Civil Authority

And if these things seem to you to be reasonable and true , honour them; but if they seem nonsensical, despise them as nonsense, and do not decree death against those who have done no wrong, as you would against enemies. For we forewarn you, that you shall not escape the coming judgment of God , if you continue in your injustice ; and we ourselves will invite you to do that which is pleasing to God . And though from the letter of the greatest and most illustrious Emperor Adrian, your father, we could demand that you order judgment to be given as we have desired, yet we have made this appeal and explanation, not on the ground of Adrian's decision, but because we know that what we ask is just. And we have subjoined the copy of Adrian's epistle, that you may know that we are speaking truly about this.

And the following is the copy:— Appendix Epistle of Adrian on behalf of the Christians I have received the letter addressed to me by your predecessor Serenius Granianus, a most illustrious man; and this communication I am unwilling to pass over in silence, lest innocent persons be disturbed, and occasion be given to the informers for practising villany. Accordingly, if the inhabitants of your province will so far sustain this petition of theirs as to accuse the Christians in some court of law, I do not prohibit them from doing so. But I will not suffer them to make use of mere entreaties and outcries. For it is far more just, if any one desires to make an accusation, that you give judgment upon it.

If, therefore, any one makes the accusation, and furnishes proof that the said men do anything contrary to the laws , you shall adjudge punishments in proportion to the offenses. And this, by Hercules, you shall give special heed to, that if any man shall, through mere calumny , bring an accusation against any of these persons , you shall award to him more severe punishments in proportion to his wickedness . Epistle of Antoninus to the common assembly of Asia The Emperor Cæsar Titus Ælius Adrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius , Supreme Pontiff, in the fifteenth year of his tribuneship, Consul for the third time, Father of the fatherland, to the Common Assembly of Asia, greeting: I should have thought that the gods themselves would see to it that such offenders should not escape.

For if they had the power, they themselves would much rather punish those who refuse to worship them; but it is you who bring trouble on these persons , and accuse as the opinion of atheists that which they hold, and lay to their charge certain other things which we are unable to prove. But it would be advantageous to them that they should be thought to die for that of which they are accused, and they conquer you by being lavish of their lives rather than yield that obedience which you require of them. And regarding the earthquakes which have already happened and are now occurring, it is not seemly that you remind us of them, losing heart whenever they occur, and thus set your conduct in contrast with that of these men; for they have much greater confidence towards God than you yourselves have.

A certain woman lived with an intemperate husband; she herself, too, having formerly been intemperate. But when she came to the knowledge of the teachings of Christ she became sober-minded, and endeavoured to persuade her husband likewise to be temperate, citing the teaching of Christ , and assuring him that there shall be punishment in eternal fire inflicted upon those who do not live temperately and conformably to right reason. But he, continuing in the same excesses, alienated his wife from him by his actions. For she, considering it wicked to live any longer as a wife with a husband who sought in every way means of indulging in pleasure contrary to the law of nature, and in violation of what is right, wished to be divorced from him.

And when she was overpersuaded by her friends, who advised her still to continue with him, in the idea that some time or other her husband might give hope of amendment, she did violence to her own feeling and remained with him. But when her husband had gone into Alexandria, and was reported to be conducting himself worse than ever, she — that she might not, by continuing in matrimonial connection with him, and by sharing his table and his bed, become a partaker also in his wickednesses and impieties — gave him what you call a bill of divorce , and was separated from him.

But this noble husband of hers — while he ought to have been rejoicing that those actions which formerly she unhesitatingly committed with the servants and hirelings, when she delighted in drunkenness and every vice , she had now given up, and desired that he too should give up the same — when she had gone from him without his desire, brought an accusation against her, affirming that she was a Christian . And she presented a paper to you, the Emperor, a very bold apostrophe, like that of Huss to the Emperor Sigismund, which crimsoned his forehead with a blush of shame.] }}--> requesting that first she be permitted to arrange her affairs, and afterwards to make her defense against the accusation, when her affairs were set in order. And this you granted.

And her quondam husband, since he was now no longer able to prosecute her, directed his assaults against a man , Ptolemæus, whom Urbicus punished, and who had been her teacher in the Christian doctrines. And this he did in the following way. He persuaded a centurion — who had cast Ptolemæus into prison , and who was friendly to himself — to take Ptolemæus and interrogate him on this sole point: whether he were a Christian ? And Ptolemæus, being a lover of truth , and not of a deceitful or false disposition, when he confessed himself to be a Christian , was bound by the centurion, and for a long time punished in the prison And, at last, when the man came to Urbicus, he was asked this one question only: whether he was a Christian ?

But they are gods to us, you say. And how is it, then, that in utter inconsistency with this, you are convicted of impious, sacrilegious , and irreligious conduct to them, neglecting those you imagine to exist, destroying those who are the objects of your fear , making mock of those whose honour you avenge? See now if I go beyond the truth . First, indeed, seeing you worship, some one god, and some another, of course you give offense to those you do not worship. You cannot continue to give preference to one without slighting another, for selection implies rejection. You despise, therefore, those whom you thus reject; for in your rejection of them, it is plain you have no dread of giving them offense. For, as we have already shown, every god depended on the decision of the senate for his godhead.

No god was he whom man in his own counsels did not wish to be so, and thereby condemned. The family deities you call Lares, you exercise a domestic authority over, pledging them, selling them, changing them — making sometimes a cooking-pot of a Saturn, a firepan of a Minerva, as one or other happens to be worn down, or broken in its long sacred use, or as the family head feels the pressure of some more sacred home necessity. In like manner, by public law you disgrace your state gods, putting them in the auction-catalogue, and making them a source of revenue. Men seek to get the Capitol, as they seek to get the herb market, under the voice of the crier, under the auction spear, under the registration of the quæstor. Deity is struck off and farmed out to the highest bidder.

But indeed lands burdened with tribute are of less value; men under the assessment of a poll-tax are less noble; for these things are the marks of servitude. In the case of the gods, on the other hand, the sacredness is great in proportion to the tribute which they yield; nay, the more sacred is a god, the larger is the tax he pays. Majesty is made a source of gain. Religion goes about the taverns begging. You demand a price for the privilege of standing on temple ground, for access to the sacred services; there is no gratuitous knowledge of your divinities permitted — you must buy their favours with a price. What honours in any way do you render to them that you do not render to the dead? You have temples in the one case just as in the other; you have altars in the one case as in the other.

Their statues have the same dress, the same insignia. As the dead man had his age, his art, his occupation, so it is with the deity. In what respect does the funeral feast differ from the feast of Jupiter? Or the bowl of the gods from the ladle of the manes? Or the undertaker from the soothsayer, as in fact this latter personage also attends upon the dead? With perfect propriety you give divine honours to your departed emperors, as you worship them in life. The gods will count themselves indebted to you; nay, it will be matter of high rejoicing among them that their masters are made their equals.

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 defense 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 steadfastness, being still annoyed by their great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan , 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 and 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.

For we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal , the true , the living God , whose favour, beyond all others, they must themselves desire. They know from whom they have obtained their power; they know , as they are men, from whom they have received life itself; they are convinced that He is God alone, on whose power alone they are entirely dependent, to whom they are second, after whom they occupy the highest places, before and above all the gods. Why not, since they are above all living men, and the living, as living, are superior to the dead? They reflect upon the extent of their power, and so they come to understand the highest; they acknowledge that they have all their might from Him against whom their might is nought.

Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. Just because he is less than heaven, he is great. For he himself is His to whom heaven and every creature appertains. He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life. Thither we lift our eyes, with hands outstretched, because free from sin ; with head uncovered, for we have nothing whereof to be ashamed; finally, without a monitor, because it is from the heart we supplicate. Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer .

We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Cæsar, an emperor would wish.

These things I cannot ask from any but the God from whom I know I shall obtain them, both because He alone bestows them and because I have claims upon Him for their gift, as being a servant of His, rendering homage to Him alone, persecuted for His doctrine, offering to Him, at His own requirement, that costly and noble sacrifice of prayer dispatched from the chaste body, an unstained soul , a sanctified spirit, not the few grains of incense a farthing buys — tears of an Arabian tree — not a few drops of wine, — not the blood of some worthless ox to which death is a relief, and, in addition to other offensive things, a polluted conscience , so that one wonders, when your victims are examined by these vile priests , why the examination is not rather of the sacrificers than the sacrifices .

But why dwell longer on the reverence and sacred respect of Christians to the emperor, whom we cannot but look up to as called by our Lord to his office? So that on valid grounds I might say Cæsar is more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him. Therefore, as having this propriety in him, I do more than you for his welfare, not merely because I ask it of Him who can give it, or because I ask it as one who deserves to get it, but also because, in keeping the majesty of Cæsar within due limits, and putting it under the Most High, and making it less than divine, I commend him the more to the favour of Deity, to whom I make him alone inferior. But I place him in subjection to one I regard as more glorious than himself.

Never will I call the emperor God , and that either because it is not in me to be guilty of falsehood ; or that I dare not turn him into ridicule; or that not even himself will desire to have that high name applied to him. If he is but a man , it is his interest as man to give God His higher place. Let him think it enough to bear the name of emperor. That, too, is a great name of God's giving. To call him God , is to rob him of his title. If he is not a man , emperor he cannot be. Even when, amid the honours of a triumph, he sits on that lofty chariot, he is reminded that he is only human . A voice at his back keeps whispering in his ear, Look behind you; remember you are but a man . And it only adds to his exultation, that he shines with a glory so surpassing as to require an admonitory reference to his condition.

Augustus, the founder of the empire, would not even have the title Lord; for that, too, is a name of Deity. For my part, I am willing to give the emperor this designation, but in the common acceptation of the word, and when I am not forced to call him Lord as in God's place. But my relation to him is one of freedom; for I have but one true Lord, the God omnipotent and eternal , who is Lord of the emperor as well. How can he, who is truly father of his country, be its lord? The name of piety is more grateful than the name of power; so the heads of families are called fathers rather than lords. Far less should the emperor have the name of God .

