Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Number of quotes: 44
Book ID: 134 Page: 9
Section: 2C
chapter IINo! One thing is looked for, one alone, the one thing needful for popular hatred – the confession of the name. Not investigation of the charge!
Quote ID: 2939
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 19
Section: 2C
chapter IIFinally, in reading the charge, why do you call the man a Christian, why not a murderer too, if a Christian is a murderer? Why not incestuous? Or anything else you believe us to be? Or is it that in our case, and ours alone, it shames you, or vexes you, to use the actual names of our crimes? If a Christian, with no charge laid against him, is defendant because of a name, how shocking the name must be, if the charge consist of a name and nothing more.
Quote ID: 2940
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 21
Section: 4B
chapter III
The wife is chaste now; but the husband has ceased to be jealous, and has turned her out. The son is now submissive; but the father, who used to bear with his ways, has disinherited him. The slave is faithful now; but the master, once so gentle, has banished him from his sight. As sure as a man is reformed by the name, he gives offence. The advantage does not balance the hatred felt for Christians.
Quote ID: 2941
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 23
Section: 2C
chapter IV
. . . . the name is picked out; the name is the object of attack. The school is unknown; the founder is unknown; a word of itself condemns both in advance – because they bear a name, not because they are convicted of anything.
Quote ID: 2942
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 33
Section: 4B
chapter V
Where have those laws gone that limit luxury and obstentation? The laws that forbade more than 100 asses to be allowed for a banquet or more than one fowl to be set on the table, and that fowl not fattened either? The laws that dealt with a patrician because he had ten pounds weight of silver plate, and, on the grave indictment of aspiring too high, removed him from the Senate?
Quote ID: 2943
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 134 Page: 49
Section: 2D3B,4B
For us murder is once for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother’s blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one take away the life once born or destroy it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.
Quote ID: 2944
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 53
Section: 2A4,4B
Apology and De Spectaculis IX.Finally, when you are testing Christians, you offer them sausages full of blood; you are throughly well aware, of course, that among them it is forbidden; but you want to make them transgress.
Quote ID: 2945
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 55
Section: 2D3B
chapter IX
So we are accused of sacrilege and treason at once. That is the chief of the case against us – the whole of it, in fact;
Quote ID: 2946
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 134 Page: 59
Section: 5D
chapter X
The whole of Italy in fact, after being called Oenotria, bore the name Saturnia.
Quote ID: 2948
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 59
Section: 4B
chapter X
I waive the fact that men were in those days so uncivilized that they were moved by the sight of any strange person as if divine, when today civilized people will deify persons whom they have a day or two before by public mourning admitted to be dead.
Quote ID: 2949
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 134 Page: 65
Section: 5D
chapter XI
. . . bottom of Tartarus, which you, when you so please, affirm to be the prison of infernal punishment. That is the place to which commonly are relegated the impious, those who commit incest on parents or sisters, who seduce wives, rape virgins, defile boys, who are cruel, who kill, who steal, who deceive, anyone, in short, who might be like some god or other of yours, . . .
. . . .
Your justice is an affront to heaven. You should make your worst criminals into gods, if you would please your gods! The consecration of their equals is an honour to them!
Quote ID: 2950
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 69
Section: 2E5
chapter XIII
First, then, when some of you worship one lot of gods and another group others, why, surely those whom you do not worship you offend. There cannot be preference of the one without slight to the other; there is no choice without rejection. So you really despise those whom you reject – whom you are not afraid to offend by rejecting them.
Quote ID: 2951
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 81
Section: 5D
chapter XV
For, in fact, with other people, you have dreamed that our God is an ass’s head. This sort of notion Cornelius Tacitus introduced.
Quote ID: 2952
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 83
Section: 2E1
chapter XVI
Yes, and the man who thinks we worship the cross, will prove a fellow-worshipper of ours. For when a bit of wood is worshipped – what matters the shape, if the nature of the material is the same?
Quote ID: 2953
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 85
Section: 2A4
chapter XVI
. . . the sun with us everywhere in his own orb.{d} This suspicion must be due to its becoming known that we turn to the East when we pray.
Quote ID: 2954
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 85
Section: 2E4
chapter XVI
Equally, if we devote the day of the sun (Sunday) to joy (from a very different cause than sun-worship) we stand next in line to those who devote Saturn’s day to resting and eating, wide as they are from Jewish usage of which they know nothing.{e}
Quote ID: 2955
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 85
Section: 5D
chapter XVI
But quite recently in this city a new representation of our god has been displayed, since a certain person,{f} a criminal hired to dodge wild beasts in the arena, exhibited a picture with this inscription: “The God of the Christians, ass-begotten.” It had ass’s ears; one foot was a hoof; it carried a book and wore a toga.
