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| Chapter XXVII. The Christians are Hated Unjustly.
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Chapter XXVII.—The Christians are Hated Unjustly.
And if you adhere to their teaching, why do
you fight against me for choosing such views of doctrine as I approve? Is
it not unreasonable that, while the robber is not to be punished for the
name he bears,494
| 494 [Athenagoras,
Embassy, cap. ii., infra.] | but only when the
truth about him has been clearly ascertained, yet we are to be assailed
with abuse on a judgment formed without examination? Diagoras was an
Athenian, but you punished him for divulging the Athenian mysteries;
yet you who read his Phrygian discourses hate us. You possess the
commentaries of Leo, and are displeased with our refutations of them;
and having in your hands the opinions of Apion concerning the Egyptian
gods, you denounce us as most impious. The tomb of Olympian Zeus
is shown among you,495
though some one says that the Cretans are liars.496
| 496 Comp. Tit. i. 12. Callimachus
is probably the author referred to, through others express the same
opinion respecting the Cretans. | Your assembly of many gods is
nothing. Though their despiser Epicurus acts as a torch-bearer,497
| 497 Accommodating himself to
the popular opinions, through fear. | I do not any the more
conceal from the rulers that view of God which I hold in relation to
His government of the universe. Why do you advise me to be false to my
principles? Why do you who say that you despise death exhort us to use
art in order to escape it? I have not the heart of a deer; but your zeal
for dialectics resembles the loquacity of
Thersites. How can I believe one who tells me that the sun is a red-hot
mass and the moon an earth? Such assertions are mere logomachies, and
not a sober exposition of truth. How can it be otherwise than foolish to
credit the books of Herodotus relating to the history of Hercules, which
tell of an upper earth from which the lion came down that was killed by
Hercules? And what avails the Attic style, the sorites of philosophers,
the plausibilities of syllogisms, the measurements of the earth, the
positions of the stars, and the course of the sun? To be occupied in
such inquiries is the work of one who imposes opinions on himself as if
they were laws.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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