Collected Works 29

A great evil, out of a small one, the scorpion breeds up from the earth. As many poisons as there are kinds, as many ruins as there are species, as many pains as there are colors. Nicander writes of it and depicts it. And yet the one gesture of violence for them all is from the tail, not the mouth; and the tail will be whatever is propagated from the hinder part of the body and lashes. Even so is the scorpion's: that poisoned series of knots, a slender vein within, rising with an arched onset, draws tight at the very top, after the manner of an engine of torture, its hooked sting. Whence too they name from the scorpion a warlike engine that quickens its missiles by a drawing-back. That sting is also a tube, gaping with a fine slenderness, and it pours the venom, wherewith it strikes, into the wound. The familiar season of its danger is summer; with the south and southwest winds it spreads its savage sail.

Among remedies natural things count for most; magic too binds something around; medicine comes to the rescue with iron and with the cup. For some even drink beforehand, hastening to secure protection; but intercourse drains it away, and they thirst anew. For us faith is the safeguard, if it too be not smitten by distrust—by our signing at once, and adjuring, and casting our heel upon the beast. In this way, in fact, we often come to the aid even of the heathen, gifted by God with that power which the Apostle consecrated when he scorned the viper's bite. What, then, does this pen of mine promise, if faith is safe of itself? That it may be safe of itself in other cases too, when it suffers its own scorpions. A bitter mediocrity belongs to these as well: their kind is various, and they are armed in one way only, and are equipped at a fixed season, and by none other than that of heat.

Among Christians this is persecution. When, therefore, faith is aflame and the church is being burned up, as in the figure of the bush, then the Gnostics break out, then the Valentinians creep forth, then all the impugners of martyrdoms boil up, themselves also hot to hurt, to sting, to kill. For, knowing that many are then simple and untaught and weak, and most people mere weathervanes, and Christians only if it please them, they judge that these are never more to be approached than when the entrance of the soul has been loosened by fear—especially when some atrocity has already crowned the faith of the martyrs. And so at first, still dragging their tail from the affections, they set to, or lash as if into the void: 'Is this what innocent men are to suffer? So that you would think him a brother, or a heathen of the better sort. Is this how a sect harmless to no one is to be treated?'

Thereupon they press home: 'men perish without a cause.' For to perish, and without a cause—this is the first sting. Thereafter they now cut in: 'but simple souls do not know what is written, and how, where and when and before whom confession is to be made—except that this is not even simplicity, but vanity, nay madness, to die for God, as though he would save me. So shall he slay, who ought to save? Once Christ died for us, once was he slain, that we should not be slain. If he demands a return, does he too expect salvation from my death? Or does God crave the blood of men, especially if he refuses that of bulls and of goats? Surely he prefers the repentance of a sinner rather than his death. And how does he not desire the death of sinners?'

These things, and whatever other inventions of heretical poisons there may be, whom do they not sting, if not to destruction, at least into gall; if not to death, at least into bile? But you, if your faith is watchful, strike the scorpion then and there with the anathema for your sandal, and leave it dying in its own venom. Otherwise, if it has glutted its blow, the venom is instilled and hastens into the inward parts; at once all the former senses grow numb, the blood of the mind congeals, the flesh of the spirit fades away, the loathing of the Name grows sharp. Now the very mind seeks for itself where it may vomit, and thus weakness, once it has been struck, breathes out its wounded faith either into heresy or into the world. And now, for the present state of things, the heat is at its midpoint, the very dog-star of persecution, from that Cynocephalus himself, forsooth.

Some by fire, some by the sword, some by wild beasts, have proved themselves Christians; others meanwhile, having tasted martyrdom by cudgels and iron claws besides, hunger in prison. We ourselves, like hares, a marked-out prey, are besieged from afar, and the heretics prowl about after their manner. And so the time has warned us, against our native little beasts, to temper with our pen a native theriac. You who read, may you drink. Nor is the draught bitter. If the oracles of the Lord are sweet above honey and the honeycombs, the pigments thereof come from that source. If the promise of God flows with milk and honey, these things taste of that which leads thither. But woe to those who turn sweet into bitter, and light into darkness!

