Then, after reminding me how he had declared that Epictetus borrowed from the Christians, he said, “This, I think, is an instance. The Christian really loves the beast-like man because he believes the man to be made in the image of God and degraded by Satan. The Christian really pities him; he is troubled for the man’s sake. Christ says ‘Pray for him’; and the Christian honestly prays, ‘This man is behaving like a beast. God help him!’ The Epictetian does not recognise prayer or pity; he recognises his own peace of mind as God’s supreme gift. ‘This man,’ he says, ‘is behaving like a beast. But it is no evil to me. I must see that it does not interfere with my peace of mind. I must beware of pitying him.’ Elsewhere Epictetus says that when you are reviled you are to make yourself a ‘stone,’ whereas Christ says, ‘Bless them that curse you.’ This exceptional sentence, then, in which Epictetus speaks about ‘loving one’s cudgellers’ appears to me a case where our friend, while cutting away the Christian foundation, has tried to keep the Christian superstructure. Perhaps the view of Epictetus (at all events in word and in appearance) is somewhat selfish. But certainly the Christian precept is contrary to justice and common sense. One ought no more to love the wicked than to admire the ugly.” This seemed at first convincing, or, at all events, overpowering. But he went on to connect it with the doctrine of forgiveness, which Matthew and Luke included in the Lord’s Prayer. “This doctrine,” said Scaurus, “I have mentioned above, as being in Mark, although he does not give the Lord’s Prayer. It is, in fact, intended by Christ to be the very basis of his community. Now of course, Silanus, you and I and all reasonable people are agreed that we ought to be patient, and equable, and to condone faults to our equals, and not to lose our temper with our inferiors, if (as Epictetus says) a slave ‘brings us vinegar instead of oil.’ And a magnanimous man will put up with much greater offences than these, sometimes with injustice or fraud, sometimes even with insults, if he feels that his honour is not touched by them, or that society does not require a prosecution of the offence. But there is all the world of difference between this—which any gentleman would do, philosopher or no philosopher—and the extraordinary dishonesty—for I can call it by no other name—reduced to a system by the Christians, of ‘letting people off’ in the hope that God may ‘let you off.’ I do not want to be ‘let off’ by God. I should prefer to say (as Epictetus says to the tyrant) ‘If it seem advisable, punish me’.”