You have heard, brethren, how Christ urges on his soldiers with a royal exhortation, that they should not be afraid at the sight of death, of those who kill the body. Indeed he enrolls them into the rights of friends, who, from zeal for triumph, from love of liberty, shed their blood with joy and without trembling; for thus he says: 'But I say to you my friends: Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you shall fear: fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. But I say to you my friends: Be not afraid' (Luke xii): because virtue proves liberty, fear indicates servitude; for the free man is born to glory, the slave to fear;
deservedly, therefore, he is raised to the friendship of God who, for God's sake, despises human deaths and knows no fears. If imitation of character makes friends, and likeness of character joins them together, fittingly Christ calls those his friends whom by his imitation he sees and foresees will trample down the darts of the world and the very dread of death. 'But I say to you.' That is, not to all, but to friends. 'But I say to you.' Whom this death releases, does not finish. 'I say to you.' Whom the dissolution of the body promotes to what is better, does not lead across to punishment. 'I say to you.' In whom by death life is begun, not ended. 'I say to you.'
Whose death becomes precious, not by its own quality, but by its cause, since it comes rather to the gain of life than loses the interest of life. But let us hear what he says to his friends: 'Be not afraid of them who kill the body.' Let those hear who wore out the ancient volumes of the ancients on the good of death, yet were able to gather thence no strength, nor to find any consolation. For although with all the powers of eloquence they armed their minds for the endurance of death, dried their tears, took away sighs, denied groans, shut up griefs, yet they acquired for their readers nothing of sure hope, nor of perpetual life, nor of true salvation. Who could say to a man, who to a man, who to a wise man? 'To die is of nature; it is necessary to perish.'
The ancients lived for us, we live for those to come, no one for himself; that which cannot be taken away, to will it is a mark of virtue: undertake as a willing man that to which you are driven unwilling; death, before it comes, is not; but when it has come, it is not known to have come. Do not therefore grieve to have lost that which, when you have lost it, you will not grieve over. But when they have said such things, they say the whole from opinion, not from life. For whence, and when, and how, and through whom death came to you, they knew not: but to us the author of life has disclosed the author of death; for God made life, the devil devised against life, the divine word thus declaring it: 'God made not death' (Wisd. i), 'but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world' (Wisd. ii).
But you say: Why did God suffer his own work to perish by the work of the devil? O man, if you wished to know the things you ask, you would be at leisure a little, would give your mind, would open your ears, that you, judge of a matter so chief and yourself so curious, might come to know it. But you, always occupied with other things, never with yourself, why should you not know the causes of things, the whole business of the ages, the depth of judgments, and the impenetrable secret — you, idle and at ease, accuse. Did you not, in order to learn the strokes of letters, to know the elements, given over to a master, fixed to your school, wholly patient of labour and pain, know neither home nor parents?
How useful it is to you, that for which a master is bound to you, a school is provided, and a teacher, by your own punishments and by his labour, entreats you to be willing to know these things, to deign to hear such and so great matters. The apostles prove this, and especially Paul, who taught by being beaten, not by beating, so that, as an eminent master, he might bear and take up as many sufferings as there are morals for a man. And let us too in a moment of time learn the principles of things, the causes of the world, because we are commanded; and how are we commanded? And you hear not as you ought; and this servitude, this necessity, excuses us; you, so great a liberty, such a will, undoubtedly accuses. What we say is of our office; what we say too little is of your disdain.
You ask, O man, why God did not straightway extinguish death together with its very author, and did not then by his providence forestall the deadly poison, lest it should come to the destruction of the whole world, and especially of his own image. The heaven which you see, O man, established with all the air, carries the many waters, nor is it itself carried by anything, because command alone sustains it, the force of precept alone upholds it, the divine word thus declaring: 'Who stretcheth out the heaven like a skin, who covereth the higher parts thereof with waters' (Ps. ciii). The earth which is trodden by such weight, and made solid by the burden of mountains and by its mass, floats upon the liquid from its foundation, as the prophet says: 'Who hath founded the earth upon the waters' (Ps. cxxxv), so that what stands is of command, not of nature. 'He himself,' he says, 'spoke, and they were made;'
'he commanded, and they were created' (Ps. cxlviii), so that what stands is of a divine work, not of human reason. The sea, which is borne with so great a crest of commotion and is lifted up to the clouds, is reined in by the fine sands, that we may see so great a power yielding not to dust, but to command. All things which are in them are moved and live, made by command alone; the prophet confirms that again by command alone they are to be dissolved, when he says: 'In the beginning, thou, O Lord, didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands; they shall perish, but thou shalt remain; and all of them shall grow old like a garment, and as a covering thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed' (Ps. ci). How? So that the creature perishes for the age, not for the Creator.
But you now say that we, whoever you are that ask, have wandered afar: because when you ask why God permitted death to remain unto the destruction of his own handiwork, we have described in a long discourse that heaven, earth, and sea were made from nothing, and again are to be dissolved into nothing, and have found for you more and more matter for inquiry. You say: I asked why man perishes, you have affirmed that even the elements themselves shall perish, so that you might provide for the failing senses of mortals a solace from the universality of perishing, not a rest from reason; as though it were not a matter of grief that heaven should perish, that earth should be dissolved, and the whole face of things be abolished by the law of mortality. Tell me, I ask, what is fairer than heaven? What more splendid than the sun? What more pleasing than the moon? What more adorned than the stars?
What more healthful than the earth? What more useful than the sea? Or what old age is in these things, which endure as if newly born or newly nursed? It would surely be more pleasing that these should stand than perish. O man, perhaps it would be more delightful, but not more useful: for while these stood, you wavered; while these shone, you were blinded, so as not to see; the brightness of heaven stupefied your senses, the sun blinded your eyes with its splendour: for, deceived by their beauty, you denied their Maker; you confessed these rulers of the world, these, to be gods, whom the true God had subjected to your servitude. It is necessary, therefore, that all things be dissolved, that all be made new, that so at least you may believe things done, when you shall see them restored.
And do not think that we have wandered, whom you behold to have run through the whole creation as an argument for your understanding. O man, when your author made you from the dust, you did not weep; for if you had seen yourself made, you would never have so wept over yourself as one about to die. You saw yourself perfected, you saw yourself living, you saw yourself beautiful, you saw yourself already like your author; whence you were, of what sort you were — you who had seen yourself neither being born nor dying — you did not know. Hence it is that you gave everything to nature, yourself to yourself, nothing to God: therefore God through nature reduced you, permitted you to be called back from nothing into dust; that you might so see what you had been, and, about to rise again, give thanks — you who, once made, once created, proved most ungrateful.
Let us not fear, therefore, brethren, as the Lord said, those who kill the body, because they do not destroy this life, but transform it, while from a temporal life they make an eternal one. What more, brethren? He then permitted them to die, who was able to raise them up; he who is sufficient to give life, permitted them to be slain; to whom be honour and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.