The Charge Is Not Sincere

But since they make a show of charging me with cowardice, I must write something about it. By this it will be proved that they are men of wicked minds who have not read the sacred Scriptures, or, if they have read them, do not believe that the oracles in them are divinely inspired. For if they had believed this, they would not dare to act against them, nor to imitate the malice of the Jews who killed the Lord. God had given that people a command, “Honor your father and your mother,” and, “Whoever curses father or mother, let him surely die.” Yet they set up a contrary law. They turned the honor into dishonor, and put to other uses the money that children owed their parents. And though they had read what David did, they acted against his example and accused the innocent for plucking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands on the Sabbath day. Not that they cared either for the laws or for the Sabbath, for they were guilty of greater breaches of the law on that day. But being wicked-minded, they begrudged the disciples the way of salvation, and wanted their own private notions to have the first place to themselves. They, however, have received the reward of their wickedness. They have ceased to be a holy nation, and are counted from then on as the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah. [a]

And these men too, no less than they, seem to me to have received their punishment already, in their ignorance of their own folly. For they do not understand what they are saying, but think they know things of which they are ignorant, while the only knowledge in them is how to do evil and to devise schemes more and more wicked day by day. So they reproach us with our present flight, not out of concern for virtue, as though they wanted us to show courage by coming forward. How could enemies wish such a thing for those who do not run with them in the same course of madness? No, they are full of malice. They pretend this, and buzz it about everywhere, thinking, foolish as they truly are, that fear of their abuse will yet lead us to give ourselves up to them. For this is what they want, and to bring it about they turn to every kind of scheme. They pretend to be friends while they search for us as enemies, so that they may glut themselves with our blood and put us out of the way as well, because we have always opposed their impiety, and still oppose it, and refute their heresy and brand it for what it is.