Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Confronted with these arguments and replies of ours, which truth supplies out of its own resources, whenever your conscience — the silent witness of its own ignorance — is pressed and hemmed in, you flee, in your agitation, to a little altar of refuge, namely, the authority of the laws — as though they surely would not punish this sect, had it not been established on its merits before the framers of the laws. [2] What, then, prevented the same certainty from holding among the executors of the laws as well, when, in the case of other crimes likewise restrained and punished by the laws, the penalty is withheld unless inquiry is made first? [3] For example: the law forbids murder, adultery — yet the circumstances of the act are still examined, and still the nature of the deed is known to everyone.
[4] The laws punish the Christian. If there is some deed of the Christian, it ought to be dragged out. No law forbids inquiry; on the contrary, inquiry serves the laws — for how will you observe a law by guarding against what the law forbids, if the diligence needed to guard against it is taken away through a failure to recognize what you are guarding against? [5] No law owes to itself alone the verdict of its own justice, but owes it to those from whom it seeks obedience. Besides, a law that refuses to prove itself is under suspicion. [6] Rightly, then, for so long the laws against Christians are reckoned just and worthy of respect and observance, only as long as it is unknown what it is they are persecuting; rightly, once recognized, they are found utterly unjust and are spat upon along with their swords and gibbets and lions. [7] There is no honor in an unjust law: and indeed, if I may say so, the injustice of certain laws is hardly even in doubt, seeing that every day you temper their harshness and iniquity with new decrees and enactments.
VII.