To the Nations 1.4

But you say that the sect is punished in the name of its founder. First, it is surely a proper and customary rule that a sect should be marked by its founder's name, since philosophers too are named after their founders, Pythagoreans and Platonists, as physicians are called Erasistrateans and grammarians Aristarcheans. So if a sect is bad because its founder is bad, the offshoot of a bad name is punished. But that would be presumed rashly. The first thing was to know the founder, so that the sect might be known, rather than to put off examining the founder on account of the sect. But as it is, being necessarily ignorant of the sect because you are ignorant of the founder, or not reviewing the founder because you do not review the sect either, you strike at the name alone, as if in it you had hold of the sect and the founder, neither of whom you know at all. And yet philosophers are free to pass over from you into a sect and to take their founders' name as their own, and no one stirs up hatred against them, though they bark out, openly and publicly, every bitterness of speech against your morals, rites, worship, and way of life, in contempt of the laws, without respect of persons, so that some even hurl their freedom of speech at the emperors themselves with impunity. But the truth, so very troublesome to the world, the philosophers only aspire to, while the Christians possess it; and so those who possess it displease more, because the one who aspires to it plays with it, while the one who possesses it defends it. In fact Socrates was condemned on the side on which he had come nearest to the truth, by destroying your gods. Although the Christian name was not yet on earth then, truth was always condemned. And you will not deny that he was wise, to whom even your Pythian bore witness: “Of all men,” he said, “Socrates is the wisest.” Truth overcame Apollo, so that he pronounced against himself; for he confessed that he was not a god when he affirmed that the man who denied the gods was most wise. But with you he is the less wise for denying the gods, when he was wise precisely because he denied them. You speak of us in the same way: “Lucius Titius is a good man, only he is a Christian.” And another: “I am surprised that Gaius Seius, a serious man, has become a Christian.” In the blindness of folly they praise what they know, censure what they do not know, and spoil what they know by what they do not know. It occurs to no one that a man may be good and prudent because he is a Christian, or a Christian because he is prudent and good, although it is more humane to judge hidden things from manifest ones than to prejudge manifest things from what is hidden. Others marvel that people whom they formerly knew, before this name, as vagrant, worthless, and wicked have suddenly been reformed, and yet they know better how to marvel than how to follow. Others fight with such obstinacy that they fight against their own advantage, which they could gain from association with this name. I know of more than one husband, formerly anxious about his wife's conduct, who could not bear even mice creeping into the bedroom without a groan of suspicion, but who, on discovering the cause of her new diligence and her unusual keeping at home, offered to put up with anything from his wife, denied that he was jealous, and preferred to be the husband of a harlot rather than of a Christian: he was allowed to change his own nature for the worse; he did not allow the woman to be reformed for the better. A father disinherited a son of whom he had ceased to complain. A master sent to the workhouse a slave whom until then he had found indispensable. As soon as anyone discovers that someone is a Christian, he would rather have a criminal. For our discipline betrays itself by itself, and we are betrayed by nothing but our own goodness, just as the wicked shine out by their own wickedness. Or are we alone, against the ordinances of nature, branded as the worst for our goodness? For what distinguishing mark do we display, if not, first, wisdom, by which we do not worship the trifling works of human hands; self-restraint, by which we keep from what belongs to others; chastity, which we do not defile even with our eyes; compassion, by which we are moved toward the needy; truth itself, by which we give offense; freedom itself, for which we know how to die? Whoever wishes to understand who the Christians are must use these signs.