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[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]
WE are not in any great perturbation or alarm about the
persecutions we suffer from the ignorance of men; for we have attached
ourselves to this sect, fully accepting the terms of its covenant, so
that, as men whose very lives are not their own, we engage in these
conflicts, our desire being to obtain God's promised rewards, and our
dread lest the woes with which He threatens an unchristian life should
overtake us. Hence we shrink not from the grapple with your utmost
rage, coming even forth of our own accord to the contest; and
condemnation gives us more pleas-are than acquittal. We have sent,
therefore, this tract to you in no alarm about ourselves, but in much
concern for you and for all our enemies, to say nothing of our friends.
For our religion commands us to love even our enemies, and to pray for
those who persecute us, aiming at a perfection all its own, and seeking
in its disciples something of a higher type than the commonplace
goodness of the world. For all love those who love them; it is peculiar
to Christians alone to love those that hate them. Therefore mourning
over your ignorance, and compassionating human error, and looking on to
that future of which every day shows threatening signs, necessity is
laid on us to come forth in this way also, that we may set before you
the truths you will not listen to openly.
We are worshippers of one God, of whose existence and character
Nature teaches all men; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble,
whose benefits minister to your happiness. You think that others, too,
are gods, whom we know to be devils. However, it is a fundamental human
right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according
to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps
another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion—to
which free-will and not force should lead us—the sacrificial victims
even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service
to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can have no desire
of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit
of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine. Accordingly the
true God bestows His blessings alike on wicked men and on His own
elect; upon which account He has appointed an eternal judgment, when
both thankful and unthankful will have to stand before His bar. Yet you
have never detected us—sacrilegious wretches though you reckon us to
be—in any theft, far less in any sacrilege. But the robbers of your
temples, all of them swear by your gods, and worship them; they are not
Christians, and yet it is they who are found guilty of sacrilegious
deeds. We have not time to unfold in how many other ways your gods are
mocked and despised by their own votaries. So, too, treason is falsely
laid to our charge, though no one has ever been able to find followers
of Albinus, or Niger, or Cassius, among Christians; while the very men
who had sworn by the genii of the emperors, who had offered and vowed
sacrifices for their safety, who had often pronounced condemnation on
Christ's disciples, are till this day found traitors to the imperial
throne. A Christian is enemy to none, least of all to the Emperor of
Rome, whom he knows to be appointed by his God, and so cannot but love
and honour; and whose well-being moreover, he must needs desire, with
that of the empire over which he reigns so long as the world shall
stand—for so long as that shall Rome continue.(2) To the emperor,
therefore, we render such reverential homage as is lawful for us and
good for him; regarding him as the human being next to God who from God
has received all his power, and is less than God alone. And this will
be according to his own desires. For thus—as less only than the true
God—he is greater than all besides. Thus he is greater than the very
gods themselves, even they, too, being subject to him. We therefore
sacrifice for the emperor's safety, but to our God and his, and after
the manner God has enjoined, in simple prayer. For God, Creator of the
universe, has no need of odours or of blood. These things are the food
of devils.(1) But we not only reject those wicked spirits: we overcome
them; we daily hold them up to contempt; we exorcise them from their
victims, as multitudes can testify. So all the more we pray for the
imperial well-being, as those who seek it at the hands of Him who is
able to bestow it. And one would think it must be abundantly clear to
you that the religious system under whose rules we act is one
inculcating a divine patience; since, though our numbers are so
great—constituting all but the majority in every city—we conduct
ourselves so quietly and modestly; I might perhaps say, known rather as
individuals than as organized communities, and remarkable only for the
reformation of our former vices. For far be it from us to take it ill
that we have laid on us the very things we wish, or in any way plot the
vengeance at our own hands, which we expect to come from God.
However, as we have already remarked, it cannot but distress us
that no state shall bear unpunished the guilt of shedding Christian
blood; as you see, indeed, in what took place during the presidency of
Hilarian, for when there had been some agitation about places of
sepulture for our dead, and the cry arose, "No areoe—no burial-grounds
for the Christians," it came that their own areoe,(2) their
threshing-floors, were awanting, for they gathered in no harvests. As
to the rains of the bygone year, it is abundantly plain of what they
were intended to remind men—of the deluge, no doubt, which in ancient
times overtook human unbelief and wickedness; and as to the fires which
lately hung all night over the walls of Carthage, they who saw them
know what they threatened; and what the preceding thunders pealed, they
who were hardened by them can tell. All these things are signs of God's
impending wrath, which we must needs publish and proclaim in every
possible way; and in the meanwhile we must pray it may be only local.
