Часть I. Внешняя деятельность Тертуллиана

Christian apologetics: conditions for its emergence and development. The reason for the emergence and continuation of the enmity of the Jews towards Christians, which caused the literary activity of the church against the sons of Israel: the messianic expectations of the Jews and their non-recognition in the person of Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. – An essay on the religious and moral state of paganism, the family and social structure of its life, elucidating the hostile attitudes of pagans towards Christians and hatred of Christianity: the attitude towards religion of the government, the educated class of society and the crowd, expressing the extreme decline of religious consciousness in all layers of the state; a picture of the moral state of Western paganism: epicureanism in life, luxury, moral laxity, mutual relations between family members, the state absorbing the individual personality, slavery, the amphitheater, the circus. Points of accusation against Christians: atheism, immorality, anti-state aspirations, uselessness in public life, culpability in public disasters. Apologetics of the Church, its task and character in pre-Tertullian times and in his century. Soon after his conversion to Christianity, Tertullian joined the ranks of defenders of Christians and Christianity, turning his spiritual forces against the sphere in which he himself was born, grew up and spent almost half of his life. He saw the persecution that his fellow believers suffered from the pagans - and his ardent nature could not remain indifferent to all this. Tertullian accepted Christianity sincerely, he already knew the life of Christians so much that he could not remain an indifferent spectator at the sight of their undeserved disasters - and he decided to provide them with possible help. With his strong words, he instilled in Christians that determination to suffer for their religious beliefs 101, that heroism that the pagans themselves marveled at 102 and which often unprejudiced people, who found in paganism only emptiness and the absence of the holy and godly 103, favored Christianity and Christians 104; against various slander, through literary polemics with paganism and its institutions, he proved that these slander, these accusations are in no way applicable to Christians, but are applicable to the pagans themselves. To understand the nature of this activity of Tertullian and its significance for the church, it is necessary to understand the demands of apologetics of that time, to find out what the accusations against Christians contained, because apologetics was created and developed precisely by the attack that was made from the hostile camp. At the same time, it is necessary to look into the past where the germs of Christian apologetics lie - in other words - to present a brief history of the mutual relations of paganism and Christianity in the pre-Tertullian era and during the life of Tertullian. From its first appearance in the world, Christianity met with strong hostility. His first enemies were the Jews. Christianity, with its heavenly character, with its high aspirations and ideals, did not meet the expectations of the children of Israel. Despite the clear prophecies about Christ and Christianity 105 , their imaginations painted a picture of the Messiah as a conquering king, His kingdom as the worldwide dominion of the descendants of Abraham with the promised Son of David at its head 106 . The Messiah did not appear in the majestic splendor of the King of the earth, not with the character of a formidable conqueror of the enemies of the Jews, but in the image of a meek servant 107, who would not crush even a broken reed 108, appeared not with the goal of commanding others, but to serve and give deliverance for others 109 - appeared without aspirations for earthly dominion 110 . He did not promise his followers an earthly life full of joy 111 and external royal splendor 112 - His sermon is a sermon about self-sacrifice and bearing one’s cross 113 . It is clear how the Jews should have met Christianity. At first, they, led by the scribes and Pharisees, declared in fact that they did not intend to deal with such a kingdom of the Son of David 114, and tried to put obstacles to the cause of Christ 115 and the spread of Christianity 116. The Jews supported this tactic in relation to Christians and Christianity for a long time and with gradually increasing force, until, finally, Christianity had to seriously face the darkness of paganism that was then widespread everywhere. From then on, the Jews retreated into the background - with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, scattered across the entire face of the earth, deprived of political independence, they could no longer openly harm Christianity 117, they began to act because of the pagans, and gave them the primary role. At first, the pagans of the upper classes were rather indifferent to Christianity. Their indifferentism was, on the one hand, a consequence of the fact that Christianity, due to the small number of its followers, did not arouse fears among the pagans for their cult and age-old institutions; on the other hand, it depended on the unfamiliarity of pagans with Christianity - Christians were either confused with Jews, whose religion was allowed in the Roman Empire 118, or Christianity was considered a philosophical sect similar to others 119, or they simply considered it one of the mass of superstitions that flooded Rome at that time from all over the globe 120. Even such people as, for example, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and others had almost no accurate information about Christianity, its character and content. But as soon as the light of the Gospel teaching began to penetrate the darkness of paganism, the Church of Christ began to increase, and the ranks of paganism began to thin out, the pagans looked more seriously at Christianity, their indifferentism began to fade; they now stopped looking at it as a philosophical school, or a small branch of Eastern superstition, which only had a struggle for existence with Judaism. From Palestine, Christianity began to spread throughout the entire earth and penetrate everywhere - this very circumstance began to instill involuntary fear in the pagans, fear for their entire institution. The fears of the pagans were all the stronger because Christianity did not fit their religious and moral beliefs and, in the view of the pagans, went against the entire system that prevailed among them. In order to better understand the reasons that caused such strong opposition to Christianity on the part of the pagans of the Roman Empire, let us present an outline of the religious and moral state of paganism of this time - from it it will be clear that the reason for the hostility of paganism to Christianity lies in the radical opposition of both 122. In decadent Rome there was no solidarity between the different classes of society; the aristocratic pride of the highest educated layer did not want to humiliate itself even in the sense of having one religion in common with the masses. Around the time of the appearance of Christianity in the world in Rome, the division of religion, so to speak, into the popular and the religion of the educated class of society was already finally formed. The religion of the masses was filled with mythological traditions and consisted of the official performance of a religious cult; the pagan intelligentsia turned away with contempt from this vulgar religion; thinking people, followers of one or another philosophical school, lost all respect for their native gods - they ridiculed them (for example, Seneca, Cicero and Lucian 123), - they began to look down on this religion, only as the property of the mob. Nevertheless, outwardly they performed its rituals, for the sake of their antiquity - out of respect for the customs of antiquity, in order, on the other hand, to set an example to the masses with their external religiosity - to fulfill the religious law regarding the service of the national religion 124. In fact, they developed for themselves a more abstract religion, or they only adhered, instead of religion, to the philosophy to which they belonged. But at the same time, they still retained the characteristic feature of their religion - freedom of thought about all subjects of religion. The administrators of the Greco-Roman Empire had a different, unique view of religion. The worldwide dominion of the Romans closely united religion with state institutions; Moreover, coming from an all-consuming idea that absorbed the personality and freedom of the citizen, it subordinated religion itself to state calculations, making it a purely state institution, on an equal basis with others, but a very strong institution. For the Roman authorities, religion was not so much a matter of conscience and feelings as a matter of obligation; it was entirely regulated, furnished with legal regulations, the implementation of which was monitored, like the implementation of other laws, by aediles 125. Not only the ceremonial part of religion was subordinated to civil power, but even the very object of religion - the deities. The gods then only received the rights to their divinity and nationality when the Senate wanted it 126. Recognizing a well-known god as a god, the Romans, as it were, entered into a contract with him, by virtue of which they already considered him obliged to fulfill the wishes of the Senate and help the Romans in military exploits. Hence, when the Roman Empire reached the apogee of its splendor and greatness, the peculiarly religious Romans were not far from the idea that the Roman Empire owed this external splendor exclusively to the genius of Rome and the Roman cult 127, therefore, in order to maintain this splendor and greatness of the Roman Empire, it was necessary to adhere to the domestic gods, the main culprits of the well-being of Rome, to maintain the connection that had previously existed between religion and by the state. Roman administrators noticed that every other pagan religion, like the Roman one, is completely national, maintained only by its people, its fans are strongly attached to it, and that with its help it is always more convenient to keep conquered nations in their hands. During the worldwide conquests of the Romans, when the body of Rome was growing every year, Rome decided to apply this observation to action, conceived the idea of ​​uniting the conquered nations, strengthening them behind them with the help of religious cults, i.e., transferring the religious residence of all conquered peoples to Rome. Fulfilling this idea of ​​unification, Rome placed the main deities of the conquered nations in its pantheon, gave them a place in public religion, 128 and thus, as if willy-nilly, forced the gods to love themselves and act in concert with him, and not in favor of those nations who, before their enslavement, incense to them, to act, however, under the influence of the Roman father of the gods. The Romans only opened the doors of the pantheon to that religion that could coexist with the Roman cult, the gods of which recognized the power of Jupiter Capitoline over themselves. In this way, the Romans achieved a double goal: they supported the existing political system and made it clear to everyone that the Romans were rulers not only politically, but also religiously. Thus, the Roman state authorities formed their own view of religion, so to speak, political: for them in the pantheon there was a guarantee of the well-being and greatness of the Roman state, in political religion there was a strong cement connecting the various parts of this grandiose edifice, and they jealously guarded the pagan cult, which had grown to nec plus ultra 129, from foreign impurities, and even more so from foreign claims to change this proven cult, or replace it with another religion. Condemnation to death is what awaited anyone who would consider denying the divine character of the national religion recognized by the Romans, rejecting it and introducing a new one 130 . Repressive measures fell on anyone who even protested against Roman polytheism 131. This, however, does not mean that Roman statesmen believed in the gods of the pantheon; no, all respect for the gods, not only conquered, taken in battle, but even for our own, has fallen; faith in the gods for them, as well as for the educated class - not administrators, remained only an empty word without content 132. If they took measures to maintain the state religion, it was only - on the one hand - because the Roman emperors were members of all priestly colleges, and then great high priests 133, on the other - because this religion was of great benefit to them - it was both a source of state revenue and a police body, a bridle for the people 134. Constant examples of what resulted from the unbelief and immorality of the masses taught the administration to value this means and, with its help, keep the masses in their hands. With the general religious and moral decay of pagan society 135, superstitions spread extremely quickly 136 and mainly in the form of various worships of God 137. In order to maintain the existing system, the Roman state issued laws concerning the religion of the Romans and the conquered nations. By virtue of these laws, every Roman had to profess only the Roman religion, and conquered nations had to honor their national gods, if representatives of these gods were in the pantheon and recognized their dependence on Jupiter. Any other religion, hitherto unknown to Rome, not sanctioned by it, a new religion, was declared prohibited 138. Bearing in mind the close connection of religion with legislation and life, Roman administrators with such laws hoped to ensure that the legislation that supported the Roman Empire remained unchanged 139. That is why the new law was surrounded by such severe threats as exile or the death penalty, in order to give the strongest and most tangible incentive to implement it 140. We have seen the views of educated people and administrators on religion, and we have seen the attitudes of both of them towards it. Let us now move on to the servants of these gods themselves - the priests. By their very profession, they naturally had to adhere to the religion that was dominant and which provided more income. The latter motive seemed to be the strongest in their service to the gods. What does the case show? Disbelief in the gods also crept into the priestly caste, and disrespect for the religion of paganism reigned among them. They did not hesitate, even in temples, to commit such things as love affairs and even adultery - religion served as a mask for them, which covered everything that was only imagined by the passionate imagination of the pagan priest and demanded implementation 141. They were not afraid to offend the gods they served by offering them parts of sacrificial animals that were only suitable for dogs... 142. Realizing the absurdity of paganism, which brought its apotheosis to the point that it had special gods and deities for such objects as door hinges, gods to whom door thresholds, jambs, etc. were dedicated 143, “a whole forest of gods appeared” 144, aware of their role in it, the servants of the pagan cult could not meet each other without laughing 145. With such an attitude towards religion even among altar servers, it is not surprising that disrespect for the Russian religion has penetrated into the masses. And among the mob the gods were often mocked. – To be convinced of this, one only has to remember the nature of those theatrical and circus shows that were popular in Rome, shows where the gods with their intrigues, passions and immoral actions mainly appeared; and the mob accepted and honored only those gods that they liked 147; and she was accustomed to treating those who were recognized unceremoniously, as her subjects, who must unquestioningly fulfill the wishes of their admirers, otherwise the gods were in danger of being subjected to contempt and punishment 148 . Meanwhile, as administrators saw in religion only a tool for maintaining the greatness of Rome, philosophers created their own religion for themselves - the masses still remained with the previous religion; although the mob made fun of their gods 149, and acted directly with domestic gods (lares) 150, nevertheless, they generally adhered to the domestic cult, especially thanks to the strict edicts that very often appeared in the form of protecting religion 151, only with this cult did it connect too crude an idea. The gaze of the pagan commoner focused exclusively on the external side of religion; he did not see any internal content in his religion; in his head, the concept of religion was assimilated with the idea of ​​temples, idols, sacrifices and solemn processions 152; even more - his religion was completely replaced by this appearance, the deities were realized in statues 153, their honoring turned into a series of dry formulas and rituals, the meaning of which the masses no longer understood 154. Thus, paganism in all layers of its society - from the throne to the poor hut of the plebeian - represented the extreme decline of religious consciousness; Imprinted by the character of particularism, religion lost its sublime, spiritual character, was subordinated to the practical calculations of power, became the subject of ridicule of the proud, joyful class of society, and turned into some kind of superstitious monster of the crowd. They looked at the gods low, somehow contemptuously. Relations with the gods were purely external, in the form of liturgical ceremonies and solemn processions; religion constantly materialized and profaned. The culmination of all this profanation of religion and the absurdity of its fans is the apotheosis of the emperors and some of their wives, despite their moral ugliness 155, apotheosis both during the life of the emperors and after their death. But more on that later. Let us now turn our attention to another area in connection with religion, the area of ​​practical application of religious principles to life. With the decline of religious consciousness, paganism presented the most pitiful picture of the moral level. Without living faith in the afterlife, posthumous rewards and punishments, moral corruption was not restrained by anything; Epicurean principles penetrated life and paralyzed the noble and sublime aspirations of the soul - people became incapable of anything lofty 156. Under the influence of Epicurean ideas, everyone saw the purpose of life only in luxury, sensual pleasures; Lucullan dinners were in vogue. Among the Roman rich, gastronomy, exquisite whim and gluttony were developed to the extreme. It seemed that in satiety and in general in sensual pleasures they found the only purpose of life 157. Not a single Roman rich man thought to look into the future. For them there was only the present - nothing existed beyond the coffin. The practical philosophy of the wealthy class of society was the immoderate enjoyment of life. “Seize the day, i.e. live and hasten to enjoy life while you live, extract from it the greatest possible amount of all kinds of pleasures,” - this is the motto of life formulated by Horace 158, and he fully implemented this motto in his life - his whole life was a desire for pleasures, the greatest possible amount of them, and in this case Horace was not an outstanding person in moral terms - no, he did not go out of the rut of the wealthy Romans. This motto was also expressed in some epitaphs. “What I ate and drank is with me, what I left behind is lost,” 159 says one. “Reader, enjoy life,” says another, “after death there is no laughter, no play, no voluptuousness” 160. “Friends,” advises the third, “believe me, fill a goblet of wine and drink it, crowning your head with flowers; after death, everything is devoured by fire and earth” 161. This view of life and its purpose incited the rich to furnish themselves with all kinds of comfort, to satisfy all their whims, and the proud half-world ruler invented various ways to satisfy all his needs. Luxury reigned everywhere and reached enormous proportions - masses of silver went to the dishes of not only senators, but even freedmen, slaves who had barely freed themselves from their chains 162; Even philosophers became infected with the love of money, such people for whom gold and silver, apparently, should be despised metals 163; pomp in the atmosphere became the idée fixe of everyone. Especially among the Roman matrons, luxury went beyond measure and manifested itself in outfits and personal adornments. They dressed exquisitely, burdened their body parts with gold, put on luxurious dresses - their vanity and desire to please were visible in everything 164. Tertullian already noticed that immoderate luxury did not lead to good results - in most cases, luxury and bliss led to sensual pleasures of a far from innocent nature, 165 and these sensual pleasures spread and became a social ulcer the more, the less there were internal and external forces restraining moral licentiousness. Pagan religion, with its patterns of intrigue and immorality in the person of gods and goddesses, gave a reason to live as anyone wanted and justified the most outrageous, immoral actions 166. Paganism did not offer any higher motives for moral perfection; there was no divine ideal of morality before the eyes of the pagan. The gods presented to the pagans only examples of adultery (Cybella) 167, incest (Zeus and Demeter - his mother, Zeus and Hera - his sister, Zeus and Proserpina - his daughter) 168, theft (Hermes). Saturn was an example of the murder of his children 169, Zeus was an example of treachery against his father 170 and the culprit of perjury 171; prostitutes found protection in Aphrodite or Venus 172; Dionysus spends time in drunken feasts with a crowd of women 173; the priests, even in the name of their gods, demanded the best beauties to the church for a shameful date... In general, religion itself seemed to sanction debauchery in all its forms, and this sanction did not disappear without a trace, the example of the gods was vividly reflected on their worshipers - debauchery became almost the dominant evil in paganism 174, so that Athenagoras, without any embarrassment or fear for his generalization, calls all paganism “harlot” 175, and Tacitus directly accuses his contemporaries of “blatant debauchery" 176. Servants of religion - even they were no strangers to debauchery; they can even be called the first conductors of a dissolute life. The priests themselves committed adultery, traded in the honor of women, their houses surpassed even the Lupanars 177. Moreover, they were not at all embarrassed to make love dates in churches and commit adultery there at the foot of the altars, the priests and servants of the gods, decorated with purple robes and sacred robes, were fed up with the shameful passion of adultery, while incense was still being burned on the altar 178 . The example of the priests had a vivid effect on everyone; depravity spread extremely quickly. Factual confirmation of this can be found in all layers of society of that time. Debauchery was strong among the emperors and their wives 179, debauchery was covered with a philosophical cloak 180, it penetrated into other layers of society 181. The pagans indulged in adultery in its various forms; - “men rushed at every woman, scattered children everywhere, and often abandoned those born at home, counting on the compassion of others 182. With the systematic throwing of children, passing them from one hand to another, it happened that the pagans “even attacked their own blood, those who were born from them,” and committed incest 183. Not satisfied with such adulteries, the voluptuous left the women and committed adultery “men on men” 184 . “Pederasty even enjoyed a special advantage among the Romans” 185. Previously imprisoned in the shackles of slavery, many women, as soon as they received the slightest opportunity to free themselves from the oppression of men, went to the other extreme, indulged in unbridled debauchery, their voluptuousness was manifested and satisfied in various whimsical forms 186. Their promiscuity finally gave rise to government orders - under Tiberius, a decree was issued that prohibited the prostitution of those women whose grandfather, father or husband was a Roman horseman 187. But these government measures could not stop the flow of debauchery, when “complete debauchery even bore the name of secularism, the liberties of dissolute women were envied,” when “boredom rather than shame appeared from debauchery 188. These are the colors with which Seneca describes modern pagan society: vices and atrocities are everywhere, so many of them are being done that nothing can be done to correct them; Some kind of struggle is in full swing as to who will surpass whom in wickedness, every day the thirst to sin develops more and more and all decency is destroyed. For better, for what should be, all respect has been lost: lust is what is printed on everyone’s face. Nowadays crimes are no longer hidden in the dark; they are before our eyes, all obscenities are committed publicly; everyone is convinced that innocence is not only a rare thing, but impossible and unnatural... Everyone, as if at a given sign, is ready and in a hurry to commit every possible crime... 