the case,
a self-contradiction! It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it
commands them to be punished as guilty. It is at once merciful and cruel; it
passes by, and it punishes. Why dost thou play a game of evasion upon
thyself, O Judgment? If thou condemnest, why dost thou not also inquire.
If thou does not inquire, why dost thou not also absolve? Military
stations are distributed through all the provinces for tracking robbers.
Against traitors and public foes every man is a soldier; search is made even
for their confederates and accessories. The Christian alone must not be
sought, though he may be brought and accused before the judge; as if a
search had any other end than that in view! And so you condemn the man
for whom nobody wished a search to be made when he is presented to
you, and who even now does not deserve punishment, I suppose, because
of his guilt, but because, though forbidden to be sought, he was found.
And then, too, you do not in that case deal with us in the ordinary way of
judicial proceedings against offenders; for, in the case of others denying,
you apply the torture to make them confess — Christians alone you
torture, to make them deny; whereas, if we were guilty of any crime, we.
should be sure to deny it, and you with your tortures would force us to
confession. Nor indeed should you hold that our crimes require no such
investigation merely on the ground that you are convinced by our
confession of the name that the deeds were done, — you who are daily
wont, though you know well enough what murder is, none the less to
extract from the confessed murderer a full account of how the crime was
perpetrated. So that with all the greater perversity you act, when, holding
our crimes proved by our confession of the name of Christ, you drive us
by torture to fall from our confession, that, repudiating the name, we may
in like manner repudiate also the crimes with which, from that same
confession, you had assumed that we were chargeable. I suppose, though
you believe us to be the worst of mankind, you do not wish us to perish.
For thus, no doubt, you are in the habit of bidding the murderer deny, and
of ordering the man guilty of sacrilege to the rack if he persevere in his
acknowledgment! Is that the way of it? But if thus you do not deal with
us as criminals, you declare us thereby innocent, when as innocent you are
anxious that we do not persevere in a confession which you know will
bring on us a condemnation of necessity, not of justice, at your hands. “I
am a Christian,” the man cries out. He tells you what he is; you wish to
hear from him what he is not. Occupying your place of authority to extort
the truth, you do your utmost to get lies from us. “I am,” he says, “that
which you ask me if I am. Why do you torture me to sin? I confess, and
you put me to the rack. What would you do if I denied? Certainly you
give no ready credence to others when they deny. When we deny, you
believe at once. Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there
is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against
the forms, against the nature of public justice, even against the very laws
themselves. For, unless I am greatly mistaken, the laws enjoin offenders to
be searched out, and not to be hidden away. They lay it down that
persons who own a crime are to be condemned, not acquitted. The decrees
of the senate, the commands of your chiefs, lay this clearly down. The
power of which you are servants is a civil, not a tyrannical domination.
Among tyrants, indeed, torments used to be inflicted even as punishments:
with you they are mitigated to a means of questioning alone. Keep to your
law in these as necessary till confession is obtained; and if the torture is
anticipated by confession, there will be no occasion for it: sentence should
be passed; the criminal should be given over to the penalty which is his.
due, not released. Accordingly, no one is eager for the acquittal of the
guilty; it is not right to desire that, and so no one is ever compelled to
deny. Well, you think the Christian a man of every crime, an enemy of the
gods, of the emperor, of the laws, of good morals, of all nature; yet you
compel him to deny, that you may acquit him, which without his denial
you could not do. You play fast and loose with the laws. You wish him to
deny his guilt, that you may, even against his will, bring him out blameless
and free from all guilt in reference to the past! Whence is this strange
perversity on your part? How is it you do not reflect that a spontaneous
confession is greatly more worthy of credit than a compelled denial; or
consider whether, when compelled to deny, a man’s denial may not be in
good faith, and whether acquitted, he may not, then and there, as soon as
the trial is over, laugh at your hostility, a Christian as much as ever?
Seeing, then, that in everything you deal differently with us than with
other criminals, bent upon the one object of taking from us our name
(indeed, it is ours no more if we do what Christians never do), it is made
perfectly clear that there is no crime of any kind in the case, but merely a
name which a certain system, ever working against the truth, pursues with
its enmity, doing this chiefly with the object of securing that men may
have no desire to know for certain what they know for certain they are
entirely ignorant of. Hence, too, it is that they believe about us things of
which they have no proof, and they are disinclined to have them looked
into, lest the charges, they would rather take on trust, are all proved to
have no foundation, that the name so hostile to that rival power — its
crimes presumed, not proved — may be condemned simply on its own
confession. So we are put to the torture if we confess, and we are
punished if we persevere, and if we deny we are acquitted, because all the
contention is about a name. Finally, why do you read out of your
tablet-lists that such a man is a Christian? Why not also that he is a
murderer? And if a Christian is a murderer, why not guilty, too, of incest,
or any other vile thing you believe of us? In our case alone you are either
ashamed or unwilling to mention the very names of our crimes. If to be
called a “Christian” does not imply any crime, the name is surely very
hateful, when that of itself is made a crime..
