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| Chapter XXXV.
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Chapter
XXXV.
This is the reason, then, why Christians are counted
public enemies: that they pay no vain, nor false, nor foolish
honours to the emperor; that, as men believing in the true religion,
they prefer to celebrate their festal days with a good conscience,
instead of with the common wantonness. It is, forsooth, a notable
homage to bring fires and couches out before the public, to have
feasting from street to street, to turn the city into one great tavern,
to make mud with wine, to run in troops to acts of violence, to deeds
of shamelessness to lust allurements! What! is public joy manifested by
public disgrace? Do things unseemly at other times beseem the festal
days of princes? Do they who observe the rules of virtue out of
reverence for Cæsar, for his sake turn aside from them? Shall
piety be a license to immoral deeds, and shall religion be regarded as
affording the occasion for all riotous extravagance? Poor we, worthy of
all condemnation! For why do we keep the votive days and high
rejoicings in honour of the Cæsars with chastity, sobriety, and
virtue? Why, on the day of gladness, do we neither cover our door-posts
with laurels, nor intrude upon the day with lamps? It is a proper
thing, at the call of a public festivity, to dress your house up like
some new brothel.124
| 124 [Note this reference to
a shameless custom of the heathen in Rome and elsewhere.] | However, in the
matter of this homage to a lesser majesty, in reference to which we are
accused of a lower sacrilege, because we do not celebrate along with
you the holidays of the Cæsars in a manner forbidden alike by
modesty, decency, and purity,—in truth they have been established
rather as affording opportunities for licentiousness than from any
worthy motive;—in this matter I am anxious to point out how
faithful and true you are, lest perchance here also those who
will not have us counted Romans, but enemies of Rome’s chief
rulers, be found themselves worse than we wicked Christians! I appeal
to the inhabitants of Rome themselves, to the native population of the
seven hills: does that Roman vernacular of theirs ever spare a
Cæsar? The Tiber and the wild beasts’ schools bear witness.
Say now if nature had covered our hearts with a transparent substance
through which the light could pass, whose hearts, all graven over,
would not betray the scene of another and another Cæsar presiding
at the distribution of a largess? And this at the very time they are
shouting, “May Jupiter take years from us, and with them lengthen
like to you,”—words as foreign to the lips of a Christian
as it is out of keeping with his character to desire a change of
emperor. But this is the rabble, you say; yet, as the rabble, they
still are Romans, and none more frequently than they demand the death
of Christians.125
| 125 [See cap. l. and
Note on cap. xl. infra.] | Of course, then, the
other classes, as befits their higher rank, are religiously
faithful. No breath of treason is there ever in the senate, in
the equestrian order, in the camp, in the palace. Whence, then,
came a Cassius, a Niger, an Albinus? Whence they who beset the
Cæsar126
between the two
laurel groves? Whence they who practised wrestling, that they might
acquire skill to strangle him? Whence they who in full armour broke
into the palace,127
more audacious than
all your Tigerii and Parthenii.128
| 128 Tigerius and Parthenius
were among the murderers of Commodus. | If I mistake not,
they were Romans; that is, they were not Christians. Yet all of them,
on the very eve of their traitorous outbreak, offered sacrifices for
the safety of the emperor, and swore by his genius, one thing in
profession, and another in the heart; and no doubt they were in the
habit of calling Christians enemies of the state. Yes, and persons who
are now daily brought to light as confederates or approvers of these
crimes and treasons, the still remnant gleanings after a vintage of
traitors, with what verdant and branching laurels they clad their
door-posts, with what lofty and brilliant lamps they smoked their
porches, with what most exquisite and gaudy couches they divided the
Forum among themselves; not that they might celebrate public
rejoicings, but that they might get a foretaste of their own votive
seasons in partaking of the festivities of another, and inaugurate the
model and image of their hope, changing in their minds the
emperor’s name. The same homage is paid, dutifully too, by those
who consult astrologers, and soothsayers, and augurs, and magicians,
about the life of the Cæsars,—arts which, as made known by
the angels who sinned, and forbidden by God, Christians do not even
make use of in their own affairs. But who has any occasion to inquire
about the life of the emperor, if he have not some wish or thought
against it, or some hopes and expectations after it? For consultations
of this sort have not the same motive in the case of friends as in the
case of sovereigns. The anxiety of a kinsman is something very
different from that of a subject.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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