CHAPTER XLV.

Our ethical standard is far higher and more awe-inspiring than yours.

WE therefore alone are the innocent ones. What cause for wonder is there, if it is inevitable? For indeed it is inevitable. We have been taught innocence by God, and we know it perfectly, as revealed by a perfect Master; and we faithfully keep His commandments, as delivered by an Observer Who cannot be despised. But with you human sanction alone has introduced innocence, and merely human regulations enjoin it: therefore your ethical system, as regards the sincerity of your innocence, is neither complete nor so awe-inspiring as ours. How far is man's insight capable of pointing out what is truly good? What authority has he to enforce it? the former may be as easily mistaken, as the latter despised. Which therefore is the more exhaustive injunction: 'Thou shalt not kill;' or, 'Be not even angry?' Which is the more perfect, to forbid adultery, or to restrain even the private indulgence of a sinful glance? Which shews the deeper knowledge, to forbid evil-doing or evil-speaking? Which is the more acute prohibition, not to permit an injury, or not to allow a retaliation? Yet all the time, you know that those very laws of yours, which seem to tend towards innocence, have borrowed their form from our divine law as the more ancient. For we have already spoken of the age of Moses ¹¹⁷. [128] 

But what is the authority of human laws, when it can happen to a man to evade them, and generally escape detection in his misdeeds, and sometimes to set them at naught, transgressing voluntarily or necessarily : especially if one considers the brevity of the punishment they can inflict; for, be it what it may, it can in no case be prolonged beyond death? So Epicurus makes light of all pains and grief, by pronouncing slight ones contemptible, and severe ones short-lived ¹¹⁸. But we, whose deeds are audited by God, the Scrutinizer of all, foreseeing eternal penalties at His hands, are deservedly the only ones who attain unto innocence, both with respect to the fulness of our knowledge of the virtue, and the difficulty of concealment, and the severity of a torture, which is not merely long, but eternal; for we fear Him Whom even the very man, who judges those that fear, will have to fear,—that is, we fear God, not the proconsul. [129]