TERTULLIAN: APOLOGY
TERTULLIAN: APOLOGY
One. If you, the magistrates of the Roman Empire, you, who, in the light of day, set on high, at the very head of the state, preside to do justice, if you are not allowed openly to investigate, face to face to examine, the Christian issue, to learn what it is in truth; if, in this phase of life, and this alone, your authority either dreads or blushes to inquire in public, with all the care that Justice demands; if finally (as recently befell) persecution of this school is so busy in the domestic tribunal as to block the way of defence; then let truth be allowed to reach your ears at least by the hidden path of silent literature.
Truth asks no favours in her cause, since she has no surprise at her present position. Truth knows that she is a stranger on earth and easily finds enemies among men of another allegiance, but she knows that her race, home, hope, recompense, honour, are in heaven. For one thing meanwhile she is eager-not to be condemned without being known. The laws are supreme in their own sphere; what loss can they suffer, if Truth be heard? Why, would it not enhance the glory of their supremacy to condemn Truth after hearing her? But, if they condemn her unheard-let us set on one side the odium such injustice will incur-they will rouse the suspicion that they have some secret sense that they are unjust, when they refuse to hear what, once heard, they cannot condemn.
This, then, is the first plea we lodge with you-the injustice of your hatred of the Christian name. The very excuse that seems to acquit it, at once aggravates and convicts that injustice-to wit, ignorance. For what could be more unjust than for men to hate a thing they do not know, even though it really deserves hatred? It can only deserve hatred when it is known whether it does deserve it. But so long as nothing at all is known of its deserts, how can you defend the justice of the hatred? That must be established, not on the bare fact of its existence, but on knowledge. When men hate a thing simply because they do not know the character of what they hate, what prevents it being of a nature that does not deserve hate at all? Whichever alternative you choose, we maintain both points: they are ignorant so long as they hate, and their hate is unjust so long as they are ignorant. It is evidence of an ignorance which, while it is made an excuse for their injustice, really condemns it, that all who once hated Christianity because they were ignorant of the nature of what they hated, so soon as they cease to be ignorant of it, leave off hating it. From their number come the Christians; it is on the basis of knowledge, nothing else; and they begin to hate what once they were and to profess what once they hated; and we are as many as we are alleged to be. Men proclaim aloud that the state is beset with us; in countryside, in villages, in islands, Christians; every sex, age, condition, yes! and rank going over to this name. They lament it as an injury; and yet even so they do not
But, says he, a thing is not necessarily good because it wins many adherents; how many are predisposed to evil, how many desert to error! Who denies that? Yet a thing that is really bad, not even those who are caught by it dare to defend or to call good. Nature steeps every evil thing with either fear or shame. Why, evil-doers are eager
bestir their minds to reflect whether there may not be in it something good that escapes them. No! it is forbidden to guess more shrewdly; it does not please them to test it at closer quarters. Here, and here alone, human curiosity grows torpid. They love to be ignorant, though others rejoice to know. How much better the saying of Anacharsis about the ignorant judging the expert would have fitted them, than the unmusical who judge the musicians! They prefer not to know because they already hate. Their prejudice implies that what they do not know really is what, if they were to know, they could not hate. Because, if no just ground for hatred be found, surely it is best to leave off hating unjustly. But if the hatred prove to be deserved, so far from any of it being abated, more hatred should be added to keep it up; and Justice itself would endorse it.
bestir their minds to reflect whether there may not be in it something good that escapes them. No! it is forbidden to guess more shrewdly; it does not please them to test it at closer quarters. Here, and here alone, human curiosity grows torpid. They love to be ignorant, though others rejoice to know. How much better the saying of Anacharsis about the ignorant judging the expert would have fitted them, than the unmusical who judge the musicians! They prefer not to know because they already hate. Their prejudice implies that what they do not know really is what, if they were to know, they could not hate. Because, if no just ground for hatred be found, surely it is best to leave off hating unjustly. But if the hatred prove to be deserved, so far from any of it being abated, more hatred should be added to keep it up; and Justice itself would endorse it.
evil is that which has none of the native marks of evil-fear, shame, shuffling, regret, lament? What is that evil where the criminal is glad, where accusation is the thing he prays for, and punishment is his felicity? It is not for you to call it madness-you, a man convicted of sheer ignorance of it.
Two. But now, if it is really certain that we are of all men the most criminal, why do you yourselves treat us otherwise than those like us, the rest of the criminal classes, when the same treatment belongs to the same fault? Whatever you charge against us, when you so charge others, they use their own eloquence, they hire the advocacy of others, to prove their innocence. There is freedom to answer, to cross-question, since in fact it is against the law for men to be condemned, undefended and unheard. But to Christians alone it is forbidden to say anything to clear their case, to defend Truth, to save the judge from being unjust. No! one thing is looked for, one alone, the one thing needful for popular hatred-the confession of the name. Not investigation of the charge! Yet, if you are trying any other confederates. In our case nothing of the kind! Yet it ought just as much to be wrung out of us (whenever that false charge is made) how many murdered babies each of us had tasted, how many acts of incest he had done in the dark, what cooks were there-yes, and what dogs. Oh! the glory of that magistrate who had brought to light some Christian who had eaten up to date a hundred babies!
