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| Chapter II.
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Chapter II.
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 defence 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 stedfastness, being still annoyed by their
great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan,79
| 79 [For chronological
dates in our author’s age, see Elucidation III. Tertullian
places an interval of 115 years, 6 months, and 15 days between Tiberius
and Antoninus Pius. See Answer to the Jews, cap. vii.
infra.] | 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 and80
| 80 Another reading is
“ut Deo,” as God. | 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 him 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.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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