Sure are they to experience it one day in its universal and final form,
who interpret otherwise these samples of it. That sun, too, in the
metropolis of Utica,(3) with light all but extinguished, was a portent
which could not have occurred from an ordinary eclipse, situated as the
lord of day was in his height and house. You have the astrologers,
consult them about it. We can point you also to the deaths of some
provincial rulers, who in their last hours had painful memories of
their sin in persecuting the followers of Christ.(4) Vigellius
Saturninus, who first here used the sword against us, lost his
eyesight. Claudius Lucius Herminianus in Cappadocia, enraged that his
wife had become a Christian, had treated the Christians with great
cruelty: well, left alone in his palace, suffering under a contagious
malady, he boiled out in living worms, and was heard exclaiming, "Let
nobody know of it, lest the Christians rejoice, and Christian wives
take encouragement." Afterwards he came to see his error in having
tempted so many from their stedfastness by the tortures he inflicted,
and died almost a Christian himself. In that doom which overtook
Byzantium,(3) Caecilius Capella could not help crying out, "Christians,
rejoice!" Yes, and the persecutors who seem to themselves to have acted
with impunity shall not escape the day of judgment. For you we
sincerely wish it may prove to have been a warning only, that,
immediately after you had condemned Mavilus of Adrumetum to the wild
beasts, you were overtaken by those troubles, and that even now for the
same reason you are called to a blood-reckoning. But do not forget the
future.
We who are without fear ourselves are not seeking to frighten
you, but we would save all men if possible by warning them not to fight
with God.(5) You may perform the duties of your charge, and yet
remember the claims of humanity; if on no other ground than that you
are liable to punishment yourself, (you ought to do so). For is not
your commission simply to condemn those who confess their guilt, and to
give over to the torture those who deny? You see, then, how you
trespass yourselves against your instructions to wring from the
confessing a denial. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment of our innocence
that you refuse to condemn us at once when we confess. In doing your
utmost to extirpate us, if that is your object, it is innocence you
assail. But how many rulers, men more resolute and more cruel than you
are, have contrived to get quit of such causes altogether,—as Cincius
Severus, who himself suggested the remedy at Thysdris, pointing out how
the Christians should answer that they might secure an acquittal; as
Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed from his bar a Christian, on the
ground that to satisfy his fellow-citizens would break the peace of the
community; as Asper, who, in the case of a man who gave up his faith
under slight infliction of the torture, did not compel the offering of
sacrifice, having owned before, among the advocates and assessors of
court, that he was annoyed at having had to meddle with such a case.
Pudens, too, at once dismissed a Christian who was brought before him,
perceiving from the indictment that it was a case of vexatious
accusation; tearing the document in pieces, he refused so much as to
hear him without the presence of his accuser, as not being consistent
with the imperial commands. All this might be officially brought Under
your notice, and by the very advocates, who are themselves also under
obligations to us, although in court they give their voice as it suits
them. The clerk of one of them who was liable to be thrown upon the
ground by an evil spirit, was set free from his affliction; as was also
the relative of another, and the little boy of a third. How many men of
rank (to say nothing of common people) have been delivered from devils,
and healed of diseases! Even Severus himself, the father of Antonine,
was graciously mindful of the Christians; for he sought out the
Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in
gratitude for his having once cured him by anointing, he kept him in
his palace till the day of his death.(1) Antonine, too, brought up as
he was on Christian milk, was intimately acquainted with this man. Both
women and men of highest rank, whom Severus knew well to be Christians,
were not merely permitted by him to remain uninjured; but he even bore
distinguished testimony in their favour, and gave them publicly back to
us from the hands of a raging populace. Marcus Aurelius also, in his
expedition to Germany, by the prayers his Christian soldiers offered to
God, got rain in that well-known thirst.(2) When, indeed, have not
droughts been put away by our kneelings and our fastings? At times like
these, moreover, the people crying to "the God of gods, the alone
Omnipotent," under the name of Jupiter, have borne witness to our God.
