Chapter 1
If, with the object of convicting the rivals and persecutors of Christian truth, from their own authorities, of the crime of at once being untrue to themselves and doing injustice to us, one is bent on gathering testimonies in its favour from the writings of the philosophers, or the poets, or other masters of this world’s learning and wisdom, he has need of a most inquisitive spirit, and a still greater memory to carry out the research. Indeed, some of our people, who still continued their inquisitive labours in ancient literature, and still occupied memory with it, have published works we have in our hands of this very sort; works in which they relate and attest the nature and origin of their traditions, and the grounds on which opinions rest, and from which it may be seen at once that we have embraced nothing new or monstrous — nothing for which we cannot claim the support of ordinary and well-known writings, whether in ejecting error from our creed, or admitting truth into it. But the unbelieving hardness of the human heart leads them to slight even their own teachers, otherwise approved and in high renown, whenever they touch upon arguments which are used in defense of Christianity. Then the poets are fools, when they describe the gods with human passions and stories; then the philosophers are without reason, when they knock at the gates of truth. He will thus far be reckoned a wise and sagacious man who has gone the length of uttering sentiments that are almost Christian; while if, in a mere affectation of judgment and wisdom, he sets himself to reject their ceremonies, or to convicting the world of its sin, he is sure to be branded as a Christian. We will have nothing, then, to do with the literature and the teaching, perverted in its best results, which is believed in its errors rather than its truth. We shall lay no stress on it, if some of their authors have declared that there is one God, and one God only. Nay, let it be granted that there is nothing in heathen writers which a Christian approves, that it may be put out of his power to utter a single word of reproach. For all are not familiar with their teachings; and those who are, have no assurance in regard to their truth. Far less do men assent to our writings, to which no one comes for guidance unless he is already a Christian. I call in a new testimony, yea, one which is better known than all literature, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications, greater than the whole man — I mean all which is man’s. Stand forth, O soul, whether you are a divine and eternal substance, as most philosophers believe if it be so, you will be the less likely to lie, — or whether you are the very opposite of divine, because indeed a mortal thing, as Epicurus alone thinks — in that case there will be the less temptation for you to speak falsely in this case: whether you are received from heaven, or sprung from earth; whether you are formed of numbers, or of atoms; whether your existence begins with that of the body, or you are put into it at a later stage; from whatever source, and in whatever way, you make man a rational being, in the highest degree capable of thought and knowledge — stand forth and give your witness. But I call you not as when, fashioned in schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and porticoes, you belch wisdom. I address you simple, rude, uncultured and untaught, such as they have you who have you only; that very thing of the road, the street, the work-shop, wholly. I want your inexperience, since in your small experience no one feels any confidence. I demand of you the things you bring with you into man, which you know either from yourself, or from your author, whoever he may be. You are not, as I well know, Christian; for a man becomes a Christian, he is not born one. Yet Christians earnestly press you for a testimony; they press you, though an alien, to bear witness against your friends, that they may be put to shame before you, for hating and mocking us on account of things which convict you as an accessory.
Chapter 2
We give offense by proclaiming that there is one God, to whom the name of God alone belongs, from whom all things come, and who is Lord of the whole universe. Bear you testimony, if you know this to be the truth; for openly and with a perfect liberty, such as we do not possess, we hear you both in private and in public exclaim, Which may God grant, and, If God so will. By expressions such as these you declare that there is one who is distinctively God, and you confess that all power belongs to him to whose will, as Sovereign, you look. At the same time, too, you deny any others to be truly gods, in calling them by their own names of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva; for you affirm Him to be God alone to whom you give no other name than God; and though you sometimes call these others gods, you plainly use the designation as one which does not really belong to them, but is, so to speak, a borrowed one. Nor is the nature of the God we declare unknown to you: God is good, God does good, you are wont to say; plainly suggesting further, But man is evil. In asserting an antithetic proposition, you, in a sort of indirect and figurative way, reproach man with his wickedness in departing from a God so good. So, again, as among us, as belonging to the God of benignity and goodness, Blessing is a most sacred act in our religion and our life, you too say readily as a Christian needs, God bless you; and when you turn the blessing of God into a curse, in like manner your very words confess with us that His power over us is absolute and entire. There are some who, though they do not deny the existence of God, hold withal that He is neither Searcher, nor Ruler, nor Judge; treating with special disdain those of us who go over to Christ out of fear of a coming judgment, as they think, honouring God in freeing Him from the cares of keeping watch, and the trouble of taking note — not even regarding Him as capable of anger. For if God, they say, gets angry, then He is susceptible of corruption and passion; but that of which passion and corruption can be affirmed may also perish, which God cannot do. But these very persons elsewhere, confessing that the soul is divine, and bestowed on us by God, stumble against a testimony of the soul itself, which affords an answer to these views. For if either divine or God-given, it doubtless knows its giver; and if it knows Him, it undoubtedly fears Him too, and especially as having been by Him endowed so amply. Has it no fear of Him whose favour it is so desirous to possess, and whose anger it is so anxious to avoid? Whence, then, the soul’s natural fear of God, if God cannot be angry? How is there any dread of Him whom nothing offends? What is feared but anger? Whence comes anger, but from observing what is done? What leads to watchful oversight, but judgment in prospect? Whence is judgment, but from power? To whom does supreme authority and power belong, but to God alone? So you are always ready, O soul, from your own knowledge, nobody casting scorn upon you, and no one preventing, to exclaim, God sees all, and I commend you to God, and May God repay, and God shall judge between us. How happens this, since you are not Christian? How is it that, even with the garland of Ceres on the brow, wrapped in the purple cloak of Saturn, wearing the white robe of the goddess Isis, you invoke God as judge? Standing under the statue of Æsculapius, adorning the brazen image of Juno, arraying the helmet of Minerva with dusky figures, you never think of appealing to any of these deities. In your own forum you appeal to a God who is elsewhere; you permit honour to be rendered in your temples to a foreign god. Oh, striking testimony to truth, which in the very midst of demons obtains a witness for us Christians!