For likewise those too who impugn martyrdoms, interpreting salvation as perdition, refashion the sweet into the bitter as much as the light into darkness; and thus, by preferring this most wretched life to that most blessed one, they substitute the bitter for the sweet as much as darkness for light. But not yet must we treat of the good of the martyr, save first of the duty; nor of its usefulness before its necessity. Divine authority goes first—whether God has willed and commanded any such thing—so that those who deny it to be good may not be persuaded of its expediency, except when they have been subdued. It is fitting that heretics be compelled to their duty, not enticed. Hardness must be conquered, not coaxed. And surely it will be adjudged best enough, whatever shall be proved to have been appointed and enjoined by God.

Let the Gospels wait a little, while I draw out their root—the Law—while thence I elicit the will of God from that very source whereby I recognize him: 'I am,' he says, 'the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt not have other gods besides me. Thou shalt not make for thyself a likeness of the things that are in heaven, and that are on the earth beneath, and that are in the sea under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, neither shalt thou serve them. For I am the Lord thy God.' Likewise in the same Exodus: 'You yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make for yourselves gods of silver, and gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.' In accordance with these, also in Deuteronomy: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with all thy strength and with thy whole soul.'

And again: 'Neither forget the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. The Lord thy God shalt thou fear, and him alone shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and by his name shalt thou swear. You shall not go after strange gods, of the gods of the nations that are round about you; for the Lord thy God is a jealous God in thy midst, lest, being angered, he be indignant and destroy thee from the face of the earth.' But also, setting forth blessings and curses: 'Blessings,' he says, 'if you shall hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, whatsoever I command you this day, and shall not err from the way which I have enjoined upon you, so as to go and sow to other gods, whom you know not.' Concerning whom, to be utterly rooted out on every side:

'With utter destruction,' He says, 'you shall destroy all the places in which the nations served their gods, which you shall possess as an inheritance, upon the mountains and hills and beneath the leafy trees; and their altars you shall dig up, you shall overthrow and break in pieces their pillars, and cut down their groves, and the graven images of their gods you shall burn with fire, and blot out their name from that place.' Further He urges, when they had entered the land of promise and had exterminated its nations: 'Take heed to yourself, that you do not follow them after they have been exterminated from before your face, that you do not seek out their gods, saying, As the nations do for their gods, so let me also do.'

'But also,' He says, 'if a prophet should rise up among you, or a dreamer of dreams, and give you a sign or a portent, and it come to pass, and he say, Let us go and serve other gods whom you do not know, you shall not hearken to the word of that prophet or dreamer; for the Lord your God is testing you, whether you fear God with your whole heart and with your whole soul. After the Lord your God you shall walk, and Him you shall fear, and His precepts you shall keep, and His voice you shall hear, and Him you shall serve, and to Him you shall cleave. But that prophet or dreamer shall die; for he has spoken to seduce you from the Lord your God.' And likewise under another heading:

'But if your brother by father or mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife who is in your bosom, or the friend who is as your own soul, secretly entice you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the nations that are round about you, near or far off, you shall not consent to go with him, nor shall you hearken to him. Your eye shall not spare him, nor shall you desire him, nor shall you save him; you shall surely inform against him. Your hands shall be upon him first to kill him, and the hands of your people last, and you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God.'

He adds also concerning cities: if it were established that any of them, at the persuasion of wicked men, had gone over to other gods, then all its inhabitants should be slain, and all things in it should be made a devoted offering, and all its spoils should be gathered together into all its exits and burned with fire, together with all its vessels and all its people, in the sight of the Lord God; 'and it shall not be habitable,' He says, 'for ever, it shall be built up no more, nor shall anything of its devoted thing cleave to your hands, that the Lord may be turned from the indignation of His anger.' He appended likewise an order of curses among the maledictions against idols: 'Cursed is the man who makes a graven or molten abomination, the work of a craftsman's hands, and sets it up in a secret place.'

But in Leviticus: 'You shall not follow idols,' He says, 'nor make for yourselves molten gods. I am the Lord your God.' And elsewhere: 'The children of Israel are My servants and my children. These are they whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You shall not make for yourselves things made by hand, nor set up for yourselves a graven pillar. Nor shall you place a stone as a mark in your land. I am the Lord your God.' And these first things were spoken through Moses, pertaining assuredly to all, to whomsoever the Lord God of Israel should likewise bring out of the Egypt of a most superstitious world and out of the house of human bondage.

