Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 2 11
of course deny the crimes also, about which you presumed us
guilty from the confession of the name. But, methinks, you
do not wish us to perish, though you believe us to be the worst
of men. For is it your wont to say to a murderer, ' Deny the
fact?' or to order a sacrilegious person to be torn with scourges,
if he continue to confess? If you do not act so in the case of us
criminals, you must judge us to be entirely innocent, when you
will not have us as innocent persons to persevere in such a
confession, as you know has to be condemned by you of necessity
and not from justice. A man cries out: 'I am a Christian.'
He tells what he is; you wish to hear what he is not. Though
presiding to extract the truth, from us alone you strive to hear
falsehood. ' I am,' he says, ' that which you ask whether I am:
why do you torture me to make me give a wrong answer ? You
reward my confession with torture; what would you have done,
if I had denied ?' It is quite evident that, when others deny,
you do not readily credit them: while, if we deny, you immediately
beheve our assertion. You ought to suspect this perversity,
lest some power lurk in secret that makes tools of you against
all rule, against the nature of judicial trial, even a,gainst the
laws themselves. For unless I am mistaken, the laws order
that malefactors should be rooted out, not concealed; they lay
down that those who confess should be condemned, not acquitted.
This is ordained by decrees of the senate, by the edicts
of emperors. The government whose servants you are is the
rule of a fellow-citizen, not of a tyrant. For with tyrants
tortures-were employed also as punishment; with you they are
kept within bounds for the sole purpose of inquiry. Retain for
them your law up to the point of necessary confession. And
if (tortures) are anticipated by confession, they will be superfiuous.
A verdict is needed: the guilty man must be struck off
the roll of the accused by the punishment which is his due, and
not saved from punishment. No one, in short, cares to acquit
him; it is not allowable to wish this: consequently no guilty man
is compelled to deny his guilt. But a Christian man you beheve
to be guilty of all crimes, an enemy of gods, emperors, laws,
morals, the whole teaching of nature, and yet you compel him
to deny, in order that you may acquit one whom you will not
be able to acquit unless from his denial. You are guilty of
unfair deahng against the laws. You wish him therefore to
deny his guilt, that you may make him out to be innocent, and
that too unwilling as he now is, and no longer arraigned for the
past. Whence comes this perversity, that you should fail to
reflect even on this fact, that more credence should be given to
one who voluntarily confesses than to one who denies under com-