Collected Works 3

Chapter I. 1. We indeed neither dread nor greatly fear the things we suffer from those who are ignorant, since we have come to this way of life having undertaken the terms of that covenant, that we should enter these battles even with our very lives forsworn, desiring to obtain the things God promises, and fearing to suffer the things he threatens against a contrary manner of life. 2. In short, we contend against all your savagery, even bursting forth of our own accord, and we rejoice more when condemned than when acquitted. And so we have sent this little book not in fear for ourselves, but for you and all our enemies, let alone our friends. 3. For we are so bidden by our discipline to love even our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us, that this may be our perfect and peculiar goodness, not the common kind.

For to love friends belongs to all, but to love enemies belongs to Christians alone. 4. We therefore who grieve over your ignorance, and pity human error, and foresee things to come, and see the signs of them daily threatening, are constrained even in this manner to break forth to set before you the things you are unwilling to hear openly. Chapter II. 1. We worship one God, whom you all know by nature, at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, at whose benefits you rejoice. The rest you yourselves also suppose to be gods, whom we know to be demons. 2. Yet it is a matter of human right and of natural power that each one worship what he has thought fit; nor does one man's religion harm or profit another.

But it belongs not to religion to compel religion, which ought to be undertaken willingly, not by force, since sacrificial victims too are required from a willing heart. Thus, even if you compel us to sacrifice, you will render nothing to your gods: for they will not desire sacrifices from the unwilling, unless they be contentious; but God is not contentious. 3. In short, he who is the true God bestows all his gifts equally upon the profane and upon his own. And therefore he has appointed an eternal judgment concerning the thankful and the unthankful. Yet we, whom you deem sacrilegious, you have never caught in a theft, let alone in sacrilege. 4. But all who plunder temples, and swear by the gods, and worship those same gods, are both not Christians and yet are found to be sacrilegious.

It would be long, were we to recount in what other ways all the gods are both derided and despised by their very own worshippers. 5. So too we are defamed concerning the majesty of the emperor; yet never could Christians be found among the followers of Albinus, nor of Niger, nor of Cassius, but those very men who had sworn by the emperors' genii up to the day before, who had both offered and vowed sacrifices for their safety, who had often condemned Christians, were found to be their enemies. 6. A Christian is no man's enemy, least of all the emperor's, whom, knowing him to be appointed by his God, he must needs love and reverence and honor and wish safe, together with the whole Roman empire, so long as the age shall stand: for so long shall it stand. 7.

We worship the emperor, therefore, in such a way as is both lawful for us and expedient for him, namely, as a man second to God; and whatever he is, he has obtained from God, being lesser only than God alone. This he himself will also wish. For thus he is greater than all, so long as he is lesser than God alone. Thus he is greater even than the gods themselves, so long as they too are in his power. 8. And so we also sacrifice for the safety of the emperor, but to our God and his, yet in the manner God has prescribed, by pure prayer. For God, the founder of the universe, has no need of any odor or blood. These are the food of demons. 9. But demons we not only reject, but even overcome, and daily put to open shame, and expel from men, as is known to very many.

Thus we rather pray for the safety of the emperor, asking it from him who is able to grant it. 10. And that we act indeed out of the discipline of divine patience can be plain enough to you, since so great a multitude of men, wellnigh the greater part of every city, we conduct ourselves in silence and modesty, known perhaps rather singly than all together, and recognizable by nothing else than the amendment of our former vices. For far be it from us to bear resentment at suffering the things we desire, or to devise any vengeance for ourselves, which we await from God. Chapter III. 1. Yet, as we said above, we must needs grieve that no city will go unpunished for the shedding of our blood;

just as under the governor Hilarianus, when they had cried out concerning the plots of our burial-grounds, "Let there be no burial-grounds!"—their own burial-grounds came to nothing: for they did not gather in their harvests. 2. Moreover, what the rains of the past year admonished became plain to the human race, namely, that there had been a deluge of old on account of men's unbeliefs and iniquities; and the fires that lately hung over the walls of Carthage through the night—what they threatened, those know who saw them; and what the earlier thunders sounded, those know who have hardened themselves. 3. All these are signs of the impending wrath of God, which we must needs, in whatever way we can, both announce and proclaim, and pray meanwhile that it may be local.

For those who interpret his examples otherwise shall in due time feel the universal and supreme wrath. For that sun, too, in the assembly at Utica, its light almost extinguished, was so great a portent that it could not have suffered this from an ordinary eclipse, being set in its own zenith and house. You have your astrologers. 4. We can likewise set before you the ends of certain governors, who at the close of their lives recalled that they had sinned in that they had harassed Christians. Vigellius Saturninus, who first here drew the sword against us, lost his eyes. Claudius Lucius Herminianus in Cappadocia, when, taking it ill that his wife had gone over to this way of life, he had cruelly treated Christians, being alone in his praetorium laid waste by a plague and boiling over with worms while yet alive, cried out:

"Let no one know it," he said, "lest the Christians rejoice or the Christian women take hope." Afterwards, recognizing his error, that by torments he had made certain ones fall from their profession, he departed almost a Christian. Caecilius Capella, in that Byzantine downfall, cried out: "Christians, rejoice!" 5. But those who seem to have gone unpunished shall come to the day of divine judgment. For you too we hope that it was but a warning, that when this same Caecilius had condemned Mavilus of Hadrumetum to the beasts, straightway this vexation followed, and now, from the same cause, this demanding of blood. But remember for the rest. Chapter IV. 1. We do not terrify you, who do not even fear; but I would wish that we could save all men, by warning them not to fight against God.

