4. On calamities attributed to the Christians (it was being claimed that the existence of the Christians brought the anger of the gods on the world) he wrote:
If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, they cry at once, "The Christians to the lions!" (See Apology 40. 2)
Tertullian claimed that the calamities attributed to Christians had appeared before. He showed that great disasters had been experienced even before Christians were ever heard of.