We can only profess our belief that he is that by the most unworthy, nay, a fatal flattery; it is just as if, having an emperor, you call another by the name, in which case will you not give great and unappeasable offense to him who actually reigns?— an offense he, too, needs to fear on whom you have bestowed the title. Give all reverence to God , if you wish Him to be propitious to the emperor. Give up all worship of, and belief in, any other being as divine. Cease also to give the sacred name to him who has need of God himself. If such adulation is not ashamed of its lie, in addressing a man as divine, let it have some dread at least of the evil omen which it bears. It is the invocation of a curse, to give Cæsar the name of god before his apotheosis.

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.

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 . 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.

If it is the fact that men bearing the name of Romans are found to be enemies of Rome, why are we, on the ground that we are regarded as enemies, denied the name of Romans? We may be at once Romans and foes of Rome, when men passing for Romans are discovered to be enemies of their country. So the affection, and fealty, and reverence, due to the emperors do not consist in such tokens of homage as these, which even hostility may be zealous in performing, chiefly as a cloak to its purposes; but in those ways which Deity as certainly enjoins on us, as they are held to be necessary in the case of all men as well as emperors. Deeds of true heart-goodness are not due by us to emperors alone.

We never do good with respect of persons ; for in our own interest we conduct ourselves as those who take no payment either of praise or premium from man, but from God , who both requires and remunerates an impartial benevolence. We are the same to emperors as to our ordinary neighbors. For we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to think ill of all men . The thing we must not do to an emperor, we must not do to any one else: what we would not do to anybody, a fortiori , perhaps we should not do to him whom God has been pleased so highly to exalt.

Let us add in completion what follows, and exhibit now with greater clearness the plagiarism of the Greeks from the Barbarian philosophy . Now the Stoics say that God , like the soul , is essentially body and spirit. You will find all this explicitly in their writings. Do not consider at present their allegories as the gnostic truth presents them; whether they show one thing and mean another, like the dexterous athletes. Well, they say that God pervades all being; while we call Him solely Maker, and Maker by the Word. They were misled by what is said in the book of Wisdom: He pervades and passes through all by reason of His purity; Wisdom 7:24 since they did not understand that this was said of Wisdom, which was the first of the creation of God . So be it, they say.

But the philosophers , the Stoics , and Plato , and Pythagoras, nay more, Aristotle the Peripatetic, suppose the existence of matter among the first principles; and not one first principle. Let them then know that what is called matter by them, is said by them to be without quality, and without form , and more daringly said by Plato to be non- existence . And does he not say very mystically , knowing that the true and real first cause is one, in these very words: Now, then, let our opinion be so. As to the first principle or principles of the universe , or what opinion we ought to entertain about all these points, we are not now to speak, for no other cause than on account of its being difficult to explain our sentiments in accordance with the present form of discourse.

But undoubtedly that prophetic expression, Now the earth was invisible and formless, supplied them with the ground of material essence . And the introduction of chance was hence suggested to Epicurus , who misapprehended the statement, Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. And it occurred to Aristotle to extend Providence as far as the moon from this psalm: Lord, Your mercy is in the heavens; and Your truth reaches to the clouds. For the explanation of the prophetic mysteries had not yet been revealed previous to the advent of the Lord. Punishments after death, on the other hand, and penal retribution by fire, were pilfered from the Barbarian philosophy both by all the poetic Muses and by the Hellenic philosophy .

Plato , accordingly, in the last book of the Republic , says in these express terms: Then these men fierce and fiery to look on, standing by, and hearing the sound, seized and took some aside; and binding Aridæus and the rest hand, foot, and head, and throwing them down, and flaying them, dragged them along the way, tearing their flesh with thorns. For the fiery men are meant to signify the angels , who seize and punish the wicked . Who makes, it is said, His angels spirits; His ministers flaming fire. It follows from this that the soul is immortal . For what is tortured or corrected being in a state of sensation lives, though said to suffer. Well!

But those who are ready to toil in the most excellent pursuits, will not desist from the search after truth , till they get the demonstration from the Scriptures themselves. There are certain criteria common to men , as the senses; and others that belong to those who have employed their wills and energies in what is true — the methods which are pursued by the mind and reason, to distinguish between true and false propositions. Now, it is a very great thing to abandon opinion, by taking one's stand between accurate knowledge and the rash wisdom of opinion, and to know that he who hopes for everlasting rest knows also that the entrance to it is toilsome and strait.

And let him who has once received the Gospel , even in the very hour in which he has come to the knowledge of salvation , not turn back, like Lot's wife, as is said; and let him not go back either to his former life, which adheres to the things of sense, or to heresies . For they form the character, not knowing the true God. For he that loves father or mother more than Me, the Father and Teacher of the truth , who regenerates and creates anew, and nourishes the elect soul , is not worthy of Me — He means, to be a son of God and a disciple of God , and at the same time also to be a friend, and of kindred nature. For no man who looks back, and puts his hand to the plough, is fit for the kingdom of God .

Luke 9:62 But, as appears, many even down to our own time regard Mary, on account of the birth of her child, as having been in the puerperal state, although she was not. For some say that, after she brought forth, she was found, when examined, to be a virgin . Now such to us are the Scriptures of the Lord, which gave birth to the truth and continue virgin, in the concealment of the mysteries of the truth . And she brought forth, and yet brought not forth, says the Scripture ; as having conceived of herself, and not from conjunction. Wherefore the Scriptures have conceived to Gnostics ; but the heresies , not having learned them, dismissed them as not having conceived.

Now all men , having the same judgment, some, following the Word speaking, frame for themselves proofs ; while others, giving themselves up to pleasures, wrest Scripture, in accordance with their lusts . And the lover of truth , as I think, needs force of soul . For those who make the greatest attempts must fail in things of the highest importance; unless, receiving from the truth itself the rule of the truth , they cleave to the truth . But such people, in consequence of falling away from the right path, err in most individual points; as you might expect from not having the faculty for judging of what is true and false, strictly trained to select what is essential. For if they had, they would have obeyed the Scriptures .

As many men drawing down the ship, cannot be called many causes, but one cause consisting of many — for each individual by himself is not the cause of the ship being drawn, but along with the rest — so also philosophy , being the search for truth , contributes to the comprehension of truth ; not as being the cause of comprehension, but a cause along with other things, and co-operator; perhaps also a joint cause . And as the several virtues are causes of the happiness of one individual; and as both the sun, and the fire, and the bath, and clothing are of one getting warm: so while truth is one, many things contribute to its investigation. But its discovery is by the Son. If then we consider, virtue is, in power, one.

But it is the case, that when exhibited in some things, it is called prudence , in others temperance , and in others manliness or righteousness. By the same analogy, while truth is one, in geometry there is the truth of geometry; in music, that of music; and in the right philosophy , there will be Hellenic truth . But that is the only authentic truth , unassailable, in which we are instructed by the Son of God . In the same way we say, that the drachma being one and the same, when given to the shipmaster, is called the fare; to the tax-gatherer, tax; to the landlord, rent; to the teacher, fees; to the seller, an earnest. And each, whether it be virtue or truth , called by the same name, is the cause of its own peculiar effect alone; and from the blending of them arises a happy life.

For we are not made happy by names alone, when we say that a good life is happiness , and that the man who is adorned in his soul with virtue is happy . But if philosophy contributes remotely to the discovery of truth , by reaching, by diverse essays, after the knowledge which touches close on the truth , the knowledge possessed by us, it aids him who aims at grasping it, in accordance with the Word, to apprehend knowledge . But the Hellenic truth is distinct from that held by us (although it has got the same name), both in respect of extent of knowledge , certainly of demonstration, divine power, and the like. For we are taught of God , being instructed in the truly sacred letters by the Son of God . Whence those, to whom we refer, influence souls not in the way we do, but by different teaching.

And if, for the sake of those who are fond of fault-finding, we must draw a distinction, by saying that philosophy is a concurrent and cooperating cause of true apprehension, being the search for truth , then we shall avow it to be a preparatory training for the enlightened man ( τοῦ γνωστικοῦ ); not assigning as the cause that which is but the joint- cause ; nor as the upholding cause , what is merely co-operative; nor giving to philosophy the place of a sine quâ non . Since almost all of us, without training in arts and sciences, and the Hellenic philosophy , and some even without learning at all, through the influence of a philosophy divine and barbarous, and by power, have through faith received the word concerning God , trained by self-operating wisdom.

On the plagiarizing of the dogmas of the philosophers from the Hebrews, we shall treat a little afterwards. But first, as due order demands, we must now speak of the epoch of Moses , by which the philosophy of the Hebrews will be demonstrated beyond all contradiction to be the most ancient of all wisdom. This has been discussed with accuracy by Tatian in his book To the Greeks , and by Cassian in the first book of his Exegetics . Nevertheless our commentary demands that we too should run over what has been said on the point.

Apion, then, the grammarian, surnamed Pleistonices, in the fourth book of The Egyptian Histories , although of so hostile a disposition towards the Hebrews, being by race an Egyptian , as to compose a work against the Jews , when referring to Amosis king of the Egyptians , and his exploits, adduces, as a witness , Ptolemy of Mendes. And his remarks are to the following effect: Amosis, who lived in the time of the Argive Inachus, overthrew Athyria, as Ptolemy of Mendes relates in his Chronology . Now this Ptolemy was a priest ; and setting forth the deeds of the Egyptian kings in three entire books, he says, that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt , under the conduct of Moses , took place while Amosis was king of Egypt . Whence it is seen that Moses flourished in the time of Inachus.

And of the Hellenic states, the most ancient is the Argolic, I mean that which took its rise from Inachus, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Times . And younger by forty generations than it was Attica, founded by Cecrops, who was an aboriginal of double race, as Tatian expressly says; and Arcadia, founded by Pelasgus, younger too by nine generations; and he, too, is said to have been an aboriginal. And more recent than this last by fifty-two generations, was Pthiotis, founded by Deucalion. And from the time of Inachus to the Trojan War twenty generations or more are reckoned; let us say, four hundred years and more.

And if Ctesias says that the Assyrian power is many years older than the Greek, the exodus of Moses from Egypt will appear to have taken place in the forty-second year of the Assyrian empire, in the thirty-second year of the reign of Belochus, in the time of Amosis the Egyptian , and of Inachus the Argive. And in Greece, in the time of Phoroneus, who succeeded Inachus, the flood of Ogyges occurred; and monarchy subsisted in Sicyon first in the person of Ægialeus, then of Europs, then of Telches; in Crete, in the person of Cres. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man. Whence, too, the author of Phoronis said that he was the father of mortal men.

