Tertullian: Persecution of Christians
The following is a letter written by Tertullian of Carthage to Scapula, who was Proconsul of Carthage. It was composed c. 217 A.D. In it Tertullian displays Christian courage in the face of persecution, and attempts to witness to Scapula of the sovereignty of Almighty God.
We
are not in any great bother or alarm about the persecutions we
suffer from the ignorance of men; for we have attached ourselves to
this sect, fully accepting the terms of its covenant, so that, as men
whose very lives are not their own, we engage in these conflicts, our
desire being to obtain God's promised rewards, and we dread the
woes with which He threatens an unchristian life that could overtake us.
Hence we shrink not from the fight with your utmost rage, coming
even forth of our own accord to the contest; and condemnation gives
us more pleasure than acquittal. We have sent, therefore, this letter to you in no alarm about ourselves, but in much concern for you and
for all our enemies, to say nothing of our friends. For our religion
commands us to love even our enemies, and to pray for those who
persecute us, aiming at a perfection all its own, and seeking in its
disciples something of a higher type than the commonplace goodness of
the world. For everyone loves those who love them; it is peculiar to
Christians alone to love those that hate them. Therefore mourning
over your ignorance, and having compassion on human error, and looking to that future which every day shows threatening signs, necessity
is laid on us to come forth in this way also, that we may set before
you the truths you will not listen to openly.
We
are worshipers of one God, of whose existence and character Nature
teaches all men; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, whose
benefits minister to your happiness. You think that others, too, are
gods, whom we know to be demons. However, it is a fundamental human
right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according
to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps
another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion -
to which free-will and not force should lead us - the sacrificial
victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no
real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can
have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are
animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether
undivine. Accordingly the true God bestows His blessings alike on
wicked men and on His own elect; upon which account He has appointed
an eternal judgment, when both thankful and unthankful will have to
stand before His bar. Yet you have never detected us -sacrilegious
wretches though you reckon us to be - in any theft, far less in any
sacrilege. But the robbers of your temples, all of them swear by your
gods, and worship them; they are not Christians, and yet it is they
who are found guilty of sacrilegious deeds. We have not time to
unfold in how many other ways your gods are mocked and despised by
their own votaries. So, too, treason is falsely laid to our charge,
though no one has ever been able to find followers of Albinus, or
Niger, or Cassius, among Christians; while the very men who had sworn
by the spirit of the emperors, who had offered and vowed sacrifices
for their safety, who had often pronounced condemnation on Christ's
disciples, are till this day found traitors to the imperial throne. A
Christian is enemy to none, least of all to the Emperor of Rome, whom
he knows to be appointed by his God, and so cannot but love and
honor; and whose well-being moreover, he must needs desire, with
that of the empire over which he reigns so long as the world shall
stand - for so long as Rome shall continue. To the emperor,
therefore, we render such reverential homage as is lawful for us and
good for him; regarding him as the human being next to God who from
God has received all his power, and is less than God alone. And this
will be according to his own desires. For thus - as less only than
the true God - he is greater than all men besides. Thus he is greater
than the very "gods" themselves, even they, too, being subject to him.
We therefore sacrifice for the emperor's safety, but to our God and
his, and after the manner God has enjoined, in simple prayer. For
God, Creator of the universe, has no need of odors or of blood.
These things are the food of demons. But we not only reject those
wicked spirits: we overcome them; we daily hold them up to contempt;
we exorcise them from their victims, as multitudes can testify. So
all the more we pray for the imperial well-being, as those who seek
it at the hands of Him who is able to bestow it. And one would think
it must be abundantly clear to you that the religious system under
whose rules we act is one inculcating a divine patience; since,
though our numbers are so great - constituting all but the majority
in every city - we conduct ourselves so quietly and modestly; I might
perhaps say, known rather as individuals than as organized
communities, and remarkable only for the reformation of our former
vices. For far be it from us to take it ill that we have laid on us
the very things we wish, or in any way plot the vengeance at our own
hands, which we expect to come from God.
However,
as we have already remarked, it cannot but distress us that no state
shall bear unpunished the guilt of shedding Christian blood; as you
see, indeed, in what took place during the presidency of Hilarian,
for when there had been some agitation about places of burial for
our dead, and the cry arose, "No area - no burial-grounds for
the Christians," it came that their own area, their
threshing-floors, were wanting, for they gathered in no harvests.
As to the rains of the bygone year, it is abundantly plain of what
they were intended to remind men - of the deluge, no doubt, which in
ancient times overtook human unbelief and wickedness; and as to the
fires which lately hung all night over the walls of Carthage, they
who saw them know what they threatened; and what the preceding
thunders pealed, they who were hardened by them can tell. All these
things are signs of God's impending wrath, which we must needs
publish and proclaim in every possible way; and in the meanwhile we
must pray it may be only local. Sure are they to experience it one
day in its universal and final form, who interpret otherwise these
samples of it. That sun, too, in the metropolis of Utica, with light
all but extinguished, was a portent which could not have occurred
from an ordinary eclipse, situated as the lord of day was in his
height and house. You have the astrologers, consult them about it. We
can point you also to the deaths of some provincial rulers, who in
their last hours had painful memories of their sin in persecuting the
followers of Christ. Vigellius Saturninus, who first here used the
sword against us, lost his eyesight. Claudius Lucius Herminianus in
Cappadocia, enraged that his wife had become a Christian, had treated
the Christians with great cruelty: well, left alone in his palace,
suffering under a contagious malady, he boiled out in living worms,
and was heard exclaiming, 'Let nobody know of it, lest the Christians
rejoice, and Christian wives take encouragement.' Afterwards he came
to see his error in having tempted so many from their steadfastness
by the tortures he inflicted, and died almost a Christian himself. In
that doom which overtook Byzantium, Cacilius Capella could not help
crying out, 'Christians, rejoice!' Yes, and the persecutors who seem
to themselves to have acted with impunity shall not escape the day of
judgment. For you we sincerely wish it may prove to have been a
warning only, that, immediately after you had condemned Mavilus of
Adrumetum to the wild beasts, you were overtaken by those troubles,
and that even now for the same reason you are called to a
blood-reckoning.