But thereafter every mouth of the prophets sounds forth with the voices of the same God, heaping up His same law by a renewal of the same precepts, and denouncing nothing else so principally in the first place as this: to beware of every fashioning and worship of idols. As through David: 'The gods of the nations are silver and gold; they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have nostrils and smell not, a mouth and speak not, hands and touch not, feet and walk not. Like unto them shall be those who make them and who trust in them.' III.

Nor let me think it need be disputed whether God rightly forbids His name and honour to be given over to a lie; whether He rightly refuses that those whom He has torn away from the error of superstition should return again into Egypt; whether He rightly does not suffer those whom He has chosen for Himself to fall away from Him. So neither will it be expected that this be examined afresh by us: whether He willed the discipline to be observed which He willed to establish, and whether He justly avenges as forsaken the discipline which He willed to be observed, since He would have established it in vain if He had not willed it to be observed, and would have willed it observed in vain if He had not willed to vindicate it. For it follows that I should prove these determinations of God against superstitions to be as fully carried into effect as they are also vindicated, since upon these will rest the whole rationale of martyrdoms.

Moses was away with God on the mountain, when the people, impatient of his so necessary absence, sought to produce for themselves gods, whereby they rather destroyed themselves. Aaron is pressed, and he orders the earrings of their women to be cast into the fire. For they were about to lose, unto judgment upon themselves, the true ornaments of the ears, the voices of God. The clever fire pours out for them the figure of a calf, thus taunting them as having their heart where their treasure also was, namely in Egypt, which consecrated among the other animals a certain ox as well. And so three thousand men, cut down by their nearest kinsmen, because they had offended a Kinsman so near as God, dedicated both the beginnings and the deserts of transgression.

In Numbers, when Israel had turned aside at Shittim, they go off to lust after the daughters of Moab, are invited to idols, so that they might also commit fornication in spirit; then they eat of their polluted things, and thereupon also worship the gods of the nation, and are initiated into Baal-Peor. For this idolatry too, the sister of adultery, twenty-three thousand, slain by domestic swords, made atonement to the divine wrath. Joshua the son of Nun being dead, they forsake the God of their fathers and serve the idols of the Baalim and of Astarte; and the Lord being angry delivered them into the hands of spoilers, and they were despoiled by them and sold to their enemies, nor could they by any means stand before the face of their enemies. Wherever they had advanced, the hand was upon them for evil, and they were sorely oppressed.

After these things God set over them Judges, whom we understand to be Censors. But they did not persevere in obeying even these. As soon as any of the Judges had died, they turned to sin beyond their fathers, going after the gods of others and serving and worshipping them. Therefore the Lord being angry said: 'Since indeed this nation has transgressed My covenant which I ordained for their fathers, and have not heard My voice, I too will no longer take heed to remove a man from before them out of the nations which Joshua left when he departed.'

And thus, throughout almost all the annals of the Judges and thereafter of the kings, the powers of the surrounding nations being preserved, Israel by war and captivity and the yoke of the alien peoples paid the penalty of God's anger, as often as it had chiefly strayed from Him into idolatry. IV. If therefore this is established both to have been forbidden from the beginning by so many and so great precepts, and never to have been committed with impunity, according to so many and so great examples, and that no crime is reckoned so haughty before God as a transgression of this kind, we ought of our own accord to understand that the intention of the divine denunciations and executions has from that time onward been the patron of martyrdoms, which are not only not to be doubted but even to be endured, for which of course He had made room by forbidding idolatry.

For otherwise martyrdoms would not come to pass. And assuredly He had laid the foundation of His authority beforehand, willing those things to come to pass for which He had made room. For now we are perplexed concerning the will of God, and the scorpion redoubles his sting, denying this will, accusing this will, so as either to insinuate another god whose will this is not, or none the less to destroy our God, whose will is such, or altogether to deny the will of God, if he cannot deny God Himself.