CHAPTER 3
What are we to think of it, that most people so blindly knock their heads
against the hatred of the Christian name; that when they bear favorable
testimony to any one, they mingle with it abuse of the name he bears? “A
good man,” says one, “is Gaius Seius, only that he is a Christian.” So
another, “I am astonished that a wise man like Lucius should have
suddenly become a Christian.” Nobody thinks it needful to consider
whether Gaius is not good and Lucius wise, on this very account that he is
a Christian; or a Christian, for the reason that he is wise and good. They
praise what they know, they abuse what they are ignorant of, and they
inspire their knowledge with their ignorance; though in fairness you should
rather judge of what is unknown from what is known, than what is known
from what is unknown. Others, in the case of persons whom, before they
took the name of Christian, they had known as loose, and vile, and wicked,
put on them a brand from the very thing which they praise. In the
blindness of their hatred, they fall foul of their own approving judgment!
“What a woman she was! how wanton! how gay! What a youth he was!
how profligate! how libidinous! — they have become Christians!” So the
hated name is given to a reformation of character. Some even barter away
their comforts for that hatred, content to bear injury, if they are kept free
at home from the object of their bitter enmity. The wife, now chaste, the
husband, now no longer jealous, casts out of his house; the son, now
obedient, the father, who used to be so patient, disinherits; the servant,
now faithful, the master, once so mild, commands away from his presence;
it is a high offense for any one to be reformed by the detested name.
Goodness is of less value than hatred of Christians. Well now, if there is
this dislike of the name, what blame can you attach to names? What
accusation can you bring against mere designations, save that something in
the word sounds either barbarous, or unlucky, or scurrilous, or unchaste?
But Christian, so far as the meaning of the word is concerned, is derived
from anointing. Yes, and even when it is wrongly pronounced by you
“Chrestianus” (for you do not even know accurately the name you hate),
it comes from sweetness and benignity. You hate, therefore, in the
guiltless, even a guiltless name. But the special ground of dislike to the sect
is, that it bears the name of its Founder. Is there anything new in a.
religious sect getting for its followers a designation from its master? Are
not the philosophers called from the founders of their systems —
Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans? Are not the Stoics and Academics
so called also from the places in which they assembled and stationed
themselves? and are not physicians named from Erasistratus, grammarians
from Aristarchus, cooks even from Apicius? And yet the bearing of the
name, transmitted from the original institutor with whatever he has
instituted, offends no one. No doubt, if it is proved that the sect is a bad
one, and so its founder bad as well, that will prove that the name is bad
and deserves our aversion, in respect of the character both of the sect and
its author. Before, therefore, taking up a dislike to the name, it behooved
you to consider the sect in the author, or the author in the sect. But now,
without any sifting and knowledge of either, the mere name is made matter
of accusation, the mere name is assailed, and a sound alone brings
condemnation on a sect and its author both, while of both you are
ignorant, because they have such and such a designation, not because they
are convicted of anything wrong.
CHAPTER 4
And so, having made these remarks as it were by way of preface, that I
might show in its true colors the injustice of the public hatred against us, I
shall now take my stand on the plea of our blamelessness; and I shall not
only refute the things which are objected to us, but I shall also retort them
on the objectors, that in this way all may know that Christians are free
from the very crimes they are so well aware prevail among themselves,
that they may at the same time be put to the blush for their accusations
against us, — accusations I shall not say of the worst of men against the
best, but now, as they will have it, against those who are only their
fellows in sin. We shall reply to the accusation of all the various crimes we
are said to be guilty of in secret, such as we find them committing in the
light of day, and as being guilty of which we are held to be wicked,
senseless, worthy of punishment, deserving of ridicule. But since, when
our truth meets you successfully at all points, the authority of the laws as
a last resort is set up against it, so that it is either said that their
determinations are absolutely conclusive, or the necessity of obedience is,.
