To Scapula 4

We do not frighten you, we who do not fear; but I should like us to be able to save all by warning them “not to fight against God.” You can both perform the duties of your jurisdiction and remember humanity, if only because you too are under the sword. For what more are you commanded than to condemn the guilty who confess, and to recall to torture those who deny? You see, then, how you yourselves act against your instructions, forcing those who confess to deny. So you admit that we are innocent, since you are unwilling to condemn us at once on our confession. But if you strive to crush us, then you are fighting against innocence. And how many governors, both more resolute and more cruel, have turned a blind eye to cases of this kind! Like Cincius Severus, who at Thysdrus himself supplied the remedy, how Christians should answer so that they could be released; like Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed a Christian as a mere disturber, to satisfy his fellow citizens; like Asper, who, when a man had been tortured a little and at once gave way, did not compel him even to sacrifice, having declared beforehand among his advocates and assessors that he was sorry to have fallen in with this case. Pudens too dismissed a Christian sent to him, perceiving extortion in the charge sheet; he tore up that charge sheet, saying that according to his instructions he would not hear a man without an accuser. All these things can be suggested to you both from your office and by those same advocates, who themselves have received benefits from Christians, though they shout what they please. For the secretary of one of them, when he was being thrown down by a demon, was set free; so were a relative of some others and a little boy. And how many men of rank (for we do not speak of ordinary people) have been cured either of demons or of illnesses! Even Severus himself, the father of Antoninus, was mindful of the Christians. For he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodus, who had once cured him with oil, and kept him in his palace until his death; Antoninus, too, reared on Christian milk, knew him very well. And Severus, knowing that most distinguished women and most distinguished men belonged to this sect, not only did not harm them but honored them with his testimony, and openly resisted the people raging against us. Marcus Aurelius too, in the German campaign, obtained rains in that drought by the prayers offered to God by Christian soldiers. When have droughts not been driven away by our kneelings and fastings? Then the people too, shouting “To the God of gods, who alone is mighty,” bore witness to our God under the name of Jupiter. Besides this, we do not deny a deposit, we violate no one's marriage, we treat orphans dutifully, we give relief to the needy, we repay no one evil for evil. Let those see to it who falsely claim the sect, whom we ourselves disown. In short, who complains of us on any other ground? What other charge does a Christian suffer except that of his own sect, which no one in all this time has proved incestuous or cruel? For such innocence, such uprightness, for justice, for chastity, for faith, for truth, for the living God we are burned, which neither the sacrilegious nor real public enemies nor so many guilty of treason usually suffer. For even now this name is harassed by the governor of Legio and the governor of Mauretania, but only as far as the sword, as it was commanded from the beginning that such cases be punished. But the greater the contests, the greater the rewards.