But we, contending elsewhere concerning God and concerning the rest of the body of every heretical doctrine, now draw fixed lines for one particular form of encounter, defending the will of no other God than the God of Israel, that will which made room for martyrdoms, of idolatry which was ever both forbidden by precepts and punished by judgments. For if, by observing the precept, I suffer violence, this will be in a manner the precept of observing the precept: that I should suffer that through which I shall be able to observe the precept, namely violence, whatsoever threatens me and must be guarded against, arising from idolatry. And assuredly he who imposes a precept extorts obedience. He could not therefore have been unwilling that those things should come to pass through which obedience would be established.

It is prescribed to me that I call no other god, that not even by speaking—no less with the tongue than with the hand—I fashion a god, nor worship another, nor in any way venerate any besides that one only who so commands, whom also I am bidden to fear lest I be forsaken by Him, and to love with all my substance so that I may die for Him. Serving in this sacred oath, I am challenged by enemies. I am their equal, unless I surrender to them. Defending this, I fight it out in the battle-line, I am wounded, I am struck down, I am slain. Who willed this end for his soldier, save He who enrolled him with such an oath? V. You have therefore the will of my God. This blow has been met. Now let us consider another stroke, concerning the quality of the will. It is a long matter to show that my God is good, which the Marcionites have already learned from us.

Meanwhile it suffices that He be called God, so that it be necessary to believe Him good. For whoever presumes God to be evil will not be able to stand consistent in both: he must either deny to be God the one he has judged evil, or call good the one he has pronounced God. Good therefore will also be the will of Him who will not be God unless He is good. This is proved also by the goodness of the very thing which God has willed, I mean of martyrdom, since a good thing none but a good Being has willed. I maintain that martyrdom is good in the sight of that same God by whom idolatry is both forbidden and punished. For martyrdom strives against and opposes idolatry. But to strive against and oppose evil, nothing but a good thing can. Not that I deny there to be a rivalry among evils with one another as well as among goods; but the condition of this heading is different.

For martyrdom contends with idolatry not out of some common warfare, but out of its own grace; for it delivers from idolatry. What delivers from evil, who will not pronounce good? What else is the opposition of idolatry and martyrdom than that of death and life? In as much as life will be reckoned to martyrdom, so much will idolatry be reckoned to death. He who calls life evil, has death, which he may call good. This too is a perversity of men: to shake off wholesome things, to take up destructive ones, to seek out dangerous things, to shun remedies, or in short to desire rather to die quickly than to be cured. For there are also many who flee the protection of medicine: for there are many fools, many cowards, and men shamefaced to their own hurt.

And there is plainly, as it were, a savagery of medicine in the scalpel and in the cautery, in the burning of mustard; yet to be cut and burned and stretched and bitten is not on that account an evil, because it brings useful pains; nor because it merely grieves will it be refused, but because it grieves of necessity will it be applied. The fruit excuses the horror of the operation. In short, that man howling and groaning and bellowing under the hands of the physician will afterward heap those same hands with reward, and will proclaim them the best of craftsmen, and will now deny them to be savage. So martyrdoms also rage savagely, but unto salvation. It will be permitted to God also to heal unto life eternal through fires and swords and all manner of bitter things.

But you will marvel at the physician even in this: that he generally applies qualities of remedies about equal to the qualities of complaints, since he aids as it were from the contrary side, coming to the rescue through those very things by which the trouble is suffered. For he checks heats by burdening them further with heats, and quenches burnings by wasting them rather with thirst, and gathers up the excesses of bile with certain bitter draughts, and recalls the fluxes of blood by a little vein poured out over and above.

But will you think that God, and a jealous God indeed, is to be blamed if He has willed to contend with the cause, and by rivalling the injury to do good—to dissolve death by death, to scatter slaughter by slaughter, to shake off torments by torments, to dispel punishments by punishments, to bestow life by taking it away, to help the flesh by harming it, to save the soul by snatching it away? What you deem perversity is reason; what you count savagery is grace. Thus, since God is healing eternal things by means of momentary ones, magnify your God to your own good; you have fallen into His hands, but you have fallen happily. He too fell into your sicknesses. Man always first makes work for the physician; indeed, he himself drew upon himself the peril of death.

