Condemned Without a Hearing

I have no doubt at all, mighty Emperor Constantine, that if one of those men who are foolish about religion should take up this work of ours — the work in which the matchless Creator of all things and Ruler of this measureless world is set out — he would attack it with abuse, since excessive superstition makes such men impatient. He would perhaps barely get through the opening before dashing the book to the ground, flinging it away from him, cursing it, and thinking himself defiled and bound by a guilt no rite could wash off, if he had read or listened to such things with any patience. From that man, though, we ask this much, if it can be had at all, by the right that belongs to being human: that he not pass sentence before he knows the whole case. If men charged with sacrilege are allowed to defend themselves, and traitors and sorcerers too, and if it is lawful for no one to be condemned in advance while his case is still untried, then our request does not look unfair — that whoever comes upon this subject should, if he reads it, read it all the way through, and if he hears it, put off forming an opinion until the end. [a]

But I know how stubborn people are. We shall never get it. They are afraid of being beaten by us and forced at last to give way, with the truth itself crying out against them. So they interrupt and throw obstacles in the way, to keep from hearing; they shut their eyes, to keep from seeing the light we are holding out to them. In doing that they show plainly enough how little they trust their own ruined system, since they dare neither to look into it nor to engage with us, knowing how easily they are overpowered. And so, with all discussion shut out —

— as Ennius says. And because they are so eager to condemn as guilty men whom they plainly know to be innocent, they refuse to come to any agreement about innocence itself — as though it were a greater injustice to have condemned innocence once it was proved than to have condemned it unheard. But, as I said, they are afraid that if they listen they will not be able to condemn.

And so they torture and put to death and banish the worshippers of the Most High God — that is, the righteous. Yet the men who hate so violently cannot say themselves what the causes of their hatred are. Being in error, they are angry at the people who take the path of truth; and at the very point where they could set themselves right, they heap their errors higher instead by cruel deeds, they are stained with innocent blood, and they tear souls dedicated to God out of the bodies they have mangled. These are the men we are now trying to engage and argue with. These are the men we would lead away from a foolish conviction to the truth — men who would sooner drink blood than take in the words of the righteous. What of it, then? Will our labor be wasted? Not at all. Even if we cannot save these men from the death they are racing toward at top speed, even if we cannot call them back from that wandering road to life and light, since they set themselves against their own safety, we shall still strengthen our own people, whose convictions are unsettled and not yet founded and fixed with solid roots. Many of them waver, and especially the ones who have some acquaintance with literature. On that side philosophers and orators and poets do real damage, because they can so easily trap unwary souls by the sweetness of their speech and by poems that run along in a delightful measure. These are honeyed things with poison inside them. That is why I wanted to join wisdom to religion: so that this empty system should do no harm at all to men of study, and so that a knowledge of literature might not only do no injury to religion and righteousness, but be of the greatest use — if the man who has learned it comes out better trained in the virtues and wiser in the truth.

And even if it should profit no one else, it will certainly profit us. The conscience will take delight in it, and the mind will be glad to be at work in the light of truth, which is the food of the soul, spread over with a kind of pleasantness beyond belief. But we must not give up hope. Perhaps, as the poet has it,

For things are not in so bad a state that there are no sound minds left to whom the truth might be welcome, minds that can see the right road and take it once it is pointed out. Only let the rim of the cup be smeared with the honey of heavenly wisdom, so that the bitter medicine may be drunk without their noticing and without any unpleasantness, while the first sweet taste, by its own attraction, hides the harshness of the flavor under a covering of pleasure.

For this above all is the reason why the sacred Scriptures carry no credit with the wise and the learned and the princes of this world: the prophets spoke in ordinary, simple language, as men speaking to the people. And so they are despised by men who will hear or read nothing that is not polished and eloquent, and nothing can stay fixed in the minds of such men except what charms their ears with a smoother sound. Whatever looks plain they take for an old woman’s talk, foolish and common. They count nothing true except what is pleasant to hear, and nothing believable except what can strike them with pleasure. No one weighs a subject by its truth; he weighs it by its ornament. So they do not believe the sacred writings, because there is no paint on them; and they do not believe the men who explain them either, because those men are either wholly unlearned or at best have little learning. It very rarely happens that they are eloquent throughout, and the reason for that is plain. Eloquence is a servant of the world. It wants to show itself off to the people and to please in things that are evil; it often tries to overpower the truth so as to display its own strength; it looks for wealth, it wants honors, and in the end it demands the highest rank of all. So it despises subjects like ours as beneath it, and it avoids what is kept secret, as being contrary to its own nature, since it delights in being out in the open and longs for crowds and celebrity. Hence it comes about that wisdom and truth need heralds fit for them. And if any of the learned have by chance turned to this work, they have not been equal to its defense.

