Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XI.—The Moral Teaching of the Christians Repels the Charge Brought Against Them.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XI.—The Moral Teaching of the Christians Repels the Charge Brought Against Them.
If I go minutely into the particulars of our doctrine,
let it not surprise you. It is that you may not be carried away by the
popular and irrational opinion, but may have the truth clearly before
you. For presenting the opinions themselves to which we adhere, as being
not human but uttered and taught by God, we shall be able to persuade
you not to think of us as atheists. What, then, are those teachings
in which we are brought up? “I say unto you, Love your enemies;
bless them that curse you; pray for them that persecute you; that ye
may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven, who causes His sun
to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the
unjust.”732
Allow me here to lift up my voice boldly in
loud and audible outcry, pleading as I do before philosophic princes. For
who of those that reduce syllogisms, and clear up ambiguities, and
explain etymologies,733
or of those who teach homonyms and
synonyms, and predicaments and axioms, and what is the subject and
what the predicate, and who promise their disciples by these and such
like instructions to make them happy: who of them have so purged their
souls as, instead of hating their enemies, to love them; and, instead
of speaking ill of those who have reviled them (to abstain from which
is of itself an evidence of no mean forbearance), to bless them; and
to pray for those who plot against their lives? On the contrary, they
never cease with evil intent to search out skilfully the secrets of their
art,734
| 734 The meaning is here doubtful;
but the probably reference is to the practices of the Sophists. |
and are ever bent on working some ill, making the art of words and not
the exhibition of deeds their business and profession. But among us you
will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they
are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their
deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth:
they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck,
they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give
to those that ask of them, and love their neighbours as themselves.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
