Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 40, 41, 42 121
touch the heart of God, and when we have wrested mercy
(from Him), Jupiter gets the honour.
CHAP. XLI. YOU therefore are dangerous to human affairs,
you are to blame for public misfortunes, drawing them always
upon us, since you despise God and worship statues. For surely
it is more hkely that one who is neglected should get angry
rather than those who are worshipped. Otherwise they are
indeed most unfair, if on account of the Christians they injure
their o-wn worshippers also, whom they ought to keep unaffected
by the deserts of the Christians. 'This,' you say, 'is to retort
on your o-wn god also, if he himself allows his own worshippers
also to be injured on account of the profane.' Learn first his
plans, and you wiU not then retort. For He who has once for
aU ordained an everlasting judgment after the end of the world,
does not hasten the separation, which is a circumstance of the
judgment, before the end of the world. Meanwhile he deals
impartiaUy with the whole human race, both as indulging and
reproving; he wished that good and evil should be shared ahke
by his own servants and by the wicked, so that, by an equal
partnership, all might have experience both of his gentleness
and of his sternness. Because we have thus learnt these things
in his own company, we love his gentleness and we fear his
sternness, while you on the contrary despise both; and it
foUows that all the plagues of the world come from God on us,
it may be, for warning, but on you for punishment. And yet we
are not really injured at all, in the first place because we have
no concern in this hfe except to depart from it as speedily as
possible, in the second place because, if any misfortune is brought
upon us, it is attributed to your deserts. But even if some
troubles touch us also as being connected with you, we rejoice
more in the recognition of the divine prophecies, which of
course strengthen the assurance and confidence of our hope.
But if it be the case that all these evils come upon you on our
account from those whom you worship, why do you continue
to worship beings so ungrateful and so unjust, whose duty it
was rather to help and defend you in the suffering coming from
the Christians, since it was their duty to keep you apart from
the deserts of the Christians ?
CHAP. XLII. But we are arraigned also on a different
charge of injuries inflicted, and we are said to be unprofitable
in business matters. How can this be true of men who live
with you, who enjoy the same food, have the same manner of
life, and dress, the same requirements for hfe? For we are-