CHAPTER V.

They are to be traced to an old decree, and to the rescripts of the worst emperors.

Now, to consider somewhat concerning the origin of laws of this kind. There was an old decree ¹¹ that no god should be consecrated by the emperor without the approval of the senate. Marcus Aemilius is a witness of this in the case of his god Alburnus. And this makes in our favour, that amongst you divinity is weighed out at human caprice. Unless a god shall have pleased man, he shall not be a god; man must now be propitious to a god. Tiberius, then, in whose time the Christian name entered into the world, laid before the senate ¹² tidings from Palestine which had revealed to him the truth of that Divine Power there manifested, and supported the motion with his own first vote. The senate, because it did not itself approve, rejected the proposal. Caesar maintained his own opinion, and threatened danger to those who accused the Christians. Consult your own records : there you will find that Nero was the first to furiously attack with the imperial sword this sect then rising into notice especially at Rome ¹³. But in such an originator of our condemnation we [18] indeed glory. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing but what was sublimely good was condemned by Nero. Domitian also, somewhat of a Nero in cruelty, attempted the same, but inasmuch as he had some human feelings, he soon stopped the proceedings, and those whom he had banished were recalled ¹⁴. Such have ever been our persecutors,— the unjust, the impious, the base, whom you yourselves have been accustomed to condemn, and to restore those condemned by them.

But out of so many princes from that time down to the present, men versed in every system of knowledge, produce if you can one persecutor of the Christians. We, however, can on the other side produce a protector, if the letters of the most grave Emperor Marcus Aurelius ¹⁵ be searched, in which he testifies that the well-known Germanic drought was dispelled [19] by the shower obtained through the prayers of Christians who happened to be in the army. And although he did not openly abolish the penalty incurred by members of that sect, yet in another way he openly averted it by the addition of a condemnatory sentence on the accusers, and that a more terrible one.

Of what kind, then, are those laws of yours, which only the impious, the unjust, the base, the foolish, the insane, put in force against us; which Trajan partially frustrated by forbidding Christians to be enquired for; which no Hadrian, although a keen investigator of all things curious; no Vespasian ¹⁶, although the vanquisher of the Jews; no Pius, no Verus, sanctioned? It might be thought that the worst of men would surely be rooted out by all the best, as being their opponents, more readily than by their own accomplices.