Chap. XI.190 - The Absurd Cavil of the Ass’s Head Disposed Of.
In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not merely of forsaking the religion of the community, but of introducing a monstrous superstition; for some among you have dreamed that our god is an ass’s head, - an absurdity which Cornelius Tacitus first suggested. In the fourth book of his histories,191 where he is treating of the Jewish war, he begins his description with the origin of that nation, and gives his own views respecting both the origin and the name of their religion. He relates that the Jews, in their migration in the desert, when suffering for want of water, escaped by following for guides some wild asses, which they supposed to be going in quest of water after pasture, and that on this account the image of one of these animals was worshipped by the Jews. From this, I suppose, it was presumed that we, too, from our close connection with the Jewish religion, have ours consecrated under the same emblematic form. The same Cornelius Tacitus, however, - who, to say the truth, is most loquacious in falsehood - forgetting his later statement, relates how Pompey the Great, after conquering the Jews and capturing Jerusalem, entered the temple, but found nothing in the shape of an image, though he examined the place carefully. Where, then, should their God have been found? Nowhere else, of course than in so memorable a temple which was carefully shut to all but the priests, and into which there could be no fear of a stranger entering. But what apology must I here offer for what I am going to say, when I have no other object at the moment than to make a passing remark or two in a general way which shall be equally applicable to yourselves?192 Suppose that our God, then, be an asinine person, will you at all events deny that you possess the same characteristics with ourselves in that matter? (Not their heads only, but) entire asses, are, to be sure, objects of adoration to you, along with their tutelar Epona; and all herds, and cattle, and beasts you consecrate, and their stables into the bargain! This, perhaps, is your grievance against us, that, when surrounded by cattle-worshippers of every kind we are simply devoted to asses!
Chap. XII.193 - The Charge of Worshipping a Cross. The Heathens Themselves Made Much of Crosses in Sacred Things; Nay, Their Very Idols Were Formed on a Crucial Frame.
As for him who affirms that we are “the 122 priesthood of a cross,”194 we shall claim him195 as our co-religionist.196 A cross is, in its material, a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind197 for the present what is the shape, provided the material is the same: the form, too, is of no importance,198 if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point what, (let me ask,) is the difference between the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross,199 when each is represented by a rough stock, without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue200 of unformed wood? Every piece of timber201 which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater portion of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us, with its transverse beam,202 of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth, however, after all is, that your religion is all cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross.203 Now, every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well, then, this modeller,204 before he did anything else,205 hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed outline of a cross. Since the head rises upwards, and the back takes a straight direction, and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands outstretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting, then, from this rudimental form and prop,206 as it were, he applies a covering of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs, and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this design, with the help of compasses and leaden moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. (This, then, is the process:) after the cross-shaped frame, the clay; after the clay, the god. In a well-understood routine, the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated (deity) begins to derive his origin.207 By way of example, let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now, if you transplant it, or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because, as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a natural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since, then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain, from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony208 as deities; and they are the more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your trophies must be crosses: these are, as it were, the very core of your pageants.209 Thus, in your victories, the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths; your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself, But all that parade210 of images, and that display of pure gold, are (as so many) necklaces of the crosses in like manner also, in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers (and) vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.
123
Chap. XIII.211 - The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day,212 in preference to the preceding day213 as the most suitable in the week214 for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts an the Sabbath and “the Purification,”215 and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps,216 and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the “littoral prayers,”217 all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest.
Chap. XIV.218 - The Vile Calumny About Onocoetes Retorted on the Heathen by Tertullian.