Our Moses then is a prophet , a legislator, skilled in military tactics and strategy, a politician, a philosopher . And in what sense he was a prophet , shall be by and by told, when we come to treat of prophecy . Tactics belong to military command, and the ability to command an army is among the attributes of kingly rule. Legislation, again, is also one of the functions of the kingly office, as also judicial authority. Of the kingly office one kind is divine, — that which is according to God and His holy Son, by whom both the good things which are of the earth, and external and perfect felicity too, are supplied. For, it is said, seek what is great, and the little things shall be added.

And there is a second kind of royalty, inferior to that administration which is purely rational and divine, which brings to the task of government merely the high mettle of the soul ; after which fashion Hercules ruled the Argives, and Alexander the Macedonians. The third kind is what aims after one thing — merely to conquer and overturn; but to turn conquest either to a good or a bad purpose, belongs not to such rule. Such was the aim of the Persians in their campaign against Greece. For, on the one hand, fondness for strife is solely the result of passion, and acquires power solely for the sake of domination; while, on the other, the love of good is characteristic of a soul which uses its high spirit for noble ends.

The fourth, the worst of all, is the sovereignty which acts according to the promptings of the passions , as that of Sardanapalus, and those who propose to themselves as their end the gratification of the passions to the utmost. But the instrument of regal sway — the instrument at once of that which overcomes by virtue , and that which does so by force — is the power of managing (or tact). And it varies according to the nature and the material. In the case of arms and of fighting animals the ordering power is the soul and mind , by means animate and inanimate; and in the case of the passions of the soul , which we master by virtue , reason is the ordering power, by affixing the seal of continence and self-restraint, along with holiness , and sound knowledge with truth , making the result of the whole to terminate in piety towards God.

For it is wisdom which regulates in the case of those who so practice virtue ; and divine things are ordered by wisdom, and human affairs by politics — all things by the kingly faculty. He is a king, then, who governs according to the laws , and possesses the skill to sway willing subjects. Such is the Lord, who receives all who believe in Him and by Him. For the Father has delivered and subjected all to Christ our King, that at the name of Jesus every knee may bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:10-11 Now, generalship involves three ideas: caution, enterprise, and the union of the two. And each of these consists of three things, acting as they do either by word, or by deeds , or by both together.

But let your works shine, says He; Matthew 5:16 but now all our shops and gates shine! You will now-a-days find more doors of heathens without lamps and laurel-wreaths than of Christians . What does the case seem to be with regard to that species (of ceremony) also? If it is an idol's honour , without doubt an idol's honour is idolatry . If it is for a man's sake, let us again consider that all idolatry is for man's sake; let us again consider that all idolatry is a worship done to men , since it is generally agreed even among their worshippers that aforetime the gods themselves of the nations were men; and so it makes no difference whether that superstitious homage be rendered to men of a former age or of this.

Idolatry is condemned, not on account of the persons which are set up for worship, but on account of those its observances, which pertain to demons . The things which are Cæsar's are to be rendered to Cæsar. It is enough that He set in apposition thereto, and to God the things which are God's. What things, then, are Cæsar's? Those, to wit, about which the consultation was then held, whether the poll-tax should be furnished to Cæsar or no. Therefore, too, the Lord demanded that the money should be shown Him, and inquired about the image, whose it was; and when He had heard it was Cæsar's, said, Render to Cæsar what are Cæsar's, and what are God's to God ; that is, the image of Cæsar, which is on the coin, to Cæsar, and the image of God , which is on man, to God ; so as to render to Cæsar indeed money, to God yourself.

Otherwise, what will be God's, if all things are Cæsar's? Then, do you say, the lamps before my doors, and the laurels on my posts are an honour to God? They are there of course, not because they are an honour to God , but to him who is honour in God's stead by ceremonial observances of that kind, so far as is manifest, saving the religious performance, which is in secret appertaining to demons .

For we ought to be sure if there are any whose notice it escapes through ignorance of this world's literature, that there are among the Romans even gods of entrances; Cardea (Hinge-goddess), called after hinges, and Forculus (Door-god) after doors, and Limentinus (Threshold-god) after the threshold, and Janus himself (Gate-god) after the gate: and of course we know that, though names be empty and feigned, yet, when they are drawn down into superstition , demons and every unclean spirit seize them for themselves, through the bond of consecration. Otherwise demons have no name individually, but they there find a name where they find also a token. Among the Greeks likewise we read of Apollo Thyræus, i.e. of the door, and the Antelii, or Anthelii, demons , as presiders over entrances.

But what shall believing servants or children do? Officials likewise, when attending on their lords, or patrons, or superiors, when sacrificing ? Well, if any one shall have handed the wine to a sacrificer, nay, if by any single word necessary or belonging to a sacrifice he shall have aided him, he will be held to be a minister of idolatry . Mindful of this rule, we can render service even to magistrates and powers, after the example of the patriarchs and the other forefathers, who obeyed idolatrous kings up to the confine of idolatry .

Hence arose, very lately, a dispute whether a servant of God should take the administration of any dignity or power, if he be able, whether by some special grace , or by adroitness, to keep himself intact from every species of idolatry ; after the example that both Joseph and Daniel, clean from idolatry , administered both dignity and power in the livery and purple of the prefecture of entire Egypt or Babylonia.

And so let us grant that it is possible for any one to succeed in moving, in whatsoever office, under the mere name of the office, neither sacrificing nor lending his authority to sacrifices ; not farming out victims; not assigning to others the care of temples; not looking after their tributes; not giving spectacles at his own or the public charge, or presiding over the giving them; making proclamation or edict for no solemnity ; not even taking oaths: moreover (what comes under the head of power ), neither sitting in judgment on any one's life or character, for you might bear with his judging about money ; neither condemning nor fore-condemning; binding no one, imprisoning or torturing no one — if it is credible that all this is possible.

In that last section, decision may seem to have been given likewise concerning military service, which is between dignity and power. But now inquiry is made about this point, whether a believer may turn himself unto military service, and whether the military may be admitted unto the faith , even the rank and file, or each inferior grade, to whom there is no necessity for taking part in sacrifices or capital punishments. There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil , the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters — God and Cæsar.

And yet Moses carried a rod, and Aaron wore a buckle, and John (Baptist) is girt with leather and Joshua the Son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred: if it pleases you to sport with the subject. But how will a Christian man war , nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed ; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbe**d every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action.

If, owing to the fault of human error , the word God has become a common name (since in the world there are said and believed to be gods many 1 Corinthians 8:5 ), yet the blessed God , (who is the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ , 2 Corinthians 1:3 will be understood to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that He had made), as you find in Genesis, Genesis 1:22 and is Himself blessed by all things, as Daniel tells us. Now, if the title of Father may be claimed for ( Marcion's ) sterile god, how much more for the Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also the Father of mercies, 2 Corinthians 1:3 and (in the prophets ) has been described as full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy. In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites.

Jonah 3:8 How inflexible was He at the tears of Hezekiah! How ready to forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel , the blood of Naboth, when he deprecated His anger . How prompt in pardoning David on his confession of his sin 2 Samuel 12:13 — preferring, indeed, the sinner's repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of mercy. Ezekiel 33:11 Now, if Marcion's god has exhibited or proclaimed any such thing as this, I will allow him to be the Father of mercies. Since, however, he ascribes to him this title only from the time he has been revealed, as if he were the father of mercies from the time only when he began to liberate the human race , then we on our side, too, adopt the same precise date of his alleged revelation; but it is that we may deny him!

It is then not competent to him to ascribe any quality to his god, whom indeed he only promulged by the fact of such an ascription; for only if it were previously evident that his god had an existence , could he be permitted to ascribe an attribute to him. The ascribed attribute is only an accident; but accidents are preceded by the statement of the thing itself of which they are predicated, especially when another claims the attribute which is ascribed to him who has not been previously shown to exist. Our denial of his existence will be all the more peremptory, because of the fact that the attribute which is alleged in proof of it belongs to that God who has been already revealed.

Therefore the New Testament will appertain to none other than Him who promised it — if not its letter, yet its spirit; 2 Corinthians 3:6 and herein will lie its newness . Indeed, He who had engraved its letter in stones is the same as He who had said of its spirit, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh. Joel 2:28 Even if the letter kills, yet the Spirit gives life; 2 Corinthians 3:6 and both belong to Him who says: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal. Deuteronomy 32:39 We have already made good the Creator's claim to this twofold character of judgment and goodness — killing in the letter through the law, and quickening in the Spirit through the Gospel .

Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in His conduct, you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that He repented, or on the recollection of some wrong-doing; because He actually said, It repents me that I have set up Saul to be king, 1 Samuel 15:11 very much as if He meant that His repentance savoured of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error . Well, this is not always implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved himself unthankful for a benefit.

For instance, in this case of Saul, the Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom, and endowing him with His Holy Spirit , makes a statement respecting the goodliness of his person, how that He had most fitly chosen him as being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was not his fellow among the children of Israel . 1 Samuel 9:2 Neither was He ignorant how he would afterwards turn out. For no one would bear you out in imputing lack of foresight to that God whom, since you do not deny Him to be divine, you allow to be also foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists in Him.

However, He did, as I have said, burden the guilt of Saul with the confession of His own repentance; but as there is an absence of all error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as upbraiding another rather than as self-incriminating. Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, And God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not. Jonah 3:10 In accordance with which Jonah himself says to the Lord, Therefore I fled before to Tarshish; for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger , and of great kindness, and repentest You of the evil .

Jonah 4:2 It is well, therefore, that he premised the attribute of the most good God as most patient over the wicked , and most abundant in mercy and kindness over such as acknowledged and bewailed their sins , as the Ninevites were then doing. For if He who has this attribute is the Most Good, you will have first to relinquish that position of yours, that the very contact with evil is incompatible with such a Being, that is, with the most good God. And because Marcion , too, maintains that a good tree ought not to produce bad fruit; but yet he has mentioned evil (in the passage under discussion), which the most good God is incapable of, is there forthcoming any explanation of these evils , which may render them compatible with even the most Good? There is.

The principal, and indeed the whole, contention lies in the point of number : whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must be), or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now add, of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this principle, God is not, if He is not one; because we more properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be. In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can form a definition of God , I adduce one which the conscience of all men will also acknowledge — that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity , unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end.