189. Let us also recall the picture drawn by Ap. Paul 190, and we will understand the abyss into which paganism has fallen in moral terms - a picture, at the memory of which the best people, even among the pagans, came into noble indignation 191. It should be noted that debauchery on such a huge scale was the property of not only the capital - Rome; Rome was, so to speak, only the center from which such moral laxity spread everywhere, penetrating other provinces 192 and making enormous conquests 193 . With such an extreme decline in morality, it is understandable how family life suffered. When both husband and wife sought the satisfaction of their voluptuousness everywhere, family ties were forgotten 194, marriage ties weakened more and more, marriage lost its value and dignity in the eyes of the pagan 195. In the end, marriage began to be looked upon as a heavy yoke, which was avoided in every possible way, so that the government of Augustus, in order to maintain the population, was finally forced to issue strict laws, by virtue of which every adult man must marry; those who did not marry were subject to significant monetary penalties, while those who had at least three children from a legal marriage were exempt from certain duties and enjoyed certain privileges 196 . But these laws did not produce the expected effect; there were so many violators that Augustus himself was forced to weaken them; and – as an exception – to give certain unmarried persons “the rights of three children.” Over time, these laws were completely forgotten. Marital life was no better, if only a man and a woman were united by marriage 197. Without a moral connection in marital relations, the despotism of the husband reigned in family life, the wife was under the complete oppression of her despot husband 198, her life and death depended on him 199. This state of family life eventually led to another extreme. When this unlimited power of the husband began to weaken and be limited by public opinion, the woman who had suffered and suffered, not connected with her husband by moral ties and deprived of a serious upbringing, took advantage of this weakening of her dependence in a bad way - one extreme - thus - caused another, more serious one. Adultery has become common; divorces became a custom, a normal phenomenon and were committed for the most empty and insignificant reasons 200, while during the 3rd century. before Christ, divorces were completely unknown to the Romans 201. “Not a single woman,” Seneca said about the Roman women of his time, “is afraid of divorce; many noble and noble women no longer count their years by the number of consuls, but by the number of their husbands; they marry to get divorced and divorce to remarry 202 . And the husbands, thanks to the established structure of family life and established family relationships, did not protest at all against this new abnormality. Already before, the home did not attract a more or less educated and wealthy pagan, and now - even more so. In the company of hetaeras, he spent time with greater pleasure than in the family circle - among educated hetaeras who were independent of anyone, he could talk about anything he wanted, even talk about political affairs, 203 while in the company of his wife, condemned to the role of an eternal savage and almost a recluse, unbearable boredom and emptiness awaited him, which he could not fill with anything, and he fled his family, one might say, he was even glad to somehow free himself from her. Nor could children chain a pagan to his family. If there were so few moral points of contact between husband and wife, then even less were there between parents and children. In children, parents saw for themselves as an extra burden, from which many freed themselves without hesitation in the most barbaric way: children were sold into slavery 204, abandoned 205, and even deprived of their lives immediately after their birth 206 - they were drowned, starved and cold, thrown to dogs 207, especially ugly children, or for some reason the despot-father did not like 208. By virtue of his right of life and death over his household, the father could take the life of his children with impunity even at his own whim. The reverse attitude, the attitude of children towards their parents, was no better. Under the harsh despotism of their father, the same despotism and arbitrariness were brought up in their children. Love and children's obedience to parents and generally good beginnings of family life could not be expected 209. Finally, waiting for the moment when they could throw off the parental yoke, the children who remained under the roof of their relatives impatiently counted the days of their fathers and with trembling hearts awaited their death, so that in turn they themselves could become the heads and despotic rulers of the family. Also, enmity between family members, supported and nurtured by the gods themselves, was also in the great state family. The same despotism that took place in the family reigned in society, because the family was a faithful photographic image of the structure of state life. Just as in a family, the younger members were squeezed by the elders, and all together - by the despot - the head, so in the state with its divisions and subdivisions of subjects into categories. In public life, the weaker class of society was squeezed by the stronger, the plebeians, by the aristocracy; the aristocracy, together with the lower class oppressed by it, was under the yoke of the state. In general, the Roman Empire was not conceived of as more or less independent individuals - the state squeezed and depersonalized everyone. In the Roman Empire, each member had only as much importance as he entered into the general chain of state life; outside the sphere of state, a person - as a person - was little known to the Roman. Therefore, slaves and conquered people who did not have the rights of Roman citizenship had no value or importance in the ancient world. But citizenship - this privileged title of the Romans - did not give the right to an independent, individual life. For a citizen, the highest interests were focused on the state, while personal interests were obscured behind the state ones. State oppression weighed heavily on everything, especially since the strengthening of state power. Endowed with divine power and dignity, the personification of the empire, the emperor considered it necessary to demonstrate his state power and divine power outwardly, and his divine autocracy sometimes responded bitterly to others. During the apotheosis of the emperors, when the emperors themselves, for example. Nero or Caligula seriously imagined themselves to be gods, and under their tyranny, the lex majestatis 210 became a terrible weapon in the hands of seeking people. Thanks to this law, it was very easy to get rid of an unpleasant neighbor, an unpleasant, even brilliant, person - one had only to present him guilty of lese majeste, and - the death penalty was the inevitable consequence of such a denunciation. The divinity of the emperors - on the one hand, the lex majestatis - on the other, led to a strong development of fiscalism and denunciation 211 and unimaginable flattery, this characteristic consequence of apotheosis. The highest authorities flattered the emperors, poets and writers 212 flattered, others flattered, and this flattery took on various forms and shades, in accordance with the position and degree of development of the flatterer, from more subtle and pompous, covered with beautiful phrases of oratorio and images of poetry, to rude and childishly naive, responding with innocence and - in form - vulgarism. If the state so absorbed individual life, depersonalized even its members, and promoted common life everywhere, sharply distinguishing itself, then it is not surprising that Rome did not develop a good view of foreigners. A true Roman, whose eyes were constantly turned to the Roman state, which he tenderly cherished, outside Rome they saw only enemies from whom he protected his homeland. As a result of this view of foreigners, the Romans could not have peaceful relations with other peoples 213. The constant cruel and devastating wars of the Romans with other nations best testify to the Romans in their attitude towards foreigners. In these wars, predation and robbery played a major role on the one hand, inhumanity and cruelty on the other. And this disunity between peoples, and such relations between them, were preached by the religion, political and national system of both. Their laws and gods were different, the position of the winner and the vanquished was not the same, there was nothing of solidarity between them; As a result of all this, the military captive could not count on the leniency and mercy of the victors - with his entire family he entered into the complete power of the winner, and sometimes he was directly turned into slavery by him. Slavery was a great evil in the Roman state 214. The more citizenship developed in Rome, the lower the slave became in the eyes of the Romans. There was even doubt whether it was possible to recognize a slave as a person, and whether it would not be better and more plausible to see in slaves a special breed, inferior to man. Whoever the slave was, whether a prisoner or a debtor enslaved for non-payment of a debt, he was looked upon equally lowly. A slave is an agricultural or industrial tool, different from cattle only by the gift of speech 215, a despicable creature standing outside the protection and justice of laws 216. The slave was treated like a thing - he was sold, bought, given, he was severely punished, or even peremptorily executed for the slightest crime or simply at the whim of the owner, executed as an example to other slaves. The fate of the slaves was difficult. They were kept in cold and hunger, forced to work until exhaustion, they were given almost no rest even on holidays, when even draft animals were, by law, exempt from work. From this law, as well as from another, which removes concern for slaves and deprives the slave of any guarantee for safety and peace of mind for his life, it is clear from these laws that the slave legally stood even lower than the working ox. For these unfortunates, who stood in the opinion of the Romans even outside the sphere of people, given their poor fate, the future in paganism did not promise anything good - slavery, chains, torment, deprivation, starvation in old age - this is what was pictured in the perspective of the slave. An outcome from this situation was not foreseen even for the offspring, because slavery imposed a stigma on all offspring, and a slave could in no way be born free 217 . Next to the inequality of members, in the ancient world there was another evil - no less - inequality of fortunes. While some had possessions that extended over several hundred miles, 218 others did not have a single acre of land. While some were luxurious, dressed in gold, gave feasts, spent thousands on just one dinner, others almost died of hunger. Vagrancy and robbery, on the one hand, slavery, on the other, were the inevitable consequences of this abnormal state of affairs. The impoverished class, without a means of subsistence, wouldy-nilly entered into debt with the rich, which it was mostly unable to pay, and thus completely subordinated itself to the will of the rich. By virtue of the law of Papias, the rich man could do whatever he wanted out of his insolvent debtor, he could even kill him or turn him into slavery 219. During the period of the amusements of Rome, and not the war, these insolvent debtors were mostly recruited onto the stage for the bloody amusement of the idle crowd. It is impossible not to mention here the Roman amphitheater and stage. These amusements of Rome very clearly highlight the prevailing traits of the inclinations of the entire Roman population. The amphitheater depicts to us a typical feature of the society of that time - bloodthirstiness and cruelty, and the theater stage - demoralization. A series of great wars and bloodsheds aroused in the Romans, so to speak, a thirst for blood; without shedding it, the life of a Roman pagan became unthinkable. Circuses and amphitheaters 220 are the direct results of this thirst; spectacles became the first need of life for everyone, “bread and circuses” were constant cries heard from all sides. Satisfying this urgent need of the public, the managers of circus performances organized long battles of wild animals with people, bloody battles of gladiators, and sometimes - for variety - they directly threw one of the spectators to the animals. And the audience did not remain calm when they saw all this. The fury of wild animals tormenting people and the skillful bloody battle of gladiators delighted the public 221 . The blood of the fighters flowed in streams. Not only prisoners and criminals, but also people of noble birth and even women 222 took part in gladiatorial battles - the number of fighters was constantly increasing 223. In the first centuries of Christianity, the stage was very often and a lot doused with the blood of Christians. The pagans considered them criminals and, without further legal proceedings, determined: ad bestias 224. But while the main spectacle of the circus was blood and gore, the theater differed in another direction - it gave abundant lessons and examples of debauchery. On the stage, the Roman saw the satisfaction of lower passions; the game turned into food for voluptuousness 225. Among the Romans, the passion for spectacle reached the point of madness; the younger generation was especially fond of theaters; many of the youth devoted their entire lives to the stage and indulged in it entirely. And, despite the fact that the position of an actor was considered shameful and “actors were subjected to the last humiliation, they were not given any rights and dignity either in courts, or in the Senate, or in patrician privileges, or in other positions” 226 - everyone vying with each other wanted to be actors. Knowing the nature of the Roman stage, one can understand how it served as a vehicle for debauchery and vices 227 - everything that was presented was low, inglorious, shameful, alien to decency... These spectacles, inflicting constant blows to morality, at the same time killed the religious spirit of the Romans, faith in the gods, and dropped their authority. It is known that gods very often appeared on stage in the person of actors and, without any embarrassment, expressed their weaknesses, sins and affairs 228 to the public, and the public was extremely sympathetic to such divine performances. Thus, this essay also leads to sad conclusions. The decline of religious consciousness, the extreme degree of immorality, satiety with sensual pleasures, luxury, the decline of the family, a low view of women, slavery, cruelty - this is what characterizes the environment into which Christianity had to penetrate 229. Although paganism was already decaying and apparently falling, nevertheless, it had taken its roots too deeply to be quickly destroyed. The pagans became close to their religion, it was the basis of their entire external life, it was a national religion that determined the internal structure of man - everything said that a pagan Roman would, on occasion, stand up for his religion of his ancestors, sanctified by centuries, and would be able to defend it. Therefore, when Christianity appeared and sought to introduce a completely new spirit into the pagan world, it met with strong resistance. Radically opposed to paganism, Christianity apparently destroyed its entire religious, moral and social structure. Christianity did not put up with paganism in the very concept of deity and the attitude of people towards him. It contrasted the pagans’ material view of the gods, their naturalistic pantheism and anthropomorphism with a sublime spiritual view of the one God, all-perfect, alien to the weaknesses and shortcomings that characterized the pagan gods - an original and independent God, infinitely loving his creation - man, and through this love saved him from sin and its consequences 230. Christianity established the relationship between God and man as spiritual, not materialistic and purely external. Religion in Christianity is not a contract, a deal between God and people, by virtue of which God, as already committed, must unquestioningly fulfill all kinds of human whims, but a living, free union, based on the love of God for man 231, and on the part of man - on faith in God and His Son, hope in Him and love for Him, as a reflection of divine love 232 - a union that has as its goal not only external relations of man to God, and the closest, internal ones about Christ Jesus 233, which do not hamper either God in His activity or man - with external pleasing to God. Worshiping God in spirit and truth 234 directly went against pagan ritual and ceremonialism. Fate and fate in Christianity are eliminated by divine providence about the world and man 235. Contrary to pagan particularism, which recognized only a national religion for each people, Christianity preached a universal religion, the same for all places and times 236, a religion not associated with either one or another political system of the state, but coexistent with any political system 237. Christianity went against all the almost cherished beliefs of paganism. The pagan world was dominated by nationality, tribal strife, there were two large groups in it - co-landers and foreigners, between whom there was always hostility, deep hatred for each other and strong mutual enmity, and within the same nationality there were two categories of people - free and slaves. Christianity is far from this narrow view of humanity - it unites the entire human race with faith, eliminates casteism and mutual enmity - according to its teachings, in Christ there is no barbarian and Scythian, slave and freeman 238, all Christians are equally children of the Heavenly Father 239. United by faith in Christ, everyone forms one flock with one Shepherd at the head 240, everyone must be imbued with love for each other 241; their love should extend to their enemies 242; revenge, hallowed by antiquity, has absolutely no place in Christianity 243. Man's personality was suppressed in paganism and was in moral slavery, man's interests were tied to the earth; Christianity spoke about the high importance of man as the image of God and the heir of the kingdom of Christ, announced to him about freedom and pointed to the high ideal to which he should strive 244. The high purpose of a woman was not at all reconciled with the pagan idea of ​​her as a simple instrument for satisfying sensual passions and the act of giving birth to children; Christianity freed her from such a role, pointed to marital relations and the high importance of marriage as an image of the mysterious union of Christ with the church 245. Christianity condemned and prohibited polygamy, so widespread in paganism, and the dissolution of marriage, unless the word is adulterous 246. The way of life and behavior of Christians, sanctified by religion, is far from a sensual nature; chastity, unselfishness, the all-forgiving love of Christians, good relations towards all people, selflessness, 247, etc. - all this was contrary to the pagans’ views on life and their age-old beliefs. And so, in addition to the political system, Christianity touched all aspects of human life, everywhere it introduced new views and beliefs and brought down from the pedestal of greatness everything that went against it - everything that was sanctified by antiquity for the pagans, cherished and jealously guarded by them. Paganism could not help but notice such a destructive power of Christianity. It is clear that, wanting to defend its centuries-old customs and acquired habits, to preserve its cult and the previous order of things, it could not indifferently meet its rival - Christianity, and tried not only to eliminate it from itself, but to completely smooth it out, wipe it off the face of the earth. Hence - that cruel and prolonged struggle between Christianity and paganism, a struggle, the favorable outcome of which turned out to be on the side of Christianity. This struggle was caused by a reason common to all paganism - the opposition of Christianity to everything non-Christian. But looking deeper into the matter, one can notice that not all layers of pagan society paid attention to the same side in Christianity; the masses were guided by their own reasons in hating Christians, the intelligentsia had a different motive for hostility, the administration put forward higher political calculations; hence the dissimilarity of protest against Christianity and Christians from one, the other and the third class of the pagan world. First of all, a vague rumor began to spread against Christianity, which, as paganism became familiar with the new teaching, the new religion, became more and more clear and took on a more or less definite character. The main culprits of this rumor, which later developed into certain accusations, in all fairness, should be considered the leaders of the spiritual-religious and moral-practical life of paganism - priests, augurs and other members of the sacred college of paganism who took direct part in the liturgical cult, sellers of sacrificial animals, makers of idols, etc. people 248. Priests, fortunetellers and wizards were moved against Christianity and Christians mainly by practical calculation and material interest. In paganism they were highly respected, their authority was strong and important in all cases of life where only it came into contact with religion (and among the Romans, their whole life was imbued with religious ritual). When Christianity began to supplant the ancient pagan cult, they clearly saw the erosion of their significance. On the other hand, with the gradual thinning out of the ranks of paganism, the number of zealous performers of the polytheistic cult naturally decreased - the temples became empty, hence the income of the priests had to decline, the trade in sacrificial animals was slower, 249 the sale of gods from workshops became more limited, etc. In view of this, the ministers of the pagan religion and people who in one way or another derived material benefits from religion began to push the masses into an idea that was far from favorable to Christians, and the blind masses unwittingly succumbed to the influence of these people and began to look closely at the Christians 250. For the pagan plebeian, religion was completely replaced by appearance; according to the idea of ​​the masses, where there are temples, statues of gods, where sacrifices are made, etc., there is religion 251. Hence, where there are no churches, sacred oak forests, where there are no idols and sacrifices, there is no institution of priests with their performance of their duties, there is no religion. From this point of view, the masses also looked at Christian society. For the first time, she was struck by the absence among Christians of that with which she was accustomed to connect the concept of religion. Christians did not have temples, there were no gods in the sense of pagan deities in a sensual form, there was no ritual that was in use among the pagans, no sacrificial offerings in the form of slaughtering animals or libations, no incense before the gods, no magnificent ceremonies 252. From here, the mob very logically concluded that Christians not only do not recognize the pagan gods 253 - they do not even have their own deities, they are, therefore, atheists in the full sense of the word 254, and therefore, turning to Christians, the pagans, already confident in advance of a negative answer, asked them to show their God 255. The accusation of godlessness against Christians is the first one heard from the pagans. Such atheists, as Christians were in the eyes of paganism, were not slow to rain down other reproaches. Christians began to be blamed as people with extremely loose morals 256, all sorts of crimes were attributed to them, and the truth of everything was covered with the cloak of mystery of the Christian “depraved religion” 257. The pagans could not penetrate into the meetings of Christians and find out what was going on there. Meanwhile, somehow rumors reached the pagans about the sacrament of the Eucharist and the evening of love; and the pagans themselves noticed the mutual fraternal relations of Christians to each other, their mutual love. The pagans looked at all this from their own angle, and painted all these facts and rumors with their own colors. It was said about Christians that they have common wives 258, in their general meetings they slaughter a child, eat the body and drink its blood; after this terrible meal they indulge in the most vile debauchery, without sorting out any family ties 259; Christians blaspheme against pagan temples 260, etc. Seeing such atheists and extremely immoral people as Christians, the pagan masses, of course, could not remain indifferent to such extreme, in their opinion, godlessness and wickedness. Jealousy arose in her for her father’s religion, which once brought happiness to the Romans. Superstitious fear prompted the mob that such neglect of the great gods of the empire would inevitably entail the latter’s wrath, 261 both against the new atheists and against the Romans - the admirers of these gods - for tolerating such people among them, and physical punishment in any form would not hesitate to follow the anger. That is why the mass attributed the cause of all disasters to Christians, against whom the Roman pantheon was angry. That is why the hatred of the masses fell upon Christians 263 - hatred that demanded that this wicked and despicable sect 264 be completely wiped off the face of the earth. The irritation and fanaticism of the masses against Christians was all the more tenacious and stronger because they found echoes and support in other classes of pagan society 265 . People with a philosophical education and administrators, who differed with the masses in their views on the domestic religion and on other issues, agreed with them in a common hatred and enmity against Christians, only this hatred was motivated by other reasons. While the mob saw atheism in Christianity and in atheism the cause of national disasters, as a consequence of the wrath of the gods, philosophers looked at the matter from their own, purely philosophical point of view. In Christianity they saw only malum and various kinds of superstitio, in Christ - an agitator, a troublemaker of the Jews, executed as a criminal 266. In addition to such a low view of Christianity and Christians, philosophers motivated their disgust from this society and its teachings for other reasons. Philosophers strove for truth; they searched for it throughout their lives. The path of research seemed to them necessary in any doctrine that has a claim to dissemination. Christianity, offering revealed truths as ready-made data, demanded from its followers not philosophical research, but faith. It demanded to keep these revelations of truth as truths unchanged. From this point of view, Christianity, which they looked upon as a philosophical system, seemed to the philosophers to be a doctrine that fears research, that preaches mental stagnation instead of progress, etc., and therefore suitable only for the rude, ignorant crowd, and not for philosophers 267 . In addition, the very birthplace of Christianity - Palestine - did not attract the attention of educated people 268 - in the eyes of the pagan intelligentsia, Palestine was a gathering place and cradle of superstitions 269, its settlers - the Jews did not have such worldwide intellectual importance as the Romans and Greeks, and did not enjoy special respect in the eyes of the Romans. With its desire for worldwide distribution and superiority over all philosophemes, Christianity, which emerged from a small and insignificant corner of the ancient world, affected the philosophical arrogance of the proud philosophers of the Greco-Roman world. It placed its Founder, the Son of Tecton, above all the founders and representatives of philosophical schools; spread Christianity and - at first - it was accepted by ordinary people 270. Thus, the philosophers, these advanced, intelligent people, retreated into the background behind the preachers of the Gospel, mingled with the crowd - while in all respects, even in the religious, they carefully separated themselves from the masses, considered it humiliating for themselves to have the same religion with the crowd - in a religious sense, they were not given primacy - the same religion for both masters and slaves, for philosophers and the crowd, educated and ignorant... The very sermon about the crucified God seemed to them the height of madness 271. And philosophers of all schools and trends armed themselves against the new religion of the cross, which equalized all classes and social positions, armed themselves with the weapon of the word 272. Administrative people turned their attention to Christianity and brought down all their hatred on it purely because of political calculations. First of all, with their “new religion,” Christians went against the law on illicit religions and their worshipers 273. As a result of their aversion from idolatry, Christians came into conflict with the laws of the empire, since the performance of religious rites constituted an essential part of civil life and was sanctioned by laws; Therefore, legally they had no right to exist, as the pagans themselves declared 274. Then - Christianity, with its desire to destroy the polytheistic system of the ancient pagan cult 275 and to found on its ruins a new high worship of God, 276 with its desire for universalism, 277 preaching about a new kingdom, 278 Christianity, the rapid spread of which had long ago attracted the jealous attention of Roman politicians, could not be tolerated in the eyes of suspicious statesmen. It was not a national religion, was not associated with a specific political and social system of the state, but coexisted with all forms of government - therefore, Roman statesmen saw in Christianity the direct opposite of their state religion, adapted only to the existing system of the state, the paternal religion - the support of pagan Rome. They saw that Christianity was introducing a new, hitherto unknown cult, excluding the Roman pagan religion 279, on which it placed all its hope as a force restraining the people. Christians did not swear by the genius of the Caesars 280 , did not burn incense in honor of the emperors 281 , the pagans were not able to penetrate into the secret liturgical meetings and find out, see with their own eyes what was happening there 282 . Christians moved away from pagan temples 283, spectacles 284 and all secular pagan entertainment 285, did not seek honors and public positions 286, avoided military service 287, did not celebrate with pagans and pagan solemn imperial days 288; “Christianity made a huge revolution in life: it recognized the legal rights of women 289, not recognized by antiquity; changed the relationship of children to their parents 290, freed the slave 291, who in ancient times was considered a creature of a lower breed...” 