Report has introduced a new calumny respecting our God. Not so long ago, a most abandoned wretch in that city of yours,219 a man who had deserted indeed his own religion - a Jew, in fact, who had only lost his skin, flayed of course by wild beasts,220 against which he enters the lists for hire day after day with a sound body, and so in a condition to lose his skin221 - carried about in public a caricature of us with this label: Onocoetes.222 This (figure) had ass’s ears, and was dressed in a toga with a book, having a hoof on one of his feet. And the crowd believed this infamous Jew. For what other set of men is the seed-plot223 of all the calumny against us? Throughout the city, therefore, Onocoetes is all the talk. As, however, it is less then “a nine days’ wonder,”224 and so destitute of all authority from time, and weak enough from the character of its author, I shall gratify myself by using it simply in the way of a retort. Let us then see whether you are not here also found in our company. Now it matters not what their form may be, when our concern is about deformed images. You have amongst you gods with a dog’s head, and a lion’s head, with the horns of a cow, and a ram, and a goat, goat-shaped or serpent-shaped, and winged in foot, head, and back. Why therefore brand our one God so conspicuously? Many an Onocoetes is found amongst yourselves.
Chap. XV.225 - The Charge of Infanticide Retorted on the Heathen.
Since we are on a par in respect of the gods, it follows that there is no difference between us on the point of sacrifice, or even of worship,226 if I may be allowed to make good our comparison from another sort of evidence. We begin our religious service, or initiate our mysteries, with slaying an infant. As for you, since your own transactions in human blood and infanticide have faded from your memory, you shall be duly reminded of them in the proper place; we now postpone most of the instances, that we may not seem to be everywhere227 handling the selfsame topics. Meanwhile, as I have said, the comparison between us does not fail in another point of view. For if we are infanticides in one sense, you also can hardly be deemed such in any other sense; because, although you are forbidden by the laws to slay new-born infants, it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity or greater safety, with the deliberate knowledge of the public, and the suffrages228 of this entire age.229 Yet there is no great difference between us, only you do not kill your infants in the way of a sacred rite, nor (as a service) to God. But then you make away with them in a more cruel manner, 124 because you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning. If, however, there does occur any dissimilarity between us in this matter,230 you must not overlook the fact that it is your own dear children231 whose life you quench; and this will supplement, nay, abundantly aggravate, on your side of the question, whatever is defective in us on other grounds. Well, but we are said to sup off our impious sacrifice! Whilst we postpone to a more suitable place232 whatever resemblance even to this practice is discoverable amongst yourselves, we are not far removed from you in voracity. If in the one case there is unchastity, and in ours cruelty, we are still on the same footing (if I may so far admit our guilt) (see Apology, c. ix.) in nature, where cruelty is always found in concord with unchastity. But, after all, what do you less than we; or rather, what do you not do in excess of us? I wonder whether it be a small matter to you233 to pant for human entrails, because you devour full-grown men alive? Is it, forsooth, only a trifle to lick up human blood, when you draw out234 the blood which was destined to live? Is it a light thing in your view to feed on an infant, when you consume one wholly before it is come to the birth?235
Chap. XVI.236 - Other Charges Repelled by the Same Method. The Story of the Noble Roman Youth and His Parents,
I am now come to the hour for extinguishing the lamps, and for using the dogs, and practising the deeds of darkness. And on this point I am afraid I must succumb to you; for what similar accusation shall I have to bring against you? But you should at once commend the cleverness with which we make our incest look modest, in that we have devised a spurious night,237 to avoid polluting the real light and darkness, and have even thought it right to dispense with earthly lights, and to play tricks also with our conscience. For whatever we do ourselves, we suspect in others when we choose (to be suspicious). As for your incestuous deeds, on the contrary,238 men enjoy them at full liberty, in the face of day, or in the natural night, or before high Heaven; and in proportion to their successful issue is your own ignorance of the result, since you publicly indulge in your incestuous intercourse in the full cognizance of broad day-light. (No ignorance, however, conceals our conduct from our eyes,) for in the very darkness we are able to recognise our own misdeeds. The Persians, you know very well,239 according to Ctesias, live quite promiscuously with their mothers, in full knowledge