Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 12, 13 45
are sisters to ordinary vessels and tools, or are made from the
same vessels and tools, changing their destiny as it were by
dedication, the wantonness of art transforming them, and that
too in the most insulting way invol-ving a sacrilege in the work
itseK. Thus it may be in truth a solace especially to us who are
punished on account of the gods themselves, a solace, I say,
in our punishment, that they themselves also go through the
same experience for their making. You place the Christians
on crosses and stakes: what image is not first moulded in soft
clay laid on a cross and a stake ? it is on a gibbet that the body
of your god is consecrated first of all. You tear the sides of
the Christians -with claws, but upon your gods axes and planes
and files are more vigorously applied aU over their bodies.
We lay do-wn our necks: your gods are -without a head until
lead and glue and nails have been apphed. We are cast out
to -wild-beasts, to the very beasts which form the train of
Bacchus and Cybele and the Carthaginian goddess of Heaven.
We are cast into the fiire: so also are they, while the ore from
which they are taken is refined. We are condemned to the
mines and quarries: it is from thence your gods get their origin.
We are banished to islands: in an island also it is usual for some
god of yours either to be born or to die. If any di-vinity is thus
confirmed, then those who are punished are deified, and punishments
-will have to be spoken of as tokens of divinity. But
clearly your gods do not feel these injuries and insults involved
in their formation, as neither do they feel the homage they
receive. Oh the impious words, the sacrilegious abuse! gnash
your teeth at them, and foam with rage! You are the same
people who blamed Seneca when with more bitterness and at
greater length he argued against your superstition. Consequently,
if we do not worship cold statues and figures, which
have a strong likeness to the dead they represent, images of
which kites and mice and spiders have a correct idea, did not
the renouncing of a discovered error deserve praise rather than
punishment? For can we be thought to inflict injury on those
who, we feel sure, do not exist at all? That which does not
exist, can suffer nothing from any one, because it has no
existence.
CHAP. XIII. 'But to us they are gods,' you say. If that
be so, how is it that you on the contrary are found impious,
sacrilegious, and irrehgious towards your gods ? you who neglect
those whose existence you take for granted, who destroy those
whom you fear, who mock even those whom you avenge?
Consider if my statement is false. In the first place, when