an.' So another, 'I marvel that that wise man Lucius Titius hath
suddenly become a Christian.' No one reflecteth whether Caius be not
therefore good and Lucius wise because a Christian, or therefore a
Christian because wise and good. They praise that which they know, they
revile that which they know not. Virtue is not in such account as hatred
of the Christians. Now, then, if the hatred be of the name, what guilt
is there in names? What charge against words? Unless it be that any word
which is a name have either a barbarous or ill-omened, or a scurrilous
or an immodest sound. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile
cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood still, if the
earth hath been moved, if there be any famine, if any pestilence, 'The
Christians to the lions' is forthwith the word."

"Men of a desperate, lawless, reckless faction," says the heathen
Caecilius, in the passage above referred to, "who collect together out of
the lowest rabble the thoughtless portion, and credulous women seduced
by the weakness of their sex, and form a mob of impure conspirators, of
whom nocturnal assemblies and solemn fastings and unnatural food, no
sacred rite but pollution, is the bond. A tribe lurking and
light-hating, dumb for the public, talkative in corners, they despise
our temples as if graves, spit at our gods, deride our religious forms;
pitiable themselves, they pity, forsooth, our priests; half-naked
themselves, they despise our honors and purple; monstrous folly and
incredible impudence!... Day after day their abandoned morals wind their
serpentine course; over the whole world are those most hideous rites of
an impious association growing into shape;... they recognize each other
by marks and signs, and love each other almost before they recognize;
promiscuous lust is their religion. Thus does their vain and mad
superstition glory in crimes.... The writer who tells the story of a
criminal capitally punished, and of the gibbet (_ligna feralia_) of the
cross being their observance (_ceremonias_), assigns to them thereby an
altar in keeping with the abandoned and wicked, that they may worship
(_colant_) what they merit.... Why their mighty effort to hide and
shroud whatever it is they worship (_colunt_), since things honest ever
like the open day, and crimes are secret? Why have they no altars, no
temples, no images known to us, never speak abroad, never assemble
freely, were it not that what they worship a