The Testimony of the Soul 1

Great research and far greater memory are needed for the study, if anyone wishes to excerpt from the most accepted writings of the philosophers or poets or of any teachers of worldly learning and wisdom testimonies to the Christian truth, so that its rivals and persecutors may be convicted from their own proper documents, both of error toward themselves and of injustice toward us. Some indeed, in whom the labor of research and the retentiveness of memory from their former literary studies have persisted, have composed little works among us in this way: recording and attesting on each point the reasoning, origin, tradition, and arguments of the opinions, by which it may be recognized that we have taken up nothing either new or monstrous for which even common and public literature does not plead in our support, whether we have rejected some error or admitted some equity. But human hardness in unbelief has not inclined its trust even to its own teachers, otherwise most approved and most select, wherever they stumble into arguments for the Christian defense. Then the poets are foolish, when they portray the gods with human passions and fables; then the philosophers are harsh, when they knock at the doors of truth. A man will be held wise and prudent only so far as he has spoken almost as a Christian; whereas if he has affected any prudence or wisdom, whether by spitting on ceremonies or by convicting the world, he is branded as a Christian. Now, therefore, we will have nothing to do with the literature and teaching of a perverted happiness, which is believed rather in what is false than in what is true. Let them see to it, if some have spoken of the one and only God. Indeed, let nothing at all be reported that a Christian may recognize, lest he be able to reproach them with it. For even what has been reported not all know, and those who know are not confident that it is established. So far are people from assenting to our writings, to which no one comes unless he is already a Christian. I call a new witness, or rather one better known than all literature, more discussed than all teaching, more widespread than every publication, greater than the whole man: that is, the whole of what belongs to man. Stand in the midst, O soul. Whether you are a divine and eternal thing, as many philosophers hold, the less will you lie; or not divine at all, since you are mortal, as seems to Epicurus alone, the less ought you to lie; whether you are received from heaven or conceived from earth, whether you are composed of numbers or of atoms, whether you begin with the body or are introduced after the body, from wherever and in whatever manner, you make man a rational animal, most capable of perception and knowledge. But I do not call upon you as you are when, formed in the schools, trained in libraries, fed in the academies and porches of Athens, you belch out wisdom. I address you simple and rough and unpolished and untaught, such as they have you who have you alone, that very soul, all of you, from the crossroads, the street corner, the weaving shop. It is your inexperience I need, since no one believes your little bit of experience. I demand those things which you bring with you into man, which you have learned to perceive either from yourself or from your author, whoever he is. You are not, so far as I know, Christian; for a soul is accustomed to become Christian, not to be born so. Yet Christians now demand testimony from you, an outsider, against your own, so that they may be ashamed even before you, because they hate and mock us on account of those very things which now hold you as their accomplice.