And yet we find it is forbidden even to hunt us down. For when Plinius Secundus was governing his province and had condemned some Christians and driven others from their steadfastness, and still the sheer numbers concerned worried him as to what he ought to do thereafter, he consulted the Emperor Trajan. He asserted that, apart from an obstinacy that refused to sacrifice, he had learnt nothing about the Christian mysteries- nothing beyond meetings before dawn to sing to Christ and to God, and to band themselves together in discipline, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, treachery, and the other crimes. Trajan replied in a rescript that men of this kind were not to be sought out, but if they were brought before Pliny they must be punished. What a decision, how inevitably entangled! He says they must not be sought out, implying they are innocent; and he orders them to be punished, implying they are guilty. He spares them and rages against them, he pretends not to see and punishes. Why cheat yourself with your judgment? If you condemn them, why not hunt them down? If you do not hunt them down, why not also acquit them? To track down bandits through all the provinces is a duty assigned by lot to the garrisons. Against those guilty of treason, against public enemies, every man is a soldier; inquiry is extended to confederates, to accessories. The Christian alone may not be hunted down; but he may be haled before the magistrate; as if hunting down led to anything but haling to the court. So you condemn a man when haled to court-a man whom nobody wished to be sought out, who (I suppose) really has not deserved punishment because he is guilty, but because, forbidden to be looked for, he was found!
Then, again, in that matter, you do not deal with us in accordance with your procedure in judging criminals. If the other criminals plead Not guilty, you torture them to make them confess; the Christians alone you torture to make them deny. Yet if it were something evil, we should deny our guilt, and you would use torture to force us to confess it. For you would not hold judicial investigation of our crimes needless, on the ground that you were certain of their commission from the confession of the name; for to this day, though the murderer confesses, and though you know what murder is, none the less you rack out of him the story of his crime. So much the more upside down is your procedure with us, when you presume our crimes from our confession of the name and then try by torture to force us to cancel our confession, in order that, by denying the name, we may really deny the crimes too, which you had presumed from our confession of the name. But, of course, I suppose you do not want us to be done to death-though you believe us the worst of men. For that is your way-to say to the murderer, "Deny!" and to order the temple-thief to be mangled," if he will insist on confession! If that is not your procedure with regard to us in our guilt, then it is clear you count us the most innocent of men, when you will not have us (as being the most innocent of men) persist with a confession which you know you will have to condemn, not because justice requires it, but of necessity.
A man shouts, "I am a Christian." He says what he is. You, sir, wish to hear what he is not. Presiding to extort the truth, you take infinite pains in our case, and ours alone, to hear a lie. "I am,' says he, "what you ask if I am; why torture me to twist the fact round? I confess, and you torture me. What would you do if I denied?" Clearly, when others deny, you do not readily believe them; if we have denied, you at once believe us. Let this topsy-turvy dealing of yours suggest to you the suspicion that there may be some hidden power which makes tools of you against the form, yes, against the very nature, of judicial procedure, against the laws themselves into the bargain. For, unless I am mistaken, the laws bid evil men to be brought to light, not hidden; they enact that those confessing be condemned, not acquitted. This is laid down by decrees of the Senate, by rescripts of the Emperors. This Empire of which you are ministers is the rule of citizens, not of tyrants. With tyrants torture was also used as penalty; with you, it is moderated and used for examination only. Maintain your law by it till the necessary confession is made. If it is fore-stalled by confession, it serves no purpose. It is the sentence that is called for then; the guilty man must cancel the penalty due by enduring it, not by being relieved of it. No, nobody desires to acquit him; it is not permissible to wish it; that is why no man is forced to deny his guilt. But the Christian, a man guilty of every crime, the enemy of gods, emperors, laws, morals, of all Nature together-so you conceive of him; and then you force him to deny the charge, in order to acquit him-a man you will not be able to acquit unless he has denied. You are playing fast and loose with the laws. You want him, then, to deny that he is guilty, in order to make him innocent-and quite against his will, too, by now; and even his past is not to count against him. What is the meaning of this confusion? this failure to reflect that more credence is to be given to a voluntary confession than to a forced denial? to reflect that, when compelled to deny, he may not honestly deny; and, once acquitted, he may again after your tribunal laugh at your enmity, once more a Christian?
So, when in every detail you treat us differently from all other criminals-as you do in concentrating on the one object of dissociating us from that name (for we are dissociated from it, if we do what men not Christians do")-you can gather that the gravamen of the case is not any crime but a name. This name, a certain rational agency, rival in its operation, assails, with the prime motive that men may be unwilling to know for certain, what they certainly know they do not know." So they believe things about us which are not proved; and they are unwilling for inquiry to be made, in case things they prefer to have believed should be proved untrue; and the object is that the name, which is the enemy of that rival