Of the men I know of, Minucius Felix held no mean rank among advocates. His book, which carries the title Octavius, shows what a fit defender of the truth he might have been if he had given himself to that pursuit entirely. Septimius Tertullianus, too, was skilled in every kind of literature; but in eloquence he had little ease, he was not polished enough, and he is very obscure. So he did not find enough renown either. Cyprian, then, stands out above them all, distinguished and famous, since he had sought great glory for himself from the profession of oratory, and he wrote a great many things worth admiring in their own class. He had a mind that was quick, full, agreeable, and — the greatest excellence a style can have — plain and open, so that you cannot decide whether he was more finished in his speech, or readier in explanation, or stronger in persuasion. And yet he cannot please anyone who does not know the mystery, except by his words; for the things he said are matters of mystery, prepared with this in view, that they should be heard by the faithful only. In short, the learned men of this age, when his writings happen to come their way, are in the habit of laughing at him. I have heard of a certain man — a clever one, I grant — who changed a single letter and called him Coprianus, as though he had put an elegant mind, fit for better things, to the service of old wives’ tales. But if that happened to a man whose eloquence is not unpleasant, what must we suppose happens to men whose speech is thin and disagreeable, who could have had no power to persuade, no subtlety in argument, and no sharpness at all for refuting?

So, because we have had no teachers among us fit and skilled enough to refute the errors held in public with vigor and edge, and to defend the whole case of the truth with elegance and fullness, this very lack stirred certain men up to venture on writing against a truth they did not know. I pass over the men who assailed it in earlier times, and to no purpose. I had been called to Bithynia and was teaching rhetoric there, and it happened that at the same time the temple of God was pulled down. There were living in that same place two men who insulted the truth as it lay thrown down and trampled — I cannot say whether with more arrogance or more cruelty. One of them professed himself the high priest of philosophy. But he was so given over to vice that, teacher of self-denial though he was, he burned no less with greed than with lust; and he lived so lavishly that although in his school he upheld virtue and praised thrift and poverty, he dined less richly in a palace than at his own house. Still, he kept his vices covered with his beard and his cloak — and, the best screen of all, with his money. To increase it he used to work his way into the friendships of the judges with astonishing effort, attaching them to himself all at once by the weight of a made-up title, and not only so that he could sell their verdicts, but so that he could use that influence to stop his neighbors, whom he was driving off their homes and lands, from getting their property back. This was the man who overturned his own arguments by his character, or else condemned his own character by his arguments — a heavy critic and a most cutting prosecutor against himself. At the very time when a righteous people was being wickedly attacked, he vomited out three books against the Christian religion and name. He declared, above everything, that it was a philosopher’s business to cure the errors of men and call them back to the true road — that is, to the worship of the gods, by whose power and majesty, as he said, the world is governed — and not to allow inexperienced men to be lured in by anyone’s frauds, so that their simplicity should not become food and prey for crafty men. [p]

So he said he had taken on this task, worthy of philosophy: to hold out to men who do not see the light of wisdom not only that they might come back to a healthy state of mind by taking up the worship of the gods, but also that, by laying down their stubborn obstinacy, they might escape the torture of their bodies and not want to endure the cruel tearing of their limbs for nothing. But to make it plain why he had worked so hard at that task, he broke out into lavish praise of the emperors, whose devotion and foresight, as he himself put it, had been outstanding in other matters and above all in defending the rites of the gods. They had, he said, in a word, consulted the interests of mankind, so that with an impious and foolish superstition held in check, everyone might be free for the lawful sacred rites and might find the gods well disposed toward them. But when he set out to weaken the foundations of the religion he was arguing against, he came off as senseless, hollow and ridiculous; that weighty adviser of other people’s advantage did not know what to attack, or even what to say. Any of our religion who were present kept quiet, given what the times were, but in their own minds they laughed at him. They were watching a man who claimed he would give others light while he himself was blind; who would call others back from error while he himself did not know where to set his feet; who would teach others the truth, when he had never at any time seen so much as a spark of it — a professor of wisdom trying to bring wisdom down. But everyone found fault with this above all: that he took the work up at that particular time, when hateful cruelty was raging. What a philosopher — a flatterer, and a man who serves the hour! He was despised, though, as his vanity deserved. He did not win the popularity he hoped for, and the glory he was so eager for turned into censure and blame.

Another man wrote on the same subject with more venom. He was at that time one of the judges, and he above all was the adviser who urged the persecution into law; and not satisfied with that crime, he went after the people he had persecuted with his writings as well. For he put together two books — not against the Christians, in case he should look as though he were attacking them as an enemy, but to the Christians, so that he might be thought to be looking after them with humanity and kindness. In these he set out to prove that sacred Scripture is false, on the ground that it contradicts itself all through; for he explained certain passages that seemed to be at odds with one another, listing so many things, and things so far inside, that at times he looks as if he had once belonged to the same body. But if that is so, what Demosthenes will be able to clear him of the charge of impiety — a man who turned traitor to the religion he had once agreed to, and to the faith whose name he had put on, and to the mystery he had received — unless it happened by chance that the sacred writings simply fell into his hands? What recklessness it was, then, to dare to pull down what nobody had ever explained to him! It was just as well that he either learned nothing or understood nothing. For self-contradiction is as far away from the sacred writings as he was from faith and from truth. He attacked Paul and Peter most of all, and the other disciples, as spreaders of deceit — the very men he testified in the same breath were untrained and unlearned. For he says that some of them earned their living by the fisherman’s trade, as though it annoyed him that no Aristophanes or Aristarchus had thought the story up.