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| The Heathen Perverted Judgment in the Trial of Christians. They Would Be More Consistent If They Dispensed with All Form of Trial. Tertullian Urges This with Much Indignation.
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Chapter II.475
| 475 Comp. c. ii. of
The Apology. | —The Heathen
Perverted Judgment in the Trial of Christians. They Would Be More
Consistent If They Dispensed with All Form of Trial. Tertullian
Urges This with Much Indignation.
In this case you actually476
conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against
criminals; for when culprits are brought up for trial, should they deny
the charge, you press them for a confession by tortures. When
Christians, however, confess without compulsion, you apply the torture
to induce them to deny. What great perverseness is this, when you stand
out against confession, and change the use of the torture,
compelling the man who frankly acknowledges the charge477
to evade it, and him who is unwilling, to
deny it? You, who preside for the purpose of extorting truth, demand
falsehood from us alone that we may declare ourselves not to be what we
are. I suppose you do not want us to be bad men, and therefore you
earnestly wish to exclude us from that character. To be sure,478
you put others on the rack and the gibbet, to
get them to deny what they have the reputation of being. Now, when they
deny (the charge against them), you do not believe them but on our
denial, you instantly believe us. If you feel sure that we are the most
injurious of men, why, even in processes against us, are we dealt with
by you differently from other offenders? I do not mean that you make no
account of479
| 479 Neque spatium
commodetis. | either an accusation
or a denial (for your practice is not hastily to condemn men without an
indictment and a defence); but, to take an instance in the trial of a
murderer, the case is not at once ended, or the inquiry satisfied, on a
man’s confessing himself the murderer. However complete his
confession,480
you do not readily
believe him; but over and above this, you inquire into accessory
circumstances—how often had he committed murder; with what
weapons, in what place, with what plunder, accomplices, and
abettors after the fact481
| 481 Receptoribus,
“concealers” of the crime. | (was the crime
perpetrated)—to the end that nothing whatever respecting the
criminal might escape detection, and that every means should be at hand
for arriving at a true verdict. In our case, on the contrary,482
whom you believe to be guilty of more
atrocious and numerous crimes, you frame your indictments483
in briefer and lighter terms. I suppose you
do not care to load with accusations men whom you earnestly wish to get
rid of, or else you do not think it necessary to inquire into matters
which are known to you already. It is, however, all the more perverse
that you compel us to deny charges about which you have the clearest
evidence. But, indeed,484
how much more
consistent were it with your hatred of us to dispense with all forms of
judicial process, and to strive with all your might not to urge us to
say “No,” and so have to acquit the objects of your hatred;
but to confess all and singular the crimes laid to our charge, that
your resentments might be the better glutted with an accumulation of
our punishments, when it becomes known how many of those feasts each
one of us may have celebrated, and how many incests we may have
committed under cover of the night! What am I saying? Since your
researches for rooting out our society must needs be made on a wide
scale, you ought to extend your inquiry against our friends and
companions. Let our infanticides and the dressers (of our horrible
repasts) be brought out,—ay, and the very dogs which minister to
our (incestuous) nuptials;485
| 485 We have for once
departed from Oehler’s text, and preferred Rigault’s:
“Perducerentur infantarii et coci, ipsi canes
pronubi, emendata esset res.” The sense is evident
from The Apology, c. vii.: “It is said that we are guilty
of most horrible crimes; that in the celebration of our sacrament we
put a child to death, which we afterward devour, and at the end of our
banquet revel in incest; that we employ dogs as ministers of our impure
delights, to overthrow the candles, and thus to provide darkness, and
remove all shame which might interfere with these impious lusts”
(Chevalier’s translation). These calumnies were very common, and
are noticed by Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Eusebius, Athenagoras,
and Origen, who attributes their origin to the Jews. Oehler
reads infantariæ, after the Agobardine codex and
editio princeps, and quotes Martial (Epigr. iv.
88), where the word occurs in the sense of an inordinate love of
children. | then the business (of
our trial) would be without a fault. Even to the crowds which throng
the spectacles a zest would be given; for with how much greater
eagerness would they resort to the theatre, when one had to fight in
the lists who had devoured a hundred babies! For since such horrid and
monstrous crimes are reported of us, they ought, of course, to be
brought to light, lest they should seem to be incredible, and the
public detestation of us should begin to cool. For most persons are
slow to believe such things,486
| 486 Nam et plerique fidem
talium temperant. | feeling a horrible
disgust at supposing that our nature could have an appetite
for the food of wild beasts, when
it has precluded these from all concubinage with the race of
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