292. All this forced government officials to believe the rumors of the masses, only to color it (the rumor) with a peculiar coloring, to look at it from the angle of their politics. From all this they concluded one thing: Christians are the enemies of the Roman state and its centuries-old system 293: “people hiding, running around the world, mute in society and talkative in their refuges” 294 - they are a gang of conspirators 295 shaking the Roman monarchy, enemies of the emperors 296 and the entire human race, people useless for the connections of public life 297, etc., – these are some “new people” (i.e. neither Jews nor pagans), “third race” 298; next, they cannot be looked at indifferently 299 - they must be forced either by various tortures, or by promises of reward - to renounce their sect and go to the camp of the pagans 300, or mercilessly wiped off the face of the earth 301. Thus, all classes of pagan society armed themselves against Christians and fanatically persecuted them - each with their own weapons: the masses began to spread absurd rumors and rumors about Christians, their godlessness and immorality 302 and treat them fanatically 303; philosophers and educated people began to act against Christians with the weapon of words, through literary polemics with Christians; the government armed itself with fire and sword 304, and adhered to this tactic all the time until the Christian religion was declared dominant; and the more zealous an emperor was for the good and greatness of Rome and the empire, the more strongly he rebelled against the illicit Christian religion 305. The holidays for the church were very short and were only due to the negligence of some emperors, or due to internal civil strife and external wars, in which the main attention was diverted from Christianity and focused on internal and external struggles 306, or due to the fact that the emperors, under whom there was no formal persecution, were affected by a more or less strong influence of Christianity, or a well-known philosophical trend 307. It is clear what the position of Christians was in this iron age for them and in such a situation, 308 and how Christians should have reacted to such an environment and the circumstances surrounding them, when a simple whim of the regional ruler, incited by the silent rumors of the mob, could initiate persecution, based in this case and having under their eyes the unrevoked edicts of former emperors against Christians. At first, when only uneducated but deeply religious people were considered in the ranks of Christians, and while the accusations against Christians were not yet formulated in a certain way, there could not be literary polemics on the part of Christians, on the one hand, because there were no people capable of this matter, and on the other hand, because there were no specific points of accusation against which it was necessary to write and from which to justify Christians; writing against silent rumors was completely useless. In this case, Christians had to overcome all torment and torture with their heroic patience, passive resistance to the onslaught of hostile force. It was a different matter when more or less definite accusations were heard from the pagans and educated people began to join the ranks of Christians - here the possibility of the emergence of Christian apologetics already appeared. In this period of the church, every more or less educated and capable Christian, seeing such a deplorable state of Christians, considered it their sacred duty to come out in defense of their fellow believers, to appear as an apologist for Christianity and Christians. History shows that the work of apologetics was not the exclusive responsibility of any class of Christian society - apologists were both ordinary laymen, as well as persons who occupied a hierarchical position in Christianity. Whatever class Christian apologists belonged to, their task was essentially the same, and only changed over time. Their only goal was to ask Christians for freedom of faith and open confession of it. To achieve this goal, they pointed out the injustice of the judicial procedure in relation to Christians, refuted the accusations brought against Christians and presented Christians in a completely different way from the way they were portrayed by popular rumor and the views of other classes of pagan society based on it. In accordance with the accusations, Christian apologists, calling on science and common sense to their aid, argued that Christians, while worshiping the one God, are not atheists - they proved this with rational arguments and a number of quotations from the books of St. Scriptures and ancient pagan poets and philosophers; argued that Christians are not an immoral people and not enemies of the state and public peace, but the best people in the state - they actually proved this by analyzing the life of Christians - both public and private, at home. But since the cause of all the misfortunes of the Christians was a simple prejudice against them, which developed into a widespread, blind hatred, which did not even want to examine the matter; Therefore, apologists called on the pagan power from thoughtless hatred to a calm investigation of the matter, from blinding passion - to reason - the judge. In order to have a stronger effect on the pagans and dispel all their prejudices, the apologists presented Christian teaching in more or less clear terms, painted a picture of the moral Christian life and, by comparing Christian teaching and morality with pagan cult and morality, visually represented the superiority of Christianity over paganism. With their apologies, Christians at first sought to achieve the intended goal - to alleviate the sad fate of poor, persecuted Christians and to gain them freedom of faith and belief - in a peaceful way. Guided by this, the apologists did not touch upon paganism much, did not open its wounds, did not attack the polytheistic cult, but only justified Christians. But when they saw that they could not achieve their goal in a peaceful way, they could not break the prejudices and stubbornness of the pagans, their tactics were changed - the apologists little by little began to move from a defensive position to an offensive one; they begin to mercilessly disparage paganism, point out its absurdities, and apply the accusations brought against Christians to the pagans themselves; From a request, an apology becomes a criticism; from humble petitioners, apologists turn into strict, unforgiving judges of paganism. In this struggle at the last stage of apologetics, the fighters of truth do not always maintain their apologetic character with its properties - a calm analysis of the case and composure in tone. To help themselves, they no longer call only on science and dialectics, but often on irony and sarcasm, and thus clearly represent the funny side of pagan myths, the emptiness and contradiction of their philosophical systems of a religious nature, etc. 309 Having made these preliminary remarks, let us move on to the apologetic works of Tertullian. Time, address, nature of Tertullian's apologetic works against the pagans. Their content: the illegal injustice of the pagans towards Christians at trial: Tertullian’s view of Roman religious legislation. Refuting accusations against Christians of cannibalism and incest, atheism, lèse imperial majesty, and that Christians are useless members of society. Christianity is not a branch of some unknown school of philosophy. A call to serious and calm inquiry into the cause of the Christians, and an indication of the inevitable consequence of their persecution and torment. Tertullian's apologetic works date back to the reign of Severus. Under this sovereign, the soldierly despotism of his adherents - the regional rulers - suspected Christians of being of the same mind with the competitors of the North - Albin and Niger, and on this suspicion cruelly persecuted the innocent Christian society 310. Long-standing accusations against Christians of godlessness and immorality were raised; but these were only plausible pretexts - the main attention was paid to the anti-government of Christianity and Christians - as if Christians were a restless people in public life, enemies of the empire - and from this particular side they treated Christians as people completely worthy of cruel persecution and painful death. Every day the Carthaginian dungeons were more and more filled with confessors of the Crucified One; The situation of African Christians became worse and worse. At the same time, a new imperial edict was issued against Christians, and its diligent implementation gave rise to Tertullian’s literary activity in the form of apologetic writings. 311 Tertullian the apologist addresses his words to the pagan masses and the authorities; the first is addressed to his libri II ad nationes and de testimonio animae, the second - apologeticus and private letter ad Scapulam. Apologeticiis is nothing more than a reworking of the books ad nationes. In accordance with the fact that the circle of readers of both works was different, the very nature of these works is not the same. Meanwhile, as in lib. ad nations there are literary shortcomings, apologeticus emerges from the pen of Tertullian as a processed work. It reproduces in an attractive form the entire content of the 1st book. Ad nations and part of the 2nd book 312. In the apologeticus, Tertullian avoids repetition, skips useless extensions, throws out digressions from the subject that delay the progress of the argument, arranges his material in a different order, and thus his apologeticus is a work that could satisfy the most refined taste of educated readers. In his apologetic activities, Tertullian had to deal with two rivals: paganism - in the broad sense of the word, and philosophy, because slander and accusations were poured on Christians and Christianity on both sides. Tertullian responds in his apologetic works to all the accusations and objections against Christians that have ever been heard from any side - either from the pagan camp or from the field of philosophy, but he does not assign the same place to all accusations in his works and does not give the same importance to all. In the eyes of the Western apologist of Christianity, no accusation was as important as the accusation of Christians in anti-state aspirations and their way of life: Tertullian refutes this slander in the most decisive manner, surrounding his refutations with the most irrefutable arguments from Christian doctrine and everyday practice. The dogmatic side in his apologies occupies a secondary place; Tertullian touches upon it relatively little and presents the Christian doctrine in the form of fragmentary, catechetical formulas. Philosophy could not particularly interest the Carthaginian presbyter - he himself admitted that modern philosophy disgusted him; That is why he does not devote a special apologetic treatise to her, and remarks about her and her objections as if in passing. Tertullian's apologetic writings exude that liveliness that leaves a very pleasant impression. All of them, with the exception of books ad nationes, as having educated readers in mind, are written in a lively, fascinating language, especially arologeticus. He interests the reader to such an extent with his content and presentation that, having read this brilliant and passionate apology 313, one does not want to tear himself away from reading it, and the reader, as if chained to reading by some magical force, involuntarily gets carried away by the apology and reads it to the end. Animation and deep feeling, sometimes triumphant at the sight and memory of the innocence of Christians, sometimes outraged by the injustice of pagans towards Christians and the dirty sides of pagan life, permeate the apology from beginning to end; Tertullian's dedication to the defense is visible at every turn. Perseverance for Christians, unconditional condemnation of all paganism and what it has developed, and bold confidence in the victory of Christianity over paganism - one might say - are the characteristic features of Tertullian’s apology. As an apologist, Tertullian is inimitable and amazing - his writings directed against paganism reflected his intelligence, wit and extensive knowledge. Not only by hint, but by deed itself, he makes the pagans feel his victorious power. From defending Christianity, he often moves on to attacking paganism; from a lawyer he turns into a satirist and a formidable judge. He dispels that mysterious aura with which venerable antiquity surrounded the pagan cult, depicts paganism in all its nakedness and ugliness, reveals its absurdities, mainly from its practical side, presents the funny side of the pagan doctrine of the gods and pagan philosophy - with one hand he squanders arrows of subtle irony and sarcasm, and with the other he already signs the verdict on paganism. To confirm the general dogmatic provisions of Christianity, Tertullian rummages through the archives of pagan wisdom, does not quote excerpts from ancient philosophers, as Eastern apologists did - philosophy is generally out of favor with Tertullian. In place of this proof, Tertullian puts forward another, stronger and more decisive argument, convincing for every reader - educated and ignorant. The observant Tertullian boldly takes on psychological analysis and, from the voice of universal human consciousness, extracts a very compelling argument to confirm those truths that form part of “natural theology.” Tertullian is neither a theorist nor a philosopher in the proper sense of the word; he is more practical, pays more attention to the life, practical side of things, and not to theory. The comparison of a known doctrine with its application and manifestation in life is one of those elements from which Tertullian’s invincible weapon is forged. – In the author of apologetic works one can see not an apologist, but a clever lawyer. The flowers of oratorical eloquence, sometimes replacing weighty arguments, the brilliance of speech and dialectical subtleties echoing the Roman tribune, are very often visible in the apologetic works of Tertullian, and his arguments were often good more in appearance than in internal content and strength. The legal character of this series of works by Tertullian constitutes a distinctive feature that stands out sharply among others, less important. As a lawyer and lawyer, Tertullian deals not with the doctrinal side of Christianity, but with the practical one - he defends not so much Christianity as a doctrine, but its Christian followers. Irritated against paganism, Tertullian is not content with just justifying Christians in the eyes of pagans - the modern tasks of apologetics, caused by the modern clash of Christianity with paganism, required something else; He finds every accusation brought against Christians more applicable to the pagans themselves, and completely inapplicable to Christians, and this method of apologetics captivates the ardent Tertullian to such an extent that he often, instead of seriously justifying Christians, only applies the accusation to the pagans and - thus - forces them to remain silent. The conclusion from here, although Tertullian sometimes did not draw it, was obvious in favor of the Christians he defended. Tertullian knew very well that all the hatred of the pagans towards Christians was based solely on ignorance of Christianity and Christians and blind prejudice against them. Despite the fact that 2 centuries have already passed since the appearance of Christianity in the world, Roman and African pagans did not bother to become acquainted with this new teaching. The prejudice against the new religion that had sunk into their souls was so strong that nothing could dissuade them from their false view of Christianity. “They are so blinded that they consider wise and prudent only the one who will speak against Christians... they reproach even their philosophers for ignorance when these latter happen to approach somewhat closer to the threshold of truth... they even cease to have confidence in them when they discover arguments in favor of the Christian faith.”... As for Christian books, none of the pagans even bothered to look into them, no one knows what they say, and whoever knows, does not believe contained in them. “The books of Christians have no authority in the world; they are read only by those who are Christians” 314. Therefore, before a private analysis of the accusations brought against Christians, Tertullian rebels against the very foundations of the hatred of the pagans and points out those injustices that were the result of blind prejudice and injustice in legal proceedings. In his apologetic writings, Tertullian no longer asks for mercy from the pagans, as Eastern apologists used to do, but for justice to the truth. Truth, he says, is not of earthly origin - its hopes, its glory, its throne are not on earth, but there - in heaven. On earth she is destined to endure various persecutions. Even before the advent of Christianity, the truth was persecuted, 315 and it is still being persecuted. When attacked from all sides, it does not require outside help to protect it - to resist attacks, sufficient strength lies within itself 316. Here - on earth, she seeks only justice, so that she is not condemned before they listen to her, and her bearers - Christians - are not condemned, based only on prejudice. Until now, says Tertullian, all the hatred against Christians was brought down for one name; they did not understand whether any crime was connected with this name or not 317, - for one name, despite the fact that according to the law, hatred and punishment should be brought down only for a crime, and not for a name. With such an attitude of pagans towards Christians, it is very natural to expect that they will not know Christians until they hate them, on the other hand, they will hate until they know them... Meanwhile, just as ignorance of Christians causes hatred and persecution of them, knowledge of them always leads to Christianity. How many examples of this does experience present - “the number of people who have thus converted (to Christianity) is immense - cities, villages, castles, islands are filled with Christians; people of all ages, genders, and ranks flock in large numbers to join their society.” Such examples, naturally, should at least arouse the curiosity of the pagans and force them to look into Christianity - what in it produces such an irresistible influence on a person, is there any good hidden in it? Curious in other cases, pagans ignore only this fact 318, although they state the moral power of Christianity, manifested in the moral rebirth of people who convert to Christianity, are aware of all this, and, however, even to their own detriment, continue to hate Christians 319. Ignorance of Christians, which lies at the basis of hatred, and this hatred itself play a major role in courts against Christians and distort all legal forms 320. “The law forbids judging anyone without hearing it out” 321. In relation to other accused non-Christians, the Roman tribunals strictly implement this law: they allow the accused to defend themselves either directly or through hired lawyers; collect various information about all the circumstances of the case, place, time, witnesses, accomplices, etc., and only when the evidence for and against the defendants has been weighed, they are either accused or acquitted 322. In relation to Christians, the legal procedure changes: Christians are not allowed to speak in their own defense, information about their crime is not collected during their trial, and only one thing is expected: for a person to admit that he is a Christian - this recognition alone is enough for judges to pronounce a death sentence. In the entire judicial procedure, the judges achieve only one of two things: either to force the Christian to renounce his name as a Christian, or to erase him from the face of the earth. To achieve the first goal, they use all kinds of means - affection, promises of rewards and honors, and a whole series of painful tortures, acting in this case contrary to the laws and their judicial practice. The law prescribes that judges must seek the truth in court and reveal the guilty; and they, on the contrary, demand and, through a series of tortures, achieve that Christians renounce their name, and, consequently, those crimes that they consider associated with the name of a Christian. And if it happens that torture forces an involuntary renunciation from a Christian, they trust this renunciation, although in their judicial practice they do not easily believe the renunciation of other criminals - not Christians, but try to surround all this with a whole series of judicial arguments 323. In trials against Christians, the case is not investigated, only one name is taken - so the judges must have already decided not to investigate the case, and it is better not to know Christianity in order to only hate Christians; they probably assume, instinctively feel, that having learned Christianity, they will not be able to hate and persecute Christians. Meanwhile, having learned the truth, they would either find that there are no reasons for hatred in Christianity and Christians, and leave Christians alone, or they would find solid reasons for it and thus give their hatred a legal character 324. However, the judges themselves de facto recognize the innocence of Christians - in death sentences they condemn Christians not for a crime, but for one name - they do not dare and are ashamed to link themselves to any crime 325. What repulsive thing is hidden in the name of a Christian? Without containing anything reprehensible, the name of a Christian cannot sound unpleasant in the ears of the scrupulous Romans, because it is not of barbarian, but of Greek origin 326; on the other hand, Christian society and the name cannot be invisible because it received its origin from its Founder; It is not uncommon for followers of a well-known teaching to take the name of their teacher. A sect or society, and hence its name, can only deserve hatred when it is proven that it is bad, that its founder is a seducer. But the judges do not try to find out whether there are bad sides in Christianity, what kind of personality the Founder of Christianity is and, thus, their hatred has no other basis for itself than the prejudice associated with the name 327. The fact that among Christians they find misers, liars and people given over to vices does not at all speak in their favor. Firstly, there are few such personalities in Christianity, and they cannot but exist, no matter how good the society is. If the clearest sky has clouds, and the cleanest, most tender body has a spot or wart, and they - the spot and the cloud - stand out the more prominently and clearly, the purer their background; then in such a pure society as Christian society, such individuals should stand out especially strongly; but they are only an exception, and the exception always proves only the rule. These or other moral shortcomings of individuals put a stain on the entire Christian society. On the other hand, bad Christians are no longer Christians in the proper sense of the word: they do not attend Christian meetings, do not pray with true Christians - their vices are intolerable in Christianity, excluding them from Christian society 328. Guided by prejudice against Christians, the pagans usually told Christians: “You are not allowed to be (Christians),” and in this case they referred to laws that did not recognize Christians, and they said that “the legislator would not punish Christians if he were not convinced of their guilt” 329. – This circumstance gives Tertullian a reason to be critical of Roman religious legislation itself, to prove that these laws could then only go against Christianity and declare it unlawful; then only their authority would be strong if they were good and Christianity was bad. The result of Tertullian's critical attitude towards Roman religious laws is that these laws are unjust and - as such - should be rejected 330. Tertullian sees the inconsistency of these laws both in their origin, and in their mutual contradiction, and in their application to practice, and in their impotence; - Tertullian ends his entire argument with the thought that it was not Christian innovators, but the pagans themselves who boasted of their conservatism. – If you look at the law against Christians from the point of view of its origin, then it will be clear how good and consistent it is, because by the inventors and executors of them one can always judge with certainty the nature of the laws themselves. It is obvious, says Tertullian, that only the Nero, Domitian and the like, “unjust, wicked, dishonored, cruel, reckless people, people whom the judges themselves condemn, justifying and restoring those condemned by them,” could have been the first persecutors of Christians and legislators against Christianity. “Sovereigns who knew and respected divine and human rights” - not one of them persecuted Christians; on the contrary, they were their patrons, or at least weakened the power and effect of previous decrees against Christians, such as Marcus Aurelius - as a result of a miracle with his thunderous legion in Germany - who patronized Christians and issued strict laws against them as informers and slanderers 331. “Meanwhile, of course, it would be more decent for virtuous sovereigns to exterminate a gang of villains, and not for those who themselves were villains” 332. – The religious law of the pagans, not to mention the moral qualities of its perpetrators or creators, is untenable simply because it is a creation of man and does not draw its origin and authority from heaven 333. It is clear that the legislator, as a person, could make mistakes; The administration itself is aware of this imperfection of its laws when, taught by experience, it constantly clarifies, modifies its legislation, and even completely repeals some laws. What can prevent laws against Christians from being called not only unjust, but even reckless, especially if they so grossly contradict themselves 334, such as, for example, Trajan’s law, which prohibits searching for Christians (as innocent) and commands them to be punished if they are declared in court as Christians (hence, they are guilty) 335. Relying on human authority, these laws are completely powerless, and are not always feasible on the part of people - they can almost always be circumvented, avoided, by hiding or pretending 336. But the practice of Roman pagan judges also goes against such laws. Laws punish only crimes, and the guardians of the laws, in order to find the truth, usually use a whole series of investigations and interrogations, but not in Christian trials. In relation to Christians, they pursue one name, not caring at all about investigating the matter and revealing the imaginary crimes of Christians; here they fail to maintain their role: they punish what has not been proven to be criminal, and they do not make public what they want to punish. It is clear that the guardians of the laws themselves disguise these laws and impose a cloak of mystery on them. To find out what is allowed and what is prohibited by these laws, you do not need to close your eyes to them. If these laws are carefully hidden, then suspicion of their injustice 337 is natural; on the other hand, by not allowing Christians to be justified, the law becomes despotic 338 . – Finally, what speaks against the dignity of the religious law of the pagans is that it, and with it religion itself, is completely subject to the arbitrariness of man: the fate of one or another god depends on the whim of man 339 , and whether to recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ or not 340 also depended on the discretion of the Senate. Based on such and such laws, the pagans bring down all their hatred on Christians, consider Christians as people professing a new religion - not permitted by Roman laws, as innovators; in this case, they themselves want to appear conservative, guardians of ancient religious and moral decrees, although they themselves have not preserved many of these decrees. They no longer have ancient laws against immoderate luxury, regulations against vanity and spectacle, there are no longer the best, smartest, most necessary regulations regarding the purity of morals, laws that strengthen family ties through prohibitions on divorce, even the wise regulations of their ancestors regarding the service of the gods have been abolished... In a word, the pagans themselves “have lagged behind the ancient examples in everything, lagged behind in dress, in taste, in luxury, in feelings, in language; They constantly praise antiquity, but live according to newness. In their consideration of serving their gods, they are even likened to Christians who reject them - Christians to whom this, however, is the main guilt; for they really neglect, despise, destroy the service of their own deities, although they exalt themselves in the fact that they inherited the religious zeal of their fathers” 341. Having pointed out the hatred of pagans towards Christians and the tactics of Roman judges in the trial of Christian cases, tactics - with its basis - laws, Tertullian moves on to the current accusations against Christians and their analysis, devoting quite a lot of space in his apologetic works. For Tertullian - the son of the West - not all accusations have the same importance and significance. As a person with a more practical than speculative mindset, Tertullian, first of all, dwells on such accusations