Chapter XXXI.--Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.
But they have further also made up stories against us of impious feasts [818] and forbidden intercourse between the sexes, both that they may appear to themselves to have rational grounds of hatred, and because they think either by fear to lead us away from our way of life, or to render the rulers harsh and inexorable by the magnitude of the charges they bring. But they lose their labour with those who know that from of old it has been the custom, and not in our time only, for vice to make war on virtue. Thus Pythagoras, with three hundred others, was burnt to death; Heraclitus and Democritus were banished, the one from the city of the Ephesians, the other from Abdera, because he was charged with being mad; and the Athenians condemned Socrates to death. But as they were none the worse in respect of virtue because of the opinion of the multitude, so neither does the undiscriminating calumny of some persons cast any shade upon us as regards rectitude of life, for with God we stand in good repute. Nevertheless, I will meet these charges also, although I am well assured that by what has been already said I have cleared myself to you. For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those whose life is directed towards God as its rule, so that each one among us may be blameless and irreproachable before Him, will not entertain even the thought of the slightest sin. For if we believed that we should live only the present life, then we might be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood, or overmastered by gain or carnal desire; but since we know that God is witness to what we think and what we say both by night and by day, and that He, being Himself light, sees all things in our heart, we are persuaded that when we are removed from the present life we shall live another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh, [819] but as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and that we should perish and be annihilated. On these grounds it is not likely that we should wish to do evil, or deliver ourselves over to the great Judge to be punished.
[818] ["Thyestian feasts" (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord's Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled, had they believed the material body and blood of the "man Christ Jesus," present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.]
[819] [1 Cor. xv. 44. A very clear representation of the apostle's doctrine. See Kaye, 199; and compare On the Resurrection, cap. xiii.]
Chapter XXXII.--Elevated Morality of the Christians.
It is, however, nothing wonderful that they should get up tales about us such as they tell of their own gods, of the incidents of whose lives they make mysteries. But it behoved them, if they meant to condemn shameless and promiscuous intercourse, to hate either Zeus, who begat children of his mother Rhea and his daughter Koré, and took his own sister to wife, or Orpheus, the inventor of these tales, which made Zeus more unholy and detestable than Thyestes himself; for the latter defiled his daughter in pursuance of an oracle, and when he wanted to obtain the kingdom and avenge himself. But we are so far from practising promiscuous intercourse, that it is not lawful among us to indulge even a lustful look. "For," saith He, "he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart." [820] Those, then, who are forbidden to look at anything more than that for which God formed the eyes, which were intended to be a light to us, and to whom a wanton look is adultery, the eyes being made for other purposes, and who are to be called to account for their very thoughts, how can any one doubt that such persons practice self-control? For our account lies not with human laws, which a bad man can evade (at the outset I proved to you, sovereign lords, that our doctrine is from the teaching of God), but we have a law which makes the measure of rectitude to consist in dealing with our neighbour as ourselves. [821] On this account, too, according to age, we recognise some as sons and daughters, others we regard as brothers and sisters, [822] and to the more advanced in life we give the honour due to fathers and mothers. On behalf of those, then, to whom we apply the names of brothers and sisters, and other designations of relationship, we exercise the greatest care that their bodies should remain undefiled and uncorrupted; for the Logos [823] again says to us, "If any one kiss a second time because it has given him pleasure, [he sins];" adding, "Therefore the kiss, or rather the salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since, if there be mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life." [824]
[820] Matt. v. 28.
[821] Otto translates: "which has made us and our neighbours attain the highest degree of rectitude." The text is obscure, but the above seems the probably meaning; comp. Matt. xxii. 39, etc.
[822] [Hermas, p. 47, [11]note, and p. 57, this volume; Elucidation, [12]ii.]
[823] [The Logos never said, "it excludes us from eternal life:" that is sure; and the passage, though ambiguous, is not so interpreted in the Latin of Gesner. Jones remarks that Athenagoras never introduces a saying of our Lord in this way. Compare Clem. Alexandrin. (Pædagogue, b. iii. cap. v. p. 297, Edinburgh Series), where he quotes Matt. v. 28, with variation. Lardner (cap. xviii. sec. 20) gives a probable explanation. Jones on The Canon (vol. i. p. 436) is noteworthy. Kaye (p. 221) does not solve the puzzle.]
[824] Probably from some apocryphal writing. [Come from what source it may, it suggests a caution of the utmost importance to Americans. In the newer parts of the country, the practice, here corrected, as cropped out among "brothers and sisters" of divers religious names, and consequent scandals have arisen. To all Christians comes, the apostolic appeal, "Let it not be once named among you."]