Christians do not fear; governors should remember humanity

We do not frighten you, since we ourselves are not afraid, but I would wish that we could save everyone by warning them not to fight against God. You can both perform the duty of your jurisdiction and remember humanity, since you too are under the sword. For what more is commanded of you than to condemn the guilty who have confessed, and to recall those who deny to torture? You see, then, how you yourselves act against your own mandates when you force those who have confessed to deny. By this very fact you admit that we are innocent, since you do not wish to condemn us immediately upon confession. But if you strive to crush us, then you are attacking innocence itself.

How many governors, both more resolute and more cruel, have turned away from cases of this kind? Cincius Severus, for example, at Thysdrus himself provided the remedy of how Christians should answer so that they could be released. Vespronius Candidus released a Christian under the pretext that he was a troublemaker, to satisfy his fellow citizens. Asper lightly harassed a man and then immediately let him go, and did not force him to sacrifice, having declared beforehand among the advocates and assessors that he was grieved to have fallen into this case. Pudens too, when a Christian was sent to him, understood from the indictment that the man had been shaken down, and released him, tearing up the indictment itself, and refused to hear the man without an accuser, citing the mandate.

All these things can be suggested to you both from your official duty and by those same advocates, who themselves have received benefits from Christians, even though they shout whatever they wish. For a certain secretary was freed when he was being thrown down by a demon, and so was a relative of certain people and a young boy. And how many respectable men—for we do not speak of common folk—have been cured either of demons or of illnesses? Even Severus himself, the father of Antoninus, was mindful of Christians. For he sought out Proculus the Christian, nicknamed Torpacion, the procurator of Euhodia, who had once cured him with oil, and kept him in his palace until his death. Antoninus knew him very well too, having been raised on Christian milk. But Severus, knowing that the most distinguished women and most distinguished men belonged to this faith, not only did not harm them, but honored them with his testimony and resisted the people raging against us.

Marcus Aurelius also, in the German expedition, obtained rain in that drought through the prayers of Christian soldiers to God. When have droughts not been driven away by our kneelings and fastings? Then the people too cried out, "God of gods, who alone is powerful," bearing witness to our God in the name of Jupiter. Besides these things, we do not deny a deposit, we commit adultery with no one's wife, we treat orphans dutifully, we refresh the needy, we return evil to no one for evil. Let those who falsely claim our faith see to it—we ourselves reject them. Who, in the end, complains about us under any other name? What other business does a Christian suffer except that of his own faith, which no one has proven to be incestuous or cruel in all this time?

For such innocence, for such honesty, for justice, for modesty, for faith, for truth, for the living God, we are burned—something that neither the sacrilegious nor true public enemies nor so many guilty of violating imperial dignity are accustomed to suffer. For even now this name is harassed by the governor of Legio and the governor of Mauretania, but only to the sword, just as from the beginning it was commanded that such people be punished. But greater contests bring greater rewards.