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| Chapter III.—Charges Brought Against the Christians.
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Chapter III.—Charges Brought Against the Christians.
Three things are alleged against us: atheism, Thyestean
feasts,706
| 706 [See cap. xxxi. Our
Lord was “perfect man,” yet our author resents the idea
of eating the flesh of one’s own kind as worse than brutal. As
to the Eucharist the inference is plain.] | Œdipodean
intercourse. But if these charges are true, spare no class: proceed
at once against our crimes; destroy us root and branch, with our wives
and children, if any Christian707
| 707
Thus Otto; others read, “if any one of men.” |
is found to live like the brutes. And yet even the brutes do not
touch the flesh of their own kind; and they pair by a law of nature,
and only at the regular season, not from simple wantonness; they also
recognise those from whom they receive benefits. If any one, therefore,
is more savage than the brutes, what punishment that he can endure shall
be deemed adequate to such offences? But, if these things are only idle
tales and empty slanders, originating in the fact that virtue is opposed
by its very nature to vice, and that contraries war against one another
by a divine law (and you are yourselves witnesses that no such iniquities
are committed by us, for you forbid informations to be laid against us),
it remains for you to make inquiry concerning our life, our opinions,
our loyalty and obedience to you and your house and government, and thus
at length to grant to us the same rights (we ask nothing more) as to
those who persecute us. For we shall then conquer them, unhesitatingly
surrendering, as we now do, our very lives for the truth’s sake.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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