Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 2, 3 13
pulsion? or whether one who has been forced to deny should
not have denied sincerely, and after acquittal on the spot,
leaving the court, should once more claim to be a Christian,
and laugh at your vain effort to prove him other ? Since therefore
in every way you treat us differently from all other criminals,
by aiming at this one thing, that we may be shut out from that
name, for we are shut out if we do things which Christians do
not do, you can understand that there is no crime in question,
but just the name, which is harassed by the scheming of a kind
of rival agency, its first aim being that men should be unwilhng
to know for certain that of which they certainly know themselves
to be ignorant. Consequently they not only beheve what
is not proved with regard to us, but they are unwilling that
inquiry should be made, lest those things should be proved not
to be, which they had rather should be beheved to be, so that
the hostile name of that rival agency should be condemned
merely by its own confession, on the presumption, not the proof
of crime. Accordingly we are tortured when we confess, and
punished when we persist, and acquitted if we deny, just
because it is a battle about a name. Finally, you also read
out from the charge-sheet that a man is a Christian. Why not
also style him a murderer ? If a Christian is a murderer, why
not also one gudty of incest or any other crime you believe us
to be guilty of ? It is in our case only that you are ashamed or
reluctant to give a verdict on the mere names of the crimes^.
If a Christian is guilty of no specific crime, it is a very guilty
sort of crime, if one of the name only!
CHAP. III. Again, many people are so blinded with prejudice
that even when they are bearing witness to a man's
excellence, they mingle with it a taunt against the name of
Christian. 'So-and-so is a good fellow, were it not that he is
a Christian.' So another says 'I marvel that a philosopher hke
So-and-so should have so suddenly turned Christian.' No one
reflects whether the fact that So-and-so is good or wise is due to
his Christianity, or the fact that So-and-so is a Christian results
from his being wise and good. They praise what they know,
and blame what they do not know, and that which they know
they spoil because they are reaUy ignorant of it. Surely
it were a juster course to prejudge things hidden from things
evident, than to precondemn the evident from the hidden.
Others characterize in their very praises those they formerly
knew, before they received the name of Christian, as vagabonds,
worthless and wicked. Through their bhnd hatred they become
1 J. B. M. conjectures scelera.