CHAPTER XLIV.

The real loss to the state involved in your injustice to us is overlooked.

YET no one pays attention to that loss to the commonwealth which is as great as it is real,—no one pays attention to that injury to the state which arises from the punishment of so many just persons, from the slaughter of so many innocent men. For we appeal now to your own judicial acts, you who preside daily for the trial of prisoners, who balance the criminal charge-sheet by the infliction of appropriate sentences. So many culprits under various criminal charges are examined by you; what assassin or cutpurse or sacrilegious person or procurer or thief is there amongst them, who is also described as a Christian? Or when Christians are brought into court on the charge peculiar to them ¹¹⁵, who amongst them is ever such an one, as are your numerous culprits? It is with your own people that your prisons heave; it is with your own people that the mines perpetually sigh; it is on your own people that the beasts are continually fattened; it is from your own people that the givers of gladiatorial shows provide their flocks of criminals. No Christian is amongst them, unless it be simply because he is one; or if it be for any other reason, he is no longer a Christian ¹¹⁶. [127]