For such a condition as this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute in God ; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power. Now, since all are agreed on this point (because nobody will deny that God is in some sense the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must be the condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is equal to Him, i.e.

that there is no other great supreme; because, if there were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being, then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique , by having no equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He will not otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being; that is, by His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our Christian verity has rightly declared, God is not, if He is not one.

Not as if we doubted His being God , by saying, He is not, if He is not one; but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe , to be that without which He is not God ; that is to say, the great Supreme. But then the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being, therefore, will be God — not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any other guise, than by ascribing to him too the property of Godhead — both eternity and supremacy over all.

But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name of God , by alleging that that name is a vague one, and applied to other beings also; as it is written, God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods. And again, I have said, You are gods. As therefore the attribute of supremacy would be inappropriate to these, although they are called gods, so is it to the Creator. This is a foolish objection; and my answer to it is, that its author fails to consider that quite as strong an objection might be urged against the (superior) god of Marcion : he too is called god, but is not on that account proved to be divine, as neither are angels nor men, the Creator's handiwork .

If an identity of names affords a presumption in support of equality of condition, how often do worthless menials strut insolently in the names of kings — your Alexanders, Cæsars, and Pompeys! This fact, however, does not detract from the real attributes of the royal persons . Nay more, the very idols of the Gentiles are called gods. Yet not one of them is divine because he is called a god. It is not, therefore, for the name of god, for its sound or its written form, that I am claiming the supremacy in the Creator, but for the essence to which the name belongs; and when I find that essence alone is unbegotten and unmade — alone eternal , and the maker of all things — it is not to its name, but its state, not to its designation, but its condition, that I ascribe and appropriate the attribute of the supremacy.

And so, because the essence to which I ascribe it has come to be called god, you suppose that I ascribe it to the name, because I must needs use a name to express the essence , of which indeed that Being consists who is called God , and who is accounted the great Supreme because of His essence , not from His name. In short, Marcion himself, when he imputes this character to his god, imputes it to the nature, not to the word. That supremacy, then, which we ascribe to God in consideration of His essence , and not because of His name, ought, as we maintain, to be equal in both the beings who consist of that substance for which the name of God is given; because, in as far as they are called gods ( i.e.

supreme beings, on the strength, of course, of their unbegotten and eternal , and therefore great and supreme essence ), in so far the attribute of being the great Supreme cannot be regarded as less or worse in one than in another great Supreme. If the happiness , and sublimity, and perfection of the Supreme Being shall hold good of Marcion's god, it will equally so of ours; and if not of ours, it will equally not hold of Marcion's . Therefore two supreme beings will be neither equal nor unequal: not equal, because the principle which we have just expounded, that the Supreme Being admits of no comparison with Himself, forbids it; not unequal, because another principle meets us respecting the Supreme Being, that He is capable of no diminution. So, Marcion , you are caught in the midst of your own Pontic tide.

1. My brother Fabius, you very lately asked, because some news or other were communicated, whether or not we ought to flee in persecution . For my part, having on the spot made some observations in the negative suited to the place and time, I also, owing to the rudeness of some persons , took away with me the subject but half treated, meaning to set it forth now more fully by my pen; for your inquiry had interested me in it, and the state of the times had already on its own account pressed it upon me. As persecutions in increasing number threaten us, so the more are we called on to give earnest thought to the question of how faith ought to receive them, and the duty of carefully considering it concerns you no less, who no doubt , by not accepting the Comforter, the guide to all truth , have, as was natural, opposed us hitherto in regard to other questions also. We have therefore applied a methodical treatment, too, to your inquiry, as we see that we must first come to a decision as to how the matter stands in regard to persecution itself, whether it comes on us from God or from the devil , that with the less difficulty we may get on firm ground as to our duty to meet it; for of everything one's knowledge is clearer when it is known from whom it has its origin. It is enough indeed to lay it down, (in bar of all besides,) that nothing happens without the will of God . But lest we be diverted from the point before us, we shall not by this deliverance at once give occasion to…

2. If, because injustice is not from God , but from the devil , and persecution consists of injustice (for what more unjust than that the bishops of the true God , that all the followers of the truth , should be dealt with after the manner of the vilest criminals?), persecution therefore seems to proceed from the devil , by whom the injustice which constitutes persecution is perpetrated, we ought to know , as you have neither persecution without the injustice of the devil , nor the trial of faith without persecution , that the injustice necessary for the trial of faith does not give a warrant for persecution , but supplies an agency; that in reality, in reference to the trial of faith , which is the reason of persecution , the will of God goes first, but that as the instrument of persecution , which is the way of trial, the injustice of the devil follows. For in other respects, too, injustice in proportion to the enmity it displays against righteousness affords occasion for attestations of that to which it is opposed as an enemy, that so righteousness may be perfected in injustice , as strength is perfected in weakness. For the weak things of the world have been chosen by God to confound the strong, and the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom. Thus even injustice is employed, that righteousness may be approved in putting unrighteousness to shame. Therefore, since the service is not of free-will , but of subjection (for persecution is the appointment of the…

3. Seeing therefore, too, these cases occur in persecutions more than at other times, as there is then among us more of proving or rejecting, more of abusing or punishing, it must be that their general occurrence is permitted or commanded by Him at whose will they happen even partially; by Him, I mean, who says, I am He who make peace and create evil , — that is, war , for that is the antithesis of peace. But what other war has our peace than persecution ? If in its issues persecution emphatically brings either life or death, either wounds or healing, you have the author, too, of this. I will smite and heal, I will make alive and put to death . I will burn them, He says, as gold is burned; and I will try them, He says, as silver is tried, for when the flame of persecution is consuming us, then the steadfastness of our faith is proved . These will be the fiery darts of the devil , by which faith gets a ministry of burning and kindling; yet by the will of God . As to this I know not who can doubt , unless it be persons with frivolous and frigid faith , which seizes upon those who with trembling assemble together in the church. For you say, seeing we assemble without order, and assemble at the same time, and flock in large numbers to the church, the heathen are led to make inquiry about us, and we are alarmed lest we awaken their anxieties. Do you not know that God is Lord of all? And if it is God's will , then you shall suffer persecution ; but if it is not, the heathen will…

4. Well, then, if it is evident from whom persecution proceeds, we are able at once to satisfy your doubts, and to decide from these introductory remarks alone, that men should not flee in it. For if persecution proceeds from God , in no way will it be our duty to flee from what has God as its author; a twofold reason opposing; for what proceeds from God ought not on the one hand to be avoided, and it cannot be evaded on the other. It ought not to be avoided, because it is good ; for everything must be good on which God has cast His eye. And with this idea has perhaps this statement been made in Genesis, And God saw because it is good ; not that He would have been ignorant of its goodness unless He had seen it, but to indicate by this expression that it was good because it was viewed by God . There are many events indeed happening by the will of God , and happening to somebody's harm. Yet for all that, a thing is therefore good because it is of God , as divine, as reasonable; for what is divine, and not reasonable and good? What is good , yet not divine? But if to the universal apprehension of mankind this seems to be the case, in judging, man's faculty of apprehension does not predetermine the nature of things, but the nature of things his power of apprehension. For every several nature is a certain definite reality, and it lays it on the perceptive power to perceive it just as it exists. Now, if that which comes from God is good indeed in its natural state (for there is…

In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God . He makes it unborn , which single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal , incorruptible, incorporeal — since he believed God to be the same — invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul , if he wanted to call it God?

We, however, who allow no appendage to God (in the sense of equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far below God: for we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of a diluted divinity and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God), though not His spirit; and although immortal , as this is an attribute of divinity, yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from perfection and right, and by consequence susceptible of a failure in memory. This point I have discussed sufficiently with Hermogenes.

But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to merit being accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to the attributes of God , it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties, and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we need not raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was capable of losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to recover afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that, which ought to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be powerful enough to recollect itself.

Both alternatives, indeed, will agree very well with my soul , but not with Plato's . In the second place, my objection to him will stand thus: ( Plato ,) do you endow the soul with a natural competency for understanding those well-known ideas of yours? Certainly I do, will be your answer. Well, now, no one will concede to you that the knowledge , (which you say is) the gift of nature, of the natural sciences can fail.

To begin with the real ground of the military crown, I think we must first inquire whether warfare is proper at all for Christians . What sense is there in discussing the merely accidental, when that on which it rests is to be condemned? Do we believe it lawful for a human oath to be superadded to one divine, for a man to come under promise to another master after Christ, and to abjure father, mother, and all nearest kinsfolk, whom even the law has commanded us to honour and love next to God Himself, to whom the gospel, too, holding them only of less account than Christ, has in like manner rendered honour ? Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law?

And shall he apply the chain, and the prison , and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? Shall he, forsooth, either keep watch-service for others more than for Christ , or shall he do it on the Lord's day, when he does not even do it for Christ Himself? And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he take a meal where the apostle has forbidden him? 1 Corinthians 8:10 And shall he diligently protect by night those whom in the day-time he has put to flight by his exorcisms, leaning and resting on the spear the while with which Christ's side was pierced? Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God?

Shall he be disturbed in death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who expects to be aroused by the angel's trump? And shall the Christian be burned according to camp rule, when he was not permitted to burn incense to an idol, when to him Christ remitted the punishment of fire? Then how many other offenses there are involved in the performances of camp offices, which we must hold to involve a transgression of God's law, you may see by a slight survey. The very carrying of the name over from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it.

Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism , and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God , and that is not allowed even outside of military service; or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen- faith has been no less ready to accept. Neither does military service hold out escape from punishment of sins , or exemption from martyrdom .

But I first say a word also about the crown itself. This laurel one is sacred to Apollo or Bacchus — to the former as the god of archery, to the latter as the god of triumphs. In like manner Claudius teaches; when he tells us that soldiers are wont too to be wreathed in myrtle. For the myrtle belongs to Venus, the mother of the Æneadæ, the mistress also of the god of war , who, through Ilia and the Romuli is Roman. But I do not believe that Venus is Roman as well as Mars, because of the vexation the concubine gave her. When military service again is crowned with olive, the idolatry has respect to Minerva, who is equally the goddess of arms — but got a crown of the tree referred to, because of the peace she made with Neptune. In these respects, the superstition of the military garland will be everywhere defiled and all-defiling.

