By this dispensation Peter thrice denied the Lord, that, having been taught how nothing he could do by his own strength, he might confirm his brethren. And how should he confirm them? That, distrusting themselves, they might place all their confidence in the Lord. But now it is time that we discourse to your charity concerning the other kind of martyrdom, about which too there must be more careful disputation, because it is hidden and common to all times: for the Neroes, the Diocletians, the Deciuses, and the Maximins do not always rage; yet the devil never ceases to harass those who have professed the warfare of Christ. And perhaps there will be hereafter, by Christ's granting, times in which no persecutions of tyrants shall afflict the Church: yet never will contests be lacking, never martyrdoms by which pious men may glorify God.
The Church indeed, still warring in this exile, applauds with peculiar joys those who in the profession of the name of Jesus have faithfully laid down their souls, and to their memorials there is a gathering with great eagerness: but the heavenly theater, the myriads of angels and the innumerable people of the just reigning with Christ, applaud all who by the integrity and innocence of their life testify to the sincere faith and unconquered charity which they have toward the Lord Jesus. Nor is God glorified only by the profession of faith, which, according to Paul, is made with the mouth unto salvation: but also by the confession of things committed. And lest we seem to speak this rashly of ourselves, the testimonies of the Scriptures must be adduced.
Therefore, unless the life of the pious redounded to the glory of God, Christ would not say in the Gospel: 'that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.' Nor would the apostle Paul write to the Galatians: 'and they glorified God in me.' This is confirmed also by contraries from the things we have said. For if the name of God is polluted and dishonored by the impious life of His own people, surely by their good life it is honored. There is condemned by the Apostle also the impious wisdom of the philosophers, who, though they had known God, yet did not glorify Him as God. They professed wisdom and displayed the utmost folly. And so, whereas they professed God
—though they professed God to exist—yet, living basely and sacrificing to idols, they in a certain manner by false testimony obscured the glory of God, as though He were neither just nor truthful, or as though there were not one but many, or as though He were like unto stones. But this the most blessed Paul testifies still more evidently, writing to the Corinthians: 'You are bought,' he says, 'with a great price; glorify and bear God in your body.' Therefore God redeemed us with the price of His blood, that, once purged from sins, we might thereafter lead a life worthy of Him. And we bear the emblem of the Emperor stamped upon our foreheads. What if, bearing the sign of Christ, one performs the works of Belial? Is not He dishonored whose insignia we bear?
On the contrary, just as the emperor is pleased with a most valiant soldier, esteeming his valor to be to himself an honor and ornament: so God glories in those whom He has redeemed, whom He has washed, whom He has sanctified, whom He has deigned to grace with the gift of the Spirit, if by the holiness of their life they declare that the Lord's grace in them has not been void. If Paul glories in the piety of his disciples, calling them his joy and his crown, he who was nothing but the steward of another's gift: shall not the Lord the more glory over those for whom He died? Now that which in the book of Job the Lord speaks to Satan after this manner:
'Hast thou considered my servant Job, how there is none like him upon the earth, a man simple and upright and fearing God and departing from malice?' Does He not utter speech as of one glorying in His worshipper? But the blessed Paul used even a more splendid word, writing his second epistle to the Corinthians: 'Now thanks be to God, who always triumphs us in Christ Jesus, and manifests the odor of His knowledge through us in every place, for we are the good odor of Christ unto God.' Better is a good name than precious ointments. Scripture is wont to call glorious fame 'fragrances.' Yet God does not glory after the manner of men, pleasing Himself and exulting, but He reckons our salvation His glory; and therefore the Apostle added:
'in those who are saved and in those who perish.' How is God glorified in those who are saved? Because in them His mercy is made manifest. How in those who perish? Because in them His justice is declared. Now the very course of the discourse has led us to this point, that we may also teach that God is glorified by the confession of sins. Here immediately there occurs from the book of Joshua son of Nun, Achan, who, because contrary to the divine edict he had taken from the accursed thing a splendid scarlet cloak and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels, the people of Israel turned their backs to the enemy. And so Joshua said to Achan: 'My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and confess, and tell me what thou hast done; hide it not.'
