Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
And then there's this: most people run into their hatred of the name with eyes shut tight, so that even when they hand someone a good character reference they can't help mixing in a slap at the name. "Gaius Seius is a good man — pity he's a Christian." Or another: "I'm amazed that Lucius Titius, such a sensible fellow, has suddenly turned Christian." Nobody stops to reconsider whether Gaius is good and Lucius sensible perhaps because they are Christians, or whether they became Christian because they were already sensible and good. They praise what they know and abuse what they don't know, and they let the thing they don't know trample the thing they do — though it is far more just to form a judgment about the hidden from the evident than to condemn the evident on the strength of the hidden. Others, who used to know these very people as drifters, worthless, disreputable, now brand them for the very thing that deserves praise — hatred has blinded them so badly they turn a compliment into an indictment. "What a woman! So wanton, so gay! What a young man! Such a flirt, such a lady's man!" — "They've become Christians." So the reform gets charged to the name that produced it. Some, too, strike a bargain between that hatred and their own convenience, content to do the injury as long as they no longer have to keep under their own roof the thing they hate. A husband once free of jealousy now throws out a wife who has become chaste; a father once indulgent now disowns a son who has become obedient; a master once mild now banishes from his sight a slave who has become faithful. The moment anyone is improved by this name, he gives offense. The good is not worth as much as the hatred of Christians costs.
Now then, if it is the name that is hated, what crime attaches to names, what charge can be brought against mere words — unless some word of a name sounds barbarous, or ill-omened, or abusive, or obscene? But "Christian," so far as the word can be interpreted, is derived from "anointing." And even when you mispronounce it "Chrestian" — for you don't even have a sure grasp of the name among yourselves — it comes out compounded from sweetness or kindness. So even an innocent name is hated in innocent men.
But, you say, it's the sect that's hated, precisely in the name of its founder. What's new about that, if some school of thought passes its founder's name on as a surname to its followers? Aren't philosophers named after their founders — Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans? Aren't some named from the places of their meetings and lecture-halls — Stoics, Academics? In the same way doctors take their name from Erasistratus, grammarians from Aristarchus, even cooks from Apicius. And yet no one takes offense at anyone professing a name handed down along with the teaching from its teacher. Clearly, if a man wants to condemn a school as bad, and therefore its founder as bad, he will condemn the name too as bad, deserving hatred on the strength of the guilt of the school and its founder. And so, before hating the name, it was first necessary to examine the school through its founder, or the founder through his school. But as things stand, both inquiries — into the school and into its founder — are neglected, and instead the name alone is seized, the name alone is assaulted, and a single word condemns in advance a school unknown and a founder unknown, simply because they are named, not because they are convicted.