He had received from his Lord, as from a physician, a discipline useful enough according to a law of living: that he should indeed eat all things, but abstain from one little tree alone, which the physician himself knew to be for the time inopportune. He listened to the one he preferred, and broke the abstinence. He eats the unlawful thing, and glutted with transgression, he surfeited unto death, most worthy in good faith to perish utterly, because he willed it. But the Lord, having borne with the ferment of the offence until in time the medicine should be tempered, gradually composed the remedies—all the disciplines of faith, and these too rivalling the fault, cancelling the word of death by the word of life, filing down the hearing of transgression by the hearing of devotion. Thus, even when that Physician bids one die, He shuts out the lethargy of death.

Why does man now grudge to suffer from the remedy what he did not then grudge to suffer from the fault? Does it displease him to be slain unto salvation, who was not displeased to be slain unto perdition? Will he be nauseated at the antidote, who gaped after the poison? VI. But if God had set before us martyrdoms under the name of a contest, whereby we should make trial with the adversary, so that he by whom man was gladly struck down should now be steadfastly struck down by him, here too the liberality rather than the harshness of God prevails. For He willed man, plucked out from the jaws of the devil through faith, now also through virtue to become the treader-down of that devil, so that man should not merely have escaped, but should even have vanquished the enemy. He who had called man unto salvation loved also to invite him unto glory, so that we who rejoice at being freed may exult also at being crowned.

Those contests, the strife-loving solemnities and superstitious competitions of the Greeks, both of religions and of pleasures—with what great favour the world now celebrates them, has been permitted even to Africa. Still the several cities disquiet Carthage with congratulations that she has been granted the Pythian games, after the old age of the stadium. Thus from of old it has been held most worthy to engage in a trial of studies, to weigh the arts of bodies and of voices by their excellence, with a prize as index, a spectacle as judge, and the verdict pleasure. In these, bare are the battles, not few the wounds; fists shatter, heels butt, gauntlets tear apart, whips lacerate. Yet no one will taunt the president of the contest for exposing men to violence. Actions for injuries lie outside the stadium.

But mark how much those bruises and gore and welts negotiate for: crowns to wit, and glory and endowment, public privileges, civic stipends, portraits, statues, and—such as the world can bestow—an eternity from fame, a resurrection from memory. The boxer himself does not complain of feeling pain, for he wills it; the crown covers the wounds, the palm obscures the blood; victory swells more than the injury. Will you deem him hurt whom you see glad? But not even the vanquished himself will reproach the master of the games with his fall. Will it be unbecoming to God to bring forth His arts and disciplines into the midst, into this arena of the world, as a spectacle to men and angels and all the powers? To prove flesh and soul in constancy and endurance?

To give to this one the palm, to that one honour, to another citizenship, to another stipends? even to reject some, and to remove the chastised with ignominy? No doubt you prescribe to God at what times or in what manners or in what places He should judge concerning His own household, as though it did not befit a judge to prejudge as well. What now, if He had exposed faith to martyrdoms not under the name of a contest, but even of its own advancement—ought it not to have some accumulation of hope, for which it might drive on its zeal and hang up its vow, whereby it might strain to ascend, since even earthly offices seethe by degrees? Or how are there many mansions with the Father, if not according to the variety of merits? How too shall star differ from star in glory, unless according to the diversity of their rays?

Furthermore, if for this reason it befitted faith that some enhancement of sublimity and renown should be brought forth, such a kind of profit ought to have been that which stands at a great cost: at labour, torture, torment, death. But consider the compensation, when flesh and soul are paid out—than which nothing in man is more precious, the one being the hand of God, the other His breath—that these very things are paid out unto the advancement of those whose the advancement is, that these very things are expended which become the gain, the same being the prices which are also the wages.

God had foreseen also the other infirmities of the human condition, the adversary's snares, the deceits of things, the nets of the world, that faith would be in peril even after the washing, that very many would perish again after salvation—those who had let their wedding garment grow shabby, who had not prepared oil for their little torches, who would have to be sought through mountains and glens and carried back on the shoulders. He appointed therefore second solaces and final defences: the combat of martyrdom and the washing of blood to follow thereafter. Of whose felicity David says: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is he to whom God has not imputed sin.' For to the martyrs, properly, nothing can now be reckoned, seeing that in that washing their very life is laid down.