Then we never deny the deposit placed in our hands; we never pollute
the marriage bed; we deal faithfully with our wards; we give aid to the
needy; we render to none evil for evil. As for those who falsely
pretend to belong to us, and whom we, too, repudiate, let them answer
for themselves. In a word, who has complaint to make against us on
other grounds? To what else does the Christian devote himself, save the
affairs of his own community, which during all the long period of its
existence no one has ever proved guilty of the incest or the cruelty
charged against it? It is for freedom from crime so singular, for a
probity so great, for righteousness, for purity, for faithfulness, for
truth, for the living God, that we are consigned to the flames; for
this is a punishment you are not wont to inflict either on the
sacrilegious, or on undoubted public enemies, or on the
treason-tainted, of whom you have so many. Nay, even now our people are
enduring persecution from the governors of Legio and Mauritania; but it
is only with the sword, as from the first it was ordained that we
should suffer. But the greater our conflicts, the greater our rewards.
Your cruelty is our glory. Only see you to it, that in having
such things as these to endure, we do not feel ourselves constrained to
rush forth to the combat, if only to prove that we have no dread of
them, but on the contrary, even invite their infliction. When Arrius
Antoninus was driving things hard in Asia, the whole Christians of the
province, in one united band, presented themselves before his
judgment-seat; on which, ordering a few to be led forth to execution,
he said to the rest, "O miserable men, if you wish to die, you have
precipices or halters." If we should take it into our heads to do the
same thing here, what will you make of so many thousands, of such a
multitude of men and women, persons of every sex and every age and
every rank, when they present themselves before you? How many fires,
how many swords will be required? What will be the anguish of Carthage
itself, which you will have to decimate,(3) as each one recognises
there his rela- tives and companions, as he sees there it may be men of
your own order, and noble ladies, and all the leading persons of the
city, and either kinsmen or friends of those of your own circle? Spare
thyself, if not us poor Christians! Spare Carthage, if not thyself!
Spare the province, which the indication of your purpose has subjected
to the threats and extortions at once of the soldiers and of private
enemies.
We have no master but God. He is before you, and cannot be hidden
from you, but to Him you can do no injury. But those whom you regard as
masters are only men, and one day they themselves must die. Yet still
this community will be undying, for be assured that just in the time of
its seeming overthrow it is built up into greater power. For all who
witness the noble patience of its martyrs, as struck with misgivings,
are inflamed with desire to examine into the matter in question;(1) and
as soon as they come to know the truth, they straightway enrol
themselves its disciples.
I.
(Scapula, cap. i., p. 105.)
SCAPULA was Proconsul of Carthage, and though its date is
conjectural (A.D. 217), this work gives valuable indices of its time
and circumstances. It was composed after the death of Severus, to whom
there is an allusion in chapter iv., after the destruction of Byzantium
(A.D. 196), to which there is a reference in chapter iii.; and Dr.
Allix suggests, after the dark day of Utica (A.D. 210) which he
supposes to be referred to in the same chapter. Cincius Severus, who is
mentioned in chapter iv., was put to death by Severus, A.D. 198.
II.
(Caractacus, cap. ii., note 2, p. 105.)
Mr. Lewin (St. Paul, ii. 397), building on the fascinating theory
of Archdeacon Williams, thinks St. Paul's Claudia (Qu. Gladys?) may
very well have been the daughter of Caradoc, with whose noble character
we are made acquainted by Tacitus. (Annals xii. 36.) And Archdeacon
Williams gives us very strong reason to believe he was a Christian. He
may very well have lived to behold the Coliseum completed. What more
natural then, in view of the cruelty against Christians there
exercised, for the expressions with which he is credited? In this case
his words contain an eloquent ambiguity, which Christians would
appreciate, and which may have been in our author's mind when he
says—"quousque saeculum stabit." To those who looked for the Second
Advent, daily, this did not mean what the heathen might suppose.
Bede's version of the speech (See Du Cange, II., 407.,) is this:
"Quandiu stabit Colyseus—stabit et Roma: Quando cadet Colysevs—cadet
et Roma: Quando cadet Roma—cadet et mundus."