that relate to the practical side of the matter - the life and behavior of Christians. Reproaches made to the religious beliefs of Christians are not so interesting to Tertullian, but are for him a matter of secondary importance and are relegated to the background. First of all, Tertullian's attention is drawn to the accusation of Christians of cannibalism and incest. Tertullian expresses this accusation in the following form: “They say that during our sacraments we kill a child, eat him, and after such a terrible feast we indulge in incestuous pleasures, while the dogs participating in the feast overturn the candlesticks and, extinguishing the candles, free us from all shame.”342 According to this accusation, it turns out that Christians are like a special people who have reappeared on earth 343, to whom belongs the honor of inventing such mysteries and with such a setting 344. - This accusation greatly agitated Tertullian, and he indignantly began to refute it. They constantly say the same thing, repeating old, long-standing rumors. This rumor is extremely widespread. Meanwhile, no one will think of checking it or exploring it. “If you,” says Tertullian, addressing the pagans, “believe it, then investigate it; if you do not want to investigate, then do not believe it.” If this rumor were true, then it would be revealed, manifested in a positive form, and not in the form of a silent rumor. There was a lot of time and reasons for its discovery. From the beginning of Christianity under Tiberius and until now, Christians were constantly surrounded by enemies, Jews, warriors, slaves, Christians could not hide from them, especially from the latter 345. Finally, the time and place of Christian meetings are known, so the pagans could find out what is happening there 346, whether what this rumor says is happening. As far as is known, there has not yet been a single fact that anything true has been reported against Christians regarding imaginary cannibalism. It is true that the pagans themselves admit that this could not be exposed openly, because this is a mystery that Christians carefully hide from everyone’s eyes. But the question in this case is: how could the prosecutors know all this? From Christians? But Christians would never convey this about themselves, even if it were true. From strangers? But the pagans themselves admit that the sacred meetings of Christians are not accessible to any outsiders, and they have nowhere to get information about the Christian sacraments 347 . Therefore, one rumor lies at the basis of this accusation. But the property of rumor - deceptiveness - is known to the whole world; Even if it proclaims the truth, it always distorts it either by decreasing or increasing it - rumor feeds solely on lies and exists only where the matter has not yet been fully proven 348 . Due to this property of rumor, an intelligent person will never believe it, but judges and the masses believe it, despite the falsity of its foundations, they do not even want to check, to find out whether there is a lie at its root? 349 How incredible the accusations against Christians of cannibalism and incest are, human nature itself provides proof of this. Even suppose, says Tertullian, that immortality and eternal life are promised for these crimes, would anyone agree to buy immortality at such a high price? If others do not agree, would Christians really decide to do this? Do Christians have a different nature than pagans, are they monsters? If Christians can produce such abominations, then so can pagans - pagans are the same people as Christians. If pagans cannot commit them, then one should not believe in the possibility of Christians committing them either - Christians are the same people as pagans 350. Pagans probably therefore consider Christians capable of committing these crimes and attribute them to them because they openly and covertly allow themselves to do them 351. Factual evidence shows that paganism also sheds blood abundantly: sacrifices are performed with the shedding of blood; the amphitheater is constantly watered with blood. Many of the judges themselves can be reproached for killing their newborn children - they are drowned, starved and cold, thrown to dogs, etc.; and this is much more painful than death by the sword. Next. It also applies to the pagans that they feed on human flesh and blood. According to Herodotus, there are peoples who, in order to confirm treaties, allow each other to drink blood from their hands, which was also the case with the Romans during the Catiline conspiracy. They say that the Scythians eat the corpses of their relatives. Among the Romans, the initiate into the mysteries of Bellona must drink blood obtained from the blood; and those susceptible to epilepsy, for their recovery, suck the warm blood of criminals who end their lives in the square or in the amphitheater. Whoever eats the flesh of animals killed in the amphitheater does not feed on the flesh of people like himself? In a word, pagans are anthropophagers, not Christians. Due to their religious beliefs, Christians not only do not allow themselves to take the life of a born child, but even to kill him in the womb. If Christians forbid themselves to consume even the blood of animals at the table and abstain from any strangulation of carrion, then can we then assume that they consume dishes filled with blood? Is it possible to truly believe that people who abhor the blood of animals are able to thirst for the blood of their own kind? 352. Christians are also accused of incest; “But who is more able to succeed in such matters than those who receive lessons from their Jupiter?” Not to mention the fact that the Persians and Macedonians cohabit with their mothers, and, without going too far for examples, we can point out that the Romans themselves, indulging in passions, provide many reasons for incest. With their systematic abandonment of children, leaving them to their own devices, it very easily happens that the fruits of their intemperance, scattered everywhere, must copulate, without suspecting it, either with each other, or even with their parents. Christians cannot have such a crime: chastity, aversion from all excess and debauchery puts Christians beyond the danger of incest; Among Christians there are even many such individuals who remove even the shadow of danger from themselves, maintaining abstinence until the grave. “If the pagans paid attention to the fact that these atrocities are being carried out precisely among them, then at the same time they would notice that Christians are completely innocent here: the same look at things would convince them of both. But due to ordinary duplicitous blindness, the pagans do not see what is, but see what is not” 353. If Tertullian spent so long on accusing Christians of anthropophagy and incest, then he is even more concerned with another accusation of a purely political nature, the accusation of lese imperial majesty. Tertullian borrows one of the proofs of the innocence of Christians in this crime from Christian religious teachings. This very circumstance gives Tertullian a reason to say a few words about Christian doctrine, briefly introduce it and - by the way - refute the accusation of Christians of atheism. Thus, this part of Tertullian's apology must be looked upon only as a prelude to another, more important in the eyes of the Western writer and apologist. Tertullian eliminates the accusation of Christians of atheism, first of all, with a critical analysis of polytheism - “he brings an ax into this forest of the gods, which obscures the vices of paganism” 354, and only when the paths in “this forest” have already been cut, Tertullian refutes the accusation in a positive way - conveys the Christian doctrine, and then in the most general and condensed form, in the form of general and unfounded theses. Christians were told: “You do not adore our gods and do not make sacrifices to emperors.” The general idea that Tertullian tries to make regarding the first part of this accusation is formulated by him in the following form: “we have ceased to adore your gods since we learned that they are not gods.” First of all, Tertullian summarizes the entire pagan religious worldview. Following Varro, he classifies all the religious views of the pagans under three main groups: pantheistic naturalism, mythological anthropomorphism and fetishism, or “physical gods, who owe their existence to philosophers, allegorical gods, emerging from the brains of poets, and national gods, adopted by different peoples” 355. Looking at each group, Tertullian finds that neither the gods of philosophers, as only conjectural, but not reliably known, nor the gods of poets, who trample religious feeling into the mud with their fables, nor the national gods of peoples, as merely private and not recognized by everyone, passive gods, can be recognized as gods, because neither one nor the other, nor the third religious view satisfies the requirement of the idea of ​​deity 356. One circumstance speaks against a philosophical religious worldview: in philosophy itself a definite, uniform type of religious outlook has not been established. Not illuminated by the light of divine revelation, the philosophers themselves could not agree with each other in their views on the deity, they disagreed - as many philosophers as there were, there were so many diverse opinions of a religious nature. According to Solomon, only “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” “but in order to fear God, you need to know Him,” and, having known God, have complete and perfect wisdom. Without higher insight, no matter how a philosopher approaches religious truth, his attempts will remain unsuccessful, no matter how he studies various books, even the holy books of Christians, and in this case he will be outside the light of true knowledge of God. Numerous examples have shown this to be true. The philosophers of antiquity gleaned the truth from the divine scriptures, but distorted and disfigured it to suit their own tastes, and thus “the result was a whole flood of argumentation and controversy,” but the truth still turned out to be flooded and lost in this chaos of opinions and disputes. With such diversity and contradictory views of philosophers on the deity, faith is impossible - it is impossible to lean towards one side, to which all others would be reduced as a center 357. When considering the religious worldview of philosophers, the object of their religion is what first strikes the eye. No matter how much philosophers disagree among themselves in their views on deity, they all agree on one thing - and this alone constitutes a characteristic feature of the religious teaching of philosophers - that the gods of philosophers are deifications of the elements of nature 358. Even the superficial glance of a thinking person will find the unreasonableness of such deification. If the whole world is not divine, not God, then it cannot be said from the point of view of strict logic that parts of it - the elements of nature - should be gods. The naturalistic worldview of philosophers contradicts the most fundamental requirements of reason, the idea of ​​deity; their generation of gods does not reconcile with the most basic view of deity. Human reason requires that the deity be eternal - beginningless and infinite. But birth, assimilated by philosophers and naturalists to the gods, speaks for the beginning, and it also presupposes the end of what is being born; immortality does not apply to deified bodies, daily experience convinces people of this: “elements die, therefore, they are not eternal and are not gods” 359. According to the requirement of the idea of ​​​​deity, God should not be subject to external influences, limited by any external force 360. From this side, philosophical naturalism will not find justification in the idea of ​​​​a deity. The elements of the world - the sun, moon, stars, etc. - are not animated, they themselves do not have independence and independence from external force, they are controlled by someone else standing outside of them. But just because we do not see this external force setting the mechanism of nature in motion, it does not follow that it did not exist at all and that the various parts of the world moved on their own, thanks to their inherent internal force 361, there were gods. Finally, God is invisible; How can one put in His place and idolize that which falls under the external senses? 362 And what was the motivating reason for the deification of nature in its component parts? – Not only for their good deeds, but also for their acts of seeming anger, their elements were recognized by man as deities, - by man making himself dependent on them; their deification was caused, on the one hand, by the desire to appease them and avert their anger, on the other, by the desire to repay them for their good deed 363. This is the only answer to this question, an answer that is apparently satisfactory, but, nevertheless, does not in a reasonable way clarify the idea of ​​deification. People usually thank or curse not the things themselves or the instruments of good and evil, but moral agents. After all, it is not the flute or the zither that is crowned with a wreath, but the player; It is not the saber or spear that hits a person who is considered his enemy, but the one who wields this weapon 364; to thank not the medicine for the cure, but the doctor, etc. - everywhere they go back to the culprit of this or that phenomenon. It is not clear why only philosophers go against the generally accepted logic - go back to the culprit, and, forgetting the effective cause, stop only at its manifestations, leaving aside the Creator, the engine of everything, deify the instrument of divine power 365. – If the gods of philosophers are not gods, then it is even less possible to call the inventions of poets gods. All these gods were invented by people, - therefore, they have a beginning - and this is incompatible with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bdeity 366 - and they themselves were once people; - to this there are ancient monuments that point to the cities where these gods were born, the countries where they lived and where their very tombs are shown 367. The series of pagan gods begins with Saturn - before him, the Romans did not have a nation of gods, the entire divine genealogy is traced back to Saturn 368. But pagan writers speak of Saturn as a man - that after various journeys he appeared in Italy, gave Italy laws and established coinage; for all this he received the championship. Thus, Saturn was a man and, therefore, was born from a man. If he is called the son of heaven and earth 369, it is in the sense in which they usually say about a person of unknown origin: “he fell from heaven,” that is, his genealogy is unknown. The deification of Saturn could have happened in another way. In centuries of rudeness and ignorance, the appearance of an unknown person could strike the gaze of the ancestors of the Romans, like some kind of deity, so that they could include Saturn in the category of gods, as do the descendants of the ancient Romans, including dead people, especially emperors, among the gods 370. But no matter how the deification of Saturn happened - this is an unimportant question - only one thing is clear, that Saturn - the father of the gods - was a man, just like the entire “swarm of gods”, because according to the generally accepted axiom, only from God can a god come; if the first cause is not God, then the entire genealogy of pagan gods cannot be called divine 371. And if so, then who elevated them all to divine dignity and for what? – According to fans of polytheism, before Saturn there was no supreme god, therefore, there was no being who could and had the right to impart divine perfections to other beings. But let this supreme being be; Why did it give divine dignity to others? for the services it needed? – But this is unthinkable, because the almighty God could not have needed anyone’s services, especially the services of a mere mortal, and at the same time after the creation of the world. As a reward for their moral virtues? – You can’t say that either; the gods should rather be cast down into Tartarus, where “the monsters of the human race, incestuous people, adulterers, kidnappers, seducers of children, cruel people, murderers, thieves, deceivers ... should be tormented,” because not a single pagan god can be excused from any moral shortcoming - all of them, starting with the father of the gods, are tainted by one crime or another 372. But if so, then why, having raised some to heaven, offend their comrades in atrocities, bringing them down to Tartarus? and wouldn’t it be more logical to elevate all the greatest villains into the ranks of gods?... If they say that the gods were impeccable in life, then why were Socrates, Aristides, Themistocles, Alexander, Croesus and other personalities, much better than the gods in a certain respect, left in hell? 373. These are the kind of people the supreme god should wait for to include them among the gods. “He apparently acted very badly, hastening to make a bad choice; he closed the sky, and now he is ashamed to hear in the depths of hell the murmur of souls who, without a doubt, deserved the advantage” 374. Getting acquainted more closely with the religion of the pagans, it is not difficult to see that all their worship of God is based solely on fables, their deities are nothing more than statues, which “neither kites, mice, nor spiders are afraid of,” idols are made of the same substance as ordinary vessels and tools; to achieve divine honor, idols undergo from their artists the same cruel tortures and executions to which Christians are daily subjected.... in a word, the pagans idolize those who are executed - execution is deification 375. In addition, paganism deified not only people, but even human actions and feelings, various phantoms that did not even have a real existence, abstract concepts, etc. 376. In a word, “there is no act of life, there is no bodily function, there is not even a disease that would not be his god” 377. Christians turn out to be criminals against such and such a religion; they inflict a cruel insult on such and such gods with their disrespect for them. But if Christians, not recognizing such gods as gods, insult them and are guilty, then the pagans, recognizing them as gods and yet despising them, act even more criminally. The pagans are sure that these are gods and despise them, fear them - and destroy them, avenge them - and at the same time insult them... The pagans themselves worship only the gods they please, and thus, choosing some gods to honor, insult others by not choosing 378. The fate of the public gods is entirely in the hands of the Senate. Household gods - lares - are dealt with directly at home - they are sold, pawned, turned into something else, “as they grow old and dilapidated from the honors given to them”; the public gods are dealt with in a public way - these gods are “subject to taxes, assigned for sale at auction, entered into the books of the quaestor, like all other things sold on the market,” and the more gods pay taxes, the more they are respected, and, conversely, the less they are respected, the less tax on them. In order to pay taxes, “servants of the gods are not ashamed to go to drinking houses to ask for alms; they charge a fee for entering the church, just as they receive payment for the places they occupy in the church - you cannot see and know the gods except for a certain fee.” The gods are also insulted by the fact that, among decent gods and emperors - former masters and rulers of the gods, a woman like Laurentia is placed between Ceres and Diana, and thus the entire host of gods is compromised 379. The gods are also insulted and deceived in religious rites, where one would least expect it. Decrepit, stunted, half-dead, infected and covered with ulcers animals are sacrificed to the gods; and of the good animals they try to sacrifice only the unfit parts, which would have been given to slaves and dogs anyway; of the tithes belonging to Hercules, barely a third is brought in. Gods are also profaned in many myths. Like people, gods, according to these myths; they fight among themselves like gladiators, putting each other in chains; They are exposed to the danger of deprivation of life, they bind themselves in marriage, indulge in shameful passions, and initiate intrigues against each other. Like Homer, Roman poets force the gods to shepherd mortal flocks, build city walls, and so on. For all this, philosophers ridicule the gods, and tragedians and comedians even find special pleasure in bringing the gods onto the stage, presenting their misfortunes and passions 380 , and the pagan spectators not only do not blush for their gods, their weaknesses and sins, on the contrary, they become delighted with this, applaud the actors for their successful performance on stage of the role of the gods 381 , and thus clearly swear at their gods and humiliate them. Moreover, these deities are dishonored even in their churches. If in the very temples “at the foot of the altars adultery is committed, if it is the priests and servants of the gods who are sated with this shameful passion, adorned with armbands, scarlet and sacred robes, while incense is still burning, then don’t the gods have reasons to complain more about the pagans than about Christians,” since Christians do not go to pagan temples and do nothing like that there? 382 In order not to remain in debt to Christians, the pagans, for their part, reproaching Christians for atheism, said that Christians honor and worship the donkey's head 383. Tertullian considers Tacitus to be the creator of this fable, cites this very fable and refutes it on the basis of the writings of Tacitus himself. According to Tertullian, the same Tacitus, to whom belongs the honor of inventing this fable, says that after the destruction of Jerusalem by Pompey, no donkey’s head or its image was found in the Jewish church - a clear sign that the donkey’s head, as the deity of Jews and Christians, is a fiction 384. Christians are not atheists, and they do not honor a donkey’s head, says Tertullian, - they worship the one true God 385, they honor the Cross of Christ. But there is no point in persecuting them again for this - the pagans themselves honor the tree (in the form of their statues), they honor the parts of the cross (since each piece of wood is part of the cross), they honor the cross itself - in military banners and trophies that hold crosses, and with these trophies and banners - the troops swear by crosses, revere them, and even more than before the emperor and other gods - they just do not want to honor the cross naked, not adorned 386. - But while some imagine the Christian God under the guise of a donkey’s head, others imagine that their God is the sun 387. Here comes the third representation of the Christian God. “Recently in the local city,” says Tertullian, one scoundrel 388, one of those hired to fight animals, exhibited a picture with the following inscription: “The Christian God is the descendant of a donkey” 389. In this painting he was depicted “with donkey ears, standing on a horny leg, holding a book in his hand and a toga on his shoulders.” Such a monster cannot represent the Christian God - it most likely depicts the god of those people who honor not only ordinary animals with the goddess Epona at their head, but also worship gods with lion and dog heads, with sheep and ram horns, deities that have the appearance of goats from the sacrum, the appearance of snakes from the frogs, with wings on the back and on the legs 390. Christians worship “one God, who, with his word, wisdom and omnipotence, brought the world with the elements out of non-existence, created bodies and spirits to increase his greatness. God is invisible, although He appears everywhere; intangible, although by his grace he inscribed his image in us; incomprehensible, although the human mind knows Him - this very thing proves His existence and greatness,” In addition to the indicated properties of God, His existence is proved by “His actions that surround us, preserve us, amuse us, frighten us 391. “Listen to the testimony of your soul itself, which, despite the prison of the body, prejudice and bad education, the ferocity of passions, slavery to false gods, when it is aroused as if from drunkenness or deep sleep, when it feels - so to speak - a spark of health, involuntarily calls on the name of the one God, and cries out: Great God! good God! whatever God pleases! - Therefore, His name is on everyone’s lips. The soul recognizes Him as the Judge with the following words: God sees, I hope in God, God will reward me. Oh, the testimony of a soul by Christian nature! Pronouncing such words, she turns her gaze not to the Capitol, but to heaven, knowing that there is the palace of God, that from there she herself comes, because she comes from God himself” 392. This inner voice, telling people about the true God, is reinforced and clarified for Christians by a new source of knowledge of God - the Holy. Scripture. The Holy Scriptures are a collection of what God proclaimed to people through God-enlightened men who had their special mission - to be the organs of fulfilling the will of God. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, these men communicated to people sublime concepts about the one God, Creator of the whole world and Judge; in addition, they prophesied about the future. Their prophecies and the miracles they performed to confirm their divine mission are contained in the sacred books, which under Ptolemy Philadelphus became popular thanks to their translation into Greek LXX by translators or interpreters 393. What gives these books special authority is their antiquity - they are much older than what the pagans consider ancient, older than the pagan gods themselves. Moses is the first sacred writer - a contemporary of Inachus, king of Argos, older than the founding of Rome, older than Homer; and other sacred writers are older than the most ancient pagan sages, legislators and historians. History 394 can provide proof of this. Sealed with the authority of antiquity, the sacred books acquire even more credibility and significance, being divine in character. Their divine character is too tangible to be doubted. The world and everything that happens in it provide clear evidence of this. Everything that happens in it - earthquakes, clashes between kingdoms, wars, famines, etc. - all this was predicted, and these predictions, even before their fulfillment, were entered into the sacred books, as anyone can see. The fulfillment of prophecies alone serves as a guarantee of the divinity of St. scriptures - on the one hand, and a guarantee for the future fulfillment of prophecies that have not yet been fulfilled - on the other, because both prophecies constitute the work of the same Spirit of God 395. Relying on divine books, Christians believe in one God and His Son Jesus Christ. The Jews also believed in the same God before - this chosen people from the entire human race, led by God; but then they rejected Him, not recognizing in Jesus Christ the promised Messiah, despite clear predictions about Him, and still expecting something else. They crucified Him, and for this they were rejected by God, expelled from their fatherland, wandering, having neither God nor man as their king - “they are not allowed to even set foot in their own land, even in the form of travelers.” This one God “uttered the Word and, having uttered it, gave birth to Him - for this reason He is called the Son of God, and because of the unity of His being is also called God; for God is Spirit. The Word becomes Spirit from Spirit, God from God, just as light is the outflow of light. The source of light loses nothing either in its essence or in its seed when it is communicated and poured out; so also that which comes from God is God and the Son of God (both are one), Spirit from Spirit, God from God, the other in person, but not in quality, the other in order, but not in nature, starting from its origin, but not leaving it. This ray of God, as it was predicted, descended into the Virgin, and became flesh in her depths, and was born as a man united with God. The flesh, quickened by the spirit, feeds, grows, speaks, teaches, acts: this is Christ.” According to the prophecies, there are two comings of I. Christ: “the first in the humiliation of the human condition - it was; the other is in the greatness of the discovery of the Divinity, which will occur at the end of the ages. Not understanding the first, the Jews expect the second, and believe that this alone will happen. The humiliation of Jesus Christ prompted the Jews to recognize Him as a simple man, and His power was considered sorcery.” By His miracles, “He reveals Himself everywhere to be the Word of the eternal God, His only begotten Son, full of wisdom, omnipotence and His spirit.” The Jewish teachers and high priests, embittered against Him, forced Pilate to hand Him over to them for crucifixion. I. Christ was crucified and died on the cross - at this time an eclipse occurred, recorded in the annals stored in the Roman archives. The body of I. Christ, taken from the cross and placed in the tomb, did not remain there for long - I. Christ was resurrected on the third day. In order to prevent the spread of faith in I. Christ, the Jews began to spread rumors that the body of I. Christ was stolen by His disciples. After the resurrection, after 40 days, during which I. Christ appeared to his disciples and commanded them to go preach the Gospel to all creation, He ascended to heaven. “Pilate, being in his heart and almost a Christian himself, presented Tiberius with a clear and detailed report of everything that I said here, and the emperors themselves could have believed in Christ if they had not been carried away by the world”... “Here is the history and the exact time of the appearance of your sect, along with its Founder and the name assigned to it.” From here the pagans can already see: Is I. God? Christ and whether His religion is true; and if it is true, then all others that are opposite to it are untrue and false 396. In addition to God and His only begotten Son, Christians also recognize the world of spirits, just as pagan philosophers and poets recognized it, and simple ignorant people also recognize it. Christians believe that the world of the disembodied consists of good angels and evil ones; the activity of the latter always tends to harm a person, although a person cannot always notice that it is the spirits of evil that are at work here, due to the fact that these spirits do not fall under external feelings and are only noticed by their activity. But what is especially pleasant for demons is to deviate people from true worship of God and tie them to idols, under the guise of which they themselves accept sacrifices and become satiated with them. Thanks to the speed of transition from one place to another, demons are successful in this - they know what is happening where and, taking advantage of this, they mislead people through charms and oracles, and thus easily bring people to the point that they recognize and honor them as gods 397. That gods and demons are one and the same, the proof of this is the fact of the exorcism of demons, the proof is strong and solemn. Let a person who is known to be possessed by a demon appear before a Christian; if a Christian commands a demon to speak, then the demon will confess that he is really a demon, and that in other cases he pretends to be God. In the name of I. Christ, of whom the demons are terribly afraid, a Christian can not only ask the demons who they are in order to convince the pagans, but also completely drive them out of people, and the demons obey the Christian, and go out in the eyes of the pagans with rage and screaming 398 . If, not yet expelled, they speak of themselves as demons, and call themselves gods out of vanity, then, disgraced by expulsion, they can no longer lie and speak against themselves - therefore, their testimony about the Christian religion and pagan gods in this case can be trusted. This testimony, amazing in itself, turned many pagans into Christians 399; it speaks strongly for Christianity, justifying Christians from reproaches for insulting the pagan Roman religion, because if this religion is not the true religion, then it is impossible to blame others for insulting it. This accusation - instead of Christians - is directed at the admirers of the pagan religion themselves, as admirers of lies, who not only despise the true religion and the true God, but also openly arm themselves against it, therefore, guilty of atheism. But if the pagans already insist on their worship of God, do not want to leave their national religion and accept Christianity, then they should not inflict blatant injustice and violence; Christians should not be required to honor the same deities and make sacrifices to them; They should not be forced to do this by force, but should give Christians both the freedom to worship God and the choice of a deity. By forcing Christians to do this, they do not at all please their gods, and the gods themselves, unless they act in the name of childish feelings, should not accept sacrifices made against their will. “What kind of God would demand violent honors for himself! A person wouldn’t even want 400 of them.” “Religion must be acceptable by conviction, and not due to violent measures, offerings to the deity must come from the consent of the heart” 401. This principle - the principle of free belief in any deity - the Romans apply to all nations subject to them - only “freedom of conscience is taken away from some Christians; some Christians insult the Romans; The Romans do not recognize Christians as Romans only because they do not adore the Christian God. But whether you like it or not, our God is the God of the entire human race; and He must be - finally - adored by all 402. The Romans demanded adoration of their gods from everyone out of gratitude to their gods, due to the belief that the Romans “because of their zeal for religion alone rose to such a degree of glory that they became the rulers of the world, and as if proof of the reality of their deities is that their greatest admirers are also the strongest peoples in the world.” Apparently the argument is strong. Tertullian tries to unravel the Gordian knot in him and reveal the sophistry that lies in all this belief of the Romans. According to him, speaking about the help and assistance of the gods in the conquest and achievement of the splendor of the Roman Empire, one must understand only the national gods, and not the conquered ones - it is incomprehensible that the gods of one or another conquered region or locality would help the Roman weapons to take possession of their homeland, their fatherland, where they were born, lived and where their tombs are located. It is most natural to expect from them that they will help their people, their compatriots, and not the Romans. But also among national deities - thanks to which gods did the Romans achieve greatness? Is it not Lavrentina, this most obscene woman, to whom the Romans burned incense with special zeal? And what would the national gods particularly advocate for the Romans? They began to be honored after achieving the greatness of the Roman state, but before the Romans became great, they were not religious 403. “Wild Rome is older than some of the Roman gods. He governed before the Capitol received a huge circumference” 404 - therefore, the reason for the greatness of the Romans does not lie in their religiosity. In addition, the greatness of Rome cannot be considered a consequence of the religiosity of the Romans and because the expansion of the Roman state through conquests, its apogee, was achieved by a number of insults to the gods. “The Romans had as many trophies, as many sacrileges, as many victories over peoples, as many victories over gods, as many booty was taken from the enemy, as many captive gods were taken away. And the gods willingly agree to accept honors from their enemies and winners! They give unlimited power to those from whom they should demand satisfaction for the insult, and not worship... Thus, it is difficult to attribute to religion the greatness of the Romans, who insulted it as they exalted it, or exalted themselves as they insulted it 405. If - in fact - the Roman gods had kingdoms, then the Jews - contemporaries of their gods - would never have been able to reign; and meanwhile they reigned, they had a church, which even the Romans themselves supplied with gifts, and the Romans themselves made sacrifices to the God of the Jews. The Romans would never have been able to conquer this nation (the Jews) if it had not committed deicide... So, the distributor of royal crowns is not a pagan deity, but rather a supreme Being, “on whom both the earth and those who reign on earth depend; He who was before time and created times and ages, also established the dates and changes of empires; cities rise and fall according to the will of Him who possessed the human race before cities existed 406. It is this Ruler of the universe that Christians worship, and not pagan imaginary gods. Convinced of the truth of Christianity and the falsity of paganism, Christians, in response to all pagan compulsions - to make sacrifices to the gods - will always exhibit a fair consciousness of their conscience, even if they had to pay for it with their lives - and this will not be stubbornness on the part of Christians; The advice of pagans to Christians - to sacrifice to the gods in order to preserve their lives - as the suggestion of demons, opponents of good, will forever remain advice that none of the Christians will follow 407. With such a conviction, expressed for all Christians, Tertullian ends that section of his apology, where he treats the attitude of Christians to the Roman cult and proves that Christians, worshiping the one God, are not atheists, and, by refusing to honor the pagan gods, do not in the least offend the Romans with their cult, - the matter of religion is a matter of conscience and conviction, everyone can recognize such a God as he pleases - in the realm of feelings, the hearts of outsiders should not enter with your own demands, otherwise it will be a violation of universal human rights, and forced service will be unpleasant to the gods themselves. This accusation of atheism against Christians was not particularly important in the eyes of the Romans, and could have been excused if only others had not joined here, which had great significance in the eyes of the Romans and were considered a political crime, for example, lese imperial majesty. Realizing everything, presenting everything in a sensual form, Rome had long embodied the entire Roman empire in one person of the emperor, looked at the emperor as the entire empire. The emperor, as the center and embodiment of the entire life of the empire, became a sacred person for every Roman - to whom the greatness of the fatherland was dear, the personality of the emperor was also dear 408. It is known about the attitude of a Roman to his fatherland: every member of the Roman state revered his fatherland - its greatness was happiness, pride for every Roman 409. Having embodied his empire in the person of the emperor, the Roman transferred his view and his state relations to the personality of the emperor. The emperor became an idol for him, a god 410; statues were erected to him, churches were built, sacrifices were made in his honor, his genius was sworn, etc. 411 Behind the personality of the emperor - god, everything was obscured, even the gods themselves occupied a secondary place and were grouped around the deified emperor. Due to the close connection between the emperor and the empire, an insult inflicted on the emperor was considered tantamount to an insult to the entire state, and any attack on the honor and personality of the emperor would cost dearly to anyone who dared to do so. To the credit of the Romans, it should be noted that they vigilantly guarded the person of the emperor 412; The Roman ear was sensitive to its insult, and if a citizen of the Roman Empire heard lèse-majesté, he became indignant - the image of the fatherland immediately rose before him at the peak of its splendor, and the stain that the insult imposed on this bright background of domestic splendor was drawn. Before this crime, every other crime seemed less serious to him. The death penalty was determined for failure to recognize the divine dignity of the emperor and for insulting His Majesty 413. - From all this one can judge how the Romans should have treated Christians, in whose company they constantly suspected and noticed an insult to the emperor, and in his person to the entire empire. Christians did not idolize the emperor, did not show him divine honors, did not swear by his genius, and did not take part in pagan solemn processions and sacrifices in honor of the emperors. From all this, the Romans drew one conclusion: Christians were the enemies of the emperor and the empire. It is to this accusation that Tertullian now turns and tries to present Christians not as enemies of the Caesars and the Roman Empire, but as the best subjects. Indeed, says Tertullian, Christians are the greatest criminals, if only they actually insult the imperial majesty. The majesty of the emperors is much higher than the majesty of the Roman gods, and the Romans themselves are right when they reverence and fear the emperors more than Olympian Jupiter and other soulless gods who do not have the opportunity to take revenge for their insult, because the power of the emperors is always before their eyes, tangible, while the power of the gods is still a question - and it is always easier for them to break an oath pronounced in the name of all the gods than an oath one genius of the emperor 414. But all this accusation falls on Christians not because they insult the imperial dignity, but solely because they pray for the emperor to the unrecognized and not recognized true God by the Romans, because they do not place the emperor below what is subject to him, because Christians do not play with the well-being of the emperor 415. “For the health and prosperity of emperors, Christians pray to the eternal God, the true God,” Who is the Creator of everything - and emperors, the Lord and Distributor of crowns, through Whom the emperors themselves become emperors. From this true and omnipotent God, Christians “ask the emperors for a long life, a peaceful reign, the safety of their home, the courage of the army, the fidelity of the Senate, the good behavior of the people, the peace of the whole world, in a word - everything that a person and an emperor can wish for, and are fully convinced that God will hear their prayer and grant what they ask for. Consequently, the crime of Christians is one, namely, that they “observe truth and fidelity to God” 416, do not know how to lie and flatter emperors, like the pagans themselves, and show them due respect. If Christians are generally commanded to pray for enemies and persecutors - which in all fairness can be called those emperors - persecutors, of whose lese majeste Christians are accused - and they fulfill this commandment; then all the more will they fulfill another, direct and positive, commandment - to pray for emperors and their subjects, so that complete prosperity flourishes in the state (1 Tim. 2: 1, 2) 417. Christians are members of the empire; therefore, state unrest will painfully respond to them, unless they contribute to its elimination 418 - with their prayers they actually contribute to this; Moreover, with their prayers for the emperor and the Roman Empire, Christians not only suppress state unrest, but also push back the imminent end of the world - praying for the continuation of the world, Christians - naturally - pray for the continuation of the Roman Empire 419. If Christians do not swear by the genius of emperors, it is because of the conviction that geniuses are demons; but on the other hand, Christians swear by the lives of emperors - God’s anointed ones, which is incomparably more valuable to them than the geniuses themselves 420. By turning to the true, omnipotent God with prayers for emperors, Christians thereby contribute to the well-being of the empire and emperors more than pagans. True, Christians do not equate emperors with God, but place them lower than Him; but by this they do not in the least humiliate the emperors, because by this they express the real truth, and do not lie or flatter the emperors, like the pagans, who, although they adore the emperors, nevertheless, in triumphal processes through a herald, declare to them that they are not gods, but people. And the emperors themselves will probably agree that it is enough for them to only be emperors, and not to arrogate to themselves the honor of a deity 421. The founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus, indeed, did not appropriate the title of deity to himself, and could not tolerate being called a ruler in the sense that they say about God. One Lord is the Lord, He is the Lord of the emperors, His dominion extends to everyone; to equate the emperors with Him would be an insult to Him, and vile flattery to the emperors 422. If we analyze the matter strictly, it turns out that the enemies of the emperors are not Christians, who celebrate the solemn imperial days with an outpouring of the feelings of their hearts, and do this sincerely, as their heart desires tell them, but the pagans who “on these days light fires, lay out beds in the streets, hold huge celebrations here, turn Rome into a drinking house, pour wine everywhere, run around in crowds, committing all sorts of impudence and outrages,” cover the doors of their houses with laurels, light lamps, - pagans who, under the guise of veneration of emperors, wish for their frequent replacement in order to see their generosity more - pagans - Romans, from among whom came various Cassii, Niger, Albini, Sigeria and Parthenii - murderers of their emperors and rebels. Christians cannot be reproached for any of this; not a single Christian can be convicted 423. If now the Romans - zealous admirers and adorers of the emperors - turn out to be their enemies, then, on the contrary, could it not happen that the imaginary enemies - Christians - turn out to be real Romans, and not enemies of the state? From Christians, who have as their principle not to do evil or harm to anyone, can anything be expected against the emperors and the empire? 424 The entire previous history of Christians shows that Christians, although they suffered a lot from the pagans, even though they had reason to hate them and take revenge on them for various persecutions; but, maintaining the principle of all-forgiving love, love even for enemies, Christians never made even an attempt at revenge. Meanwhile, with their numbers, they could take revenge on their persecutors with armed force; Even without raising arms, they would have cruelly taken revenge on their rulers, if only this did not contradict their beliefs - the simple separation of Christians would have shown how many of these imaginary enemies the Romans had. If the Christians had separated, there would have been silence and silence in the cities, and the Romans would have had no one to rule over. But Christians did not and do not take revenge on the pagans; they pay them back for evil with good, driving out their enemies - demons... It is necessary, however, to admit that Christians are indeed enemies, only enemies not of the state and not of the human race, as the pagan Romans imagine, but enemies of religious and moral errors 425 . In order to finally justify Christians from the anti-state charges brought against them, it was not enough to clarify the relationship of Christians to the Roman emperors, since state life, although embodied in the person of the emperors, has many manifestations outside this person. When the pagans accused Christians of anti-government, they had in mind other grounds taken from the life of Christians. In centuries of persecution, when Christians had to fear attacks from the pagans at every turn, open worship was impossible. To celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist and worship, the leading Christians mostly gathered in the catacombs and there - on the tombs of the martyrs - in the evening and night hours, a time free from daytime noise and more or less safe from the pagans, sang hymns of praise to God, held love suppers, and celebrated the sacrament of the Eucharist. Such Christian liturgical gatherings, of course, could not hide from the gaze of pagans. In the eyes of a suspicious government, these meetings of Christians took on a different character. They began to say about Christians that they, fleeing the world and hiding from human eyes in the catacombs, were probably plotting something evil against the state; They are a gang of conspirators and, by virtue of the existing laws on secret meetings, are intolerable in society. These suspicions and guesses were further strengthened by the fact that Christians shunned the life of the pagans, avoided pagan entertainment, etc. All anti-state accusations against Christians: lèse imperial majeste, Christian enemies of the state, conspirators, people suspicious in public life - all the accusations taken together were very strong for a citizen of the Roman Empire; therefore, in order to justify Christians (that they are not political criminals), the apologist had to break down all those elements or particular points that made up this one great accusation. – Tertullian has already explained above that Christians are not enemies of emperors and do not in the least offend His Majesty. Now he begins to analyze the accusation that Christians constitute a gang of conspirators, the perpetrators of social disasters, people unfit for public life. Christians are not enemies of the state, do not form a gang of conspirators and do not disrupt the flow of state affairs, since they have no passion for fame, honors, etc., and do not find benefit in conspiracies, or in confusing popular and senate assemblies 426 . By moving away from pagan life and pagan entertainment, Christians should not incur suspicion of anti-state aspirations - they only move away from pagan superstitions, recognizing them as positively harmful to themselves, and choose a different kind of pleasure, because they do not like pagan ones, as pagans do Christian ones 427 . They gather in one place for the purpose of “praying to God, forming a sacred union favorable to Him, praying for the emperors, their ministers, all powers, peace, the well-being of the whole world, the removal of the final revolution in the universe; they gather to read the sacred scriptures, from which, depending on the circumstances, they draw the information and instructions necessary for them,” - a scripture that “nourishes the faith and hope of Christians, supports their hope, more and more strengthens piety among them, introducing its rules into them.” In these meetings, presided over by elders, “exhortations and corrections take place, sentences are pronounced in the name of God,” which Christians look upon as Divine judgment. Brotherly love occupies a very prominent place here. For this, by the way, brotherly love, the pagans blame Christians, probably because the pagans have broken all family ties and there are constant disputes between relatives regarding property. Christians have everything in common except their wives - in this respect they differ sharply from the Romans themselves, who destroy marriage bonds by giving up their wives to friends to produce children, and thus even the upper classes of Roman society set an example of debauchery. In their congregations Christians hold love feasts; but these are not luxurious feasts of the Salians, but modest meals arranged for charitable purposes”; everything is done decently on them: there is no loud talking and no obscenity; they begin and end only with prayer. After the supper there is no infanticide, no debauchery - all this is a fiction, a blatant lie. If meetings of Christians were in connection or in communication with dangerous and criminal crowds, then Christians would not defend them, but would be the first to ask for their destruction 428 . But “assemblies of honest, virtuous, pious and chaste people are not a gang of conspirators, but a more respectable senate.” - It is completely in vain that Christians are blamed and considered - for their imaginary lawlessness, insult to the empire and its gods - to be the culprits of all social disasters 429. Usually, as soon as any disaster happens, cries are heard: “Christians to the lions.” 430 But in doing this to Christians, they forget one historical phenomenon: that social disasters, even the most severe ones, existed even when there were no Christians yet. Where is the cause of these disasters? In the wrath of the gods? Do the gods produce them if they themselves cannot feel anything? 431 It was not pagan gods, but the true God, irritated by the iniquities of people, who carried out and are making all these revolutions on the globe, such as the global flood, etc. 432 On the other hand, it was noticed that with the advent of Christianity and Christians, social disasters decreased significantly. God no longer punishes people with the same severity; How can this circumstance be explained if not by the influence of Christianity and the prayers of Christians? 433. Thus, it turns out that it is not Christians who are the cause of social disasters, but the pagans themselves, who irritate God with their worship of idols and move Him to punish them for idolatry - they “bring the scourge of heaven to earth.” And that God’s faithful servants also suffer divine punishment along with the pagans, the reason for this lies in the special plans of God - God in this life neither rewards nor punishes anyone - He will carry out the final judgment and reward everyone according to their deserts at the end of the world; - and, therefore, the fact that Christians are punished for the sacrilege of pagans does not in the least speak against Christianity and Christians and in favor of paganism 434. Just as all the previous accusations against Christians by pagans are unfounded, the reproach made to Christians that “they are useless for the connections of social life” also has no factual support. In everyday life, Christians are placed in the same conditions as pagans: they enjoy the same everyday environment, have very frequent clashes and relations with pagans everywhere, and only pagan ceremonies and various kinds of spectacles are avoided. Christians and pagans mutually work for each other and receive reward or payment accordingly. Hence, it is not clear how it turns out that Christians are useless in public life? If we take into account the payment of taxes, then Christians in this regard turn out to be more efficient than the pagans themselves. In addition to these state taxes, the pagans receive a lot of income or benefits from Christians, thanks to the confiscation of their property 435. Christians are among the pagans what the soul is to the body - they delivered many from demons, healed them from illnesses; with their prayers they brought rain down from the sky, since “no drought can withstand their fasts and prayers”; Christians paternally patronize orphans, feed the poor, etc. 436 This should convince even prejudiced people that Christians are very useful in public life, useless only for kidnappers, magicians, fortune-tellers, astrologers, and other exploiters 437 . Christianity, by the way, was looked at as one of the philosophical schools, as a human work, and did not see anything divine in it. Tertullian makes his remark on such a view. Let, he says, Christianity be a philosophical school; Why don’t the Romans treat it the same way as any other schools? Why do some people turn a blind eye and persecute others? The pagans of Rome should treat Christianity, even as a philosophy, with greater respect than that enjoyed by the dominant philosophical schools - its superiority over philosophical schools is obvious. Philosophers clearly destroy public worship, condemn pagan superstitions - and they are applauded for this; many philosophers even take up arms against state authorities and the existing political system - and for this they even receive awards, etc. Christians who have not done anything against the state are persecuted as enemies of the emperor and the empire; Christians who preach the truth and defend it are tortured and punished as superstitions and fans of error; Christians who profess the one true God and reject polytheism, which is not akin to their souls, are accused and judged as atheists, etc. But the fact is that Christianity is not a branch of this or that philosophical school, and Christians are its followers; Christians cannot be compared with philosophers either in terms of teaching, or in terms of applying this teaching to life, or in terms of morality. The philosophers had no definite doctrine of divinity, their religious opinions were shaky and extremely varied 438; among Christians, the last artisan knows more about God than the greatest pagan philosopher. Regarding moral issues and their application to life, there can be no question - here, in this respect, Christians are far superior to all pagan philosophers - the pagans themselves speak with special respect of many supporters of Christian morality and their practical application. In a word, “is it possible to compare a philosopher with a Christian, a student of Greece with a student of heaven itself, a man who is concerned only with glory, with a man who cares only about his own salvation, a man who speaks wisely with a man who acts wisely, a man who destroys everything with a man who builds and supports everything? How can one compare the champion of error with its opponent, the distorter of truth with its avenger, the thief of it with its eternal guardian and owner? 