of the fact, and without any horror; whilst of the Macedonians it is well known that they constantly do the same thing, and with perfect approbation: for once, when the blinded240 Oedipus came upon their stage, they greeted him with laughter and derisive cheers. The actor, taking off his mask in great alarm, said, “Gentlemen, have I displeased you?” “Certainly not,” replied the Macedonians, “you have played your part well enough; but either the author was very silly, if he invented (this mutilation as an atonement for the incest), or else Oedipus was a great fool for his pains if he really so punished himself;” and then they shouted out one to the other, Ἣλσυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα. But how insignificant, (say you,) is the stain which one or two nations can make on the whole world! As for us, we of course have infected the very sun, polluted the entire ocean! Quote, then, one nation which is free from the passions which allure the whole race of men to incest! If there is a single nation which knows nothing of concubinage through the necessity of age and sex - to say nothing of lust and licentiousness - that nation will be a stranger to incest. If any nature can be found so peculiarly removed from the human state as to be liable neither to ignorance, nor error, nor misfortune, that alone may be adduced with any consistency as an answer to the Christians. Reflect, therefore, on the licentiousness which floats about amongst men’s passions241 as if they were the winds, and consider whether there be any communities which the full and strong tides of passion fail to waft to the commission of this great sin. In the first place, when you expose your infants to the mercy of others, or leave them for adoption to better parents than yourselves, do you forget what an opportunity for incest is furnished, how wide a scope is opened for its accidental commission? Undoubtedly, such of you as are more serious from a principle of self-restraint and careful reflection, abstain from lusts which could produce results of such a kind, in whatever place you may happen to be, at home or abroad, so that no indiscriminate diffusion of seed, or licentious reception thereof, will produce children 125 to you unawares, such as their very parents, or else other children, might encounter in inadvertent incest, for no restraint from age is regarded in (the importunities of) lust. All acts of adultery, all cases of fornication, all the licentiousness of public brothels, whether committed at home or perpetrated out of doors,242 serve to produce confusions of blood and complications of natural relationship,243 and thence to conduce to incest; from which consummation your players and buffoons draw the materials of their exhibitions. It was from such a source, too, that so flagrant a tragedy recently burst upon the public as that which the prefect Fuscianus had judicially to decide. A boy of noble birth, who, by the unintentional neglect of his attendants,244 had strolled too far from home, was decoyed by some passers-by, and carried off. The paltry Greek245 who had the care of him, or somebody else,246 in true Greek fashion, had gone into the house and captured him. Having been taken away into Asia, he is brought, when arrived at full age, back to Rome, and exposed for sale. His own father buys him unawares, and treats him as a Greek.247 Afterwards, as was his wont, the youth is sent by his master into the fields, chained as a slave.248 Thither the tutor and the nurse had already been banished for punishment. The whole case is represented to them; they relate each other’s misfortunes: they, on the one hand, how they had lost their ward when he was a boy; he, on the other hand, that he had been lost from his boyhood. But they agreed in the main, that he was a native of Rome of a noble family; perhaps he further gave sure proofs of his identity. Accordingly, as God willed it for the purpose of fastening a stain upon that age, a presentiment about the time excites him, the periods exactly suit his age, even his eyes help to recall249 his features, some peculiar marks on his body are enumerated His master and mistress, who are now no other than his own father and mother, anxiously urge a protracted inquiry. The slave-dealer is examined, the unhappy truth is all discovered. When their wickedness becomes manifest, the parents find a remedy for their despair by hanging themselves; to their son, who survives the miserable calamity, their property is awarded by the prefect, not as an inheritance, but as the wages of infamy and incest. That one case was a sufficient example for public exposure250 of the sins of this sort which are secretly perpetrated among you. Nothing happens among men in solitary isolation. But, as it seems to me, it is only in a solitary case that such a charge can be drawn out against us, even in the mysteries of our religion. You ply us evermore with this charge;251 yet there are like delinquencies to be traced amongst you, even in your ordinary course of life.252
Chap. XVII.253 - The Christian Refusal to Swear by the Genius of Caesar. Flippancy and Irreverence Retorted on the Heathen.
