CHAPTER IV.

2. We propose to refute and retort every charge you bring against us; but first let us examine the nature of the laws under which we are condemned.

AND so, having as it were prefaced thus much for the purpose of holding up to contempt the injustice of the public hatred towards us, I will now take up [14] a position for the defence of our innocence; nor shall I merely refute what is laid to our charge, but also retort the charges upon those who make them; so that from this also all may know that those crimes are not to be found amongst Christians which our accusers are well aware do exist amongst themselves; and that at the same time they may be put to the blush, being as they are accusers (respecting whom I will not say that they are the worst of men posing as accusers of the best, but) of those who are from their point of view their fellow-criminals. We shall reply to each charge, both those which we are accused of perpetrating in secret, and those which we are detected in committing openly; those in which we are deemed wicked, those in which we are deemed foolish; those for which we are to be condemned, those for which we are to be ridiculed.

But whereas, since the truth of our cause meets you at every point, as a last resort the authority of the laws is set up as a barrier against it, so that either it is said that no question ought to be reopened after the laws have once decided it, or else that, however unwillingly, the necessity of obedience takes precedence of any care for the truth, I will first engage you in argument on this point of the laws, regarding you as their guardians.

First, then, how sternly you lay down this decision : 'Your existence is illegal!' And this you lay down as a preliminary objection without any more lenient modification. You exhibit violence and unjust tyrrany from out of your citadel if you therefore say it [15] is unlawful merely because you wish it, not because it ought to be so. Of course if you do not wish it to be lawful because it ought not to be so, without doubt what is wrong ought not to be lawful. And as a matter of fact, on this very ground it is already decided that what is right is lawful. If I shall find that to be good which your law has forbidden, does it not surely by that pre-decision lose the power to forbid me that which, if it were wrong, it would rightly forbid? What if your law has erred? it is I suppose of human origin, for it did not fall from heaven. Is it a matter for wonder either that man should err in framing a law, or that he should become sensible again in repealing it? Were not the laws of Lycurgus himself revised by the Spartans, and did not this revision inflict such grief upon their author that he starved himself to death in retirement? Do not you yourselves, too, day by day, in your attempts to illumine the darkness of past ages, cut down and fell with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts the whole of that old and tangled forest of laws? Did not Severus, that steadiest of princes, only the other day repeal those ridiculous Papian laws which bade children be brought up before the Julian law enforced marriage,—laws whose antiquity gave them such high authority? But there were laws also formerly which authorized those sentenced under them to be cut in pieces by their creditors, yet by common consent this cruelty was afterwards abolished, and a mark of disgrace substituted for capital punishment; it was thought better [16] to bring about, by the appointment of a confiscation of goods, the flush of shame rather than the rush of life-blood ¹⁰. How many laws needing amendment yet lie hidden, which neither their own antiquity nor the dignity of their framers, but their intrinsic justice alone commends; and therefore when proved to be unjust, they are deservedly to be condemned, although they condemn.

Nor are they merely unjust; they are stupid too, if they condemn a mere name. If, however, they punish deeds, why in our case do they punish deeds on the ground of a name alone,—deeds which it is determined in other cases must be proved by the committal of them, not by a name? I am guilty of incest; why do they not enquire into it? or infanticide; why do they not extort the details? I commit a crime against the gods, or against the Caesars; why am I not heard when I have means of exculpating myself? No law forbids the investigation of a prohibited act; because no judge can rightly inflict punishment unless he knows that an illegal act has been committed. Nor can any citizen loyally obey the law, if ignorant of the nature of punishable offences. No law is bound to satisfy itself alone as to its own intrinsic justice, but also those from whom it looks for obedience. A law excites suspicion if it is not willing to be approved, and it is unjust if, when disapproved, it tyrannizes. [17]