Thus love covers a multitude of sins: love, namely, which loves God with all its might, whereby it strives unto the end in martyrdom, with all its soul, which it lays down for God, fashions out the man a martyr. Will you call these remedies, counsels, judgments, and even spectacles of God, atrocity? Does God covet the blood of man? And yet I would dare to say He does, if man too covets the kingdom of God, if man too covets sure salvation, if man too covets a second regeneration. No compensation is invidious in which the account either of grace or of injury is mutual. VII.

Let the scorpion still strike, brandishing God as a murderer; I shall plainly shudder at the foul breath of blasphemy stinking from a heretical mouth, but I shall nonetheless embrace such a God out of confidence in reason, by which reason He too pronounced Himself more than a murderer, in the person of His Wisdom, by the voice of Solomon. 'Wisdom,' He says, 'has slaughtered her sons.' Wisdom is Sophia. She slaughtered wisely, surely, in that it was unto life, and rationally, in that it was unto glory. O ingenuity of parricide! O contrivance of crime! O argument of a cruelty which slays for this reason, that the one it slays should not die! And therefore what follows? 'Wisdom is sung in her going-out with hymns'; for the going-out of the martyrs too is sung. 'Wisdom in the streets acts with constancy'; for well does she slaughter her sons.

'But upon the highest walls she speaks confidently,' when indeed, according to Isaiah, this one cries out here: 'I am God's'; and this one shouts aloud: 'In the name of Jacob'; and another inscribes himself: 'In the name of Israel.' O good Mother! I too wish to be reckoned among her sons, that I may be slain by her; I wish to be slain, that I may become a son. But does she only slaughter her sons, or does she also torture them? For I hear God saying elsewhere too: 'I will burn them as gold is burned, and I will test them as silver is tested.' Assuredly through the torments of fires and of punishments, through the examining martyrdoms of faith. The apostle too knows what manner of God he has ascribed, when he writes: 'If God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us, how has He not with Him also freely granted us all things?'

You see how the divine Wisdom has slaughtered even her own proper Son, the firstborn and only-begotten, who was surely destined to live, nay, to bring back the rest also unto life. I may say with the Wisdom of God: 'Christ it is who gave Himself for our transgressions.' Now Wisdom has butchered even herself. By the word men become wise, not by sound alone, but by sense also; nor are they to be heard only with the ears, but also with the mind. He who does not understand, believes God cruel. And yet, even for him who does not understand, a sentence has been set down which may restrain the rashness of understanding otherwise. 'For who,' He says, 'has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor, to instruct Him? Or who has shown Him the way of understanding?'

But indeed the Diana of the Scythians, or the Mercury of the Gauls, or the Saturn of the Africans, it has been permitted in the world to appease with a human victim; and in Latium to this day human blood is tasted by Jupiter in the midst of the city, nor does anyone retract it, but either presumes some rationale or the inestimable will of his god. If our God too had demanded martyrdoms for Himself under the name of His own proper sacrifice, who would have reproached Him with a deadly religion and mournful rites and an altar for a funeral-pyre and a corpse-dresser for a priest, and would not rather have reckoned him blessed whom God had consumed? VIII.

On one step therefore we take our stand, and on this alone we make challenge: whether martyrdoms are enjoined by God, so that you may believe them enjoined with reason, if you have recognized them enjoined, since God has enjoined nothing without reason. Since indeed honoured in His sight is the death of His religious ones, as David sings—not, I suppose, that common one and debt of all (nay, that one is even ignominious, from the character of transgression and the desert of condemnation)—but that death which is approached in Himself, from the testimony of religion and the battle of confession, for righteousness and for the sacred bond. As Isaiah says: 'Behold how the just man perishes, and no one takes it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no one considers; for from before the face of injustice the just man perishes, and there shall be honour in his burial.'

