CHRISTIANS MORE LOYAL TO ROME THAN UNBELIEVERS
EXCERPTS FROM TERTULLIAN
EXCERPTS FROM EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
08. Christians
inequitably treated for their name only.
09. Cruelties and absurd accusations suffered by the Christians.
10. Pagan injustice and misunderstanding.
11. Contrast between Christian sober ways and pagan wantonness.
12. Christians more loyal to Rome than unbelievers.
13. Pagan disregard of the revered customs.
12. CHRISTIANS MORE LOYAL TO ROME THAN UNBELIEVERS
It was easily seen to be unjust to compel freemen against their will to offer sacrifice (for even in other acts of religious service a willing mind is required), it should be counted quite absurd for one man to compel another to do honour to the gods, when he ought ever voluntarily, and in the sense of his own need, to seek their favour ...You have been led, no doubt, by these same evil spirits to compel us to offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperor; and you are under a necessity of using force, just as we are under an obligation to face the dangers of it. This brings us, then, to the second ground of accusation, that we are guilty of treason against a majesty more august; for you do homage with a greater dread and an intenser reverence to Caesar, than Olympian Jove himself (Apologeticum, 28).
Many gods have felt the displeasure of the Caesar. It makes for my argument if they are also partakers of his favour, when he bestows on them some gift or privilege. How shall they who are thus in Caesar's power, who belong entirely to him, have Caesar's protection in their hands, so that you can imagine them able to give to Caesar what they more readily get from him? This, then, is the ground on which we are charged with treason against the imperial majesty, to wit, that we do not put the emperors under their own possessions; that we do not offer a mere mock service on their behalf, as not believing their safety rests in leaden hands (Apologeticum, 29).
We offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal, the true, the living God, whose favour, beyond all others, they must themselves desire. They know from whom they have obtained their power; they know, as they are men, from whom they have received life itself; they are convinced that He is God alone, on whose power alone they are entirely dependent, to whom they are second, after whom they occupy the highest places, before and above all the gods ... Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish (Apologeticum, 30).
Our first step in this contumacious conduct concerns that which is ranked by you immediately after 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 propitiate their images nor swear by their genius. We are called enemies of the people (Ad Nationes, 17).
There is also another and a greater necessity for our offering prayer in behalf of the emperors, nay, for the complete stability of the empire, and for Roman interests in general. For we know that a mighty shock impending over the whole earth-in fact, the very end of all things threatening dreadful woes--is only retarded by the continued existence of the Roman empire. We have no desire, then, to be overtaken by these dire events; and in praying that their coming may be delayed, we are lending our aid to Rome's duration. More than this, though we decline to swear by the genii of the Caesars, we swear by their safety, which is worth far more than all your genii (Apologeticum, 32).
But why dwell longer on the reverence and sacred respect of Christians to the emperor, whom we cannot but look up to as called by our Lord to his office? So that on valid grounds I might say Caesar is more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him. Therefore, as having this propriety in him, I do more than you for his welfare, not merely because I ask it of Him who can give it, or because I ask it as one who deserves to get it, but also because, in keeping the majesty of Caesar within due limits, and putting it under the Most High, and making it less than divine, I commend him the more to the favour of Deity, to whom I make him alone inferior (Apologeticum, 33).
Of course, then, the other classes, as befits their higher rank, are religiously faithful. No breath of treason is there ever in the senate, in the equestrian order, in the camp, in the palace. Whence, then, came a Cassius, a Niger, an Albinus? Whence they who beset the Caesar between the two laurel groves? Whence they who practised wrestling, that they might acquire skill to strangle him? Whence they who in full armour broke into the palace, more audacious than all your Tigerii and Parthenii. If I mistake not, they were Romans; that is, they were not Christians. Yet all of them, on the very eve of their traitorous outbreak, offered sacrifices for the safety of the emperor, and swore by his genius, one thing in profession, and another in the heart; and no doubt they were in the habit of calling Christians enemies of the state (Apologeticum, 35).
If it is the fact that men bearing the name of Romans are found to be enemies of Rome, why are we, on the ground that we are regarded as enemies, denied the name of Romans? We may be at once Romans and foes of Rome, when men passing for Romans are discovered to be enemies of their country (Apologeticum, 36).
Ought not Christians, therefore, to receive not merely a somewhat milder treatment, but to have a place among the law-tolerated societies, seeing they are not chargeable with any such crimes as are commonly dreaded from societies of the illicit class? For, unless I mistake the matter, the prevention of such associations is based on a prudential regard to public order, that the state may not be divided into parties, which would naturally lead to disturbance in the electoral assemblies, the councils, the curiae, the special conventions, even in the public shows by the hostile collisions of rival parties; especially when now, in pursuit of gain, men have begun to consider their violence an article to be bought and sold. But as those in whom all ardour in the pursuit of glory and honour is dead, we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings; nor is there aught more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state (Apologeticum, 38).
So, too, treason is falsely laid to our charge, though no one has ever been able to find followers of Albinus, or Niger, or Cassius, among Christians; while the very men who had sworn by the genii of the emperors, who had offered and vowed sacrifices for their safety, who had often pronounced condemnation on Christ's disciples, are till this day found traitors to the imperial throne. A Christian is enemy to none, least of all to the Emperor of Rome, whom he knows to be appointed by his God, and so cannot but love and honour; and whose well-being moreover, he must needs desire, with that of the empire over which he reigns so long as the world shall stand-for so long as that shall Rome continue (Ad Scapulam, 2).
Tertullian is traditionally regarded as a fiery apologist of unknown biography who burst into Latin Christianity, in the reign of Septimius Severus, with a number of remarkable treatises that he composed over a relatively short period of time, after which he fizzled out for the rest of his long-lasting life. Surprisingly, he focused his attacks on a Greek painter, and also fought some other unfamiliar character that could not share his admiration for a strange group of visionaries who lived in Phrygia long time since. Some less demanding section of the clergy unleashed his fury no less than an otherwise unrecorded persecution of Christians. Not only himself but also his epoch is elusive. Ruthless opponents of the bishop Cyprian, who fled Carthage when Decius launched his anti-Christian campaign, followed his guidelines in a religious confrontation closely mirroring the subsequent Donatist controversy that flared up in Africa after Diocletian’s resignation. Following his unrelenting defence of the orthodox stance and his proscription of all heretics, at some point in time he supposedly forsook the Church Catholic to follow the ridiculous directions and put up with the frivolities of a gang of false prophets. Such two hardly compatible stages in his career were not successive but widely overlapping.
A quite different approach is presented in Did Tertullian really exist? Did Cyprian? Did Hippolytus? according to which the efforts of early 4th-century African and Roman rigorists, forcefully denouncing an entrenched ecclesiastical body intent on preserving its former privileged position in the Church in spite of the disappointing behaviour of many of its members in times of harassment, along with the reaction of the hierarchical organization under attack, gave rise to the purported works of their respective literary champions, which conveniently came down from the preceding century to the assistance of Donatists and Caecilianists.