And it is further defiled, I should think, also in the grounds of it. Lo the yearly public pronouncing of vows, what does that bear on its face to be? It takes place first in the part of the camp where the general's tent is, and then in the temples. In addition to the places, observe the words also: We vow that you, O Jupiter, will then have an ox with gold-decorated horns. What does the utterance mean? Without a doubt the denial (of Christ). Albeit the Christian says nothing in these places with the mouth, he makes his response by having the crown on his head. The laurel is likewise commanded (to be used) at the distribution of the largess. So you see idolatry is not without its gain, selling, as it does, Christ for pieces of gold, as Judas did for pieces of silver.

Will it be You cannot serve God and mammon Matthew 6:24 to devote your energies to mammon , and to depart from God? Will it be Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's, Matthew 22:21 not only not to render the human being to God , but even to take the denarius from Cæsar? Is the laurel of the triumph made of leaves, or of corpses? Is it adorned with ribbons, or with tombs? Is it bedewed with ointments, or with the tears of wives and mothers? It may be of some Christians too; for Christ is also among the barbarians. Has not he who has carried (a crown for) this cause on his head, fought even against himself? Another son of service belongs to the royal guards. And indeed crowns are called (Castrenses), as belonging to the camp; Munificæ likewise, from the Cæsarean functions they perform.

But even then you are still the soldier and the servant of another; and if of two masters, of God and Cæsar: but assuredly then not of Cæsar, when you owe yourself to God , as having higher claims, I should think, even in matters in which both have an interest.

For state reasons, the various orders of the citizens also are crowned with laurel crowns; but the magistrates besides with golden ones, as at Athens, and at Rome . Even to those are preferred the Etruscan. This appellation is given to the crowns which, distinguished by their gems and oak leaves of gold, they put on, with mantles having an embroidery of palm branches, to conduct the chariots containing the images of the gods to the circus. There are also provincial crowns of gold, needing now the larger heads of images instead of those of men. But your orders, and your magistracies, and your very place of meeting, the church, are Christ's. You belong to Him, for you have been enrolled in the books of life.

Philippians 4:3 There the blood of the Lord serves for your purple robe, and your broad stripe is His own cross; there the axe is already laid to the trunk of the tree; Matthew 3:10 there is the branch out of the root of Jesse. Isaiah 11:1 Never mind the state horses with their crown. Your Lord, when, according to the Scripture , He would enter Jerusalem in triumph, had not even an ass of His own. These (put their trust) in chariots, and these in horses; but we will seek our help in the name of the Lord our God. From so much as a dwelling in that Babylon of John's Revelation we are called away; much more then from its pomp. The rabble, too, are crowned, at one time because of some great rejoicing for the success of the emperors; at another, on account of some custom belonging to municipal festivals.

For luxury strives to make her own every occasion of public gladness . But as for you, you are a foreigner in this world, a citizen of Jerusalem, the city above. Our citizenship, the apostle says, is in heaven. Philippians 3:20 You have your own registers, your own calendar; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world; nay, you are called to the very opposite, for the world shall rejoice , but you shall mourn. John 16:20 And I think the Lord affirms, that those who mourn are happy , not those who are crowned. Marriage, too, decks the bridegroom with its crown; and therefore we will not have heathen brides, lest they seduce us even to the idolatry with which among them marriage is initiated. You have the law from the patriarchs indeed; you have the apostle enjoining people to marry in the Lord.

1 Corinthians 7:39 You have a crowning also on the making of a freeman; but you have been already ransomed by Christ, and that at a great price. How shall the world manumit the servant of another? Though it seems to be liberty, yet it will come to be found bondage. In the world everything is nominal, and nothing real. For even then, as ransomed by Christ, you were under no bondage to man; and now, though man has given you liberty, you are the servant of Christ . If you think freedom of the world to be real, so that you even seal it with a crown, you have returned to the slavery of man , imagining it to be freedom; you have lost the freedom of Christ , fancying it is slavery.

Keep for God His own property untainted; He will crown it if He choose. Nay, then, He does even choose. He calls us to it. To him who conquers He says, I will give a crown of life. Be you , too, faithful unto death, and fight you , too, the good fight, whose crown the apostle 2 Timothy 4:8 feels so justly confident has been laid up for him. The angel Revelation 6:2 also, as he goes forth on a white horse, conquering and to conquer, receives a crown of victory; and another Revelation 10:1 is adorned with an encircling rainbow (as it were in its fair colors)— a celestial meadow. In like manner, the elders sit crowned around, crowned too with a crown of gold, and the Son of Man Himself flashes out above the clouds. If such are the appearances in the vision of the seer, of what sort will be the realities in the actual manifestation?

Look at those crowns. Inhale those odours. Why condemn you to a little chaplet, or a twisted headband, the brow which has been destined for a diadem? For Christ Jesus has made us even kings to God and His Father. What have you in common with the flower which is to die? You have a flower in the Branch of Jesse, upon which the grace of the Divine Spirit in all its fullness rested — a flower undefiled, unfading, everlasting, by choosing which the good soldier, too, has got promotion in the heavenly ranks.

Blush, you fellow-soldiers of his, henceforth not to be condemned even by him, but by some soldier of Mithras , who, at his initiation in the gloomy cavern, in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness, when at the sword's point a crown is presented to him, as though in mimicry of martyrdom , and thereupon put upon his head, is admonished to resist and cast it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And thenceforth he is never crowned; and he has that for a mark to show who he is, if anywhere he be subjected to trial in respect of his religion; and he is at once believed to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws the crown away — if he say that in his god he has his crown.

Let us take note of the devices of the devil , who is wont to ape some of God's things with no other design than, by the faithfulness of his servants, to put us to shame, and to condemn us.

Very lately it happened thus: while the bounty of our most excellent emperors was dispensed in the camp, the soldiers, laurel-crowned, were approaching. One of them, more a soldier of God , more steadfast than the rest of his brethren, who had imagined that they could serve two masters, his head alone uncovered, the useless crown in his hand — already even by that peculiarity known to every one as a Christian — was nobly conspicuous. Accordingly, all began to mark him out, jeering him at a distance, gnashing on him near at hand. The murmur is wafted to the tribune, when the person had just left the ranks. The tribune at once puts the question to him, Why are you so different in your attire? He declared that he had no liberty to wear the crown with the rest. Being urgently asked for his reasons, he answered, I am a Christian . O soldier!

Boasting yourself in God . Then the case was considered and voted on; the matter was remitted to a higher tribunal; the offender was conducted to the prefects. At once he put away the heavy cloak, his disburdening commenced; he loosed from his foot the military shoe, beginning to stand upon holy ground; he gave up the sword, which was not necessary either for the protection of our Lord; from his hand likewise dropped the laurel crown; and now, purple-clad with the hope of his own blood, shod with the preparation of the gospel, girt with the sharper word of God , completely equipped in the apostles' armour, and crowned more worthily with the white crown of martyrdom , he awaits in prison the largess of Christ .

Thereafter adverse judgments began to be passed upon his conduct — whether on the part of Christians I do not know , for those of the heathen are not different — as if he were headstrong and rash, and too eager to die, because, in being taken to task about a mere matter of dress, he brought trouble on the bearers of the Name, — he, forsooth, alone brave among so many soldier-brethren, he alone a Christian . It is plain that as they have rejected the prophecies of the Holy Spirit , they are also purposing the refusal of martyrdom . So they murmur that a peace so good and long is endangered for them. Nor do I doubt that some are already turning their back on the Scriptures , are making ready their luggage, are equipped for flight from city to city; for that is all of the gospel they care to remember.

I know , too, their pastors are lions in peace, deer in the fight. As to the questions asked for extorting confessions from us, we shall teach elsewhere. Now, as they put forth also the objection — But where are we forbidden to be crowned?— I shall take this point up, as more suitable to be treated of here, being the essence , in fact, of the present contention. So that, on the one hand, the inquirers who are ignorant , but anxious, may be instructed; and on the other, those may be refuted who try to vindicate the sin , especially the laurel-crowned Christians themselves, to whom it is merely a question of debate, as if it might be regarded as either no trespass at all, or at least a doubtful one, because it may be made the subject of investigation. That it is neither sinless nor doubtful, I shall now, however, show.

We are worshippers of one God , of whose existence and character Nature teaches all men ; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, whose benefits minister to your happiness . You think that others, too, are gods, whom we know to be devils. However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion — to which free-will and not force should lead us — the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice . For they can have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine.

Accordingly the true God bestows His blessings alike on wicked men and on His own elect; upon which account He has appointed an eternal judgment, when both thankful and unthankful will have to stand before His bar. Yet you have never detected us — sacrilegious wretches though you reckon us to be — in any theft, far less in any sacrilege. But the robbers of your temples, all of them swear by your gods, and worship them; they are not Christians , and yet it is they who are found guilty of sacrilegious deeds . We have not time to unfold in how many other ways your gods are mocked and despised by their own votaries.

So, too, treason is falsely laid to our charge, though no one has ever been able to find followers of Albinus, or Niger, or Cassius, among Christians ; while the very men who had sworn by the genii of the emperors, who had offered and vowed sacrifices for their safety, who had often pronounced condemnation on Christ's disciples , are till this day found traitors to the imperial throne. A Christian is enemy to none, least of all to the Emperor of Rome, whom he knows to be appointed by his God , and so cannot but love and honour ; and whose well-being moreover, he must needs desire, with that of the empire over which he reigns so long as the world shall stand — for so long as that shall Rome continue.

To the emperor, therefore, we render such reverential homage as is lawful for us and good for him; regarding him as the human being next to God who from God has received all his power, and is less than God alone. And this will be according to his own desires. For thus — as less only than the true God — he is greater than all besides. Thus he is greater than the very gods themselves, even they, too, being subject to him. We therefore sacrifice for the emperor's safety, but to our God and his, and after the manner God has enjoined, in simple prayer . For God , Creator of the universe , has no need of odours or of blood. These things are the food of devils. But we not only reject those wicked spirits: we overcome them; we daily hold them up to contempt; we exorcise them from their victims, as multitudes can testify.

