Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 23, 24 85
be un-willing to lose those who are so profitable and so dutiful
to them as you are, if only that they might not be driven away
from you one day by the -Christians, if it were in their power
to speak falsely in the presence of a Christian who wished to
prove the truth to you.
CHAP. XXIV. All this confession of theirs, by which they
deny that they are gods and by which they answer that there
is no other God but one, whose servants we are, is sufficient to
refute the charge of signal violation of the Reman rehgion.
For if there are assuredly no gods, then assuredly there is ne
rehgion either; and if there is ne rehgion, because assuredly
there are no gods either, assuredly neither can we be charged.
with -vdolation of rehgion. On the contrary the reproach has
receded on yourselves, who, worshipping a he, commit the crime
of real irrehgion against the truth, not only by neglecting the true
worship of the true God, but by attacking it also. Now, even
though it were allowed that those gods exist, do you not coincide
with the general opinion that there is one higher and more
powerful, a sort of head of the universe of absolute power and
sovereignty? For very many also distribute the di-vine power
in such a way as te wish the rule of the highest lordship to be in
the hands of one, while his functions are in the hands of many, as
Plato describes the great Jupiter in heaven, attended by a host
ahke of gods and of daemons, and held it thus to be right that
the procurators and prefects and governors (in general) should
be ahke respected^. And yet what crime is committed by him
who apphes both his exertions and his hope rather to the
winning of favour with Caesar, and dees not allow the name
God, just as he would not allow the name Emperor in the case
of any leading man, since it is judged a capital offence both te
use and to listen to the use of the name for any one but Caesar ?
Let one worship God, another Jupiter; let one hold out suppliant
hands te the sky, another te the altar of Fides; let one, if such
is your opinion, count the clouds while he prays, another the
panels of the ceihng; let one dedicate to his God his own life,
another the hfe of a goat. Beware, too, lest this also should
be combined -with the- charge of irrehgion, the taking away of
the hberty of worship and the forbidding of the choice of a god,
se that I should be prevented from worshipping him whom I will,
but should be compelled to worship (another) against my will.
No being, not even a man, will desire to be worshipped by an
unwilhng person; and yet even the Egyptians were allowed
the power of such a foohsh superstition, for the deification of
'• Joining to previous sentence, as grammar requires.