Chapter XXXVII.

If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands? In regard to this, recall your own experiences. How often you inflict gross cruelties on Christians, partly because it is your own inclination, and partly in obedience to the laws! How often, too, the hostile mob, paying no regard to you, takes the law into its own hand, and assails us with stones and flames! With the very frenzy of the Bacchanals, they do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them, now sadly changed, no longer entire, from the rest of the tomb, from the asylum we might say of death, cutting them in pieces, rending them asunder. Yet, banded together as we are, ever so ready to sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you able to point to, though, if it were held right among us to repay evil by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample vengeance? But away with the idea of a sect divine avenging itself by human fires, or shrinking from the sufferings in which it is tried. If we desired, indeed, to act the part of open enemies, not merely of secret avengers, would there be any lacking in strength, whether of numbers or resources?  The Moors, the Marcomanni, the Parthians themselves, or any single people, however great, inhabiting a distinct territory, and confined within its own boundaries, surpasses, forsooth, in numbers, one spread over all the world! We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you—cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum,—we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay? Without arms even, and raising no insurrectionary banner, but simply in enmity to you, we could carry on the contest with you by an ill-willed severance alone. For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you, and betake themselves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with shame; nay, in the very forsaking, vengeance would be inflicted. Why, you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves, at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of a dead world. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few,—almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ.53    [Elucidation VI.] Yet you choose to call us enemies of the human race, rather than of human error.  Nay, who would deliver you from those secret foes, ever busy both destroying your souls and ruining your health?  Who would save you, I mean, from the attacks of those spirits of evil, which without reward or hire we exorcise?  This alone would be revenge enough for us, that you were henceforth left free to the possession of unclean spirits.  But instead of taking into account what is due to us for the important protection we afford you, and though we are not merely no trouble to you, but in fact necessary to your well-being, you prefer to hold us enemies, as indeed we are, yet not of man, but rather of his error.

CAPUT XXXVII.

A quibus Christianis nihil mali expectandum hinc patere possit, utpote apud quos malum malo compensare non liceat, quod si vellent, iniqua odia et contumelias ulturi, facillime possent, et ob ingentem numerum, quo brevi tempore orbis impletus est, et ob mortis contemptum, quem etiam in tormentis pro Fide praestent: sive id agere mallent per incendia, sive per bella, sive denique per meram discessionem vastaturi Rempublicam. At nunc etiam benefactores inimicorum factos, a Daemonum incursibus illos liberare, quos tamen generis, quam erroris humani hostes vocare maluerint.

0461A Si inimicos, ut supra diximus, jubemur dilligere, quem habemus odisse? Item si laesi vicem referre prohibemur, nec de facto pares simus, quem possumus laedere? Nam de isto ipsi recognoscite. Quoties enim in Christianos desaevitis, partim animis propriis, partim legibus obsequentes? Quoties etiam praeteritis vobis suo jure nos inimicum vulgus invadit lapidibus et incendiis? Ipsis Bacchanalium furiis nec mortuis parcunt Christianis, quin illos de requie sepulturae , de asylo quodam mortis, jam alios, jam nec totos avellant, dissecent, distrahant. Quid tamen unquam denotastis de tam 0462A conspiratis, de tam animatis ad mortem usque pro injuria repensatum , quando vel una nox pauculis faculis largiter ultionis posset operari, si malum malo dispungi penes nos liceret? Sed absit, ut aut igni humano vindicetur divina sectae , aut doleat pati, in quo probatur. Si enim hostes exsertos, non tantum vindices occultos agere vellemus, deesset nobis vis numerorum et copiarum? Plures nimirum Mauri et Marcomanni ipsique Parthi, vel quantaecumque unius tamen loci et suorum finium gentes, quam totius orbis. Hesterni sumus et vestra omnia implevimus , urbes, insulas, castella, 0463A municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa, tribus, decurias, palatium, senatum, forum; sola vobis reliquimus templa. Possumus dinumerare exercitus vestros: unius provinciae plures erunt . Cui bello non idonei, non prompti fuissemus, etiam impares copiis, qui tam libenter trucidamur , si non apud istam disciplinam magis occidi liceret, quam occidere? Potuimus et inermes, nec rebelles, sed tantummodo discordes, solius divortii invidia ad versus vos dimicasse. Si enim tanta vis hominum in aliquem orbis remoti sinum abrupissemus a vobis, suffudisset [pudore] utique dominationem vestram tot qualiumcumque amissio civium, imo etiam et ipsa destitutione punisset. Procul dubio expavissetis ad solitudinem vestram, ad silentium rerum et stuporem quemdam 0463B quasi mortui orbis ; quaesissetis quibus imperaretis. Plures hostes quam cives vobis remansissent. Nunc enim pauciores hostes habetis prae multitudine christianorum, pene omnium civitatum pene omnes cives christianos habendo. Sed hostes maluistis vocare generis humani. Quis autem vos ab illis occultis et usquequaque vastantibus mentes et valetudines vestras hostibus raperet? a daemoniorum incursibus dico, quae de vobis sine praemio, sine mercede depellimus. Suffecisset hoc solum nostrae 0464A ultioni, quod vacua exinde possessio immundis spiritibus pateretis. Porro nec tanti praesidii compensationem cogitantes, non modo non molestum vobis genus, verum etiam necessarium, hostes judicare maluistis: qui sumus plane, non generis humani tamen, sed potius erroris.