Having confessed, he paid the penalty, and the wrath of the Lord was turned away. That confession glorified the justice and wisdom of God. His wisdom, because to His eyes nothing was hidden: His justice, because not without cause had He suffered the enemies to prevail against Israel, and because no man violates His laws with impunity. It was nothing great that Achan had pilfered: yet it was a great lesson to the whole people, how great a danger it is to neglect the commands of God and to wish to impose upon Him, as though anything could escape Him, or as though He favored transgressors. And that man indeed, though he was a Jew, for a single sin which seemed to himself trifling paid most severe penalties, stoned by the whole people, redeeming by the destruction of the body the salvation of the soul.
For God does not judge twice for the same thing. But what punishment awaits those who, after so great a light and grace of the gospel, after they were once enlightened, have also tasted the heavenly gift and been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, have likewise tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, yet relapse into many and monstrous crimes, crucifying to themselves the Son of God and holding Him up to mockery? These are the more miserable in this, that although they are such, they nevertheless spurn the saving remedy of repentance, despise the Church offering her maternal bosom and inviting them to the restoration of health. How great an ignominy, do you think, does such defection brand upon the Church?
Nor can that disgrace fail to touch Christ, who is the head of the Church and accounts as his own in all things whatever belongs to his body and its members. Conversely, how great is the rejoicing of the whole Church when one who has fallen is reconciled to the Church through penance! And lest we suppose that this joy is only among you, let us hear the Lord speaking in the Gospel according to Luke: 'I say to you, that there shall be greater joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance than over ninety-nine just persons who need no penance.' For this clause concludes the parable of the shepherd who, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, sought with great labour the one that had strayed from the flock, and at last, having found it, laid it upon his shoulders and restored it to the fold.
With a like sentence he closes the parable of the woman who had found the lost drachma: 'So I say to you, there shall be joy before the angels of God over one sinner doing penance.' Yet this is not to be so understood as though it were more pleasing to God and his angels that a man should return to piety after a fall than that he should persevere in innocence without falling. Rather, Scripture speaks after its own manner, according to human affections, wishing to attest that the conversion of sinners is most pleasing to God. For he does not desire the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. And at times the falls of pious men, however great, are turned by divine dispensation to the highest advantage of the Church.
Thus fell the chief of the apostles, thus Paul the teacher of the Gentiles, thus Mary Magdalene, in whom the Church now especially glories, whose falls turned into the strengthening and consolation of the house of God. Moreover, here he does not speak of the truly just, but of Pharisaic justice, just as he says elsewhere: 'They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.' Yet those to whom the Lord said this were not whole; rather, puffed up by some observance of the law, they seemed to themselves whole and therefore did not desire a physician. Since these matters stand in this way, longed-for brother, let us strive with unremitting exhortations to rouse the souls of the faithful, so that our whole life too may render martyrdom, that is, testimony, to God.
This is so far from being negligible that, unless it comes first, the martyrdom which is borne by blood is no martyrdom. For in vain would you offer your neck to the executioner, unless you first put to death the members which are upon the earth, that is, the affections which war against the spirit—hatred, envy, avarice, lust; whoever serves these has in a manner denied God, and while professing Christ with his mouth confesses Satan as his god by his life. Nor ought this saying to seem too harsh to anyone, since it is both true and wholesome: whatever a man sets before God, he makes his god, and we cannot serve two masters; for there is one God, to be loved with the whole heart, the whole soul, and all one's strength. Whoever, therefore, says with his mouth:
'I believe in one God,' and yet serves avarice or lust or luxury, lies to himself and contradicts himself, sounding one thing with the tongue while concealing another in the heart, bearing testimony to God with the voice only, while his life worships Satan. But the testimony of life is more effective than that of the tongue. 'Not everyone that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom, but he that does the will of the heavenly Father.' Works too have their tongue, they have their eloquence even while the tongue is silent. Therefore the Lord speaks thus in the Gospel of John: 'The works which the Father hath given me to perfect, the very works which I do, bear witness of me.' As, therefore, good works profess God, so evil works in a manner say: 'There is no God, nor knowledge in the Most High.'
