CHAPTER XLII.

3. We are accused of being worthless to trade, a charge sufficiently refuted by our habits of life.

BUT we are called up on another charge of injuries committed, and are accused of being unprofitable in ordinary business. Yet how can this be in the case of men who live amongst you and use the same food, dress, style of living, and necessaries of life? For we are not Brachmans or Indian gymnosophists, dwellers in the woods, or outlaws from life. We remember the gratitude that we owe to God our Lord and Creator; we reject no enjoyment of His works; true, we are moderate in our enjoyment of them, lest we should use them intemperately or wrongfully. Consequently we cannot live with you in the world without a market-place, or shambles, nor without baths, shops, workshops, inns, fairs, and other places of resort. We sail and fight with you; we till the ground and engage in trade just as you do; similarly we join crafts, and throw our workmanship open to the public to your profit. How then we can seem to be unprofitable to your trades, when we live with you and by you, I am at a loss to understand. Moreover if I do not frequent your religious rites, yet all the same on that day I am still a man. I do not bathe on the eve of the Saturnalia, lest I should lose both night and day; yet I bathe at a proper and healthy hour, and preserve my warmth and colour; I shall be pale and stiff enough after my last bath [124] when dead. I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, as is the custom of the beast-fighters who are making their last meal; yet in some place or other I do sup, and from your resources. I buy no crown for my head; but what difference does it make to you how I use the flowers which I do undoubtedly purchase? I think they are more pleasing when free, and loose, and straying unarranged : but even if made up into a crown, we prefer to appreciate it with our noses, no matter that some people smell with their hair. We do not attend your public shows; yet if I want what is sold at those places of resort, I can get it more easily at the proper shops. True, we buy no incense: if the Arabians complain about this, the Sabaeans will know that their spices are consumed in greater quantities and at higher cost for the burials of Christians, than in fumigating your gods.

'Exactly;' you say, 'the temple-revenues are daily diminishing : how few now pay their contributions!' Well, we cannot afford to support our own people and your begging gods too; nor do we think that we ought to give, except to those who ask. So let Jupiter stretch out his hand, and he shall receive something: whilst in the meantime our pity is dispensing more in the streets than your religion is in the temples. But your other revenues will be grateful to us Christians, who pay what is due ¹¹³ as [125] faithfully as we abstain from defrauding another; so that if the matter be gone into as to how much is lost to the public exchequer by the fraud and lying returns which you declare, the conclusion would soon be arrived at that the loss complained of from us in one particular ¹¹⁴, is balanced by the gain in all the others.