As to your charges of obstinacy and presumption, whatever you allege against us, even in these respects, there are not wanting points in which you will bear a comparison with us. Our first step in this contumacious conduct concerns that which is ranked by you immediately after254 the worship due to God, that is, the worship due to the majesty of the Caesars, in respect of which we are charged with being irreligious towards them, since we neither propititate their images nor swear by their genius. We are called enemies of the people. Well, be it so; yet at the same time (it must not be forgotten, that) the emperors find enemies amongst you heathen, and are constantly getting surnames to signalize their triumphs - one becoming Parthicus,255 and another Medicus and Germanicus.256 On this head257 the Roman people must see to it who they are amongst whom258 there still remain nations which are unsubdued and foreign to their rule. But, at all events, you are of us,259 and yet you conspire against us. (In reply, we need only state) a well-known fact,260 that we acknowledge the fealty of Romans to the emperors. No conspiracy has ever broken out from our body: no Caesar’s blood has ever fixed a stain upon us, in the senate or even in the palace; no assumption of the purple has ever in any of the provinces been affected by us. The Syrias still exhale the odours of their corpses; still do the Gauls261 fail to wash away (their blood) in the waters of their Rhone our allegations of our insanity262 I omit, because 126 they do not compromise the Roman name. But I will grapple with263 the charge of sacrilegious vanity, and remind you of264 the irreverence of your own lower classes, and the scandalous lampoons265 of which the statues are so cognizant, and the sneers which are sometimes uttered at the public games,266 and the curses with which the circus resounds. If not in arms, you are in tongue at all events always rebellious. But I suppose it is quite another affair to refuse to swear by the genius of Caesar? For it is fairly open to doubt as to who are perjurers on this point, when you do not swear honestly267 even by your gods. Well, we do not call the emperor God; for on this point sannam facimus,268 as the saying is. But the truth is, that you who call Caesar God both mock him, by calling him what he is not, and curse him, because he does not want to be what you call him. For he prefers living to being made a god. (compare The Apology, c. xxxiii., p. 37, supra, and Minicus Felix, Octavius, c. xxiii.[Vol. IV. this series.])
Chap. XVIII.269 - Christians Charged with an Obstinate Contempt of Death. Instances of the Same Are Found Amongst the Heathen.
The rest of your charge of obstinacy against us you sum up in this indictment, that we boldly refuse neither your swords, nor your crosses, nor your wild beasts, nor fire, nor tortures, such is our obduracy and contempt of death. But (you are inconsistent in your charges); for in former times amongst your own ancestors all these terrors have come in men’s intrepidity270 not only to be despised, but even to be held in great praise. How many swords there were, and what brave men were willing to suffer by them, it were irksome to enumerate.271 (If we take the torture) of the cross, of which so many instances have occurred, exquisite in cruelty, your own Regulus readily initiated the suffering which up to his day was without a precedent;272 a queen of Egypt used wild beasts of her own (to accomplish her death);273 the Carthaginian woman, who in the last extremity of her country was more courageous than her husband Asdrubal,274 only followed the example, set long before by Dido herself, of going through fire to her death. Then, again, a woman of Athens defied the tyrant, exhausted his tortures, and at last, lest her person and sex might succumb through weakness, she bit off her tongue and spat out of her mouth the only possible instrument of a confession which was now out of her power.275 But in your own instance you account such deeds glorious, in ours obstinate. Annihilate now the glory of your ancestors, in order that you may thereby annihilate us also. Be content from henceforth to repeal the praises of your forefathers, in order that you may not have to accord commendation to us for the same (sufferings). Perhaps (you will say) the character of a more robust age may have rendered the spirits of antiquity more enduring. Now, however, (we enjoy) the blessing of quietness and peace; so that the minds and dispositions of men (should be) more tolerant even towards strangers. Well, you rejoin, be it so: you may compare yourselves with the ancients; we must needs pursue with hatred all that we find in you offensive to ourselves, because it does not obtain currency276 among us. Answer me, then, on each particular case by itself. I am not seeking for examples on a uniform scale.277 Since, forsooth, the sword through their contempt of death produced stories of heroism amongst your ancestors, it is not, of course,278 from love of life that you go to the trainers sword in hand and offer yourselves as gladiators,279 (nor) through fear of death do you enrol your names in the army.280 Since an ordinary281 woman makes her death famous by wild beasts, it cannot but be of your own pure accord that you encounter wild beasts day after day in the midst of peaceful times. Although no longer any Regulus among you has raised a cross as the instrument of his own crucifixion, yet a contempt of the fire has even now displayed itself,282 since one of yourselves very lately has offered for a wager283 to go to any place which may be fixed upon and put on the burning shirt.284 If a woman once defiantly danced beneath the scourge, the same feat has been very recently performed again by one of your own (circus-) hunters285 as he traversed the 127 appointed course, not to mention the famous sufferings of the Spartans.286
Chap. XIX.287 - If Christians and the Heathen Thus Resemble Each Other, There Is Great Difference in the Grounds and Nature of Their Apparently Similar Conduct.