Who would not tremble, who would not shudder, who would not rend his garments, who would not stop up his ears, if he should hear such utterances from a Christian? What great horror, what great grief seizes our souls when someone, overcome by torments and ordered to deny Christ, denies him and burns incense before the statue of Jupiter? How we quake, fearing lest God in his wrath should hurl against us the thunderbolt of his anger, lest the earth, gaping open, should swallow us up—so that at times the impiety of one man may involve many in the fellowship of punishment; and there are crimes so monstrous that even to have seen or heard of them is detestable. But why in other cases, in a like offense, are we so indulgent? Why do we flatter both ourselves and others? Yet see what the Apostle says of such men, writing to Titus:
'They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him.' Likewise in the first letter to Timothy, concerning the widow who neglects her household: 'But if any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.' If she has denied the faith who too negligently cares for her household, what do you think he will say of those who have given themselves wholly to Mammon and the belly? Certainly Paul speaks of Christians when, writing to the Philippians, he says: 'Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly.' The same men he censures writing to the Romans: 'Such serve not Christ the Lord, but their own belly.' He used 'to serve' after the manner of the Scriptures for 'to worship.' They worship the belly as him whom they hold for their God.
Now concerning avarice he pronounces even more plainly, writing to the Colossians: 'Mortify,' he says, 'your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and avarice, which is the service of idols.' We execrate those who prostrate themselves before the image of Diana: how much more justly do we execrate those who with their whole heart serve Mammon, who daily sacrifice to it? And if he is an idolater who, held by the love of money, is greedy—who hoards what comes by inheritance or is gained by industry and does not dispense it to the needy—what must be thought of those who pile up wealth by pandering, by usury, by robbery, by fraud, by false accusations, by oppressing the poor?
And this service of idols is found not only among the laity of Christians, but also—what must be lamented—among bishops. Furthermore, drunkenness is so common in our Africa that they scarcely reckon it a crime. Do we not see that at the memorials of the martyrs a Christian is driven by a Christian to intoxication? Or do we deem this a lighter crime than to immolate a goat to Bacchus? To me it seems far graver, if we are willing to weigh the matter by right reason. When the tyrant says, 'Deny Christ and offer sacrifice to Jupiter, and be our friend, or die,' often the tongue denies while the heart protests, and the hand burns incense while the mind within adores Christ.
Although this too is a most grievous crime, yet the weakness of human nature somewhat lightens the guilt of the impiety. There Satan speaks to you by the voice of the tyrant; but what does the same Satan say to you through your own concupiscence? 'Deny Christ, and be rich; sacrifice to Mammon and send Christ away.' What does he promise? Gold and silver, useless material unless you put it to use. Nor does he say 'die,' but 'delight your eyes'—nay rather, he says this: 'Gain money which you will possess for a short time, and lose your soul forever.' And yet here you willingly bend your knees to Satan and, having denied Christ, hand yourself over wholly to him. But what does Christ say? 'Be mine and live forever;
despise these temporal riches, and I will repay you a hundredfold in this world and eternal life in the world to come. Leave the earth and receive heaven.' And God, promising these things, is forsaken, and the devil, promising things so worthless and those falsely, is adored. O foul defection! O base idolatry! O iniquitous exchange! With what reward did he solicit the first parents of the human race? He showed an apple and gave death. He deceived them with a lie: 'You shall not die, but you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.' And they, thus deluded—what a Lord did they forsake, and to whom did they defect? From what happiness did they fall, and into what miseries did they cast themselves?
But that same prince of darkness who spoke to Eve through the serpent speaks to us through his satellites and ministers, through procuresses and pimps, through those who allure us to the love of money, to ambition, to pleasure, drawing us away from the sincerity that is in Christ Jesus. That same one speaks to us through our own concupiscences which live in our members. Nor does he say, as the human tyrant does, 'Either obey me or die,' nor does he display prisons, chains, hooks, frying-pans, or blazing furnaces, no crosses, nooses, or swords, but only this: 'Despise God, renounce the inheritance of the heavenly life, and commit adultery, and you will seize pleasure.' But what kind? Momentary and of the body only:
but how seasoned with bitterness! With infamy, with danger, and above all with the secret torment of conscience. This is the devil's bait, this his hire. And what sort is the wage that follows? Let the blessed Apostle declare it with greater faith: 'The wages of sin is death.' What death? Of the body, which alone the human tyrant threatens and can inflict? No, but the death of hell, which knows no end. The human tyrant can do more than the devil. He in a manner compels man's nature; the devil can do nothing but solicit; he cannot cast down unless you consent; to have despised him is to have conquered. Greater pardon, therefore, is owed to one who denies Christ under torments than to one who willingly consents to the devil, for whom to have believed is to have denied Christ.