Quote ID: 2956
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 93
Section: 4A
chapter XIX
[Footnote d] Extreme antiquity gives books authority. For Moses was the first prophet.
Quote ID: 2957
Time Periods: 02
Book ID: 134 Page: 95
Section: 4A
chapter XIX
Much follows; and other prophets older than your literature. For the very last who sang was either a little antecedent to your sages and legislators, or at any rate of the same period.
Quote ID: 2958
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 95
Section: 4A
chapter XIX
So it can be seen that your laws and your studies alike were fertilized from the [Hebrew] law and teaching of God; the earlier must be the seed. Hence you have some tenets in common with us, or very near us.
Quote ID: 2959
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: ix
Section: 2D3B
IntroductionThey remember how he left “the great Church” to follow the Monastist heresy, to become an adherent of a sect which fancied itself the recipient of a new activity of the Holy Spirit, and to attack the body that he left, the people whom he now described as the psychici – in other words, the “natural man” {c} as opposed to the spiritual.
Quote ID: 2938
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 134 Page: 111
Section: 2D3B
chapter XXI
He made the very elements his servants, he controlled the storm, he walked on the sea, - showing that he is the Logos of God, that is the Word, original and first-begotten, attended by Power and Reason, upheld by Spirit, the same Being who by his word still made as he had made all things.
Quote ID: 2960
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 134 Page: 113
Section: 2C
chapter XXI
This whole story of Christ was reported to Caesar (at that time it was Tiberius) by Pilate,{c} himself in his secret heart already a Christian.
Quote ID: 2961
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 134 Page: 121
Section: 2E5
chapter XXII
Every spirit is winged; so it is with angels, so it is with demons.
Quote ID: 2962
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 141
Section: 1B,4B
chapter XXV
So the Romans were not “religious” before they were great; and, it follows, they are not great because they were religious.
Quote ID: 2963
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 154
Section: 1B
chapter XXXII
[Footnote d] Cf. 2Thess. ii. 6-8. Tertullian elsewhere (Ad Scapulam, 2) indicates the belief that the Roman Empire is to last as long as the world. It is to be noted that, apart from the author of the canonical Apocalypse, the early Christian. . . .
Quote ID: 2964
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 134 Page: 155
Section: 5D
chapter XXXII
Do you not know that genius is a name for demon, or in the diminutive daemonium?
Quote ID: 2965
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 157
Section: 4B
chapter XXXIII
Even in the triumph, as he rides in that most exalted chariot, he is reminded that he is a man. It is whispered to him from behind: “Look behind thee; remember thou art a man.”
Quote ID: 2966
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 134 Page: 175
Section: 2D3B
chapter XXXIX
We meet to read the books of God – if anything in the nature of the times bids us look to the future or open our eyes to facts. In any case, with those holy words we feed our faith, we lift up our hope, we confirm our confidence; and no less we reinforce our teaching by inculcation of God’s precepts.{a} There is, besides, exhortation in our gatherings, rebuke, divine censure. For judgement is passed, and it carries great weight, as it must among men certain that God sees them; and it is a notable foretaste of judgement to come, if any man has so sinned as to be banished from all share in our prayer, our assembly, and all holy intercourse. Our presidents are elders of proved character, men who have reached this honour not for a price, but by character; for nothing that is God’s goes for a price.
Quote ID: 2967
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 134 Page: 191
Section: 2E2
chapter XLII
But there is another charge of wrong-doing upon the sheet against us. We are said to be unprofitable in business. How so – when we are human beings and live alongside of you – men with the same ways, the same dress and furniture, the same necessities, if we are to live? For we are not Brahmans, naked sages of India, forest-dwellers, exiles from life.{a}
Quote ID: 2968
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 191
Section: 2D3B
chapter XLII
. . . shops, factories, your inns and market-days, and the rest of the life of buying and selling, we live with you – in this world. We sell ships, we as well as you, and along with you; we go to the wars, to the country, to market with you. Our arts and yours work together; our labour is openly at your service.