We who are without fear ourselves are not seeking to frighten you, but we would save all men if possible by warning them not to fight with God . You may perform the duties of your charge, and yet remember the claims of humanity; if on no other ground than that you are liable to punishment yourself, (you ought to do so). For is not your commission simply to condemn those who confess their guilt, and to give over to the torture those who deny? You see, then, how you trespass yourselves against your instructions to wring from the confessing a denial. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment of our innocence that you refuse to condemn us at once when we confess. In doing your utmost to extirpate us, if that is your object, it is innocence you assail.

But how many rulers, men more resolute and more cruel than you are, have contrived to get quit of such causes altogether — as Cincius Severus, who himself suggested the remedy at Thysdris, pointing out how the Christians should answer that they might secure an acquittal; as Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed from his bar a Christian , on the ground that to satisfy his fellow citizens would break the peace of the community; as Asper, who, in the case of a man who gave up his faith under slight infliction of the torture, did not compel the offering of sacrifice , having owned before, among the advocates and assessors of court, that he was annoyed at having had to meddle with such a case.

Pudens, too, at once dismissed a Christian who was brought before him, perceiving from the indictment that it was a case of vexatious accusation; tearing the document in pieces, he refused so much as to hear him without the presence of his accuser, as not being consistent with the imperial commands. All this might be officially brought under your notice, and by the very advocates, who are themselves also under obligations to us, although in court they give their voice as it suits them. The clerk of one of them who was liable to be thrown upon the ground by an evil spirit, was set free from his affliction; as was also the relative of another, and the little boy of a third. How many men of rank (to say nothing of common people) have been delivered from devils, and healed of diseases!

Even Severus himself, the father of Antonine, was graciously mindful of the Christians ; for he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his having once cured him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day of his death. Antonine, too, brought up as he was on Christian milk, was intimately acquainted with this man. Both women and men of highest rank, whom Severus knew well to be Christians , were not merely permitted by him to remain uninjured; but he even bore distinguished testimony in their favour, and gave them publicly back to us from the hands of a raging populace. Marcus Aurelius also, in his expedition to Germany, by the prayers his Christian soldiers offered to God , got rain in that well-known thirst.

Your cruelty is our glory . Only see you to it, that in having such things as these to endure, we do not feel ourselves constrained to rush forth to the combat, if only to prove that we have no dread of them, but on the contrary, even invite their infliction. When Arrius Antoninus was driving things hard in Asia, the whole Christians of the province, in one united band, presented themselves before his judgment-seat; on which, ordering a few to be led forth to execution, he said to the rest, O miserable men, if you wish to die, you have precipices or halters. If we should take it into our heads to do the same thing here, what will you make of so many thousands, of such a multitude of men and women , persons of every sex and every age and every rank, when they present themselves before you? How many fires, how many swords will be required?

What will be the anguish of Carthage itself, which you will have to decimate, as each one recognises there his relatives and companions, as he sees there it may be men of your own order, and noble ladies, and all the leading persons of the city, and either kinsmen or friends of those of your own circle? Spare yourself, if not us poor Christians ! Spare Carthage , if not yourself! Spare the province, which the indication of your purpose has subjected to the threats and extortions at once of the soldiers and of private enemies. We have no master but God. He is before you, and cannot be hidden from you, but to Him you can do no injury. But those whom you regard as masters are only men, and one day they themselves must die.

Yet still this community will be undying, for be assured that just in the time of its seeming overthrow it is built up into greater power. For all who witness the noble patience of its martyrs , as struck with misgivings, are inflamed with desire to examine into the matter in question; and as soon as they come to know the truth , they straightway enrol themselves its disciples .

1. On the Freedom of the Will, With an Explanation and Interpretation of Those Statements of Scripture Which Appear to Nullify It.

1. Since in the preaching of the Church there is included the doctrine respecting a just judgment of God , which, when believed to be true , incites those who hear it to live virtuously, and to shun sin by all means, inasmuch as they manifestly acknowledge that things worthy of praise and blame are within our own power, come and let us discuss by themselves a few points regarding the freedom of the will — a question of all others most necessary. And that we may understand what the freedom of the will is, it is necessary to unfold the conception of it, that this being declared with precision, the subject may be placed before us.

2. Of things that move, some have the cause of their motion within themselves; others, again, are moved only from without. Now only portable things are moved from without, such as pieces of wood, and stones, and all matter that is held together by their constitution alone. And let that view be removed from consideration which calls the flux of bodies motion, since it is not needed for our present purpose. But animals and plants have the cause of their motion within themselves, and in general whatever is held together by nature and a soul , to which class of things they say that metals also belong. And besides these, fire too is self-moved, and perhaps also fountains of water. Now, of those things which have the cause of their movement within themselves, some, they say, are moved out of themselves, others from themselves: things without life, out of themselves; animate things, from themselves. For animate things are moved from themselves, a phantasy springing up in them which incites to effort. And again, in certain animals phantasies are formed which call forth an effort, the nature of the phantasy stirring up the effort in an orderly manner, as in the spider is formed the phantasy of weaving; and the attempt to weave follows, the nature of its phantasy inciting the insect in an orderly manner to this alone. And besides its phantasial nature, nothing else is believed to belong to the insect. And in the bee there is formed the phantasy to produce wax.

3. The rational animal, however, has, in addition to its phantasial nature, also reason, which judges the phantasies, and disapproves of some and accepts others, in order that the animal may be led according to them. Therefore, since there are in the nature of reason aids towards the contemplation of virtue and vice , by following which, after beholding good and evil , we select the one and avoid the other, we are deserving of praise when we give ourselves to the practice of virtue , and censurable when we do the reverse. We must not, however, be ignorant that the greater part of the nature assigned to all things is a varying quantity among animals, both in a greater and a less degree; so that the instinct in hunting-dogs and in war-horses approaches somehow, so to speak, to the faculty of reason. Now, to fall under some one of those external causes which stir up within us this phantasy or that, is confessedly not one of those things that are dependent upon ourselves; but to determine that we shall use the occurrence in this way or differently, is the prerogative of nothing else than of the reason within us, which, as occasion offers, arouses us towards efforts inciting to what is virtuous and becoming, or turns us aside to what is the reverse.

An excellent thing has silence proved itself in many another person on many an occasion, and at present it befits myself, too, most especially, who with or without purpose may keep the door of my lips, and feel constrained to be silent. For I am unpractised and unskilled in those beautiful and elegant addresses which are spoken or composed in a regular and unbroken train, in select and well-chosen phrases and words; and it may be that I am less apt by nature to cultivate successfully this graceful and truly Grecian art.

Besides, it is now eight years since I chanced myself to utter or compose any speech, whether long or short; neither in that period have I heard any other compose or utter anything in private, or deliver in public any laudatory or controversial orations, with the exception of those admirable men who have embraced the noble study of philosophy , and who care less for beauty of language and elegance of expression. For, attaching only a secondary importance to the words, they aim, with all exactness, at investigating and making known the things themselves, precisely as they are severally constituted. Not indeed, in my opinion, that they: do not desire, but rather that they do greatly desire, to clothe the noble and accurate results of their thinking in noble and comely language.

Yet it may be that they are not able so lightly to put forth this sacred and godlike power (faculty) in the exercise of its own proper conceptions, and at the same time to practise a mode of discourse eloquent in its terms, and thus to comprehend in one and the same mind — and that, too, this little mind of man — two accomplishments, which are the gifts of two distinct persons , and which are, in truth , most contrary to each other. For silence is indeed the friend and helpmeet of thought and invention. But if one aims at readiness of speech and beauty of discourse, he will get at them by no other discipline than the study of words, and their constant practice.

Moreover, another branch of learning occupies my mind completely, and the mouth binds the tongue if I should desire to make any speech, however brief, with the voice of the Greeks; I refer to those admirable laws of our sages by which the affairs of all the subjects of the Roman Empire are now directed, and which are neither composed nor learned without difficulty. And these are wise and exact in themselves, and manifold and admirable, and, in a word, most thoroughly Grecian; and they are expressed and committed to us in the Roman tongue, which is a wonderful and magnificent sort of language, and one very aptly conformable to royal authority, but still difficult to me. Nor could it be otherwise with me, even though I might say that it was my desire that it should be.

When you have given your name to the warfare, you are held by a bridle. Therefore begin to put away your former doings. Shun luxuries, since labour is threatening arms. With all your virtue you must obey the king's command, if you wish to attain the last times in gladness . He is a good soldier, always wait for things to be enjoyed. Be unwilling to flatter yourself; absolutely put away sloth, that you may daily be ready for what is set before you. Be careful beforehand; in the morning revisit the standards. When you see the war , take the nearest contest. This is the king's glory , to see the soldiery prepared. The king is present; desire that you may fight beyond his hope. He makes ready gifts. He gladly looks for the victory, and assigns you to be a fit follower.

Be unwilling to spare yourself besides for Belial ; be rather diligent, that he may give fame for your death.

1. I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamour with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and true God , thinking it more modest and better, silently to scorn the ignorance of a mistaken man, than by speaking to provoke the fury of a senseless one. Neither did I do this without the authority of the divine teaching, since it is written, Speak not in the ears of a fool, lest when he hear you he should despise the wisdom of your words; Proverbs 23:9 and again, Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him. Proverbs 26:4 And we are, moreover, bidden to keep what is holy within our own knowledge , and not expose it to be trodden down by swine and dogs, since the Lord speaks, saying, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Matthew 7:6 For when you used often to come to me with the desire of contradicting rather than with the wish to learn, and preferred impudently to insist on your own views, which you shouted with noisy words, to patiently listening to mine, it seethed to me foolish to contend with you; since it would he an easier and slighter thing to restrain the angry waves of a turbulent sea with shouts, than to check your madness by arguments. Assuredly it would be both a vain and ineffectual labour to offer light to a blind man, discourse to a deaf one, or wisdom to a brute; since neither…

2. In consideration of this, I have frequently held my tongue, and overcome an impatient man with patience; since I could neither teach an unteachable man, nor check an impious one with religion, nor restrain a frantic man with gentleness. But yet, when you say that very many are complaining that to us it is ascribed that wars arise more frequently, that plague, that famines rage, and that long droughts are suspending the showers and rains, it is not fitting that I should be silent any longer, lest my silence should begin to be attributed to mistrust rather than to modesty; and while I am treating the false charges with contempt, I may seem to be acknowledging the crime. I reply, therefore, as well to you, Demetrianus, as to others whom perhaps you have stirred up, and many of whom, by sowing hatred against us with malicious words. you have made your own partisans, from the budding forth of your own root and origin, who, however, I believe , will admit the reasonableness of my discourse; for he who is moved to evil by the deception of a lie , will much more easily be moved to good by the cogency of truth .