439 What do two people who are so opposite to each other have in common? 440 Touching upon the question of the superiority of revealed teaching over the teaching of philosophers, Tertullian, by the way, takes one point from the entire body of Christian doctrine - the doctrine of the posthumous existence of man, and by comparing this doctrine with non-Christian doctrine he proves his thought. Meanwhile, outside of Christianity, the doctrine of soul transmigration reigned, if only not the complete destruction of man with death, Christianity spoke of a new life after the grave - not the same as it was imagined in pagan dogma - it announced that for this life all people will be resurrected, “everyone will again become what he was, that the soul will again revive the body, although, perhaps, not in the exact form in which it was.” Not to mention the fact that this Christian teaching is entirely based on divine authority, it is necessarily required by the idea of ​​a just and omnipotent God 441, and has a great influence on the lives of those who accept this teaching - thanks to the doctrine of the resurrection, eternal rewards and punishments, people become better. The practical conclusion from here, consistent with the goal suggested by the apology, is that this teaching is also beneficial in public life; but only prejudice, which forgets all benefits, can condemn what is beneficial. And this prejudice is held by the Romans, not only by the masses, not by the blind crowd, but also by people occupying very prominent positions. And among the Roman judges there are those who, in order to gain the people's love and favor, use various cruelties towards Christians, and find in this a sign of their triumph. Meanwhile, it is not the pagan Romans who should rejoice, but the Christians, because through persecution, torture and painful death they achieve what they wanted 442. At the conclusion of his apology, Tertullian does not appeal to the Roman authorities and the Roman people with a request for religious tolerance - the nature of the entire apology does not allow him to end his word in this way. He calls on the Romans only to seriously examine the cause of Christians and points out the inevitable consequence of persecution. “First,” he says, “take the beam out of your own eye, and then set about taking the straw out of your neighbor’s eye. Correct your morals before becoming ferocious against the morals of Christians. Examine what you blame us for, and you will no longer blame us. Finally, get to know yourself, and you will become stricter with yourself. This little book 443 should be enough, if not to show you the truth, then at least to show you the way to find it. If you please, condemn the truth and prove the error; but only let it be with full consciousness of the matter” 444. “You can,” he continues, “turning to the Roman administration, freely condemn us to execution, torture and exterminate us 445; but we are not at all afraid of the persecution that threatens us from those people who hate the light... 446 Your injustice is direct proof of our innocence... All your subtle cruelties serve nothing: they bind us even more to our religion. We multiply as you reap: our blood becomes seed for Christians.” And this is especially thanks to example. If every example is stronger than words, then even more so the example of Christians - their firmness and heroic enduring of torment force every eyewitness to delve into their reason and then join the Christians. Thus, a series of torments invented for Christians by pagan hatred is the closest path leading pagans to the Church of Christ 447. The nature of Tertullian’s work “adversus iudaeus” and its analysis. The idea of ​​the Jews about their superiority over other peoples, based on the Old Testament divine institutions. The temporary nature of these institutions, their transformative significance. Old Testament messianic prophecies and their fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. The false messianic idea of ​​the Jews as the reason why they did not recognize the promised Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ. Two comings of the Son of God. Tertullian's final conclusion from his adversus iudaeus. Tertullian also has a treatise concerning his external activities - this treatise “adversus iudaeus”. Its purpose is not so much apologetic as missionary - to illuminate the Jews with the light of Christ’s teaching, by clarifying the Old Testament messianic prophecies to show that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, that if the Jews are faithful to the Old Testament revelation, then they must call in Him that promised Person, Who was the hope of Old Testament humanity. The treatise against the Jews, according to Tertullian himself, is, as it were, a continuation of the conversation that a Christian and a Jewish proselyte had between themselves. As you can see, the Jew especially insisted on his descent from the forefather of the believers, and displayed his advantage in the kingdom of God. It is known that the Jews sharply separated themselves from other nations, they considered only themselves worthy heirs of the kingdom of God 448, while all other nations in their eyes were seen as people standing outside the doors of the blessed kingdom, “a drop of water in a vessel, tares carried away by the wind 449. In his treatise, Tertullian primarily refers to this national pride of the Jews; he contrasts the narrow ideas of his opponents with the breadth of the views of Christianity 450, and proves that both unequal halves of the human race - Jews and other peoples - by the will of God should form one great family in the blessed kingdom of Christ; Moreover, the nation standing outside the guidance of the Mosaic Law, according to the promise of God, must triumph. In the oath of God spoken to Abraham (Gen. 22:18), both nations are equally called nations, without any advantage to one or the other. And the promise of Rebekah (Gen. 25:23) clearly states that the younger nation will triumph over the older. This promise has already been fulfilled. The older people - the Jews, called to the kingdom of God before other nations, throughout their lives gradually fell under the yoke of slavery - in religious terms, “they were always criminal in idolatry,” abandoned the true God and bowed their knees to idols (Ex. 32: 1b 8), and at the end of times completely rejected the true God. The younger people found themselves with advantages over the older ones. True, he walked after idols for a long time, outside the guidance of the written law and the special vigilant protection of God; but he “left idols, turned to the God whom Israel rejected, gained the blessing of divine protection, which Israel had lost,” and thus “the younger - Christian people triumphed over the older - Jewish 451. And does the Jewish people, proud of their advantages, have any prerogatives that would sharply distinguish them from other nations, and which would be permanent and eternal? – Jews usually point in this case to the Law of Moses, the Sabbath, circumcision, etc. Old Testament institutions. But, says Tertullian, none of this puts the Jews above other peoples. The Law of Moses is not the exclusive property of the Jews; God “gave it through Moses not only for one people, but for all nations in general.” The proof of this is that the Legislator Himself allowed it to be accepted by everyone without distinction; on the other hand, the fact that this law appeared relatively late is not a primary law given only to Jews. In its rudimentary and primary form, the law of Sinai also lay in the commandment given to Adam and Eve in paradise”; this commandment is, as it were, the source of divine decrees; it “contained collectively all the decrees that were to be developed in due time in a later law,” and passed on to other nations. Hence, if the basis of the law - the primary commandment genetically became the property of all formed nations, then it cannot be said that the Sinai law - the revelation of the primary commandment - was the exclusive property of one Jewish people. “Before the law of Moses, inscribed on stone tablets, there was already a law, not written, but understood and observed according to the inspiration of natural knowledge” - an unwritten law or the law of conscience. They were guided by this unwritten law all the time until the Mosaic Law was written and - they pleased God - Noah, Abraham and other righteous people were guided by the only natural law. Consequently, “the law (in the proper sense) received its beginning not on Mount Horeb, not on Sinai and not in the desert,” but earlier, and, therefore, it should not be a subject of special pride and exclusivity of the Jews; there is no need to dwell on it alone and consider it the main law, one, eternal and unchanging. Appearing as an expression of natural law, appearing relatively late, it did not constitute the essence of the divine economy 452. The Mosaic Law, moreover, was imprinted with a local character, a character of cruelty. This “old law was upheld by the sword, cut out eye for eye” 453. As a result, imperfect, it could not remain forever active. “Through Moses the law was given only for a certain time, so that it would be observed temporarily,” and in the Old Testament itself the prophets predicted its abolition and replacement with a new law 454, alien to local exclusivity, a law imbued with the character of universalism, rising above the cruelties and coercive measures of the Old Testament law 455. Just as temporary institutions should not be a source of pride for modern Jews, the Sabbath and circumcision should not be a source of pride. Like the law, these Old Testament institutions did not appear early and were temporary. Without these rituals, until the time of their establishment, the righteous became saints of God. If circumcision purified a person, then Adam would have been created circumcised, or - at least - would have received circumcision for his purification after the Fall; If the Sabbath had been such an important institution that it could not be done without it, then the first people would have strictly observed what pertains to the Sabbath. Meanwhile, history shows that neither Adam nor any of the Old Testament righteous people before Abraham were circumcised, none of them celebrated the Sabbath, and yet they pleased God 456. And Abraham himself “pleased God before he was circumcised, and did not celebrate the Sabbath at all.” Considering the nature of the Old Testament institutions, Tertullian finds that circumcision itself was established “not as an advantage of salvation, but as a sign of the times” 457. “Carnal circumcision was temporarily given to the rebellious people as a sign by which they could be recognized when they were prohibited from entering Jerusalem because of their iniquities.” God was pleased not with this carnal circumcision, but with circumcision of the heart, as “a guarantee of salvation for a submissive people” 458, “spiritual circumcision”, which preceded carnal circumcision 459. As a result, “the first-given (carnal) circumcision had to turn and give way to a new law, different from the law given to the fathers of the Jews,” and it was abolished, as was predicted 460. Likewise, “the observance of the Sabbath was only a temporary institution.” “The Holy Scriptures mention both the temporary and the eternal Sabbath.” The temporary Sabbath “belongs to man” and is displeasing to God (Ex. 1:14; Ezek. 23:38); and the eternal Sabbath “goes back to God.” “It was announced and prescribed before the temporary Sabbath, just as the spiritual circumcision was predicted before the physical circumcision.” Before Moses, the righteous were saved not by special reverence for this temporary Sabbath. If the decree about the Sabbath appeared only in the Mosaic Law, then, obviously, the Sabbath is temporary, its celebration must cease in the same time as it began. It was not in this temporary Sabbath that God was pleased; “the keeping of the Sabbath consisted not in the keeping of this seventh day.” The capture of Jericho is the clearest proof of this. Even on the Sabbath day, even the priests were not free from the siege of the city and from its capture. The wars and victories of the Maccabees, won on the Sabbath days, prove the same. From these particular cases of the abolition of the Sabbath law by the command of God, it is clear that “this law was not originally given to the Jews so that it would be fulfilled forever” 461 . Finally, the most important institution of the Mosaic Law - sacrifices - and they had to stop. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of sacrifices: carnal and spiritual sacrifices - “the carnal, earthly sacrifices of the eldest son, that is, Israel, from the very beginning are transformed through the sacrifices of Cain,” spiritual ones - through the sacrifices of Abel (Gen. 4: 4–14). In the instructions of Moses, the people of Israel were “commanded to offer sacrifices in no other place than in the Promised Land”; the younger people - according to the predictions of the prophets, led by the Holy Spirit - “will one day offer sacrifices throughout the whole face of the earth and in every place” (Mal. 1:11). The Lord favored spiritual sacrifices, “a spiritual sacrifice of praise is acceptable to God, a sacrifice to Him is a broken spirit” (Ps. 50:19; 49:14). On the contrary, carnal sacrifices are unpleasant to Him, and He Himself announced their rejection (Ex. 1:11–15) 462. Thus, in the Old Testament, “the temporary Sabbath and the eternal Sabbath, carnal circumcision and spiritual circumcision, the temporal law and the eternal law, carnal sacrifices and spiritual sacrifices were predicted.” It was predicted that the temporal and ancient should cease and be replaced by the new and spiritual - with the appearance of a new divine Lawgiver. Consequently, the whole matter now comes down to clarifying one thing, that “the ancient law has ceased, and that the promised new law is now in effect”; in other words, to solve the question: “has the Creator of the new law, the Guardian of the spiritual Sabbath, the High Priest of eternal sacrifices, the immortal Lord of the eternal kingdom come or not?” If it has come, then the Old Testament law with all its institutions has already come to an end, and the time has come for the new covenant; and if not, in that case it still has its binding force 463. This question will be resolved by itself if we compare the Old Testament prophecies about the appearance of the Messiah with historical events. It was predicted that the preaching about I. Christ would spread “to all the earth” (Ex. 40:1; Ps. 18:5). “This miracle has already happened” before the eyes of everyone, “in all places the name of I. Christ, Who has already come and reigns, is glorified,” “His name and power penetrate to all ends of the universe; everywhere they believe in Him; all nations revere Him; everywhere He reigns, everywhere He is worshiped, everywhere the same tribute is brought to Him. There is no barbarian who would not be received from Him with joy; there is no rank or status that could enjoy a special advantage here; He treats everyone the same, he rules over everyone equally. He is one King, one Judge, one Lord God in the universe" 464. Prophet Daniel predicted with accuracy “the time for the birth of I. Christ, for His suffering and for desolation, i.e. destruction of Jerusalem" (Dan. 9:1. 2. 21-27), - according to prophecy - "from the exodus of the word to Christ, 62 weeks will pass, and the Holy of Holies will be anointed; then the anointing will be consumed; after the end of seven weeks, in one week and half a week, the hail will crumble, the sacrifice will be taken away, and the end will be desolate.” – Chronological data clearly show that from the first year of the reign of Darius, when the time of the coming of the Messiah was revealed to Daniel, until the appearance of I. Christ, 438 ½ years or 62 ½ weeks passed, and that the reign of Augustus was the time when the promised Messiah was to reveal Himself to the world. The same chronology, continued during the time of the appearance of the Messiah, shows the fulfillment of the rest of Daniel’s prophecy, namely, that I. Christ, being about 30 years old, suffered in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, that from the birth of I. Christ until the destruction of Jerusalem, 52½ years passed, or 7 1/2 weeks. Thus, from the time of Daniel’s prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem, 438 ½ + 52 ½ years passed, i.e. 70 weeks. In the last period of the weeks, anointing was required, when the hand and nose of I. Christ were plowed (Ps. XXI); “this bloody sacrifice was performed at the end of the 70 weeks, during the reign of Tiberius; the whole synagogue of the children of Israel participated in this sacrifice.” At the end of all the weeks, Jewish sacrifice and offerings were stopped in the country, because, on the one hand, the anointing was consumed, on the other, the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, and sacrifices and offerings could no longer be sent there. Thus, Daniel's prophecy was fulfilled with literal accuracy 465. In a similar consideration of historical data, one can see the fulfillment of another prophecy of Daniel, that in Judea there will be prophets only until the Messiah. The evangelist had the right to say that all the prophets and the law before John (the Baptist) prophesied (Matthew 11:13). With the appearance of I. Christ, there were no more prophets with predictions about the Messiah, - I. Christ appeared “the seal and completion of all the prophets,” - “as soon as He was baptized, the fullness of the spiritual grace of the ancient law was entirely concentrated in I. Christ, and He sealed the visions and all the prophecies, fulfilling them with His coming 466. In the Old Testament prophecies, the birth of I. Christ from the Virgin and His all-conquering power were predicted (Ex. 7:13–15; 8:4). Here the Jews objected that they too see in this place from the prophecies of Isaiah a prophecy about the Messiah; but is it applicable to I. Christ who has already come? “Isaiah declares, the Jews said, that He will be called Immanuel, and that He will receive (destroy) the power of Damascus, and (delight) the gains of Samaria before the king of Assyria. It is known that the Christ who came, in your opinion, never called himself by this name and did not make war.” To resolve the first objection, Tertullian advises mainly to pay attention to the meaning of the name - Immanuel (God with us); the name “God with us” was exactly justified in I. Christ - “all the Jews who believed in Him do not call Emmanuel otherwise than “God with us.” Then he examines the idea of ​​the Messiah as a King-Conqueror. In the expression: “he will receive the power of Damascus and the gain of Samaria before the king of Assyria,” the Jews “strengthen to see the prophecy about Christ the Conqueror, not paying attention to what was said in the prophecy, i.e., that He will receive this power and these gain before the youth even call father or mother.” In this prophecy, “one must take into account,” says Tertullian, “the age of the Adolescent, whose weakness is not characteristic of acting like an adult, much less a boss.” If, judging by the laws of nature, success in life precedes success in the art of war, if it is necessary to know the name of father and mother before taming the pride of Damascus; then one inevitably has to conclude that these expressions are figurative or allegorical. “Christ, while still in the cradle, without weapons, without any battle, received the power of Damascus,” that is, gold and incense from the eastern wise men. Gold and incense constitute the main wealth of the East (Z. 14:14; Ps. 71:10), almost always ruled by magicians, on whom Damascus was dependent. “Consequently, Christ, having received gold and incense as a gift from the East, assumed spiritual power over him.” Even in the cradle, he also received Samaria’s self-interest, i.e., the worship of the Magi, as an image of “defeated idolatry,” designated by the name of Samaria, who beheaded herself with superstition and rebellion against God, under Jeroboam, for example... That this place from the prophecy should be understood in this way is evidenced by other places of Holy Scripture, in which “I. Christ is presented in the form of a conqueror with symbolic weapons and under figurative names (Ps. 45:4): girdle Your sword on Your thigh, O Mighty One... By sword here we mean not a military sword, but the sword of the word of God, a two-edged sword, sharpened by the righteousness and wisdom of God, able to render to each according to his deed; therefore, Christ could, even without participating in wars and battles, arm himself mysteriously with the sword of the word of God.” In his hands the arrows are sophisticated, that is, “commandments flowing around the whole world, threats, executions and contrition of the heart, penetrating the conscience of everyone.” – With this understanding of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, “Christ can be considered all the less warlike because Isaiah did not proclaim Him as an earthly conqueror” 467. Following this, Tertullian resolves another bewilderment of the Jews - regarding the name of the appeared Messiah - they did not see any indication of the name “Jesus” in the Old Testament books. Tertullian proves, on the contrary, that in the Old Testament there was even a representative figure bearing the name of Jesus - this is Joshua, the successor of Moses, who led the Jews into a land boiling with honey and milk; with the last event he prefigured I. Christ, who would lead people into the kingdom of grace. He was sent with divine authority, invested with the name of Jesus (Ex. 23:20), and was named Jesus “because of the future sacrament of this name” 468. According to the prophecies of I., Christ must come from the descendants of David, must be filled with spiritual gifts (Exodus 11:1-3), set the world an example of meekness, patience and self-sacrifice (Exodus 53:3.7; 42:2.3). All this was fulfilled with amazing accuracy on the face of I. Christ. To Him most of all befits all the abundance of spiritual gifts; He was a descendant of David - His Mother Mary belonged to the family of David; I. Christ was born in Bethlehem - this alone speaks of His meekness. According to the prophecies (I. Christ), the Messiah should have especially two properties - prophecy and miracles (Ex. 58:1. 2; 35:4-6). And these features of the prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ - He performed many miracles, as was testified by the Jews themselves, who wanted to stone Him for performing miracles on the Sabbath, and was also a preacher in continuation of his open service to his human race 469. Concerning the very personality of I. Christ (as the High Priest), the Jews found the suffering and death of I. Christ inconsistent with the prophecies; the crucifixion was found to contradict the Old Testament saying: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Deut. 21:22.23). According to Tertullian, this curse falls only on those criminals who are sentenced to shameful execution for capital crimes. I. Although Christ was crucified and suffered a shameful death, he did not endure it as a criminal - “a lie never desecrated His lips, He was a perfect example of truth and humility”; suffered execution, but He did this “in fulfillment of the prophets who pointed out the very instruments of His death.” All “the mystery of His passion was foreordained” (Ps. 21; 68; Deut. 33:17) and foreshadowed by types. Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Jesus carrying the wood of the cross; Isaac, once a type, was spared, and a ram was sacrificed in his place; Jesus, as the fulfillment of this prototype, was crucified on the wood of the cross brought by Him. Joseph, persecuted by his brothers and sold by them to Egypt, predicted the Savior, “treasonably betrayed by his brothers in the person of Judah.” In his blessing to Simeon and Levi, Jacob symbolically pointed to the persecution of I. Christ from the scribes and Pharisees (Gen. 49:5.6), which ended with them nailing I. Christ to the cross. Moses, who stretched out his hands in a cross shape during Joshua’s battle with the Amalekites, also foreshadowed the sacrament of atonement, that “where the name of Jesus fought, the sign of the cross had to be erected, with which Joshua could win the victory.” The copper serpent in the desert was an image of the ascension of I. Christ to the tree of the cross and the power of the cross... Such prototypes, clear for the present time, but covered with a veil of mystery for the Old Testament man, were clarified by prophecies that outlined the suffering and death of Christ to the smallest detail. The psalmist directly says that “the Lord reigns from the heights of the tree” (Tertullian paraphrase of Psalm 10, Art. 95); Ave. Isaiah - that His rulership is on His frame (Ex. 9:6); Prophet Jeremiah speaks of the evil intentions of enemies against I. Christ (Jer. 11:19); Psalm 21 speaks with amazing precision and detail about the suffering of the Messiah on the cross; Prophet Isaiah, predicting the suffering of the Redeemer, says that He will endure them for the sins of other people, being Himself completely sinless (Ex. 58:8–10) 470. Describing the suffering on the cross and the death of I. Christ, the prophets did not forget to mention the signs and wonders that accompanied these events in the life of the God-man. The darkness on the day of death was foretold by St. Amos (8:9. 