however unwillingly, preferred to the truth, I shall first, in this matter of
the laws grapple with you as with their chosen protectors. Now first,
when you sternly lay it down in your sentences, “It is not lawful for you
to exist,” and with unhesitating rigor you enjoin this to be carried out, you
exhibit the violence and unjust domination of mere tyranny, if you deny
the thing to be lawful, simply on the ground that you wish it to be
unlawful, not because it ought to be. But if you would have it unlawful
because it ought not to be lawful, without doubt that should have no
permission of law which does harm; and on this ground, in fact, it is
already determined that whatever is beneficial is legitimate. Well, if I have
found what your law prohibits to be good, as one who has arrived at such
a previous opinion, has it not lost its power to debar me from it, though
that very thing, if it were evil, it would justly forbid to me? If your law
has gone wrong, it is of human origin, I think; it has not fallen from heaven.
Is it wonderful that man should err in making a law, or come to his senses
in rejecting it? Did not the Lacedaemonians amend the laws of Lycurgus
himself, thereby inflicting such pain on their author that he shut himself
up, and doomed himself to death by starvation? Are you not yourselves
every day, in your efforts to illumine the darkness of antiquity, cutting
and hewing with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts, that whole
ancient and rugged forest of your laws? Has not Severus, that most
resolute of rulers, but yesterday repealed the ridiculous Papian laws which
compelled people to have children before the Julian laws allow matrimony
to be contracted, and that though they have the authority of age upon their
side? There were laws, too, in old times, that parties against whom a
decision had been given might be cut in pieces by their creditors; however,
by common consent that cruelty was afterwards erased from the statutes,
and the capital penalty turned into a brand of shame. By adopting the plan
of confiscating a debtor’s goods, it was sought rather to pour the blood in
blushes over his face than to pour it out. How many laws lie hidden out of
sight which still require to be reformed! For it is neither the number of
their years nor the dignity of their maker that commends them, but simply
that they are just; and therefore, when their injustice is recognized, they
are deservedly condemned, even though they condemn. Why speak we of
them as unjust? nay, if they punish mere names, we may well call them
irrational. But if they punish acts, why in our case do they punish acts
solely on the ground of a name, while in others they must have them.
proved not from the name, but from the wrong done? I am a practicer of
incest (so they say); why do they not inquire into it? I am an infant-killer;
why do they not apply the torture to get from me the truth? I am guilty of
crimes against the gods, against the Caesars; why am I, who am able to
clear myself, not allowed to be heard on my own behalf? No law forbids
the sifting of the crimes which it prohibits, for a judge never inflicts a
righteous vengeance if he is not well assured that a crime has been
committed; nor does a citizen render a true subjection to the law, if he does
not know the nature of the thing on which the punishment is inflicted. It is
not enough that a law is just, nor that the judge should be convinced of its
justice; those from whom obedience is expected should have that
conviction too. Nay, a law lies under strong suspicions which does not
care to have itself tried and approved: it is a positively wicked law, if,
unproved, it tyrannizes over men.
CHAPTER 5
To say a word about the origin of laws of the kind to which we now refer,
there was an old decree that no god should be consecrated by the emperor
till first approved by the senate. Marcus Aemilius had experience of this
in reference to his god Alburnus. And this, too, makes for our case, that
among you divinity is allotted at the judgment of human beings. Unless
gods give satisfaction to men, there will be no deification for them: the god
will have to propitiate the man.
Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry
into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of
events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ’s divinity, brought the
matter before the senate, with his own decision in favor of Christ. The
senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal.
Caesar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all accusers of the
Christians. Consult your histories; you will there find that Nero was the
first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect, making
progress then especially at Rome. But we glory in having our
condemnation hallowed by the hostility of such a wretch. For any one
who knows him, can understand that not except as being of singular
excellence did anything bring on it Nero’s condemnation. Domitian, too, a.