3. You have said that all these things are caused by us, and that to us ought to be attributed the misfortunes wherewith the world is now shaken and distressed, because your gods are not worshipped by us. And in this behalf, since you are ignorant of divine knowledge , and a stranger to the truth , you must in the first place know this, that the world has now grown old, and does not abide in that strength in which it formerly stood; nor has it that vigour and force which it formerly possessed. This, even were we silent, and if we alleged no proofs from the sacred Scriptures and from the divine declarations, the world itself is now announcing, and, bearing witness to its decline by the testimony of its failing estate. In the winter there is not such an abundance of showers for nourishing the seeds; in the summer the sun has not so much heat for cherishing the harvest; nor in the spring season are the grain-fields so joyous; nor are the autumnal seasons so fruitful in their leafy products. The layers of marble are dug out in less quantity from the disembowelled and wearied mountains; the diminished quantities of gold and silver suggest the early exhaustion of the metals, and the impoverished veins are straitened and decreased day by day; the husbandman is failing in the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the market, justice in the tribunal, concord in friendships, skilfulness in the arts, discipline in morals. Think you that the substantial…

4. You impute it to the Christians that everything is decaying as the world grows old. What if old men should charge it on the Christians that they grow less strong in their old age; that they no longer, as formerly, have the same facilities, in the hearing of their ears, in the swiftness of their feet, in the keenness of their eyes, in the vigour of their strength, in the freshness of their organic powers, in the fullness of their limbs, and that although once the life of men endured beyond the age of eight and nine hundred years, it can now scarcely attain to its hundredth year? We see grey hairs in boys — the hair fails before it begins to grow; and life does not cease in old age, but it begins with old age. Thus, even at its very commencement, birth hastens to its close; Wisdom 5:13 thus, whatever is now born degenerates with the old age of the world itself; so that no one ought to wonder that everything begins to fail in the world, when the whole world itself is already in process of failing, and in its end.

1. Behold, beloved brethren, peace is restored to the Church ; and although it lately seemed to incredulous people difficult, and to traitors impossible, our security is by divine aid and retribution re-established. Our minds return to gladness ; and the season of affliction and the cloud being dispersed, tranquillity and serenity have shone forth once more. Praises must be given to God , and His benefits and gifts must be celebrated with giving of thanks, although even in the time of persecution our voice has not ceased to give thanks. For not even an enemy has so much power as to prevent us, who love the Lord with our whole heart, and life, and strength, from declaring His blessings and praises always and everywhere with glory . The day earnestly desired, by the prayers of all has come; and after the dreadful and loathsome darkness of a long night, the world has shone forth irradiated by the light of the Lord.

2. We look with glad countenances upon confessors illustrious with the heraldry of a good name, and glorious with the praises of virtue and of faith ; clinging to them with holy kisses, we embrace them long desired with insatiable eagerness. The white-robed cohort of Christ's soldiers is here, who in the fierce conflict have broken the ferocious turbulence of an urgent persecution , having been prepared for the suffering of the dungeon, armed for the endurance of death. Bravely you have resisted the world: you have afforded a glorious spectacle in the sight of God ; you have been an example to your brethren that shall follow you. That religious voice has named the name of Christ , in whom it has once confessed that it believed ; those illustrious hands, which had only been accustomed to divine works, have resisted the sacrilegious sacrifices ; those lips, sanctified by heavenly food after the body and blood of the Lord, have rejected the profane contacts and the leavings of the idols . Your head has remained free from the impious and wicked veil with which the captive heads of those who sacrificed were there veiled; your brow, pure with the sign of God , could not bear the crown of the devil , but reserved itself for the Lord's crown. How joyously does your Mother Church receive you in her bosom, as you return from the battle! How blissfully, how gladly, does she open her gates, that in united bands you may enter, bearing the trophies from a prostrate enemy! With the…

3. Let none, my beloved brethren, let none depreciate this glory ; let none by malignant dispraise detract from the uncorrupted steadfastness of those who have stood. When the day appointed for denying had gone by, every one who had not professed within that time not to be a Christian , confessed that he was a Christian . It is the first title to victory to confess the Lord under the violence of the hands of the Gentiles . It is the second step to glory to be withdrawn by a cautious retirement, and to be reserved for the Lord. The former is a public, the latter is a private confession. The former overcomes the judge of this world; the latter, content with God as its judge, keeps a pure conscience in integrity of heart. In the former case there is a readier fortitude ; in the latter, solicitude is more secure. The former, as his hour approached, was already found mature; the latter perhaps was delayed, who, leaving his estate, withdrew for a while, because he would not deny, but would certainly confess if he too had been apprehended.

4. One cause of grief saddens these heavenly crowns of martyrs , these glorious spiritual confessions, these very great and illustrious virtues of the brethren who stand; which is, that the hostile violence has torn away a part of our own bowels, and thrown it away in the destructiveness of its own cruelty. What shall I do in this matter, beloved brethren? Wavering in the various tide of feeling, what or how shall I speak? I need tears rather than words to express the sorrow with which the wound of our body should be bewailed, with which the manifold loss of a people once numerous should be lamented. For whose heart is so hard or cruel, who is so unmindful of brotherly love , as, among the varied ruins of his friends, and the mournful relics disfigured with all degradation, to be able to stand and to keep dry eyes, and not in the breaking out of his grief to express his groanings rather with tears than with words? I grieve, brethren, I grieve with you; nor does my own integrity and my personal soundness beguile me to the soothing of my griefs, since it is the shepherd that is chiefly wounded in the wound of his flock. I join my breast with each one, and I share in the grievous burden of sorrow and mourning. I wail with the wailing, I weep with the weeping, I regard myself as prostrated with those that are prostrate. My limbs are at the same time stricken with those darts of the raging enemy; their cruel swords have pierced through my bowels; my mind could not remain…

1. Although in very many of you, dearly beloved brethren, there is a steadfast mind and a firm faith , and a devoted spirit that is not disturbed at the frequency of this present mortality, but, like a strong and stable rock, rather shatters the turbulent onsets of the world and the raging waves of time, while it is not itself shattered, and is not overcome but tried by these temptations ; yet because I observe that among the people some, either through weakness of mind , or through decay of faith , or through the sweetness of this worldly life, or through the softness of their sex, or what is of still greater account, through error from the truth , are standing less steadily, and are not exerting the divine and unvanquished vigour of their heart, the matter may not be disguised nor kept in silence, but as far as my feeble powers suffice with my full strength, and with a discourse gathered from the Lord's lessons, the slothfulness of a luxurious disposition must be restrained, and he who has begun to be already a man of God and of Christ , must be found worthy of God and of Christ .

2. For he who wars for God , dearest brethren, ought to acknowledge himself as one who, placed in the heavenly camp, already hopes for divine things, so that we may have no trembling at the storms and whirlwinds of the world, and no disturbance, since the Lord had foretold that these would come. With the exhortation of His fore-seeing word, instructing, and teaching, and preparing, and strengthening the people of His Church for all endurance of things to come, He predicted and said that wars , and famines, and earthquakes, and pestilences would arise in each place; and lest an unexpected and new dread of mischiefs should shake us, He previously warned us that adversity would increase more and more in the last times. Behold, the very things occur which were spoken; and since those occur which were foretold before, whatever things were promised will also follow; as the Lord Himself promises, saying, But when you see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand. Luke 21:31 The kingdom of God , beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and the rejoicing of eternal salvation , and the perpetual gladness and possession lately lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world; already heavenly things are taking the place of earthly, and great things of small, and eternal things of things that fade away. What room is there here for anxiety and solicitude? Who, in the midst of these things, is trembling and sad,…

3. For it is written that the just lives by faith . If you are just, and live by faith , if you truly believe in Christ , why, since you are about to be with Christ, and are secure of the Lord's promise, do you not embrace the assurance that you are called to Christ , and rejoice that you are freed from the devil ? Certainly Simeon, that just man, who was truly just, who kept God's commands with a full faith , when it had been pledged him from heaven that he should not die before he had seen the Christ , and Christ had come an infant into the temple with His mother, acknowledged in spirit that Christ was now born, concerning whom it had before been foretold to him; and when he had seen Him, he knew that he should soon die. Therefore, rejoicing concerning his now approaching death, and secure of his immediate summons, he received the child into his arms, and blessing the Lord, he exclaimed, and said, Now let Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation ; Luke 2:29 assuredly proving and bearing witness that the servants of God then had peace, then free, then tranquil repose, when, withdrawn from these whirlwinds of the world, we attain the harbour of our home and eternal security, when having accomplished this death we come to immortality . For that is our peace, that our faithful tranquillity, that our steadfast, and abiding, and perpetual security.

4. But for the rest, what else in the world than a battle against the devil is daily carried on, than a struggle against his darts and weapons in constant conflicts? Our warfare is with avarice , with immodesty, with anger , with ambition; our diligent and toilsome wrestle with carnal vices , with enticements of the world. The mind of man besieged, and in every quarter invested with the onsets of the devil , scarcely in each point meets the attack, scarcely resists it. If avarice is prostrated, lust springs up. If lust is overcome, ambition takes its place. If ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, wine-bibbing entices, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts friendship; you are constrained to curse, which the divine law forbids; you are compelled to swear , which is not lawful.

1. That those are no gods whom the common people worship, is known from this. They were formerly kings, who on account of their royal memory subsequently began to be adored by their people even in death. Thence temples were founded to them; thence images were sculptured to retain the countenances of the deceased by the likeness; and men sacrificed victims, and celebrated festal days, by way of giving them honour . Thence to posterity those rites became sacred which at first had been adopted as a consolation. And now let us see whether this truth is confirmed in individual instances.

