relates the accusation in the most elegant and circumstantial
manner. The answer of Tertullian is the boldest and most
vigorous.]

But the perusal of the ancient apologies was sufficient to
remove even the slightest suspicion from the mind of a candid
adversary. The Christians, with the intrepid security of
innocence, appeal from the voice of rumor to the equity of the
magistrates. They acknowledge, that if any proof can be produced
of the crimes which calumny has imputed to them, they are worthy
of the most severe punishment. They provoke the punishment, and
they challenge the proof. At the same time they urge, with equal
truth and propriety, that the charge is not less devoid of
probability, than it is destitute of evidence; they ask, whether
any one can seriously believe that the pure and holy precepts of
the gospel, which so frequently restrain the use of the most
lawful enjoyments, should inculcate the practice of the most
abominable crimes; that a large society should resolve to
dishonor itself in the eyes of its own members; and that a great
number of persons of either sex, and every age and character,
insensible to the fear of death or infamy, should consent to
violate those principles which nature and education had imprinted
most deeply in their minds. ^20 Nothing, it should seem, could
weaken the force or destroy the effect of so unanswerable a
justification, unless it were the injudicious conduct of the
apologists themselves, who betrayed the common cause of religion,
to gratify their devout hatred to the domestic enemies of the
church. It was sometimes faintly insinuated, and sometimes
boldly asserted, that the same bloody sacrifices, and the same
incestuous festivals, which were so falsely ascribed to the