To the Nations 1.7

“Whence, then,” you say, “did so great a report about you gain currency, whose testimony was perhaps enough for the makers of the laws?” Who, I ask, stood surety for its reliability, either to them then or to you since? It is rumor. Is this not the one of whom it is said, “Rumor, an evil than which no other is swifter”? Why an evil, if it is always true? It is not free of lying, and very often, even when it carries the truth, it does not cease from its lust for lying, weaving falsehood into truth by adding, subtracting, and confusing with variations. What is more, its condition is such that it lasts only as long as it lies. For it lives only as long as it proves nothing; once proved, it falls and, as if it had discharged its office of reporting, it departs; from then on the fact is held, the fact is named, and no one says, for example, “They say this was done at Rome,” or “Rumor has it that he has drawn a province,” but “He has drawn a province,” and “This was done at Rome.” No one names rumor except one who is uncertain, because no one is certain by rumor but by knowledge; no one believes rumor but a fool, because the wise man does not believe what is uncertain. Rumor, however widely it has spread in its ambition, must at some time have arisen from one mouth; thence it creeps somehow along the channels of tongues and ears, and the small fault at the origin of the report is so obscured that no one reflects whether that first mouth sowed lies, as often happens, from a spirit of rivalry, or from the whim of suspicion, or even from the fresh pleasure of lying. But it is well that time reveals all things, as your own maxims and proverbs testify, and nature itself, which is so ordered that nothing stays hidden, not even what rumor has not betrayed. See what a prodigy you have suborned against us: what it once reported and has strengthened into belief over so long a time, it has not been able to prove to this day. This name arose under the emperor Augustus; under Tiberius its teaching shone forth; under Nero its condemnation grew strong, so that from this point you may weigh it by the character of the persecutor. If that emperor was pious, the Christians are impious; if he was just, if chaste, the Christians are unjust and unchaste; if he was not a public enemy, we are public enemies. What we are, our condemner himself has shown, for he surely punished what was the opposite of himself. And yet, when all his other acts were erased, this one institution of Nero's alone has remained: just, no doubt, as being unlike its author. So for our age it is not yet two hundred and fifty years. So many criminals in the meantime, so many crosses that have attained divinity, so many infants slaughtered, so many loaves bloodied, so many lamps overturned, so many confusions of unions, and still rumor alone passes judgment on the Christians. It has, indeed, a great foundation in a fault of human nature: it lies more successfully about harsh and atrocious things. For the more you are inclined to malice, the readier you are to believe evil; indeed, a false evil is believed more easily than a true good. Yet if injustice had left any room among you for prudence, justice surely demanded, in order to test the reliability of the rumor, that you examine from whom the rumor could have been given out to the crowd, and so to the whole world. Not from the Christians themselves, I think, since by the very form and law of all mysteries the pledge of silence is owed: how much more for such things as, once betrayed, would not escape instant punishment? If, then, they did not betray themselves, it follows that outsiders did. How, I ask you, did outsiders come to know, since even just and lawful mysteries guard against every outside witness, unless unlawful ones are less careful? And yet it suits outsiders rather to be ignorant, and to invent. The curiosity of members of the household, you say, stole a look through chinks and holes. What then, if members of the household betray these things to you? We are all betrayed by none more than by them; how much more, if the atrocity were so great that the justice of indignation broke every bond of household loyalty? The mind could not have held in what it shuddered at, what the eye was terrified to see. This too is strange, if the one who leapt out with such a right of indignation to report it did not also long to prove it, and the one who heard it did not also take care to see; since the reward is equal for the informer, if he proves what he reported, and for the hearer, if he can believe on his own evidence what he hears. “Then,” you say, “it was first reported and exhibited, heard and inspected, and thereafter committed to rumor.” This indeed passes all wonder, if what is always being committed was caught once, unless we have now stopped doing such things. Yet we are still called by the same name and counted among the same people, and we grow more numerous day by day; the more we are, the more people hate us. Hatred grows as its material grows: as the multitude of the accused advances, why does the multitude of informers not advance with it? As far as I know, our way of life has become better known; you know the days of our meetings too, and so we are besieged and overpowered and held in our very secret gatherings. Yet who ever came upon a half-eaten corpse? Who ever found the marks of teeth in bloodied bread? Who, bursting into the darkness with a sudden light, ever found any foul, not to say incestuous, traces? If we obtain by bribes that we are not dragged out in public as such, why are we overpowered at all? We could avoid being dragged out altogether. For who either sells or buys off the betrayal of a crime without the crime itself? But why should I disparage outside spies and informers, when you charge us with such things as we ourselves would be publishing with the loudest outcry, either heard at once, if they are shown beforehand, or found out later, if they are hidden meanwhile? For no doubt it is the custom for those who wish to be initiated first to go to the master of the rites, or the father. Then he will say: “You need an infant, pledged for this purpose, to be sacrificed, and some bread to be broken in its blood; also candlesticks, for dogs tied to them to knock over, and morsels to draw those same dogs; and you also need a mother or a sister.” What if you have none? I suppose you could not be a lawful Christian. Tell me, do such things, when announced beforehand by others, bear being kept from betrayal? It is no strange thing that those people know. First the business of deceit is carried out: the banquet and the unions are foisted on the ignorant, for they had never before heard anything of the Christian mysteries. Yet afterward they must come to know, if only to prepare them in advance for others whom they bring in. Besides, how absurd it is that the profane should know what the priest does not know! So they keep silent and take it in good part, and break out into no tragedy of Thyestes or Oedipus, and do not drag it before the people. … If nothing of the kind is proved, something great, I know not what, must be judged to exist, the reward for which consists in bearing such atrocities. Wretched and pitiable nations, see, we set before you the promise of our discipline. It promises eternal life to its followers and keepers, and on the other hand threatens the profane and hostile with eternal punishment in eternal fire; for both outcomes the resurrection of the dead is preached. We shall see about the credibility of these things when they are treated in their own place; meanwhile, believe, as we do. For I want to know whether you are ready to come to it through such crimes, as we are said to do. Come, whoever you are, plunge the knife into the infant; or if that is someone else's office, then just watch a soul dying before it has lived; at least catch the fresh blood in which to soak your bread; eat heartily. Meanwhile, recline at table; count the places where mother or sister has lain; note them carefully, so that when darkness falls, testing, no doubt, the carefulness of each, you may not err by falling upon a stranger: you will have committed a sacrilege if it is not incest. When you have carried all this out, you will live forever. I want you to answer: do you value eternity so highly? No; that is why you do not believe it; even if you believed it, I deny that you would want it; even if you wanted it, I deny that you could do it. Why then can others, if you cannot? Why can you not, if others can? At what price would you have impunity and eternity cost? Or do these seem to us things to be bought at any price whatever? Or do Christians have other rows of teeth, other caverns of the throat, other sinews for incestuous lust? I think not. It is enough for us to be distinguished from your position by the truth alone.