2. Melicertes and Leucothea are precipitated into the sea, and subsequently become sea-divinities. The Castors die by turns, that they may live. Aesculapius is struck by lightning, that he may rise into a god. Hercules, that he may put off the man, is burnt up in the fires of Oeta. Apollo fed the flocks of Admetus; Neptune founded walls for Laomedon, and received — unfortunate builder — no wages for his work. The cave of Jupiter is to be seen in Crete, and his sepulchre is shown; and it is manifest that Saturn was driven away by him, and that from him Latium received its name, as being his lurking-place. He was the first that taught to print letters; he was the first that taught to stamp money in Italy , and thence the treasury is called the treasury of Saturn. And he also was the cultivator of the rustic life, whence he is painted as an old man carrying a sickle. Janus had received him to hospitality when he was driven away, from whose name the Janiculum is so called, and the month of January is appointed. He himself is portrayed with two faces, because, placed in the middle, he seems to look equally towards the commencing and the closing year. The Mauri, indeed, manifestly worship kings, and do not conceal their name by any disguise.

3. From this the religion of the gods is variously changed among individual nations and provinces, inasmuch as no one god is worshipped by all, but by each one the worship of its own ancestors is kept peculiar. Proving that this is so, Alexander the Great writes in the remarkable volume addressed to his mother, that through fear of his power the doctrine of the gods being men, which was kept secret, had been disclosed to him by a priest , that it was the memory of ancestors and kings that was (really) kept up, and that from this the rites of worship and sacrifice have grown up. But if gods were born at any time, why are they not born in these days also?— unless, indeed, Jupiter possibly has grown too old, or the faculty of bearing has failed Juno.

4. But why do you think that the gods can avail on behalf of the Romans, when you see that they can do nothing for their own worshipers in opposition to the Roman arms? For we know that the gods of the Romans are indigenous. Romulus was made a god by the perjury of Proculus, and Picus, and Tiberinus, and Pilumnus, and Consus, whom as a god of treachery Romulus would have to be worshipped, just as if he had been a god of counsels, when his perfidy resulted in the rape of the Sabines. Tatius also both invented and worshipped the goddess Cloacina; Hostilius, Fear and Paleness. By and by, I know not by whom, Fever was dedicated, and Acca and Flora the harlots. These are the Roman gods. But Mars is a Thracian, and Jupiter a Cretan, and Juno either Argive or Samian or Carthaginian, and Diana of Taurus, and the mother of the gods of Ida; and there are Egyptian monsters, not deities, who assuredly, if they had had any power, would have preserved their own and their people's kingdoms. Certainly there are also among the Romans the conquered Penates whom the fugitive Aeneas introduced there. There is also Venus the bald — far more dishonoured by the fact of her baldness in Rome than by her having been wounded in Homer.

1. In Opposition to Those of the School of Epicurus Who Deny the Existence of a Providence, and Refer the Constitution of the Universe to Atomic Bodies. Is the universe one coherent whole, as it seems to be in our own judgment, as well as in that of the wisest of the Greek philosophers , such as Plato and Pythagoras, and the Stoics and Heraclitus? Or is it a duality, as some may possibly have conjectured? Or is it indeed something manifold and infinite , as has been the opinion of certain others who, with a variety of mad speculations and fanciful usages of terms, have sought to divide and resolve the essential matter of the universe , and lay down the position that it is infinite and unoriginated, and without the sway of Providence? For there are those who, giving the name of atoms to certain imperishable and most minute bodies which are supposed to be infinite in number, and positing also the existence of a certain vacant space of an unlimited vastness, allege that these atoms, as they are borne along casually in the void, and clash all fortuitously against each other in an unregulated whirl, and become commingled one with another in a multitude of forms, enter into combination with each other, and thus gradually form this world and all objects in it; yea, more, that they construct infinite worlds. This was the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus; only they differed in one point, in so far as the former supposed these atoms to be all most minute and consequently…

2. A Refutation of This Dogma on the Ground of Familiar Human Analogies. How, shall we bear with these men who assert that all those wise, and consequently also noble, constructions (in the universe ) are only the works of common chance? Those objects, I mean, of which each taken by itself as it is made, and the whole system collectively, were seen to be good by Him by whose command they came into existence . For, as it is said, God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31 But truly these men do not reflect on the analogies even of small familiar things which might come under their observation at any time, and from which they might learn that no object of any utility, and fitted to be serviceable, is made without design or by mere chance, but is wrought by skill of hand, and is contrived so as to meet its proper use. And when the object falls out of service and becomes useless, then it also begins to break up indeterminately, and to decompose and dissipate its materials in every casual and unregulated way, just as the wisdom by which it was skilfully constructed at first no longer controls and maintains it. For a cloak, for example, cannot be made without the weaver, as if the warp could be set aright and the woof could be entwined with it by their own spontaneous action; while, on the other hand, if it is once worn out, its tattered rags are flung aside. Again, when a house or a city is built, it does not take on its stones, as if some of…

3. A Refutation on the Ground of the Constitution of the Universe. Or who can bear to hear it maintained, that this mighty habitation, which is constituted of heaven and earth, and which is called Cosmos on account of the magnitude and the plenitude of the wisdom which has been brought to bear upon it, has been established in all its order and beauty by those atoms which hold their course devoid of order and beauty, and that that same state of disorder has grown into this true Cosmos, Order? Or who can believe that those regular movements and courses are the products of a certain unregulated impetus? Or who can allow that the perfect concord subsisting among the celestial bodies derives its harmony from instruments destitute both of concord and harmony? Or, again, if there is but one and the same substance in all things, and if there is the same incorruptible nature in all — the only elements of difference being, as they aver, size and figure — how comes it that there are some bodies divine and perfect, and eternal , as they would phrase it, or lasting, as some one may prefer to express it; and among these some that are visible and others that are invisible — the visible including such as sun, and moon, and stars, and earth, and water; and the invisible including gods, and demons , and spirits? For the existence of such they cannot possibly deny however desirous to do so. And again, there are other objects that are long-lived, both animals and plants. As to animals, there…

4. A Refutation of the Same on the Grounds of the Human Constitution. Further, those men understand neither themselves nor what is proper to themselves. For if any of the leaders in this impious doctrine only considered what manner of person he is himself, and whence he comes, he would surely be led to a wise decision, like one who has obtained understanding of himself, and would say, not to these atoms, but to his Father and Maker, Your hands have made me and fashioned me. And he would take up, too, this wonderful account of his formation as it has been given by one of old: Have You not poured me out as milk, and curdled me as choose? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and favour, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit. For of what quantity and of what origin were the atoms which the father of Epicurus gave forth from himself when he begot Epicurus ? And how, when they were received within his mother's womb, did they coalesce, and take form and figure? And how were they put in motion and made to increase? And how did that little seed of generation draw together the many atoms that were to constitute Epicurus , and change some of them into skin and flesh for a covering, and make bone of others for erectness and strength, and form sinews of others for compact contexture? And how did it frame and adapt the many other members and parts — heart and bowels, and organs of sense, some within and some…

1. Since I have found some who deem themselves very wise in their opinions, acting as if they were inspired, and announcing with all the authority of an oracle, that from the time when the Christian people began to exist in the world the universe has gone to ruin, that the human race has been visited with ills of many kinds, that even the very gods, abandoning their accustomed charge, in virtue of which they were wont in former days to regard with interest our affairs, have been driven from the regions of earth — I have resolved, so far as my capacity and my humble power of language will allow, to oppose public prejudice, and to refute calumnious accusations; lest, on the one hand, those persons should imagine that they are declaring some weighty matter, when they are merely retailing vulgar rumours; and on the other, lest, if we refrain from such a contest, they should suppose that they have gained a cause , lost by its own inherent demerits, not abandoned by the silence of its advocates. For I should not deny that that charge is a most serious one, and that we fully deserve the hatred attaching to public enemies, if it should appear that to us are attributable causes by reason of which the universe has deviated from its laws , the gods have been driven far away, and such swarms of miseries have been inflicted on the generations of men.

2. Let us therefore examine carefully the real significance of that opinion, and what is the nature of the allegation; and laying aside all desire for wrangling, by which the calm view of subjects is wont to be dimmed, and even intercepted, let us test, by fairly balancing the considerations on both sides, whether that which is alleged be true . For it will assuredly be proved by an array of convincing arguments, not that we are discovered to be more impious, but that they themselves are convicted of that charge who profess to be worshippers of the deities, and devotees of an antiquated superstition . And, in the first place, we ask this of them in friendly and calm language: Since the name of the Christian religion began to be used on the earth, what phenomenon, unseen before, unheard of before, what event contrary to the laws established in the beginning, has the so-called Nature of Things felt or suffered? Have these first elements, from which it is agreed that all things were compacted, been altered into elements of an opposite character? Has the fabric of this machine and mass of the universe , by which we are all covered, and in which we are held enclosed, relaxed in any part, or broken up? Has the revolution of the globe, to which we are accustomed, departing from the rate of its primal motion, begun either to move too slowly, or to be hurried onward in headlong rotation? Have the stars begun to rise in the west, and the setting of the constellations to take place in…

3. Since this is so, and since no strange influence has suddenly manifested itself to break the continuous course of events by interrupting their succession, what is the ground of the allegation, that a plague was brought upon the earth after the Christian religion came into the world, and after it revealed the mysteries of hidden truth ? But pestilences, say my opponents, and droughts, wars , famines, locusts, mice, and hailstones, and other hurtful things, by which the property of men is assailed, the gods bring upon us, incensed as they are by your wrong-doings and by your transgressions. If it were not a mark of stupidity to linger on matters which are already clear, and which require no defense, I should certainly show, by unfolding the history of past ages, that those ills which you speak of were not unknown, were not sudden in their visitation; and that the plagues did not burst upon us, and the affairs of men begin to be attacked by a variety of dangers, from the time that our sect won the honour of this appellation. For if we are to blame, and if these plagues have been devised against our sin , whence did antiquity know these names for misfortunes? Whence did she give a designation to wars ? By what conception could she indicate pestilence and hailstorms, or how could she introduce these terms among her words, by which speech was rendered plain? For if these ills are entirely new, and if they derive their origin from recent transgressions, how could it be that the…

4. When was the human race destroyed by a flood? Was it not before us? When was the world set on fire, and reduced to coals and ashes? Was it not before us? When were the greatest cities engulphed in the billows of the sea? Was it not before us? When were wars waged with wild beasts, and battles fought with lions? was it not before us? When was ruin brought on whole communities by poisonous serpents? was it not before us? For, inasmuch as you are wont to lay to our blame the cause of frequent wars , the devastation of cities, the irruptions of the Germans and the Scythians, allow me, with your leave, to say — In your eagerness to calumniate us, you do not perceive the real nature of that which is alleged.