Here too you have both the proclamation and the remuneration of martyrdoms. For from the beginning righteousness suffers violence. As soon as God began to be worshipped, religion drew envy as its lot. He who had pleased God is slain, and that by a brother. The more readily might impiety persecute another's blood, it began its persecution from its own, and at last persecuted not only the just, but even the prophets. David is harried, Elijah is put to flight, Jeremiah is stoned, Isaiah is sawn asunder, Zechariah is slaughtered between the altar and the temple, assigning to the flints the enduring stains of his own blood. He Himself, the close of the law and the prophets, called not a prophet but an angel, is cut off by a contumelious slaughter, as a fee for a dancing girl.

And assuredly those who were moved by the Spirit of God were by Him directed unto martyrdoms, even by suffering the very things they had foretold. Accordingly the threefold brotherhood too, when the dedication of the royal image pressed the crowd to its duty, were not ignorant of what faith—which alone in them had not been made captive—demanded, namely that one must die against idolatry. For they remembered also Jeremiah writing to those upon whom that captivity was impending: 'And now you shall see the gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, carried upon shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware therefore lest you too become like the aliens and be seized with fear, while you behold the crowds worshipping them behind and before; but say in your heart: It is Thee, O Lord, whom we ought to worship.'

And so, with confidence conceived from God, they spoke—with how great vigour of soul do they shake off those conditional threats of the king: 'We have no need to answer this thy command. For our God, whom we worship, is able to deliver us out of the furnace of fire and out of thy hands; and then it shall be made manifest to thee that we will neither serve thy idol nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.' O martyrdom perfected even without suffering! Enough had they suffered, enough had they been scorched, whom God on that account covered, lest they should seem to have belied His power.

For Daniel too, a suppliant of none but God and on that account denounced and demanded by the Chaldeans, the confined and accustomed ferocity of the lions would forthwith have devoured, if the worthy presumption of Darius concerning God had been destined to be deceived. Otherwise it behoved every preacher and worshipper of God, who being challenged to idolatry had denied obedience, to suffer, according to the condition of that reasoning also whereby the truth had to be commended both to those then present and thereafter to those to come; for which the suffering of those very defenders of it declared their faith, since no one would have willed to be slain in vain, unless possessed of the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show faith to be a debtor of martyrdom. IX.

It remains, lest perchance antiquity had its own peculiar sacrament, to review Christian newness, as though it held both another view concerning God and consequently a rival view concerning discipline as well, whose Wisdom would not know how to slaughter her sons. Plainly, in Christ there are another divinity and will and school—one who has enjoined martyrdoms either to be none at all or to be understood otherwise, who exhorts no one to a hazard of this kind, who promises nothing to those who suffer for Him, because He does not wish them to suffer, and therefore, deducing the first principles of His precepts, says: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'? This indeed absolutely to all; then properly to the apostles themselves:

'Blessed shall you be when they have dishonoured you and persecuted you and spoken against you every evil for My sake: rejoice and exult, for your reward is very great in heaven: for so did their fathers to the prophets also'—so that He even prophesied that they too should be slain after the example of the prophets. And yet, even if He had destined all this conditional persecution to the apostles alone at that time, assuredly through them, with the whole sacrament, with the propagation of the Name, with the transmission of the Holy Spirit into us also, the discipline of undergoing persecution too regarded us as well, as hereditary disciples and shoots of the apostolic seed. For even if again He directs His words to the apostles: 'Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,' and:

'Beware of men; for they will deliver you up into assemblies, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and you will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations,' and the rest; but then He adds: 'And the brother shall deliver up the brother, and the father the son, unto death, and the children shall rise up against their parents and shall put them to death'—He manifestly pronounced that iniquity against the rest, which we do not find in the apostles. For none of them suffered a brother or a father as a betrayer, which most of ours now suffer. Then He recalls it to the apostles again: 'And you shall be hated by all men for My name's sake.' How much more we, whom it behoves to be delivered up even by our parents?

Thus by this very intermingling—now to the apostles, now to all—in His arranging, He pours out one and the same issue of the Name upon all, in whom the Name has settled together with the law of its own hatred. 'But he who shall have endured unto the end, this one shall be saved.' By enduring what, if not persecution, if not betrayal, if not slaughter? For to endure unto the end is nothing else than to suffer the end. And therefore:

'The disciple is not above his master,' it immediately follows, 'nor the servant above his lord'; for since the Master and Lord Himself endured persecution and betrayal and death, much more must the servants and disciples pay out the same coin, lest, as though their superiors, they should seem exempted from injustice, when this very thing ought to suffice them for glory: to be made equal to the sufferings of their Lord and Master. And building them up unto the endurance of these things, He warns that those are not to be feared who kill only the body but have no power to slay the soul; rather is fear to be consecrated to Him who can kill and destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. And who are these slayers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings aforesaid, men, I suppose?

