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| The Christians are Not the Cause of Public Calamities: There Were Such Troubles Before Christianity. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
IX.595
595 Comp. The
Apology, cc. xl. xli. [And Augustine, Civ. Dei.
iii.] | —The Christians are Not the Cause of
Public Calamities: There Were Such Troubles Before
Christianity.
But why should I be astonished at your vain
imputations? Under the same natural form, malice and folly have
always been associated in one body and growth, and have ever opposed us
under the one instigator of error.596
596 By the “manceps
erroris” he means the devil. | Indeed, I feel
no astonishment; and therefore, as it is necessary for my subject, I
will enumerate some instances, that you may feel the astonishment by
the enumeration of the folly into which you fall, when you insist on
our being the causes of every public calamity or injury. If the Tiber
has overflowed its banks, if the Nile has remained in its bed, if the
sky has been still, or the earth been in commotion, if death597 has made its devastations, or famine its
afflictions, your cry immediately is, “This is the fault598
598 Christianorum
meritum, which with “sit” may also, “Let the
Christians have their due.” In The Apology the cry is,
“Christianos ad leonem.” | of the Christians!” As if they who fear
the true God could have to fear a light thing, or at least anything
else (than an earthquake or famine, or such visitations).599
599 We insert this after
Oehler. Tertullian’s words are, “Quasi modicum habeant aut
aliud metuere qui Deum verum.” | I suppose it is as despisers of your gods
that we call down on us these strokes of theirs. As we have remarked
already,600 three hundred years
have not yet passed in our existence; but what vast scourges before
that time fell on all the world, on its various cities and provinces!
what terrible wars, both foreign and domestic! what pestilences,
famines, conflagrations, yawnings, and quakings of the earth has
history recorded!601 Where were the
Christians, then, when the Roman state furnished so many chronicles of
its disasters? Where were the Christians when the islands Hiera,
Anaphe, and Delos, and Rhodes, and Cea were desolated with multitudes
of men? or, again, when the land mentioned by Plato as larger than Asia
or Africa was sunk in the Atlantic Sea? or when fire from heaven
overwhelmed Volsinii, and flames from their own mountain consumed
Pompeii? when the sea of Corinth was engulphed by an earthquake? when
the whole world was destroyed by the deluge? Where then were (I
will not say the Christians, who despise your gods, but) your gods
themselves, who are proved to be of later origin than that great ruin
by the very places and cities in which they were born, sojourned, and
were buried, and even those which they founded? For else they
would not have remained to the present day, unless they had been more
recent than that catastrophe. If you do not care to peruse and
reflect upon these testimonies of history, the record of which affects
you differently from us,602
602 Aliter vobis
renuntiata. | in order
especially that you may not
have to tax your gods with extreme injustice, since they injure even
their worshippers on account of their despisers, do you not then prove
yourselves to be also in the wrong, when you hold them to be gods, who
make no distinction between the deserts of yourselves and profane
persons? If, however, as it is now and then very vainly said, you incur
the chastisement of your gods because you are too slack in our
extirpation, you then have settled the question603 of
their weakness and insignificance; for they would not be angry with you
for loitering over our punishment, if they could do anything
themselves,—although you admit the same thing indeed in another
way, whenever by inflicting punishment on us you seem to be avenging
them. If one interest is maintained by another party, that which
defends is the greater of the two. What a shame, then, must it be for
gods to be defended by a human being!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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