But do not forget the future.
We
who are without fear ourselves are not seeking to frighten you, but
we would save all men if possible by warning them not to fight with
God. You may perform the duties of your charge, and yet remember the
claims of humanity; if on no other ground than that you are liable to
punishment yourself (you ought to do so). For is not your commission
simply to condemn those who confess their guilt, and to give over to
the torture those who deny? You see, then, how you trespass
yourselves against your instructions to wring from the confessing a
denial. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment of our innocence that you
refuse to condemn us at once when we confess. In doing your utmost to
extirpate us, if that is your object, it is innocence you assail. But
how many rulers, men more resolute and more cruel than you are, have
contrived to get rid of such causes altogether, as Cincius Severus,
who himself suggested the remedy at Thysdris, pointing out how the
Christians should answer that they might secure an acquittal; as
Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed from his bar a Christian, on the
ground that to satisfy his fellow-citizens would break the peace of
the community; as Asper, who, in the case of a man who gave up his
faith under slight infliction of the torture, did not compel the
offering of sacrifice, having owned before, among the advocates and
assessors of court, that he was annoyed at having had to meddle with
such a case. Pudens, too, at once dismissed a Christian who was
brought before him, perceiving from the indictment that it was a case
of vexatious accusation; tearing the document in pieces, he refused
so much as to hear him without the presence of his accuser, as not
being consistent with the imperial commands. All this might be
officially brought under your notice, and by the very advocates, who
are themselves also under obligations to us, although in court they
give their voice as it suits them. The clerk of one of them who was
liable to be thrown upon the ground by an evil spirit, was set free
from his affliction; as was also the relative of another, and the
little boy of a third. How many men of rank (to say nothing of common
people) have been delivered from devils, and healed of diseases! Even
Severus himself, the father of Antonine, was graciously mindful of
the Christians; for he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed
Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his having
once cured him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day
of his death. Antonine, too, brought up as he was on Christian milk,
was intimately acquainted with this man. Both women and men of
highest rank, whom Severus knew well to be Christians, were not
merely permitted by him to remain uninjured; but he even bore
distinguished testimony in their favor, and gave them publicly back
to us from the hands of a raging populace. Marcus Aurelius also, in
his expedition to Germany, by the prayers his Christian soldiers
offered to God, got rain in that well-known thirst. When, indeed,
have not droughts been put away by our kneeling and our fasting? At
times like these, moreover, the people crying to 'the God of gods,
the alone Omnipotent,' under the name of Jupiter, have borne witness
to our God. Then we never deny the deposit placed in our hands; we
never pollute the marriage bed; we deal faithfully with our wards; we
give aid to the needy; we render to none evil for evil. As for those
who falsely pretend to belong to us, and whom we, too, repudiate, let
them answer for themselves. In a word, who has complaint to make
against us on other grounds? To what else does the Christian devote
himself, save the affairs of his own community, which during all the
long period of its existence no one has ever proved guilty of the
incest or the cruelty charged against it? It is for freedom from
crime so singular, for a probity so great, for righteousness, for
purity, for faithfulness, for truth, for the living God, that we are
consigned to the flames; for this is a punishment you are not wont to
inflict either on the sacrilegious, or on undoubted public enemies,
or on the treason-tainted, of whom you have so many. Nay, even now
our people are enduring persecution from the governors of Legio and
Mauritania ; but it is only with the sword, as from the first it was
ordained that we should suffer. But the greater our conflicts, the
greater our rewards.
Your
cruelty is our glory.
Only see you to it, that in having such things
as these to endure, we do not feel ourselves constrained to rush
forth to the combat, if only to prove that we have no dread of them,
but on the contrary, even invite their infliction. When Arrius
Antoninus was driving things hard in Asia, the whole Christians of
the province, in one united band, presented themselves before his
judgment-seat; on which, ordering a few to be led forth to execution,
he said to the rest, 'O miserable men, if you wish to die, you have
precipices or halters.' If we should take it into our heads to do the
same thing here, what will you make of so many thousands, of such a
multitude of men and women, persons of every gender and every age and
every rank, when they present themselves before you? How many fires,
how many swords will be required? What will be the anguish of
Carthage itself, which you will have to decimate, as each one
recognizes there his relatives and companions, as he sees there it
may be men of your own order, and noble ladies, and all the leading
persons of the city, and either kinsmen or friends of those of your
own circle? Spare yourself, if not us poor Christians! Spare Carthage
, if not yourself! Spare the province, which the indication of your
purpose has subjected to the threats and extortion at once of the
soldiers and of private enemies.
We
have no master but God!
He is before you, and cannot be hidden from
you, but to Him you can do no injury. But those whom you regard as
masters are only men, and one day they themselves must die. Yet still
this community will be undying, for be assured that just in the time
of its seeming overthrow it is built up into greater power. For all
who witness the noble patience of its martyrs, as struck with
misgivings, are inflamed with desire to examine into the matter in
question; and as soon as they come to know the truth, they
straightway become themselves its disciples.
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