Quote ID: 2969
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 134 Page: 199
Section: 4A
chapter XLVI
Still, while every man recognizes our truth, meanwhile unbelief (conceived though it be of the goodness of our school, which experiences an intercourse by now have established) counts our school no divine affair at all, but rather a variety of philosophy. “The philosophers,” says he, “they teach the same things, make the same professions – innocence, justice, patience, sobriety, chastity.” Then why, if, so far as teaching goes, we are compared with them, why are we not put on an equality with them in freedom and impunity of teaching? Or why, since we are all on one level, why are not they compelled to discharge those duties, our refusal of which brings us into danger? For who compels a philosopher to sacrifice, or to take an oath, or to set out silly lamps at midday? Not a bit of it! They openly destroy your gods, they attack your superstitions in their treatises, and you applaud. Yes, and many of them bark against the Emperors too, and you sustain them. You are more ready to reward them with statutes stipends than to condemn them to the beasts. Quite right too! Philosophers is what they are called, not Christians. The name of “philosopher” does not drive out demons.
Quote ID: 2970
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 205
Section: 4A
chapter XLVI
But someone will say that in our case too there are some who desert the rule of our teaching. Then they cease to be counted Christians among us; but those philosophers, despite deeds such as those mentioned, continue in all the name and fame of wisdom among you. But then what have philosopher and Christian in common, - the disciple of Greece and the disciple of heaven, - the business of the one with reputation, of the other with salvation, - the man of words and the man of deeds, - the builder and the destroyer, - the friend and the foe of error, - the man who corrupts the truth, and the man who restores it and proclaims it – the thief of truth and its guardian?
Quote ID: 2971
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 211
Section: 4A
chapter XLVII
Now whence, I ask you, do the philosophers and poets find things so similar? Whence, indeed, unless it be from our mysteries? And if from our mysteries, which are the older, then ours are truer and more credible when the mere copies of them win credence. If they invented these things our of their own feelings, then our mysteries must be counted copies of what came later – a thing contrary to nature. For the shadow never exists before the body, nor the copy before the truth.
Quote ID: 2972
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 215
Section: 5D
chapter XLVIII
Accordingly their bodies, too, will be re-fashioned, because the soul by itself alone cannot suffer anything without some solid matter, that is the flesh; and because, whatever souls desserve in the judgement of God to suffer, they did not earn it without the flesh, clothed with which they committed all their acts.
Quote ID: 2973
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 227
Section: 2E2
chapter L
Who, on inquiry, does not join us, and joining us, does not wish to suffer, that he may purchase for himself the whole grace of God, that he may win full pardon from God by paying his own blood for it? For all sins are forgiven to a deed like this.
PJ: Apology, L.15
Quote ID: 2974
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 253
Section: 2E3
Mark well, O Christian, how many unclean names have made the circus their own. It is an alien religion, none of thine, possessed by all those spirits of the devil.And speaking of places, this will be the place for some words to anticipate the question that some will raise. What, say you, suppose that at some other time I approach the circus, shall I be in danger of pollution? There is no law laid down for us as to places. For not merely those places where men gather for the shows, but even temples, the servant of God may approach without risk to his Christian loyalty, if there be cause sufficient and simple, to be sure, unconnected with the business or character of the place.
Quote ID: 8074
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 255
Section: 2E3
Places do not of themselves defile us, but the things done in the places.
Quote ID: 8075
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 265
Section: 2A4
We must give the same interpretation to the equipments which are reckoned among the ornaments of office. The purple, the rods (fasces), the fillets and garlands, and then the harangues and edicts, and the dinners on the eve of installation do not lack the pomp of the devil nor the invocation of demons.
Quote ID: 8078
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 134 Page: 267
Section: 2E1
We know neither sort of altar; we adore neither sort of image; we pay no sacrifice; we pay no funeral rite. No, and we do not eat of what is offered in sacrificial or funeral rite, because “we cannot eat of the Lord’s supper and the supper of demons.” {d}
Quote ID: 8079
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 273
Section: 5D
They are plunged in grief by another’s bad luck, high in delight at another’s success. What they long to see, what they dread to see, - neither has anything to do with them; their love is without reason, their hatred without justice.
Quote ID: 8080
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 134 Page: 283
Section: 4B
. . . will have a reluctant gladiator hounded on with lash and rod to do murder;
Quote ID: 8081
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 295
Section: 4A
Philosophers have given the name “pleasure” to quiet and tranquillity; in it they rejoice, take their ease in it, yes, glory in it.
Quote ID: 8082
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 134 Page: 299
Section: 4A
And the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus, liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled in their rage against the Christians! those sages, too, the philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together. . . .
Quote ID: 8083
Time Periods: 23
End of quotes