He is a liar and the father of every lie, and his promises, however they flatter with their outward show, are nothing but illusions luring men to destruction. Let no one, therefore, flatter himself thus: 'I am a sinner, I love money, I serve lust, I am eager for honors, I indulge in vengeance, I am given over to pleasures—but I have not denied Christ.' But the Lord himself cries out against you: 'You cannot worship two masters.' And meanwhile you shudder at the abominable name of one who has offered incense or purchased a certificate, though you yourself are perhaps worse than those who have burned incense or taken certificates. Human fear, too violent for man's nature to overcome, drove them to utter impious words with the conscience protesting in the tongue:
You, solicited by so cheap a wage, willingly defect to him from whose tyranny Christ redeemed you by his own blood—you who have now become wholly his, as the Apostle says: 'You are bought with a great price, and are no longer your own.' You professed his warfare at the saving font, to him you gave your name, in his sacraments you were initiated, you received the largess and the pledge of the Spirit, that you might have no doubt about the promised wage; and at the same time you declared perpetual enmity against the devil, you renounced all his pomps and pleasures, you blew and hissed him away, you swore upon the words of the Redeemer; and yet, while you serve so many vices, you please yourself because you have not yet burned incense or purchased a certificate.
If some soldier, sworn upon the words of Caesar, should flee to the Turk and at his bidding do the things he knew to be most hateful to Caesar, would he not, when caught, be haled off to punishment as a deserter, a perjurer, a runaway? And who would listen to him defending himself thus: 'I am no deserter, I have not denied Caesar'? Would he not straightway hear: 'What does it matter if your tongue was silent? By the deed itself you have denied him, and more than denied him, you who have not only abandoned the service but have even gone over to the tyrant and irreconcilable enemy of your emperor'? Rightly do the ears of the faithful abominate the word 'apostate':
But this is to be execrated not only there, when by burning a grain of incense or by a written certificate one renounces the profession of the name of Christ, but wherever, with contempt for the laws of Christ, obedience is rendered to Satan. For it matters not what the tongue sounds: if it sounds Christ while the mind is given over to crimes, it is not profession but hypocrisy, ready to deny Christ if fear should press—the fear that oppresses those who burn incense or take certificates. And in these matters which so war against each other that neither can bear the company of the other, whenever we embrace the one, we have renounced the other; whenever we reject the one, we acknowledge the other. Of such kind are light and darkness, war and peace, death and life, God and Belial, as the blessed Paul also attests in the second letter to the Corinthians:
'For what participation has justice with iniquity, or what fellowship has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial?' To have cleaved to Belial is to have denied Christ, though you profess Christ with tongue or dress. If any of the simpler sort should doubt this, I will give a coarse and evident argument. Let us imagine a tyrant thus speaking to a Christian: 'Burn incense to Jupiter,' adding nothing and demanding nothing further that he deny Christ: if he burns it, will it not be manifest to all that by this very act he has denied Christ, in that he has made an offering of incense to Jupiter, even though he utter nothing impious against Christ?
Just as those who practice magic arts—from which evil the mercy of the Lord has freed us, as from all the rest by which, walking according to the old man, we were once held—silently deny Christ while they have a covenant with demons. Now if the Maccabee brothers, together with their mother, chose rather to be done to death by so many torments than to eat swine's flesh, deeming that thereby they would deny that God who was the author of the law, then whoever knowingly and willingly violates the precepts of the law—on what grounds does he flatter himself who grows old in luxury, drunkenness, avarice, robberies, adulteries, and other crimes which even the laws of the Gentiles have not wished to leave unpunished? And while they deny Christ in so many ways, while they so often sacrifice to demons, do they demand to be reckoned as Christians?
And among these are some who commit such things openly and almost even glory in the vilest deeds: so far are they from being ashamed or grieved at their misdeeds. And yet they dare to come into the Church of the saints, they dare to mingle with the Lord's flock. Such the Church at times tolerates, lest, being provoked, they disturb the people of God still more; but what does it profit not to be cast out from the assembly of the pious, if you have deserved to be cast out? For to be cast out is a remedy and a step toward recovering health; to have deserved expulsion is the height of evils. And in vain does he mingle with the assembly of the saints in a temple made by hands, if he is removed from the fellowship of God and from the whole mystical body of Christ.