Here end, I suppose, your tremendous charges of obstinacy against the Christians. Now, since we are amenable to them in common with yourselves, it only remains that we compare the grounds which the respective parties have for being personally derided. All our obstinacy, however, is with you a foregone conclusion,288 based on our strong convictions; for we take for granted289 a resurrection of the dead. Hope in this resurrection amounts to290 a contempt of death. Ridicule, therefore, as much as you like the excessive stupidity of such minds as die that they may live; but then, in order that you may be able to laugh more merrily, and deride us with greater boldness, you must take your sponge, or perhaps your tongue, and wipe away those records of yours every now and then cropping out,291 which assert in not dissimilar terms that souls will return to bodies. But how much more worthy of acceptance is our belief which maintains that they will return to the same bodies! And how much more ridiculous is your inherited conceit,292 that the human spirit is to reappear in a dog, or a mule, or a peacock! Again, we affirm that a judgment has been ordained by God according to the merits of every man. This you ascribe to Minos and Rhadamanthus, while at the same time you reject Aristides, who was a juster judge than either. By the award of the judgment, we say that the wicked will have to spend an eternity in endless fire, the pious and innocent in a region of bliss. In your view likewise an unalterable condition is ascribed to the respective destinations of Pyriphlegethon293 and Elysium. Now they are not merely your composers of myth and poetry who write songs of this strain; but your philosophers also speak with all confidence of the return of souls to their former state,294 and of the twofold award295 of a final judgment.
Chap. XX. - Truth and Reality Pertain to Christians Alone. The Heathen Counselled to Examine and Embrace It.
How long therefore, O most unjust heathen, will you refuse to acknowledge us, and (what is more) to execrate your own (worthies), since between us no distinction has place, because we are one and the same? Since you do not (of course) hate what you yourselves are, give us rather your right hands in fellowship, unite your salutations,296 mingle your embraces, sanguinary with the sanguinary, incestuous with the Incestuous, conspirators with conspirators, obstinate and vain with those of the selfsame qualities. In company with each other, we have been traitors to the majesty of the gods; and together do we provoke their indignation. You too have your “third race;”297 not indeed third in the way of religious rite,298 but a third race in sex, and, made up as it is of male and female in one, it is more fitted to men and women (for offices of lust).299 Well, then, do we offend you by the very fact of our approximation and agreement? Being on a par is apt to furnish unconsciously the materials for rivalry. Thus “a potter envies a potter, and a smith a smith.”300 But we must now discontinue this imaginary confession.301 Our conscience has returned to the truth, and to the consistency of truth. For all those points which you allege302 (against us) will be really found in ourselves alone; and we alone can rebut them, against whom they are adduced, by getting you to listen303 to the other side of the question, whence that full knowledge is learnt which both inspires counsel and directs the judgment. Now it is in fact your own maxim, that no one should determine a cause without hearing both sides of it; and it is only in our own case that you neglect (the equitable principle). You indulge to the full304 that fault of human nature, that those things which you do not disallow in yourselves you condemn in others, or you boldly charge305 against others those things the guilt of which306 you retain a lasting consciousness of307 in yourselves. The course of life in which you will choose to occupy yourselves is different from ours: whilst chaste in the eyes of others, you are 128 unchaste towards your own selves; whilst vigorous against vice out of doors, you succumb to it at home. This is the injustice (which we have to suffer), that, knowing truth, we are condemned by those who know it not; free from guilt, we are judged by those who are implicated in it. Remove the mote, or rather the beam, out of your own eye, that you may be able to extract the mote from the eyes of others. Amend your own lives first, that you may be able to punish the Christians. Only so far as you shall have effected your own reformation, will you refuse to inflict punishment on them - nay, so far will you have become Christians yourselves; and as you shall have become Christians, so far will you have compassed your own amendment of life. Learn what that is which you accuse in us, and you will accuse no longer; search out what that is which you do not accuse in yourselves, and you will become self-accusers. From these very few and humble remarks, so far as we have been able to open out the subject to you, you will plainly get some insight into (your own) error, and some discovery of our truth. Condemn that truth if you have the heart,308 but only after you have examined it; and approve the error still, if you are so minded,309 only first explore it. But if your prescribed rule is to love error and hate truth, why, (let me ask,) do you not probe to a full discovery the objects both of your love and your hatred?
FOOTNOTES
190 Compare The Apology, c. xvi.
191 In The Apology (c. xvi.) the reference is to “the fifth book.” This is correct. Book v. c. 3, which is meant.
192 In vobis, for “in vos” ex pari transferendorum.
193 Compare The Apology, c. xvi.
194 Crusis antistites.
195 Erit.
196 Consacraneus.
197 Viderint.
198 Viderit.
199 Stipite crusis.
200 Solo staticulo. The use of wood in the construction of an idol is mentioned afterward.
201 Omne robur.
202 Antemna. See our Anti-Marcion, p. 156. Ed. Edinburgh.
203 De isto patibulo.
204 Plasta.
205 In primo.
206 Statumini.
207 Compare The Apology, c. xii.: “Every image of a god has been first constructed on a cross and stake, and plastered with cement. The body of your god is first dedicated on a gibbet.”
208 Veneramini.
209 Tropæum, for “tropæorum.” We have given the sense rather than the words of this awkward sentence.
210 Suggestus.
211 Compare The Apology, c. xvi.
212 Sunday.
213 Saturday.
214 Ex diebus.
215 On the “Coena pura,” see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note 4.
216 See Lev_24:2; also 2Ch_13:11. Witsius (Ægyptiaca, ii. 16, 17) compares the Jewish with the Egyptian “ritus lucernarum.”
217 Tertullian, in his tract, de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air, “per omne litus.”
218 Compare The Apology, c. xvi.
219 In ista civitate, Rome.
220 This is explained in the passage of The Apology (xvi.): “He had for money exposed himself with criminals to fight with wild beasts.”
221 Decutiendus, from a jocular word, “decutire.”
222 This curious word is compounded of ὅνος, an ass, and κοιᾶσθαι, which Hesychius explains by ίρᾶσθαι, to act as a priest. The word therefore means, “asinarius sacerdos,” “an ass of a priest.” Calumnious enough; but suited to the vile occasion, and illustrative of the ribald opposition which Christianity had to encounter.
223 We take Rigaltius’ reading, “seminarium.”
224 Tanquam hesternum.
225 Compare The Apology, c. ix.
226 Sacri.
227 He refers to a passage in his Apology, especially c. ix.
228 Tabellis.
229 Unius ætatis. This Oehler explains by “per unam jam totam hanc ætatem.”
230 Genere.
231 Pignora, scil. amoris.
232 Si forte.
233 Parum scilicet?
234 Elicitis.
235 Infantem totum præcocum.
236 Compare The Apology, c. ix.
237 Adulteram noctem.
238 Ceterum.
239 Plane.
240 Trucidatus oculos.
241 Errores.
242 Sive stativo vel ambulatorio titulo.
243 Compagines generis.
244 Comitum.
245 Græculus.
246 “Aliquis” is here understood.
247 Utitur Græco, i.e., cinædo, “for purposes of lust.”
248 Or, “is sent into the country, and put into prison.”
249 Aliquid recordantur.
250 Publicæ eruptionis.
251 Intentatis.
252 Vestris non sacramentis, with a hyphen, “your non-mysteries.”
253 Compare The Apology, c. xxxv.
254 Secunda.
255 Severus, in a.d. 198.
256 These titles were borne by Caracalla.
257 Or, “topic,” - hoc loco.
258 i.e., whether among the Christians or the heathens.
