Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] If, in short, it is settled that we are the most guilty of men, why are we treated by you differently from our equals — that is, from other guilty men — when the same offense ought to receive the same treatment? [2] Whatever charge is brought against us, when it is brought against others, they use both their own voice and hired advocacy to plead their innocence; the chance to answer, to argue back, stands open, since it is not even lawful for the undefended and unheard to be condemned outright. [3] But to Christians alone nothing is allowed to be said that might clear the case, that might defend the truth, that might keep the judge from acting unjustly; the only thing waited for is what public hatred requires: admission of the name, not a hearing into the charge — [4] whereas, if you are investigating some other guilty man, you are not content, the moment he has confessed to the name of murderer or temple-robber or incestuous man or public enemy — to speak in our own indictments' terms — to pass sentence, unless you also press for what follows: the nature of the deed, the count, the place, the time, the accomplices, the associates. [5] In our case, nothing of the kind, though it would be equally proper to wring out of us — since it is falsely bandied about — how many infants each of us has already tasted, how many acts of incest he has shrouded in darkness, who the cooks were, who the dogs that were present. Oh, what glory for that governor, if he had dug up someone who had already eaten a hundred babies!
[6] And yet we find that even inquiry into us is forbidden. For Pliny the Younger, when he governed a province, having condemned some Christians and driven others from their rank, was nevertheless disturbed by the sheer number of them, and consulted the emperor Trajan as to what he should do from then on; he reported that, apart from their stubbornness in not sacrificing, he had discovered nothing else about their rites except pre-dawn gatherings to sing to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath to a rule of life that forbade murder, adultery, fraud, treachery, and other crimes. [7] Trajan then wrote back that people of this kind were not to be sought out, but that if they were brought forward they should be punished. [8] What a verdict, tangled by its own expediency! He says they are not to be sought out, as though innocent, and orders them punished, as though guilty. He spares and he savages; he looks away and he strikes. Why do you go in circles against yourself, Judgment? If you condemn, why do you not also seek out? If you do not seek out, why do you not also acquit? For hunting down bandits, a military watch is posted through every province; against men charged with treason and public enemies, every man is a soldier — the inquiry is extended even to their accomplices, even to their associates. [9] Only the Christian is it forbidden to seek out, though he may be brought forward — as if an inquiry were meant to do anything other than turn up what is brought forward! So you condemn the man who is handed over, whom no one wished to have searched for; who, I suppose, by now has earned his punishment not because he is guilty, but because he was found when he ought not to have been looked for.
[10] And so, not even in this do you follow the pattern used for judging other wrongdoers: with everyone else who denies, you apply torture to make them confess; with Christians alone, to make them deny — although, if it were something wicked, we would indeed deny it, and you would be forcing us by torture to confess it. Nor, indeed, would you think crimes needed no investigation by torture just because you were sure they were admitted by confession of the name — seeing that today, in the case of a confessed murderer, though you already know what murder is, you nonetheless wring out of him the sequence of his crime. [11] How much more perverse, then, that while you presume our crimes from the mere confession of the name, you force us by torture to fall away from that confession — so that, by denying the name, we may equally deny the very crimes which you had presumed from confessing the name!
[12] But you do not want us, I take it, to perish, whom you believe to be the very worst of men. For that is how you are accustomed to speak to a murderer: "Deny it" — while you order a temple-robber torn apart if he persists in confessing. If that is not how you act toward the guilty, then you must be judging us the most innocent of all — since, as though we were the most innocent, you do not want us to persist in that confession which you know must be condemned by necessity, not by justice. [13] The man cries out, "I am a Christian." He says what he is; you insist on hearing what he is not. As magistrates charged with wringing out the truth, you labor to hear a lie from us alone. "This is what I am," he says, "which you ask whether I am. Why do you twist me the wrong way? I confess, and you torture; what would you do if I denied?" Plainly, when others deny, you do not readily give them credit — but us, the moment we deny, you believe at once.
[14] You ought to be suspicious of this perversity of yours, in case some hidden force is at work in secret that drives you against the very form, against the very nature of judging, and even against the laws themselves. Unless I am mistaken, the laws command that the guilty be dragged into the light, not hidden away; they prescribe that the confessed be condemned, not acquitted. This is what the decrees of the senate lay down, what the mandates of the emperors define. This empire, whose servants you are, is a civil rule, not a tyranny. [15] For among tyrants, torture was applied even as a punishment in itself; among you, it is tempered, applied only for questioning. Keep, then, your own law with us up to the point where it is needed to secure confession — and once confession has forestalled the need, torture is done with; what is needed then is sentence. The guilty man must be marked off for the punishment owed him, not let off it. In fact, no one is eager to acquit him. [16] It is not permitted even to wish for that; and so no one is forced to deny. You reckon the Christian guilty of every offense, a foe to the gods, to the emperors, to the laws, to morals, to the whole of nature — and yet you force him to deny, so that you can acquit a man you could not acquit unless he denies! [17] You are betraying your own laws: you want him, then, to deny that he is guilty, so as to make him innocent — and against his will at that, no longer even guilty of the past! Where does this perversity come from, that you do not even stop to consider that a man who confesses freely deserves more credit than one who denies under compulsion? Or that a man forced to deny might not deny sincerely — and once acquitted, right there after leaving the tribunal, might laugh at your rivalry with him and be a Christian all over again?
[18] Since, then, in everything you treat us differently from other guilty men, striving for this one thing — that we be excluded from that name (for excluded we are, if we do what non-Christians do) — you can understand that there is no crime at issue here at all, but a name; a name pursued by some scheme of rival hostility, whose first aim is that men should refuse to know for certain what they know for certain they do not know. [19] That is why they both believe things about us that cannot be proved and refuse to have them investigated — lest, once investigated, the things they prefer to have believed turn out not to be so — so that the name, the enemy of that rival scheme, may be condemned on presumed, unproven charges, on its own confession alone. That is why we are tortured when we confess, and punished when we persist, and acquitted when we deny — because it is a war fought over a name.
[20] Finally, why, when you read from the record, do you call the man "a Christian"? Why not also "a murderer," if the Christian is a murderer? Why not also "incestuous," or whatever else you believe us to be? Is it only in our case that you are ashamed or reluctant to pronounce the very names of the crimes? If "Christian" is the name of no crime at all, it is quite absurd that the name alone should be the crime.