Quis umquam taliter vagienti infanti supervenit? Quis cruenta, ut invenerat, Cyclopum et Sirenum ora iudici reservavit? Quis vel in uxoribus aliqua inmunda vestigia deprehendit? Quis talia facinora cum invenisset, celavit aut vendidit ipsos trahens homines? Si semper latemus, quando proditum est quod admittimus? Immo a quibus prodi potuit? Ab ipsis enim reis non utique, cum vel ex forma omnibus mysteriis silentii fides debeatur.
Who yet, I ask, came upon a baby wailing, as they say? Who ever kept for the judges sight the jaws of Cyclops and Siren, bloodstained as he had found them? Who, again, found in our wives the traces of impurity? Who discovered such crimes and concealed them, or sold his discovery,b with his hands on the persons of the guilty? If we always escape detection, when was our wicked conduct betrayed? Yes, tell me, by whom the betrayal could have been made? Not, I should think, by the guilty themselves; since in all mysteries the very fact that they are mysteries requires the pledge of silence.
final_alignments\Tertullian_Apology.json