man of Nero’s type in cruelty, tried his hand at persecution; but as he had
something of the human in him, he soon put an end to what he had begun,
even restoring again those whom he had banished. Such as these have
always been our persecutors, — men unjust, impious, base, of whom even
you yourselves have no good to say, the sufferers under whose sentences
you have been wont to restore. But among so many princes from that time
to the present day, with anything of divine and human wisdom in them,
point out a single persecutor of the Christian name. So far from that, we,
on the contrary, bring before you one who was their protector, as you will
see by examining the letters of Marcus Aurelius, that most grave of
emperors, in which he bears his testimony that that Germanic drought was
removed by the rains obtained through the prayers of the Christians who
chanced to be fighting under him. And as he did not by public law remove
from Christians their legal disabilities, yet in another way he put them
openly aside, even adding a sentence of condemnation, and that of greater
severity, against their accusers. What sort of laws are these which the
impious alone execute against us — and the unjust, the vile, the bloody,
the senseless, the insane? which Trajan to some extent made nought by
forbidding Christians to be sought after; which neither a Hadrian, though
fond of searching into all things strange and new, nor a Vespasian, though
the subjugator of the Jews, nor a Pius, nor a Verus, ever enforced? It
should surely be judged more natural for bad men to be eradicated by good
princes as being their natural enemies, than by those of a spirit kindred
with their own.
CHAPTER 6
I would now have these most religious protectors and vindicators of the
laws and institutions of their fathers, tell me, in regard to their own fidelity
and the honor, and submission they themselves show to ancestral
institutions, if they have departed from nothing — if they have in nothing
gone out of the old paths — if they have not put aside whatsoever is most
useful and necessary as rules of a virtuous life. What has become of the
laws repressing expensive and ostentatious ways of living? which forbade
more than a hundred asses to be expended on a supper, and more than one
fowl to be set on the table at a time, and that not a fatted one; which.
expelled a patrician from the senate on the serious ground, as it was
counted, of aspiring to be too great, because he had acquired ten pounds of
silver; which put down the theaters as quickly as they arose to debauch
the manners of the people; which did not permit the insignia of official
dignities or of noble birth to be rashly or with impunity usurped? For I see
the Centenarian suppers must now bear the name, not from the hundred
asses, but from the hundred sestertia expended on them; and that mines of
silver are made into dishes (it were little if this applied only to senators,
and not to freedmen or even mere whip-spoilers). I see, too, that neither is
a single theater enough, nor are theaters unsheltered: no doubt it was that
immodest pleasure might not be torpid in the wintertime, the
Lacedaemonians invented their woolen cloaks for the plays. I see now no
difference between the dress of matrons and prostitutes. In regard to
women, indeed, those laws of your fathers, which used to be such an
encouragement to modesty and sobriety, have also fallen into desuetude,
when a woman had yet known no gold upon her save on the finger, which,
with the bridal ring, her husband had sacredly pledged to himself; when the
abstinence of women from wine was carried so far, that a matron, for
opening the compartments of a wine cellar, was starved to death by her
friends, — while in the times of Romulus, for merely tasting wine,
Mecenius killed his wife, and suffered nothing for the deed. With reference
to this also, it was the custom of women to kiss their relatives, that they
might be detected by their breath. Where is that happiness of married life,
ever so desirable, which distinguished our earlier manners, and as the result
of which for about 600 years there was not among us a single divorce?
Now, women have every member of the body heavy laden with gold;
wine-bibbing is so common among them, that the kiss is never offered with
their will; and as for divorce, they long for it as though it were the natural
consequence of marriage. The laws, too, your fathers in their wisdom had
enacted concerning the very gods themselves, you their most loyal children
have rescinded, The consuls, by the authority of the senate, banished
Father Bacchus and his mysteries not merely from the city, but from the
whole of Italy. The consuls Piso and Gabinius, no Christians surely,
forbade Serapis, and His, and Arpocrates, with their dog headed friend,
admission into the Capitol — in the act casting them out from the
assembly of the gods — overthrow their altars, and expelled them from the
country, being anxious to prevent the vices of their base and lascivious.
religion from spreading. These, you have restored, and conferred highest
honors on them. What has come to your religion — of the veneration due
by you to your ancestors? In your dress, in your food, in your style of
life, in your opinions, and last of all in your very speech, you have
renounced your progenitors. You are always praising antiquity, and yet
every day you have novelties in your way of living. From your having
failed to maintain what you should, you make it clear, that, while you
abandon the good ways of your fathers, you retain and guard the things
you ought not. Yet the very tradition of your fathers, which you still seem
so faithfully to defend, and in which you find your principal matter of
accusation against the Christians — I mean zeal in the worship of the
gods, the point in which antiquity has mainly erred — although you have
rebuilt the altars of Serapis, now a Roman deity, and to Bacchus, now
become a God of Italy, you offer up your orgies, — I shall in its proper
place show that you despise, neglect, and overthrow, casting entirely aside
the authority of the men of old. I go on meantime to reply to that
infamous charge of secret crimes, clearing my way to things of open day.
