Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But you say the sect is punished under the name of its founder. Now, first, that a sect should take its name from its founder is a perfectly proper and common practice — philosophers too are named after their founders, Pythagoreans and Platonists, just as physicians are called Erasistrateans and grammarians Aristarcheans. [2] So then, if a sect is bad because its founder was bad, the taint of a bad name is what is being punished. But that would be presuming rashly. It was necessary first to know the founder, in order to know the sect, rather than to hold an inspection of the founder based on the sect. [3] But as it is, since you are necessarily ignorant of the sect, because you are ignorant of its founder — or fail to examine the founder, because you likewise fail to examine the sect — you strike at the bare name alone, as though in it you had hold of both sect and founder, whom in fact you do not know at all. [4] And yet philosophers enjoy the freedom to pass over from you to their sect and its founder and its own name, and no one stirs up hatred against them for it — even though, openly and publicly, they bark out every bitterness of speech against your morals, your rites, your worship, and your way of life, with contempt for the laws, without respect of persons, so that some of them even hurl their liberty unpunished against the very emperors themselves.
[5] But truth, most hateful of all things to this age, the philosophers merely court, while Christians possess it; and so those who possess it are the more disliked, because he who merely courts a thing plays at it, while he who possesses it defends it. [6] In the end, Socrates was condemned precisely on that point where he had come closest to the truth, by pulling down your gods: even though the Christian name did not yet exist on earth at that time, truth was always condemned all the same. [7] And you will not even deny that he was wise — your own Pythian god himself bore witness to him: "Of all men," he said, "Socrates is the wisest." Truth conquered even Apollo, so that he pronounced against himself; for he confessed that he was no god, while affirming as the wisest of all the very man who denied the gods. Yet among you he is less wise for that very reason — for denying the gods — when in fact he was accounted wise precisely because he denied the gods.
[8] In just this way you are accustomed to speak of us too: "Lucius Titius is a good man — pity he's a Christian." And another: "I'm amazed that Gaius Seius, so serious a man, has become a Christian." [9] Out of the blindness of their folly, they praise what they know and denounce what they do not know, and corrupt what they know by what they do not know. [10] It occurs to no one that a man might be good and prudent precisely because he is a Christian, or a Christian precisely because he is good and prudent — though it is more reasonable to judge the hidden by the evident than to prejudge the evident by the hidden. [11] Others, who used to know these people, before they bore this name, as vagrant, worthless, wicked, are astonished at their sudden reform — yet they know how to marvel at it without knowing how to follow it; others fight with such stubbornness that they battle against their own advantages, the very benefits they could gain from association with this name. [12] I know of a husband, more than one, previously anxious about his wife's conduct, who could not bear even a mouse creeping into the bedroom without a groan of suspicion — yet once he discovered the cause of her new diligence and unaccustomed seclusion, he offered his wife every possible patience, renounced his jealousy, and preferred to be the husband of an adulteress rather than of a Christian; he himself was allowed to twist his own nature for the worse, but his wife was not permitted to be reformed for the better. [13] A father disinherited a son of whom he had ceased to complain; a master threw into the workhouse a slave whom he had otherwise found indispensable — the moment either learned the person was a Christian, he preferred him guilty. [14] For indeed our very discipline is itself its own betrayer, and we are exposed by nothing else than our own good conduct. Do the wicked, too, then, shine forth from their own wickedness? Or are we alone, contrary to the order of nature, marked out as worst on account of what is good? [15] For what indeed do we display that is remarkable, except that supreme wisdom by which we do not worship the trivial products of human hands; that self-restraint by which we abstain from what belongs to another; that chastity which we do not stain even with our eyes; that mercy by which we are moved toward the needy; that very truth for which we give offense; that very liberty for which we know how to die? Anyone seeking to grasp what a Christian actually is need only take up exactly these marks as the measure.
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