Though Christians deny that the emperor is a god, they nevertheless pray for his prosperity, because the general dissolution that threatens the universe, the conflagration of the world, is retarded so long as the glorious majesty of the triumphant Roman Empire shall last. They desire not to be present at the subversion of all Nature. They acknowledge only one republic, but it is the whole world; they constitute one body, worship one God, and all look forward to eternal happiness. Not only do they pray for the emperor and the magistrates, but also for peace. They read the Scriptures to nourish their faith, lift up their hope, and strengthen the confidence they have in God. They assemble to exhort one another; they remove sinners from their societies; they have bishops who preside over them, approved by the suffrages of those whom they are to conduct. At the end of each month every one contributes if he will, but no one is constrained to give; the money gathered in this manner is the pledge of piety; it is not consumed in eating and drinking, but in feeding the poor, and burying them, in comforting children that are destitute of parents and goods, in helping old men who have spent the best of their days in the service of the faithful, in assisting those who have lost by shipwreck what they had, and those who are condemned to the mines, or have been banished to islands, or shut up in prisons, because they professed the religion of the true God. There is but one thing that Christians have not in common, and that one thing is their wives. They do not feast as if they should die to-morrow, nor build as if they should never die. The objects of their life are innocence, justice, patience, temperance, chastity. To this noble exposition of Christian belief and life in his day, Tertullian does not hesitate to add an ominous warning to the magistrates he is addressing--ominous, for it was a forecast of a great event soon to come to pass: "Our origin is but recent, yet already we fill all that your power acknowledges--cities, fortresses, islands, provinces, the assemblies of the people, the wards of Rome, the palace, the senate, the public places, and especially the armies. We have left you nothing but your temples. Reflect what wars we are able to undertake! With what promptitude might we not arm ourselves were we not restrained by our religion, which teaches us that it is better to be killed than to kill!" Before he closes his defense, Tertullian renews an assertion which, carried into practice, as it subsequently was, affected the intellectual development of all Europe. He declares that the Holy Scriptures are a treasure from which all the true wisdom in the world has been drawn; that every philosopher and every poet is indebted to them. He labors to show that they are the standard and measure of all truth, and that whatever is inconsistent with them must necessarily be false.