You can both discharge the office of your jurisdiction and be mindful of humanity, if only because you too are under the sword. 2. For what more is entrusted to you than to condemn the guilty who confess, but to recall to torments those who deny? You see, then, how you yourselves act contrary to your instructions, in that you compel those who have confessed to deny. Thus you confess that we are innocent, whom you will not straightway condemn upon confession. But if you strive to crush us, then you assail our innocence. 3. Yet how many governors, both more resolute and more cruel, have dissembled from cases of this kind! As Cincius Severus, who at Thysdrus himself supplied the remedy, as to how the Christians should answer so that they might be released;

as Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed a Christian, as being one who caused a tumult, in order to satisfy his fellow-citizens; as Asper, who, having only moderately harassed a man and immediately let him off, did not even compel him to sacrifice, having first professed among the advocates and assessors that he was sorry he had happened upon this case at all. Pudens too, when a Christian was sent to him, perceiving from the indictment that it was a case of extortion, dismissed him, tearing up the same indictment, saying that without an accuser he would not hear the man, in accordance with the instruction. 4. All these things can be suggested to you both from your office, and by those same advocates who themselves also have benefits from Christians, however much they cry out for what they wish. 5. For a certain man's clerk too, when he was being cast down by a demon, was set free;

and so were the kinsman and the little boy of certain persons; and how many men of honor (for of the common folk we do not speak) have been remedied either of demons or of sicknesses! Severus himself, too, the father of Antoninus, was mindful of the Christians. For he sought out Proculus, a Christian who was surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodia, who had once cured him by means of oil, and kept him in his palace until his death; whom Antoninus also knew very well, having been reared on Christian milk. 6. But Severus also, knowing most illustrious women and most illustrious men to be of this way of life, not only did not harm them, but even adorned them with his testimony, and openly withstood the people that raged against us.

Marcus Aurelius too, in the German expedition, by the prayers made to God by his Christian soldiers, obtained rains in that drought. When have not even droughts been driven away by our kneelings and fastings? Then the people also, acclaiming the God of gods, who alone is mighty, bore witness to our God under the name of Jupiter. 7. Besides these things, we do not deny a deposit entrusted to us, we adulterate no one's marriage, we treat orphans dutifully, we bring relief to the needy, we render to no one evil for evil. Let those look to it who feign our way of life, whom we too disown. Who, in short, complains of any one of us on another charge? What other business does a Christian suffer for, save that of his own sect, which no one in so long a time has proved to be incestuous or cruel? 8.

For such great innocence, for such great probity, for justice, for chastity, for faith, for truth, for the living God, we are burned; a thing which not even the sacrilegious, nor public enemies, nor indeed so many guilty of treason, are wont to suffer. For even now this name is harassed by the governor of the Legion and by the governor of Mauretania, but only to the extent of the sword, as also from the beginning it was ordained that men of this sort should be dealt with. But greater contests are followed by greater rewards. Chapter V. 1. Your cruelty is our glory. Only see to it that, by this very thing, that we endure such things, we do not seem to burst forth for this alone, that we may prove this very point, that we do not fear these things but summon them of our own accord.

When Arrius Antoninus was persecuting vigorously in Asia, all the Christians of that city, in a band, presented themselves before his tribunal. Then he, having ordered a few to be led off to execution, said to the rest: "O wretched men, if you wish to die, you have cliffs and nooses." 2. If it should please him that this be done here too, what will you do with so many thousands of men, with so many men and women, of every sex, of every age, of every rank, offering themselves to you? How many fires, how many swords will be needed!

What will Carthage itself suffer, decimated by you, when each man shall there recognize his kinsmen, his messmates, when he shall see there perhaps even men of your own order and matrons, and every one of the leading persons, and either the kinsmen or the friends of your own friends? 3. Spare yourself, then, if not us. Spare Carthage, if not yourself. Spare the province, which, once your intent was seen, was laid open to the extortions both of the soldiers and of every man's enemies. 4. We have no master save God alone. He is before you, and cannot be hidden, but is one upon whom you can do nothing. But those whom you deem your masters are men, and they too shall one day die.

Nor yet shall this sect fail, which you should know is then the more built up, when it seems to be cut down. For everyone who beholds such great endurance, being struck as by some scruple, is both kindled to inquire what may be the cause, and, when he has come to know the truth, straightway himself follows it. HERE ENDS TERTULLIAN'S TO SCAPULA. Edited by Dom. E. Dekkers, 1954, Transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2000.