It is fitting also to consider how greatly Christians shrink from meats offered to idols, from entering shrines, and even from the idols themselves. Though the blessed Paul cries out that an idol is nothing, and that meat offered to idols is nothing, much less is a shrine built of stones anything: and yet the minds of very many are held by such scruple that they would sooner meet death than taste what has been immolated to idols, and they reckon it an inexpiable offense if they should enter a shrine of Jupiter or Apollo or Diana, and they think themselves grievously defiled by the touch of an idol. Indeed I approve the religion of such men, if it be consistent in all things.
But now, alas, one may see certain people almost superstitiously timid in these matters, while in others, where there was graver cause for fear, they are excessively secure. The touch of an idol does not of itself defile the soul, nor does entering a shrine, nor eating what is offered to idols; but of itself the love of money, incest, rapine, hypocrisy, and monstrous things like these pollute the conscience. How fitting indeed is it to shrink from entering a shrine, and not to shrink from immolating victims to demons in the temple consecrated to the Holy Spirit? Holy Paul cries out, writing to the Corinthians: 'Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy.' Again in the same epistle:
'Or know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?' Now if God has consecrated to himself the breasts of Christians that he may dwell in them through his Spirit, there he takes delight and walks about, there he loves to have a pure victim offered to him in every place. And he who into this temple sacred to God, having cast out the Holy Spirit, brings the abominations which Ezekiel beheld in a mystic vision, who there makes a seat for Mammon, Venus, Comus, Bacchus, and other monsters, who there immolates to demons the foulest victims—does he fear to enter a shrine of the Gentiles lest he be contaminated? Wherefore let no one flatter himself in vain: God is not mocked.
Let our religion be consistent with itself, and let us not execrate others while we ourselves are liable to graver crimes; nor let us be religiously timid in one place and shamelessly impious in another. But having once professed Christ, let us render him testimony throughout our whole life, and glorify him on every side by obeying his precepts, so that by this men may know that we truly trust in him, that we love him from the heart, and that we have not feignedly bound ourselves to his warfare at the sacred font. The blessed Apostle foretold that persecution would not be lacking to any who is unwilling to live piously in Christ Jesus. If the tyrant is absent, if the torturer, if the despoiler: concupiscence will not be absent, presenting us with daily material for martyrdom.
Finally, these very evils which the life of mortals brings with it, and which are common to the pious with the impious, will win for us the crown of martyrdom, if we bear them calmly, if with thanksgiving. Nor are those deprived of the glory of martyrdom who have not been consummated by a violent death. Who would dare to remove either the patriarch Abraham, or his son Isaac, or blessed Job from the number of martyrs? What torturers racked the body more grievously than the affections of nature racked the patriarch's mind, when without hesitation, at God's command, he prepared to immolate his only and uniquely dear son, in whom lay all his hope of posterity?
What did Isaac lack of martyrdom, who without a murmur suffered himself to be bound and laid upon the pyre, and did not shrink from the sword brandished over his neck? And whose martyrdom shall we dare to compare with the things that Job suffered? But if anyone still distrusts our discourse, surely he will not be able to distrust the words of blessed Paul. Writing to the Hebrews, beginning from Abel down to Gideon, he recounts a vast catalogue of the saints, in which there are many who did not die by a violent death—nay, few are they who so died—and yet of all he pronounces: 'And these, being approved by the testimony of faith, were found,' plainly declaring that the martyrdom of faith is accomplished even by a good life.
The usage of the Church, indeed, distinguishes them by titles, calling martyrs those who departed by a violent death, and confessors those who steadfastly amid torments and threats of death professed the name of the Lord Jesus, prepared to meet death or rather aspiring to the supreme crown of martyrdom. Yet in God's sight, whoever have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences, whoever have truly died together with Christ and been buried with him in baptism, so that now they live no longer to themselves nor to the world to which they once died, but to him who died for them—these are martyrs and shall not be defrauded of the martyr's crown: and first of all, monks who are truly monks, and virgins who are truly virgins.
For neither a desert place, nor sackcloth for clothing, nor pulse for food, nor fasts, nor sleeping on the ground make a monk; beneath these wrappings there sometimes lurks a mind exceedingly worldly. This is detected thus, if they be called to some ecclesiastical office: there you may see certain of them very easily overcome by delights, more impatient of injuries, more eager for vengeance than any other man from the common crowd. What is the cause? Because they have exercised the body more than the mind: whereas the blessed Paul teaches that bodily exercise is profitable to little, but piety avails to all things. I would not say these things as though those are to be condemned who by such means chastise their body and bring it into servitude: