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| The Truth Hated in the Christians; So in Measure Was It, of Old, in Socrates. The Virtues of the Christians.
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Chapter IV.502
| 502 See The
Apology, c. iii. | —The Truth Hated
in the Christians; So in Measure Was It, of Old, in Socrates. The
Virtues of the Christians.
But the sect, you say, is punished in the name of
its founder. Now in the first place it is, no doubt, a fair and usual
custom that a sect should be marked out by the name of its founder,
since philosophers are called Pythagoreans and Platonists after their
masters; in the same way physicians are called after Erasistratus, and
grammarians after Aristarchus. If, therefore, a sect has a bad
character because its founder was bad, it is punished503
as the traditional bearer504
of a bad name. But
this would be indulging in a rash assumption. The first step was to find out what the
founder was, that his sect might be understood, instead of
hindering505
inquiry into the
founder’s character from the sect. But in our case,506
by being necessarily ignorant of the sect,
through your ignorance of its founder, or else by not taking a fair
survey of the founder, because you make no inquiry into his sect, you
fasten merely on the name, just as if you vilified in it both sect and
founder, whom you know nothing of whatever. And yet you openly allow
your philosophers the right of attaching themselves to any school, and
bearing its founder’s name as their own; and nobody stirs up any
hatred against them, although both in public and in private they bark
out507
their bitterest eloquence against your
customs, rites, ceremonies, and manner of life, with so much contempt
for the laws, and so little respect for persons, that they even flaunt
their licentious words508
against the emperors
themselves with impunity. And yet it is the truth, which is so
troublesome to the world, that these philosophers affect, but which
Christians possess: they therefore who have it in possession afford the
greater displeasure, because he who affects a thing plays with it; he
who possesses it maintains it. For example,509
Socrates was condemned on that side (of his wisdom) in which he came
nearest in his search to the truth, by destroying your gods. Although
the name of Christian was not at that time in the world, yet truth was
always suffering condemnation. Now you will not deny that he was a wise
man, to whom your own Pythian (god) had borne witness. Socrates, he
said, was the wisest of men. Truth overbore Apollo, and made him
pronounce even against himself since he acknowledged that he was no
god, when he affirmed that that was the wisest man who was denying the
gods. However,510
on your principle he
was the less wise because he denied the gods, although, in truth, he
was all the wiser by reason of this denial. It is just in the same way
that you are in the habit of saying of us: “Lucius Titius is a
good man, only he is a Christian;” while another says; “I
wonder that so worthy511
a man as Caius Seius
has become a Christian.”512
| 512 Comp. The
Apology, c. iii. | According to513
the blindness of their folly men praise what
they know, (and) blame what they are ignorant of; and that which they
know, they vitiate by that which they do not know. It occurs to none
(to consider) whether a man is not good and wise because he is a
Christian, or therefore a Christian because he is wise and good,
although it is more usual in human conduct to determine obscurities by
what is manifest, than to prejudice what is manifest by what is
obscure. Some persons wonder that those whom they had known to be
unsteady, worthless, or wicked before they bore this514
name, have been suddenly converted to
virtuous courses; and yet they better know how to wonder (at the
change) than to attain to it; others are so obstinate in their strife
as to do battle with their own best interests, which they have it in
their power to secure by intercourse515
with that hated
name. I know more than one516
| 516 Unum atque alium.
The sense being plural, we have so given it all
through. | husband, formerly
anxious about their wives’ conduct, and unable to bear even mice
to creep into their bed-room without a groan of suspicion, who have,
upon discovering the cause of their new assiduity, and their unwonted
attention to the duties of home,517
offered the
entire loan of their wives to others,518
| 518 Omnem uxorem patientiam
obtulisse (comp. Apology, middle of c. xxxix.). | disclaimed all
jealousy, (and) preferred to be the husbands of she-wolves than of
Christian women: they could commit themselves to a perverse abuse of
nature, but they could not permit their wives to be reformed for the
better! A father disinherited his son, with whom he had ceased to find
fault. A master sent his slave to bridewell,519
whom
he had even found to be indispensable to him. As soon as they
discovered them to be Christians, they wished they were criminals
again; for our discipline carries its own evidence in itself, nor are
we betrayed by anything else than our own goodness, just as bad men
also become conspicuous520
by their own evil.
Else how is it that we alone are, contrary to the lessons of nature,
branded as very evil because of our good? For what mark do we exhibit
except the prime wisdom,521
which teaches us not
to worship the frivolous works of the human hand; the temperance, by
which we abstain from other men’s goods; the chastity, which we
pollute not even with a look; the compassion, which prompts us to help
the needy; the truth itself, which makes us give offence; and liberty,
for which we have even learned to die? Whoever wishes to understand who
the Christians are, must needs employ these marks for their
discovery.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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