A Plea for the Christians 35

Who in his right mind, then, would say that we, being such people, are murderers? For one cannot eat human flesh without first killing someone. Their first charge is a lie; as for the second, if anyone asks them whether they have seen what they describe, no one is so shameless as to say that he has. And yet we have slaves, some of us more and some fewer, from whom nothing can be hidden; but not one of them has ever told such lies about us. For who could accuse of murder or cannibalism people who, as they know, cannot bear to watch even a man being justly put to death? Who does not eagerly attend the contests of gladiators and of wild beasts, especially those you put on? But we, considering that to watch a man being put to death is close to killing him, have renounced such spectacles. How then can we commit murder, when we will not even watch, lest we bring guilt and pollution on ourselves? We say that women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder and will have to give account to God for the abortion; on what principle, then, would we commit murder? For it is not consistent to regard even the fetus in the womb as a living being, and therefore an object of God's care, and then to kill it once it has come into life; nor to refuse to expose a newborn child, on the ground that those who expose children are child-murderers, and then to do away with a child that has been reared. No, we are in all things always alike and consistent, being servants of reason and not its masters.