10), and symbolically indicated in the evening slaughter of the Passover lamb. The death of the Jewish people for deicide (Ezek. 8:12-18,9:1-6), the murder of I. Christ - the seal and completion of ancient prophecies, who fulfilled all the messianic prophecies on himself, the impoverishment of prophecies - all this was predicted in the Old Testament, and thereby - the exact fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies on the face of I. Christ - should already involuntarily convince everyone of messianic dignity I. Christ, in recognizing that He appeared as He was proclaimed, and to encourage faith in Him and His activity 471; the fulfillment of messianic prophecies on the face of I. Christ clearly testifies that I. Christ is the same promised Messiah, who was to appear on earth to redeem humanity from slavery to sin and death and to reconcile it with God. If we deny the messianic dignity of I. Christ, then the Old Testament prophecy is destroyed. According to the predictions of the prophets, the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, a city of Judah (Mic. 5:2). If we do not recognize in I. Christ the promised leader from the flames of Judas and from Bethlehem, then we must expect the appearance of another Messiah from Bethlehem. But “we see that in the city of Bethlehem there is now not a single soul of the Israelite tribe left,” and they are forbidden to even settle near Judea - how and from whom will a leader be born in Judea? If the Messiah has not yet come, then from whom will He receive the anointing? - during the foreign yoke it is not allowed to perform anointing, on the other hand, the Jews have neither a church nor an altar where anointing was previously performed, and where the Messiah could be anointed 472. - But what the coming of Jesus Christ proves most clearly and palpably, as an accomplished fact, is the last events in the life of the children of Israel. It was predicted (Jer. 2:13) that the Jews would reject the Messiah, the source of living water, and dig bottomless wells for themselves, i.e. “having been scattered among different nations, to establish synagogues among them, in which the Holy Spirit will no longer dwell, as before in the temple before the coming of Christ” 473. It was predicted (Isa. 2:20; 3:1; 5:6; 52:5; 1: 3–8; 50:11; Ps. 59:12) that “at His coming, in retribution for their contempt, cruelty and deicide,” misfortunes will befall them: the wise Architect, the grace of God, will be taken away from Jerusalem and Judea will cease to be poured out on them, the blessings of heaven will not enrich the houses of Israel. All this has already been fulfilled among the Jews - “the font of Siloam, which healed the infirmities of Israel before the coming of Christ, has since lost its power,” their land has become empty, their cities have been burned, a foreign yoke weighs heavily on them. “As it was predicted - on the one hand, that the Jews would be scattered and destroyed for the sake of I. Christ, and on the other - it is known that their dispersion and death took place in our eyes; then from this it is clear that the Jews underwent this misfortune really for the sake of Christ. Here everything agrees with the other: the meaning of St. Scriptures, events and order of time,” Jerusalem is destroyed, the people are scattered and wander throughout the whole earth. If the Messiah has not come, then the prophecy turns out to be unfulfilled - “return to Judea the state that Jesus Christ could have acquired before you begin to claim that another Christ will come” 474. Not recognizing the promised Messiah in the person of I. Christ, the Jews, of course, did not imagine that in this case they were going against the Old Testament messianic prophecies; if they deny the messianic dignity of I. Christ and do not recognize the work of redemption of mankind accomplished by Him, then the reason for this mainly lay in the false messianic idea developed among the Jews, thanks to the foreign political oppression that weighed on them. Under the influence of this idea of ​​​​the Messiah as a King, who in his appearance would throw off the foreign yoke hated by the Jews from the chosen people, the Jews pushed into the background the prophecies about the destroyed state of the Messiah and the high task of the promised Descendant of David - the prophecies about the glory and dominion of the God-man, His royal power came to the fore; expecting the glorious, brilliant appearance of the Messiah, the Jews thus mixed up the first and second coming of the Son of God. In order to understand the messianic idea to the sons of Israel, to show the difference between one and another appearance of the Son of God, Tertullian outlines the first and second coming of the Son of God to earth, shows the purpose for which the Son of God descended to earth and the purpose of His glorious coming; at the same time, he again stands on the same basis as he stood on in continuation of previous discussions with the Jews, on the basis of comparing Old Testament prophecies with New Testament events. Both appearances of the Son of God are described by the Old Testament prophets, presented in two different types or images. The first image was supposed to consist of humiliations of all kinds (Exodus 53, 2–4. 7), thanks to which I. Christ appeared as a stumbling block for many (Exodus 8:14), made a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:6). “The second coming will be marked by greatness and glory. Then he will no longer be a stone of stumbling and temptation, but a stone, whose carelessness has been built and that which has become the cornerstone (Ps. 118:22), a stone that will strike and destroy to the end the dreamy greatness of the kingdoms of this world” (Dan. 2:34 et seq.), will appear in glory and majesty (Dan. 7:13.14; Ps. 44:3–5; 8:6; Heb. “Then those who (the Jews) did not know how and did not want to know Him in the state of His human humiliation will mourn for Him (Zechariah 7:10) will look at His own disgrace.” In the first coming, “He is clothed in sackcloth, that is, in passionate and mortal flesh... he fights with the devil, who tempts Him after baptism and puts treacherous thoughts into the heart of Judas.” In the second - “He takes off his former humiliation, like an unclean garment, puts on a bright robe and places a clean turban on his head, that is, he accepts the glory and greatness of his second coming. This duality of the appearance of I. Christ was indicated by two goats of purification (Lev. 16), of which “one, who took upon himself the iniquities of people and was expelled into the desert, into an impassable land, bears obvious signs of the suffering of I. Christ, Who was mocked, showered with curses and crucified outside the city, as if in the desert; the other goat resembles the solemn, glorious state of I. Christ.” Thus, “the first coming of Christ had to be fulfilled among humiliations and insults: the images denoting it are covered in darkness for many; the second - on the contrary - is illuminated with light and in accordance with the dignity of God. Therefore, the Jews only had to raise their eyes to be convinced of this second appearance by its brilliance and radiance, while veils and infirmities, unusual for God, at the first appearance could darken their views, and even now they claim that their Christ has not yet come, because they have not seen Him in all glory; but they don’t want to know that He must first appear in humiliation and shame.” The general conclusion from all that has been said is this. Seeing the fulfillment of everything predicted in I. Christ, only one conclusion is possible: either I. Christ is the promised Messiah, and, therefore, one must believe in Him as the Son of God, or the prophecies are not true. Not having the opportunity and courage to say the latter, the Jews, acting logically, cannot deny the first 475. Tertullian contrasts this last conclusion of his - as the total sum of all the evidence presented - with the unbelief of the Jews in Jesus Christ; we add, he contrasts it with the same missionary goal that he pursued in his entire treatise adversus iudaeos. A look at Tertullian's external activities Did Tertullian achieve any result in his activities against Jews? Parallel between the works of Eastern apologists and apologetics works of Tertullian. The significance of Tertullian's apologetic writings against After analyzing Tertullian's apologetic writings, two important questions arise: did Tertullian say anything new compared to the Eastern apologists who preceded him? In other words: can Tertullian’s apologetic works be called at least somewhat original, and are they not a simple compilation of Greek apologias? The last question: did Tertullian’s apologetic activity have any significance for its time, did it achieve the goal it pursued? Let's start with Tertullian's activities against the Jews. Here Tertullian pursued not so much an apologetic goal (in the proper sense of the word) as a missionary one. Without political independence, scattered here and there across the face of the earth, the Jews around the time and during Tertullian could not significantly harm Christianity and Christians; they have already proven themselves sufficiently before paganism that their slander against Christians is seriously believed in Rome and its provinces; Christianity had already become somewhat known to the pagans, at least the pagans no longer confused Christians with Jews and did not persecute Christians because of the Jews. Hence, the apology (in the proper sense) addressed to the Jews did not take place; Therefore, Tertullian does not set out to protect Christians and Christianity from Jewish attacks and persecution; his task is different: to illuminate the Jews with the light of the Gospel teaching, and this task was accomplished in the same way as other church writers who dealt with the Jews in the literary field. Contrary to the view of the Jews on I. Christ, as a simple man who owed his glory to the power of Beelzebub or magic, without any attractive sides, Christian writers at all times proved to the sons of Israel that I. Christ is the true Messiah - the Son of God, that in Him all the prophecies of the Old Testament about the Descendant of David were fulfilled and that the Jews, if only they remain faithful to the words of the divine Old Testament scripture, must recognize in the person of I. Christ the promised Messiah. Against the claims of the Jews to the immutability and independence of the Old Testament law, Christian writers argued that with the appearance of the Messiah, the Old Testament institutions lost their meaning and must give way to the New Testament. The Holy Scripture of the Old Testament and its comparison with the New Testament sacred events and sacred Christian writing - this is the ground on which the struggle with the Jews revolved - divine authority was equally important for both sides, divine authority - and only he alone - mattered in the struggle with Israel, and this authority covered both Christians and Jews in the struggle; philosophical, metaphysical issues were not touched upon in this debate, and could not be touched upon in disputes with Jews, conservatives, people attached to the letter of the law and prophets. Hence, no matter how the polemical activity of the church developed with non-Christian views and teachings, the focal point of the polemic with the Jews - the face of I. Christ - always remained the same, the polemical material and point of view did not change. After this, it is not surprising if later apologists, compared with the apologists of the 1st and 2nd centuries who wrote against the Jews, brought almost nothing new to this polemic, and constantly repeated in different ways what had already been said before. Tertullian himself, for all his genius, in the fight against the Jews did not come up with almost anything special compared to Justin, for example; The polemical material had already been exhausted, and Tertullian, like the others, repeated only what had been said, coloring, however, this repetition with a peculiar shade and a more practical formulation and resolution of the issues outlined by the polemic. Hence, it is hardly possible to give any definite answer to the question about the meaning of Tertullian’s literary polemics with the Jews. One thing can only be pointed out here is that the Jews, even in the time of Tertullian, probably declared their existence, pursuing interests far from being in favor of Christianity and Christians; Otherwise, one cannot explain to oneself the appearance of this church-literary monument - adversus iudaeos. Completely different can and should be said about Tertullian’s apologetic activity, directed towards the pagan camp hostile to Christians. The parallel between the apologetic works of 476 Tertullian and the Eastern apologists clearly shows that Tertullian chose the same apologetic theme as the Eastern apologists, he turned his strong word to the same camp, fanaticism, which was oppressing Christians; he used the arguments of the apologists who preceded him - their argument became his. In the treatise ad nationes he even apparently imitated St. Justin 477. But it is too hasty to conclude from this that Tertullian is not in favor. This vast and insightful spirit managed to remain completely original, even using the works of his predecessors. Well acquainted with the apologies that appeared before him, 478 Tertullian could not help but borrow from this rich source. But his merit was that he was able, with his powerful inspiration, to update a long-repeated and almost hackneyed theme. Under his pen, the arguments took on new strength, were colored differently, he gave them a new form and judicial oratorical shine, unknown before. A cursory reading of the Eastern apologies and the apologies of Tertullian is enough to convince oneself of the profound difference between the two. The nature of Eastern apologies, their tone, apologetic techniques, point of view - everything points to their difference from the apologetic works of Tertullian. The national characteristics of the Greeks and Romans (the Carthaginians are similar in character to Roman nationality) were vividly reflected in both apologies and gave each of them a special physiognomy. The Greeks are generally a people of philosophical constructions, interested in mental, speculative questions; they dealt with special love primarily with scientific questions, with the mental movement of their age. They were not interested in political movements, global dominion over the world was not part of the calling program of the Greeks - science was the area where the Greeks felt their strength and superiority, mental reserve was the wealth that the Greeks valued most of all. As a result, the Greeks were not at all embarrassed by the narrow Roman nationality and were sympathetic to any manifestation of mental movement even outside the sphere of the Greek nation. The Greeks accepted Christianity and treated it, like any system, with critical analysis, and examined its internal scientific validity from a philosophical point of view. Thanks to this character of the Greeks and their attitude towards religion, the struggle between Christianity and paganism in their eyes was a purely scientific debate, calm, restrained, where two doctrines stood out - Christian and pagan, a struggle of ideas, not personalities. Each side knew the opposing doctrine and attacked it from a purely scientific point of view. The result of this struggle between two religions was, on the part of Christians, a series of apologies, according to which it is very easy to reproduce the course of the struggle. Without exception, all Greek apologies are written in the spirit of philosophical research. Apologists took Christianity as a philosophical system, placed it on a scientific basis, paid special attention to the doctrinal part, and with a series of speculative philosophical proofs tried to convince opponents that Christianity does not contain internal contradictions, in terms of its internal consistency it surpasses all other doctrines and fully meets the internal needs of the human spirit. Rushing in the area of ​​abstractions and philosophical solutions to issues, Eastern apologists, with the imperturbable calm of true philosophers, focused all their attention only on the principles of reason, developed the metaphysical side of Christian dogmatics, almost without touching the practical side of the matter. Therefore, Eastern apologies can be more accurately and accurately called apologies with a metaphysical character, ideal. In their desire to find scientific truth anywhere, Eastern apologists were not embarrassed by the narrow frame that separated Christianity from paganism - they gladly borrowed evidence in the interests of truth wherever the opportunity presented itself, even from pagans, and did not in the least weaken the strength of these evidence. To this end, all of them, who before converting to Christianity were followers of philosophical schools that had great respect for philosophy, rummaged through the archives of pagan wisdom and selected evidence in them to support general theological truths, looked for similarities between Christianity and paganism, the point of contact between pagan teaching and Christian, and found it in the doctrine of the divine Logos. We see a completely different character in the West - Tertullian’s apology - the first of the Western apologies - very sharply imprinted on itself the typical features of the Romans. Mental questions, scientific movements of thought, philosophemes were of least interest to the Romans - they were not in their character, the Romans did not like speculative philosophy, and from the moral part of it they chose only what seemed suitable for Roman life. The state and public life were in the foreground; They measured everything by this scale. They accepted everything that fit this standard as useful and necessary, and anything that went in any way contrary to their idea of ​​the state was considered useless and even positively harmful, even though in fact it did not contain anything harmful or dangerous for the state. From a practical point of view, the Romans looked at Christianity and saw in it, first of all, a religion standing in one way or another in relation to the state; They understood Christianity as a religion that destroys the existing system of state and social life, and Christians as a crowd of rebels and revolutionaries. Due to this view of Christianity and Christians, the struggle in the West was of a different nature - it was not doctrines or ideas that fought here, but two camps hostile to each other - pagans and Christians. Christianity was not put on a scientific basis, it was not used to prove its philosophical validity or inconsistency, it did not resort to scientific constructions of abstract arguments in favor of Christianity and Christians - life and its phenomena were the main evidence for and against Christians. The apologies of the West, as an expression and reflection of this struggle, all have some kind of official character, the character of business papers or speeches of clever orators or lawyers standing on a legal basis. Tertullian has this character and characteristics in his apologetic activities. He is not interested in metaphysical questions; if he touches on Christian doctrine, then, as if casually and in passing, he does not indulge in verbal debate regarding the dogmatic side of Christianity, its scientific validity - the doctrinal part occupies a secondary place in Tertullian, if not less. He brings to the fore practical issues relating to Christian life, skillfully paints a picture of the life of Christians and contrasts this picture with pagan accusations, which were also of a purely practical nature and were clothed in concrete forms. Tertullian does not look at anything more seriously than the accusations of Christians of political crimes and their unsuitability and unreliability in family and public life. But he again proves the groundlessness of these accusations not with philosophical subtleties, not with abstract arguments, but through experience - he presents facts from the life of Christians that speak more eloquently than any logical arguments in favor of Christians against the accusations brought against them. While in all Eastern apologists one can see people with a philosophical education and philosophers, Tertullian comes out to fight the pagans as a clever orator on a forum or tribune, who, under the brilliant appearance of an orator and poet, hides the solidity of a thinker - a realist. In him one can see a man experienced in dialectics and logic, who masters his weapon perfectly and successfully applies all the rules of attack and defense to the case. Tertullian, to whom paganism reminded him of the darkest pages of his life, became tired and disgusted with philosophy, closes himself closely in the sphere of Christianity and in it alone seeks his foundations in the struggle, summarily condemns all paganism together with philosophy, which is, in his opinion, the desire not to find the truth, but to obscure and distort it. Tertullian is fully convinced that the philosophers themselves borrowed their best thoughts from the Christian holy books, but only distorted what they borrowed 479; they are the patriarchs of heresies, preachers of errors; therefore, one can borrow evidence from them only in favor of lies, not truth. Not accustomed to working in the realm of abstraction, Tertullian does not seek for himself in this case external authority in the author’s works of paganism - they seem to him neither free from error, nor authoritative, nor convincing, and he leaves them to others 480; instead of all this, he moves onto the soil of experience - this soil is the most reliable for him, on it he feels well grounded. Evidence that is not abstract, but, so to speak, tangible for everyone in its concreteness, ad hominem evidence was used by Tertullian in the most extensive application, pushing aside many rationalistic arguments of Eastern apologists. Tertullian considered the most accessible and convincing argument in favor of Christian monotheism to be the testimony of the soul. True, in Eastern apologies (for example, in Athenagoras) there is a reference to this argument, but the reference is very weak and - so to speak - fleeting. No one insists more forcefully on this argument, on the kinship of the human soul with God, than Tertullian. This same kinship of the soul with God constitutes - according to Tertullian - the natural transition from paganism to Christianity, the focal point where the two religious doctrines of the world - paganism and Christianity - come into contact with each other. Different phases of the struggle between Christianity and paganism required apologists to use different tactics to conduct their defense at different times. Appearing relatively early, Eastern apologies represent the first attempt to defend Christianity from attack. The apologists had not yet lost hope of ending the fight against paganism in a peaceful way; they thought that paganism would be convinced by the fair requests and arguments of Christians, and if it itself did not lose credit from its followers, then at least it would give Christians freedom of faith and belief. Therefore, all Eastern apologists in general turned to the pagans with a humble, most submissive request - to take pity on Christians, not to oppress them, not to persecute the “new teaching,” and to eliminate the improper legal proceedings against Christians. Whether it was due to the small number of Christians at that time, or perhaps because of the same hope for reconciliation with paganism and the fear of spoiling things with ardor, Eastern apologists turned to the secular authorities with some timidity, fearfulness, they were afraid to strongly touch upon paganism, criticize it, attack it - they looked condescendingly, as if turning a blind eye, to paganism, its religious cult and the developments developed over the centuries customs. On the contrary, Tertullian, already standing at the highest stage of development of the apologetic activity of the church, playing a role in the last act of the bloody drama - the persecution of Christians, when all hope for a peaceful end to the clash between Christianity and paganism was already lost, when the stubbornness and fanaticism of the pagans were fully revealed, Tertullian enters the apologetic field with an apology of a different nature. He clearly saw that the most humble request of a Christian apologist would lead nowhere and would not alleviate the lot of persecuted Christians; so I decided to act differently. In the name of the equality of all members of the Roman Empire, by virtue of universal human rights, he does not ask, but already demands freedom of faith for Christians, as a due, which belongs to them, but was illegally stolen from them. He does not seek reconciliation with paganism, does not want to hear about any concessions to paganism; he does not only ask for the correctness of legal proceedings and religious tolerance for Christians - before paganism, he is neither a supplicant nor an apologist, but a fighter. Tertullian boldly enters into an open struggle against paganism, with full consciousness of the righteousness of his cause and with consciousness of his own dignity, and is the judge of paganism. He mercilessly attacks paganism, points out its absurdities and absurdities - his apology is, therefore, not an apology for Christians, but a stinging satire on paganism and pagans. In relation to paganism, Tertullian does not always remain within the limits of moderation; in places he leaves the ground for impartial analysis and criticism of paganism, his speech often turns into irony and sarcasm about the religious cult of pagans and pagan gods; the absurdities of paganism from his pen sometimes come out exaggerated.... As a feature of Tertullian's apology in its difference from Eastern apologies, one more method of Tertullian should be pointed out. Eastern apologists, in the actual defensive part of their apologies, tried only one thing - to protect Christians from those accusations that were heard from the pagan camp, to justify Christians from what the pagans blamed them for. Tertullian is not content with this. Exonerating Christians from one or another accusation, he tries to prove and clearly present that these accusations apply not to Christians, but to the pagans themselves, and surrounds this with solid arguments 481. Finally, let us point out one more feature of Tertullian’s apology as its distinctive feature. Eastern apologists - all without exception - looked at the struggle of Christianity against paganism from a scientific point of view, measured the significance of Christianity as a religious system on a general scale, and defended Christianity with the same weapons with which the pagans thought to defeat it. Tertullian changes his point of view. He looks at Christianity not from a scientific point of view; he does not criticize and ridicule paganism from the point of view of paganism itself, but from a Christian point of view. It is clear that, looking at paganism from this side, he found in it absurdities unworthy of a reasonable person, and irony after irony, joke after joke fell from Tertullian on paganism; and with such an attitude towards the matter, Tertullian, with his ardent nature and irritability, could not maintain calmness when presenting the case, that composure and methodicality that characterized the Eastern apologists. We do not have direct historical data for a categorical solution to the second question - about the significance of Tertullian’s apologetic writings for the contemporary church. Factual data says that throughout the entire reign of Severus, persecution was rampant, and the external disasters of the church did not stop. Guided by vague Roman legislation regarding Christians, regional rulers acted at their own discretion - they either fanatically persecuted Christians, then, as if tired, they abandoned torture and torment for a while, then they took up persecution again. In general, the time of Tertullian was a time when it was difficult to determine the historical significance of one or another written monument. If the edicts of the emperors could not keep the masses and regional rulers from stopping the persecution, then could an apology make a quick turn in the beliefs of the government and people and quickly give Christianity a dominant place in the minds of the pagans? Historical data show that Tertullian’s apology did not result in a formal, widespread cessation of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire; but this was not what Tertullian had in mind, he did not ask for mercy for Christians - his task was to open the eyes of the pagans and, if not to indicate the truth, then at least to show the way to find it, to show that the pagans see straw in the eyes of Christians, while they do not see logs in their own. He only demanded that the Romans, abandoning fanaticism and blind prejudice against Christians, investigate what was the cause of hatred towards Christians. Tertullian is quite convinced that this research will certainly lead to the fact that Christians will not be blamed and persecuted 482; he already knows many examples that familiarization with Christianity led to Christianity 483. Therefore, his main goal was to convert the pagans to a calm study of Christianity. Written in an attractive form, in popular language, apologetic writings were probably read by both Christians and pagans and had an effect. There is no particular need to trust the testimony of Lactantius that, due to darkness and lack of external elegance, Tertullian’s writings were not particularly popular 484; such a view is not applicable to the apologetic writings of Tertullian - clarity and elasticity of thought, eloquent, colorful and figurative language, elaborate syllables, a serious tone, sometimes turning into a humorous one, made his apologetic writings pleasant reading, and Tertullian could have a wide range of readers 485. Clearly indicating the absurdity of the accusations against Christians and the height of Christian beliefs, opposite to the beliefs of the pagans, Tertullian with his writings achieved two goals, which, in all likelihood, was what he had in mind: he affirmed Christians in their steadfastness and courageously enduring all suffering for the sake of religious truth 486, and he put pagans, in whom he undermined the conviction of the truth of their beliefs, on the path to conversion to Christianity 487 . Thus, it turns out that in a similar way, Tertullian’s apology contributed to the greater prevalence of Christian ideas and the decline of paganism in quantitative terms; that, without having the immediate, tangible detection of its action in providing Christians with freedom of belief in religious beliefs, in another respect it achieved the immediate goal leading to a more distant one - the triumph of the Gospel over the pagan Roman religion. Apolog. 50. Epistle to Diogenes 1. Eg. all Christian apologists (Just. apol. 1; Tertull. apol. 50). Zach. 9:9; 12:10 ; Ps. XXI:8. 9. 