13. What is this insatiable madness for blood-shedding, what this interminable lust of cruelty? Rather make your election of one of two alternatives. To be a Christian is either a crime, or it is not. If it be a crime, why do you not put the man that confesses it to death? If it be not a crime, why do you persecute an innocent man? For I ought to be put to the torture if I denied it. If in fear of your punishment I should conceal, by a deceitful falsehood, what I had previously been, and the fact that I had not worshipped your gods, then I might deserve to be tormented, then I ought to be compelled to confession of my crime by the power of suffering, as in other examinations the guilty, who deny that they are guilty of the crime of which they are accused, are tortured in order that the confession of the reality of the crime, which the tell-tale voice refuses to make, may be wrung out by the bodily suffering. But now, when of my own free will I confess, and cry out, and with words frequent and repeated to the same effect bear witness that I am a Christian, why do you apply tortures to one who avows it, and who destroys your gods, not in hidden and secret places, but openly, and publicly, and in the very market-place, in the hearing of your magistrates and governors; so that, although it was a slight thing which you blamed in me before, that which you ought rather to hate and punish has increased, that by declaring myself a Christian in a frequented place, and with the people standing around, I am confounding both you and your gods by an open and public announcement?

XIII. Quae haec est insatiabilis carnificinae rabies? quae inexplebilis libido saevitiae? Quin potius elige tibi alterum de duobus: Christianum esse aut est crimen, aut non est; si crimen est, quid non interficis confitentem? si crimen non est, quid persequeris innocentem? Torqueri enim debui, si negarem. Si, poenam tuam metuens, id quod prius fueram et quod deos tuos non colueram, mendacio fallente celarem, tunc torquendus fuissem, tunc ad confessionem criminis vi doloris adigendus; sicut in caeteris quaestionibus torquentur rei qui se negant crimine quo accusantur teneri, ut facinoris veritas, quae indice voce non promitur, dolore corporis exprimatur. Nunc vero, cum sponte confitear et clamem et crebris ac repetitis 0554B identidem vocibus Christianum me esse contester, quid tormenta admoves confitenti et deos tuos, non in abditis et secretis locis, sed palam, sed publice, sed in foro ipso, magistratibus et praesidibus audientibus, destruenti; ut, etsi parum fuerat quod in me prius criminabaris, creverit quod et odisse et punire plus debeas, quod, dum me Christianum celebri loco et populo circumstante pronuntio, et vos et deos vestros clara et publica praedicatione confundo?