15 – 19; 68:21 and 22 As a result, the Jews developed such a messianic idea, see “The Teaching about the Face of Jesus Christ” by V. Snegirev, pp. 22–23. Tertullian bases the Jews' expectation of a conquering king on the prophecy of Isaiah VIII, 4. Adv. Marc, III, 13 cf. Adv.iud.9. Matt. 12:12, 20; Is. 43:2 and 3. Matt. 10:38; 16:24 ; Mk. 8:34–35, Luke. 14:27 A strong expression of this is the trial of the God-Man and His crucifixion as a deceiver and state criminal. Matt. 9:34; 12:14, 24; 22, 26:37; Mk. 3:22; 12:13; OK. 11:15; 20:20 onwards; the trial of I. Christ, His death and Resurrection, which they wanted to explain differently. Acts 5:17–19; 7:54–60; 8:1–4; 9:1–2, 13–14; 12:1–6, etc. As an expression of the same desire, one must look at the fables they started regarding the face of I. Christ. See Teaching about the face of I. Christ - V. Snegirev, p. 28; compare Just. conversation with Trofim. From that time on, they only incited the pagans and helped them invent various accusations against Christians. Tertull. ad nat. I, 14 Tert. Apolog. 21; Orig. contra Cels. III, p. 117. Freppel. S. Justin, b. 18; cf Tert. ad.nat. II, 9. Tacitus called Christianity only a “disastrous superstition” and was an obedient echo of the slander of the people (Freppel. S. Just. pp. 20–21). Suetonius knew no more about Christianity than Tacitus - he interprets Christianity as Judaism, considers Christ an agitator, etc. (Sueton. Nero, 16; - Trud. Kiev. Spirit. Acad. 1864, vol. II, p. 446). Pliny calls Christianity “superstitio prava” (Epist. ad Trajan.). To make this contrast more obvious, a more detailed and relief picture of paganism in all its respects is deliberately presented here; this had to be done in those forms that from here the character and tone of Christian apologetics are determined and clarified. Freppel. Tertull. I, 77. 78. 92. 93. 136 Neander. Allgem. Gesch. christ. Relig. u. Kirche. S.2 Lactantius quotes the words of Cicero, who, although he recognized many fables in this religion, ait tamen, non esse illa vulgo disputanda, ne susceptas publice religions disputatio talis exstinguat. Lact. Just div II, 3 Tit, Livii Hist. Rom. IX, 30; XXV, 1. Terull. Apolog. 13; ad nat. I, 10 Apolog. 25; M. Fel. Oct. 25; Cicero. De natura deor. III, 2: “Mihi ita persuasi, Romulum auspiciis, Numam sacris constitutis fundamenta jecisse nostrae civitatis: quae numquam profecto sine summa placatione deorum immortalium tanta esse potuissent.” Arnobii Adv. Gentes. III, 38; Terull. Apol. 25; M. Felix Octavius. 6. Tert. Apolog. 11, ad nat. II, 11. 15. In addition to national - Roman and foreign gods, Rome increased its religious cult with the apotheosis of emperors and some of their wives, for example, Favston - Marcus Aurelius, an extremely depraved woman (Dion. Cass. LXXI), as well as the deification of other women, for example. Laurentians (Tertull. apol. 13). Thus, it is not surprising that in Rome, with a population of almost one and a half million - and in it alone - there were 420 churches in which 30 thousand gods were worshiped, with Jupiter at the head. Freppel S. Justin, b. 35. A terrible persecution was brought against some of Cicero's works, where he was critical and with caustic irony of the pagan religion, and his religious treatise de natura deorum was burned under Diocletian. Work. Kyiv. Spirit. Academician 1864, II, 454. Sochin. Yeshensky, I, 255. Polyb. Histor. gent. VI, 56. Strabo, Geograph. I, 2 – in Freppel, S. Justin, p. 13., 14. Athenagoras–Apol. 1 Fear of something unknown expected in the future also instilled panic in the masses and kept them from strong passions and indignations. Seneca. De vita beata, 27; Plin. Nat. hist. II, 7, - strong manifestations of superstition - magic, spells, etc. - even provoked strict interdicts from the government (Tacit. Annal II, 33). Law of the XII Tables (Cicero, de leg. II, 8); deos peregrinos ne colunto; separatim nemo habessit deos, neve novos, sive advenos, nisi publice adscitos, privatim colunto. – Constructa a pattribus delubra in urbibus habento. Lucos in agris habento, et larum sedes. – Ritus familiae patrumque servanto. – Poena violati juris (or according to others maris) esto. In Dio Cassius (Dio Cass. 1. II, p. 208), Maecenas’s speech to Augustus is conveyed as follows: “honor the gods without fail according to domestic laws and force others to honor them in the same way. Those who introduce something alien in this regard, persecute and punish, not only because they despise the gods, but because, despising them, they despise everything else, because, by introducing new deities, they tempt to accept new laws. From here come conspiracies and secret alliances that are by no means tolerant of the monarchy. Do not allow anyone to be an atheist” (in Chelts. History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, p. 116). Julii Pauli 1. V, 1. 7. 21, – in Frepp. S. Just. r. 37. Tert. Apolog. 15; M. Fel. 25. Cicero – de natura deorum, I. 26: “Mirabile videtur, quod non rideat haxuspex, cum haruspex, cum haruspicem viderit...” Tert. Apol. 14 and 15; de spect. 1; August. de civ. Dei, VI, 8: “non alii dii videntur in theatris, quam qui a lorantur in templis.” M. Fel. 32; Tert. Apolog. 14. 15. Tit Uv.XXV, 1, – Freppel, S. Justin, p. 38, memory. Freppel, S. Just p. 56–56. Plin. Nat hisst. II, 7. Tert. Apolog. 12. Kulanzh. Civil Community of the Ancient World, pp. 471–480. M. Fel. Oct. 20; Dio Cass. LXXI. You can partially get acquainted with apotheosis from Art. Radonezh "cellar. rites of the ancient Romans." Ch. 12, – in J.M.N. Ave. Part 176. Schlosser. Everyone. Histor. vol. IV, pp. 253–254 For example, Juvenal speaks about the luxury and gluttony of his contemporaries. Sat.1– 95.96. 142–146 See Soulep. Readings 1862, III, 228. Tert. de cultu foem. I, 1. 8; II, 1. 2. 3. 11; Exh. ad castit 9. Speech to the Hellenes, 2.4; demolished Min. Fel. 21 and 31, Athenagoras, 32 Min. Fel. 31; Tacit. Annal. XV, 37; Tert. Apolog. 9; ad uxor. II, 8; Speech to the Hellenes, 4. Magna adulteria. Tac. Hist. I. I, p.2 Tac. Annal. 1. XII, p. 3; XI, 25–38; XIV, 2; VI, 1– To what extent things sometimes reached in paganism can be seen from the example of Nero. Tacitus reports that a few days after the feast of Tigellinus, this sovereign entered into marriage with the freedman Pythagoras, and all marriage customs and celebrations were observed (Annal. XV, 37). Tac. Annal. XIII, 42–43; Tat. speech by prot. Hellene. 19.22. Tert. apol. 9.15; M. Fel. Oct. 24. 25. 28. 31, etc. Here is also the story about Tigellinus’ pen – Tacit. Annal. XV, 37 M. Fel. Oct. 31; Tert. apol. 9. Athenag. apol. 34. Wed. Rome. I, 26. 27. Tat. Speech against Hellenes. 28 Tert. ad uxor. II, 8. You can read about the depravity of women in Yuven. in his satires. . Rome. 1:21–32. Comparison. Tas. Annal. VI, 1; XV, 37 Tacitus, Seneca, Juvenal. etc. Schlosser. Everyone, ist. IV, 341–342. Only this, it seems, can explain the origin of the so-called. lenocimum mariti – wife trafficking. Juv. sat. I, 56–57; Horat. od. III, 6, 25 – 30. See comment. iu Horat. carm. saec. v. 17–20. In Rome, marriage was recognized only between full-fledged citizens - there was no marriage outside the sphere of citizenship, just as there was no family in private. sense of this word and family rights. Aul. Gell., Noct. attic. I. 6. Tit. Liv. I, 39; Dion. Halic. II, 96; Tert. apol. 6. Tert. apol. 6; Seneca, de benefit. III, 16. Dion. Halic. II, 93; Val.Max. II, 1; Tert. apol. Seneca, de benefit. III, 16. Law of the XII Tables; By virtue of this law, a father could sell his son into slavery up to 3 times, after which he would lose all right to him. M. Fel. Oct. 31; Tert. apol. 9 Tert. apol. 9; M. Fel. Oct. 30. A law protecting the emperor from insults and violence, making his personality inviolable. Seneca, de benefit. III, 26; Juven. Sat. I, 34. 35; Mk. 12:29 . Horace (l.V, od. 5; I. IV, od. 18; l. I, od.2), Lucian (see Freppel I vol., p. 135), Seneca (consil. a. Polibe 31. 32, in comparison with the place in his work where he equates the same emperor with a pumpkin. See Freppel, Tertull. I, 141–144). According to the law of the Twelve Tables, a stranger is a being without rights - adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas. According to Cicero, whoever is not a citizen of Rome cannot claim the same respect for himself as a Roman. Most of the 120 ½ millionth rome. population were slaves. In Rome there was a law according to which punishment was imposed for the killing of draft animals, while there was not one that would punish a slave guilty of the violent death. True, sometimes they gave slaves freedom and made them freedmen (Tert. apol. 6); but the slave could rarely wait for such mercy from the masters - these were such exceptional cases that it is impossible to talk about them or more or less generalize. According to Pliny (XVIII, 6), half of Roman Africa was the possession of only 6 individuals - the rich. Freppel. Tertull. I, 117. You can get acquainted with the Roman stage and circus, which served as examples of spectacles in other areas of the empires, in the article by Bogoyavlensky - in Stran. 1873, Oct. and the article “A Day in the Roman Circus” (Propylaea, vol. III). Lactant. Inst. div. VI, 20, Tatian, Speech against the Hellenes. 23. Juvenal speaks of women who made athletic art their permanent craft (Satyr. II, 53; cf. sat. VI, 246. 251). Suetonius mentions pugnae foeminarum (Dom. 4). Strange 1873, Oct. Page 16 – 18. Tert. apol. 40; ad. nat. I, 9. Freppel. Tertull. I, 195. Ibid. 17; M. Fel. Oct. 8; Tat. Speech by Rev. Hellene. 22; Lactant. Inst. div. I, 20. Tert. apol. 15; Strange 1873, Oct. 25, 26 Let us note that everything that has been said about Rome, its religion and life in relation to the Roman pagans towards Christians, all this is applicable to other areas of the Roman Empire: Rome, as the capital, gave the tone and direction of religious and moral life to its provinces, especially this must be said about proconsular Africa with its center - Carthage, in which, like in a mirror, the life of proud Rome was reflected. Mr. 12:29; In. 4:24, 7:3, 5:26, 3:16, 15:9, 13–15; 1John 2:2 In. 14:1; 1John 5:1; OK. 10:27, 28, etc. In. 8:12; Mf. 28:18. 19; Mr. 14:15, 20; Mf. 24:14; Rome. 3:29 Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, said the Savior, without excluding any political system. Gal. 4:5, 6, 7; In. 1:12; 1John 3:2 In. 13:34 ; 1John 3:14, 23; 4:7, 11 Rome 8:15; Gal. 4:7; Matt. 5:48. Matt. 19:4, 5; 1 Cor. 7:2, 4; Eph. 5:23 Matt. 19:3–9; 1 Cor. 7:2, 4, 10, 11 In. 13:34 ; OK. 10:27 ; Matt. 5:44–48, 38–39; Mr. 8:34. Acts 19:9. 24–40; Euseb. H. E. VI, 41; VII, 10. Letter of Pliny to Trajan, in French translation - in Pantheón litteraire. Choix des monumens primitis de l'église chrétienne, par Buchon, p.2. For an indication of the decrease in church income, see Tert. Apol. 42. That the initiative of the crowd and slander against Christians does not belong to the masses, this is clear from the words of Tertullian: he believes that the rumor began outside the masses, the people accepted it with their eyes closed and were an obedient echo of the inventions of others (ad nation. I, 8). Tert. apol. 10; M. Fel. 12. Tert. apol. 10; M. Fel.10 Ibid. 10: Naes nimis multa sunt quae aut omnia aut pleraque omnium vera declarat ipsius pravae religionis obscuritas. Cur enim occultare et abscondere quidquid illud colunt magnopere nituntur, quum honesta semper publico gandeant, scelera secreta sint?... nisi quod ilhud, quod cohunt est interprimunt, aut puniendum est aut pudendum? Feof. last to Autol. 3:4. Tert. apol. 10; M. Fel.9. Tac. annal. XV, 44. 47; XI, 15. Tac. Hist. I, 3, Tert. apol. 40; ad. nat. I, 9, August. de mor. chr. 4; de civ. Dei, II, 3. Christianos ad leonem (Tert. apol. 40; ad nad I, 9), αἴρε τούς ἀθέους (Euseb. H. E. IV, 5) - these were the most common exclamations of the crowd regarding Christians. How strong this fanaticism of the masses was is evidenced, by the way, by the fact that at first the government itself considered it necessary to intervene in this matter and take measures on its part to protect Christians from the angry crowd (Euseb. H. E. IV, 26). Tert. apol. 49; M. Fel.9. Other strata of society, relying, among other things, on rumor, realized: if there were no truth, then insightful rumor would not attribute to them so many disgusting atrocities (M. Fel.9). Tas. annal. XV, 44; Sueton. in Cloud. 25; in Nero. 16; Plin. ep. ad Trajan. True, sometimes people with a philosophical education extorted confessions of Christians as innocent of anything other than superstition (Pliny). Orig. contra Cels. I, 3; Plin. ep. X, 37. Tas. annal. XV, 44; Freppel, S. Justin, b. 15. “What a religion this is! It is spread by flax carders, shoemakers and clothiers, the most ignorant and rude of all people, and they seek their proselytes among women and children.” (M. Fel. 8; Orig. c. Cels. III, 17). Eg. Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, etc. We read this law in Cicero - de leg. II, 8. See above, p. 32, note. 1. Non licet esse vos (i.e. christianos), the pagans said to the Christians. Tert. apol. 4. From this point of view, the Christian religion could not be recognized as permissible - for the Christian God, who does not recognize the power of Capitoline Jupiter over himself, the doors of the pantheon were closed; The Christian religion was far from reconciled with Greco-Roman polytheism, as a result of which it was an illicita and persecuta religion. Mf. 14:18; In. 4:28. 24; Phil. 3:8. Mf. 28:19; In. 10:16 ; Rome. 3:29. 30 ; Gal. 3:28; Cor. 3:11. About the spiritual kingdom, the head and foundation of which is I. Christ. In. 18:53–37. Tert. apol. 32; ad Scap. 2; ad nat. 1:17. Tert. apol. 10; ad nat. 1:17. Tert. apol. 15; M. Fel. 8. Tert. de spect. 1. 2. 13. 18; apol. 38; Athenag. apol. 35. M. Fel. 12; Athens. 38; Tert. tie idol 15. Tert. de idol. 19; de cor. mil. 11, etc. 1 Cor. 7: 22; Flm. 1:10–20; Const. apost. IV, 12; Aug. de civ. Dei XIX, 15. - On the state of slavery in the Greco-Roman world and the significance of the destruction of this ancient institution - see op. Yeshev. I:473–507. Tert. apol. 35; ad nat. I, 17. Tert apol. 42; M. Fel. 8. The entire legal procedure against Christians boiled down to this. Celsus, - in Orig. VIII, 55; M. Fel. 9. Apol. 37.40; Euseb. H. E. IV, 26. About the torment and torture of Christians - Lactantius de mor. persecuted 16; Euseb. II. E. VIII, 7. 9; Clem. alex. Strom. 11. A fact noted by Tertullian, but he only painted it in a different color. Tertullian looked at this fact not from the point of view of the pagans, but from the point of view of the moral cost of the persecutors of Christianity. Hence, the meaning of this fact in Tertullian is completely different than in the history of the Roman state. (Tert. apol. 5). So, for example, during the civil strife before S. Severus, at the beginning of Tertullian’s Christian life, while there was a fierce struggle between three competitors for the Roman throne - S. Severus, P. Niger and C. Albinus. On the position of Christians in the age of Tertullian, see N. Shcheglov, “Tertullian’s apologeticist” - in Works. Kyiv. Spirit. Ak. 1887, No. 8. Under Nero, Christians were used to illuminate gardens instead of torches (Juvenal. Sat. I, 155–157; VIII, 235), under other kings they were sent to the arena among the animals (sat. I, 157). The first tactic of apologetics belongs to Eastern writers, the second predominantly, if not exclusively, Western. This is what Tertullian and Hermias wrote, for example. According to Tertullian, Severus himself at the beginning of his reign was disposed towards Christians, as a result of the miraculous healing of him from an illness performed by the Christian Proclus through anointing the sick person with oil. Ad Scap.4. Of all the proconsuls, Virgil Saturninus, the governor of Africa, marked his name with cruelty against Christians, whose persecution constitutes an era in the history of cruelty and violence against Carthaginian Christians. The 1st book ad nationes, with the exception of the 5th and last chapter, was included in the apologeticus almost entirely, from the 2nd book. similar to apol. only 12 and 17 chapters. From the 2nd book, Tertullian, as it seems, is not included in the apolog. everything that he assumed was already known and obvious to an educated circle of readers - he omitted the first 8 chapters of the 2nd book, where Varro’s legends about the 3 kinds of gods - physicum genus, mythicum and plebejum and criticism of them were set out, and the last 7 chapters, where he condemned the gods praised by the Romans. As the French like to call it. Apol. 2; ad nat. I, 3; ad Scap. 4. Apol. 1. 2; ad nat. I, 1. Apol. 2; ad nat. I, 3. In his essay ad Scap. Tertullian points out that some judges, realizing the innocence of Christians, positively wrote their justifications - they taught Christians how to answer them in court in order to be acquitted, they skillfully inserted into the accusation of Christians some minor crime, such as extortion, and in the absence of evidence against Christians in this crime, they released them, freed them from trial and investigation. (Ad Scap. 4). Apol. 3; ad nat. I, 4; II, 1 The third race is the cynopennae, sciapodes or aliqui de subterranean antipodes. Freppel. Tert. t. I, p.92. Ibid. – It should be noted that when analyzing these worldviews, Tertullian dwells especially long only on anthropomorphism, as a very widespread form of religion and which is before his eyes; philosophical naturalism attracted little attention from Tertullian; he says almost nothing about fetishism. Pagan gods become gods only after their death - therefore, by the very recognition of the pagans, they were people. Ibid. 7. The birth of Saturn from heaven to earth is described in detail in ad nat. II, 12. Apol. 10; ad nat. II, 7. 12. Ad nat. II, 3. 12; apol. 10. Apol 11; ad. nat. II, 7.10. Apol 11; ad. nat. II, 9.10. Apol. 13; ad. nat. I, 10. Apol. 14; ad. nat. I, 10; II, 7. Apol. 15; ad. nat. II, 7. In addition to Tertullian, there is an indication of Christians’ veneration of the donkey’s head by M. Felix, Oct. 9. Apol. 16; ad. nat. I, 10; I, 12. Apol. 16; ad. nat. I, 12. Apol. 16; ad. nat. I, 13. Deus christianorum ὀνοκοίτης. In ad. nat. the inscription ὀνοκοίτης – and nothing more. – Obviously, this idea is connected and rests on the idea of ​​a donkey’s head, which was mentioned above. Apol. 16; ad. nat. I, 11. 14. Apol. 17. We have cited this passage with literal accuracy because it represents a classical passage in Op. Tertullian, the argument to which Tertullian was the first to pay special attention - he himself calls this evidence new (de test. an. 1). Tertullian did not attach such importance to any ad hominem argument in his apology as to the testimony of the soul - Christian by nature. Realizing the importance of this evidence, Tertullian decided to reveal it in more detail, to present it in all its clarity and completeness, and for this purpose he wrote a special treatise dedicated to this argumentation - this treatise - de testimonio animae. In it, Tertullian first of all indicates the motivation why he especially insists on this argumentation and expects such brilliant results from it. According to him, testimonium animae is more important than all evidence. For a pagan who is prejudiced against Christians, the testimony of the pagans themselves, much less the priests, no longer has any force. books by Christians, because no one reads them except Christians. For a pagan, authority is on the side of the one who speaks against Christians. To dispel the prejudice of the pagans, Tertullian turns “to a new testimony, which is more famous than all books, safer than any teaching, more public than all exclamations, yours of every person, because it actually constitutes a person.” This testimony is the testimony of the soul, which - whether it be eternal and divine or not - in any case should not lie, but the soul “not under the guise of a pedantic creature, educated in schools, sophisticated in reading ancient books and always ready to spew out the blasphemous rules of academies or the famous portico; and in all its rudeness, initial simplicity, in a barbaric and ignorant form,” a soul detached from everything external, acquired in schools or anywhere, because the soul taught something does not want to believe (de test. an. 1). Tertullian then analyzes the fact of consciousness when the soul, calling on the name of God, names only God and, therefore, rejects the divinity of many gods (de test. an. 2; ad nat. II, 1); recognizes Him as a Being endowed with the highest perfections, related to created beings: “God is merciful, God does good; God bless you, may God protect you”; recognizes God as the Judge and the Rewarder: “God sees, may God reward you, may God be the judge between us”... These instinctive impulses (eruptiones) of the soul often appear in pagan temples before idols (de test. an. 2), and thereby already indicate that polytheism is an oppression for the soul, from under which it wants to free itself, contradicts its natural aspirations for the one Author of everything, breaks the kinship of the soul with God, by whom (kinship) the soul values so much. Testimonio animae Tertullian reinforces other truths: retribution to man after death, the fact of resurrection (p. 4). The evidence of the soul is all the more probable because it is usually very simple; simplicity makes them popular, and therefore universal, accessible to all, and their universality proves that they are natural, innate to the soul (adv. Marc. I, 10) and - therefore - in a sense, divine. The soul - in its crudeness of initial simplicity - borrows all its testimony not from books, which it becomes acquainted with later and which constitute a second source, but from the primary source, received directly from its Creator (de test. an. 5). Souls in their natural simplicity should be the same for everyone, hence their testimony should be tangible for everyone, their authority is strong not only for Christians, but also for pagans, both educated and uneducated (Ibid. 5). Apol. 23.27; ad Scap. 2. Pressensé does not see evidence in favor of the Christian religion in exorcism (Hist. des trois premiers siècles de l’eglise chret., par. E. Pressensé, t. II, ed 1861 an.). “It is surprising, he says, that Tertullian insists on an argument that has no other basis for itself than ephemeral superstition” (p. 457). Pressanse explains this phenomenon - exorcism - as a disorder of the imagination; “Nothing,” he says, was as widespread as the belief in demonic possession; a sick mind was completely subject to the power of this belief, only it was colored differently in him, depending on the nature of the influences to which the disordered mind was exposed. If the patient came into contact with Christians, he explained his illness as they did, considered himself to be under the influence of a demon, saw in this demon a pagan god, and did not hesitate to announce this to the exorcist who questioned him... It is therefore not surprising that Tertullian’s ardent imagination was kindled at such a spectacle, and that he drew from it one of his favorite arguments in favor of the new religion” (p. 455). Thus, “even the best apology was influenced by modern prejudices!” (p. 457). We will neither defend nor refute this view of the Press, nor will we refer to the Gospel. Mark 14:17, - we will only point out that to confirm this view of exorcism in the first centuries it is necessary to upset the imagination of too many Christians of that time (Tert, apol. 23); Tertullian is not the only one who speaks about exorcism and bases the proof of the truth and divinity of Christianity on it (Orig. Contra Cels. 1. 1). On the other hand, Pressanza lacks solid support to confirm this view; it is based on nothing more than one unproven assumption. Ibid. 24.28; ad Scap. 2. In Rome there was a special law protecting imperial greatness, lex majestatis (Tacit annal. II, 50), as a logical consequence of the former law of Julius on maintaining the greatness of the Roman people. Horat. Carm. saecul. v. 9 – 12; Virgil. Aeneid VII, 218. The usual formula with which Domitian's official papers began was: Dominus ac Deus noster haec jubet (Dio Cass. LXVII, 13. - in Freppel, Tertull. I, 141). Freppel. Tertullien, I, 134. 140; S. Justin, p. 53. – How the deification of emperors was carried out after their death, the process itself, you can read about this in Jour. Min. Nar. Enlightenment Part 176, stat. A. Radonezhsky “Funeral rites of the ancient Romans” (chapter 12) True, the despotism of the emperors sometimes provoked resistance in the oppressed classes of the Roman Empire; there were those dissatisfied with state oppression, but these rather rare and exceptional cases of rebellion against the existing order, it seems, cannot be included in the general description of the relations of the Romans to the state and the emperor as exceptions - they confirm only the general rule. Senec. de benefit. III, 26. ApoI. 31; ad nat. I, 17; ad Scap.2. In the first centuries there was a widespread belief that the end of the world was near; This event - the end of the world - in the minds of leading Christians was combined with the fall of the Roman Empire. This connection, it seems, was developed not suddenly, but gradually. At its apogee, the Roman Empire was a magnificent edifice; Looking at him, the conviction involuntarily crept in either of the complete impossibility of his fall, or of his fall only with the end of the world. The last event should serve, according to this conviction, as a living harbinger of the first, and the delay in the fall of the world monarchy, of course, also delayed the end of the world. Based on this, one might say, general conviction, Tertullian speaks of it as actual proof of the sincerity of Christians towards the person of the emperor and towards the Roman Empire. In his letter to Scapula, Tertullian gives two other proofs in favor of the innocence of Christians in what they were accused of. The terrible punishing hand of God, revealed in miraculous signs in the field of nature, the terrible punishments of the persecutors of Christians, and finally, some event from the life of Scapula himself - all this found a place in a number of Tertullian’s arguments and - according to his goal - should have made Scapula think and understand that “wishing to exterminate Christians, he is fighting against innocence”, in the trials of Christians he acts contrary to his conscience. (Ad Scap. 3. 4). Regarding the attitude of pagan philosophers to revealed teaching, Tertullian says: What poet, what sophist has not drawn something from the prophets? From these sacred sources, philosophers tried to quench their thirst, only these revealed truths they borrowed were distorted and remade in their own way, in accordance with their basic views. Revealed truths served as the original for them, from which they copied unworthy copies (apol. 47; ad nat. II, 2). Tertullian says that the doctrine of soul transmigration was developed by philosophers from the frank doctrine of the posthumous fate of man (apol. 48; ad nat. I, 19). We are talking about the first book ad nations Ibid. 1. – In the last phrase, the younger people mean Christians from the pagans - mainly. Here Tertullian foresaw an objection from the Jews: the example concerning the son of Moses proves that whoever neglected circumcision was subject to death. To this foreseen objection he replies that if circumcision were an indispensable guarantee of salvation, then Moses would not have failed to circumcise his son on the eighth day; on the other hand, the forced circumcision of one child could not become a law for an entire nation. God commanded Moses through an Angel to circumcise his sons so that the Jewish people could not subsequently point to Moses himself as an example of neglect of this rite (adv. iud. 3). Here and further we mean an apology addressed to the pagan camp. In his work Exhort ad graecos. Of these, Tertullian himself points to the apologies of Justin, Miltiades and others (Adv Val. 5). In de test. an. Tertullian says that “many Christians” (meaning Eastern apologists) have already dealt with the doctrinal question and have compiled several small books on this issue - “they have exhausted the sources of ancient traditions, analyzed the basic rules of pagan wisdom and sufficiently proved that there is nothing strange or dangerous in Christian teaching” (de test. an. I). “But this pagan literature, no matter how common it is to these religions, cannot deserve the slightest approval, as soon as we want to thoroughly refute any error, or establish some new truth,” because its authority is not strong even for the unprejudiced pagans themselves. (Ibid.). Eusebius and Jerome speak of the prevalence of Tertullian's writings (Euseb. H. E. II, 2, Hier. Ep. 14).