And who is the Lord of the soul, if not God alone? Who is this One that threatens with fires, if not He without whose will not even one of two sparrows falls to the ground—that is, not even one of the two substances of man, the flesh or the soul? For with Him even the number of the hairs has been registered. 'Fear not therefore,' as He further says, 'you are of more value than many sparrows'; and it is not in vain—that is, not without recompense—that He promises they shall fall to the ground, if we choose rather to be killed by men than by God. 'Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven. And everyone who shall deny Me before men, I also will deny him before My Father who is in heaven.'

The definition and rationale, as I judge, are plain, both of confession and of denial, even though the disposition of them differs. He who confesses himself a Christian testifies that he belongs to Christ; he who belongs to Christ must necessarily be in Christ. If he is in Christ, then assuredly he confesses in Christ when he confesses himself a Christian—for this cannot be, unless he be in Christ. Furthermore, confessing in Christ he also confesses Christ, who is in himself, while he too is in Him, as being a Christian. For if you have named the day, you have pointed to the reality of light, which furnishes the day, even though you have not named light. So, even though He did not directly declare 'whoever shall confess Me,' the act of daily confession is not different from the sense of the Lord's pronouncement.

For that which the man is who confesses himself—namely a Christian—he confesses also that through which he is what he is, namely Christ. Accordingly, he who has denied himself to be a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ while he denies that he is a Christian; and by denying Christ in himself, while he denies himself to be in Christ, he will deny Christ also. So both he who has denied in Christ will deny Christ, and he who has confessed in Christ will confess Christ. It would therefore have sufficed, even if the Lord had pronounced only concerning confessing. For from the pattern of confession its contrary too—namely denial—would have been settled beforehand, that denial should be repaid with denial by the Lord in the same way as confession with confession.

And therefore, since even the condition of denial is understood within the pattern of confession, it is clear that the fact that the Lord pronounced otherwise concerning denial pertains to no other mode of denial than the one He treats when speaking of confession—saying 'whoever shall deny Me,' not 'whoever shall deny in Me.' For He had foreseen that this force too would very often follow in the assault upon the Name: that whoever had denied himself a Christian would be compelled also to deny Christ Himself by blaspheming Him. Just as not long ago, in a certain contest waged over the whole faith of some, we shuddered at this very thing. And so it will be in vain to say: 'Even if I have denied myself a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied Him Himself.' For by that very denial he will be held equally guilty, because by denying himself a Christian, denying Christ in himself, he has denied Him also.

But there is something more, in that He threatens shame with shame: 'Whoever shall be ashamed of Me before men, I also will be ashamed of him before My Father who is in heaven.' For He knew that denial is very largely shaped by shame—that the state of the mind takes its stand in the countenance, and that the blow of modesty comes before the blow to the body. X. But those who think that confession is appointed not here—that is, not within this compass of the earth, nor throughout this passage of life, nor among men of this common nature—how great is their presumption against the whole order of things that are to be undergone on this earth, and in this life, and under human powers?

Doubtless, when souls have departed from their bodies and have begun to be inspected, story by story of the heavens, concerning their reception, and those secret sacraments of the heretics begin to be interrogated—then confession must be made before the true powers and the true men, namely the Teleti and the Acineti and the Abascanti of Valentinus. 'For not even the Demiurge himself,' they say, 'consistently approved our fellow-men as men, seeing that he reckoned them as a drop from a bucket and as dust of the threshing-floor and as spittle and as locusts, and even equated them with irrational beasts of burden.' Plainly, so it is written. Yet not on that account is another race of man to be understood besides ourselves, whom, since they certainly exist, He was able to invest with such a comparison, while the property and singularity of the race are preserved.

For even if life has been corrupted, so that, being judged fit for contempt, it is compared with things contemptible, the nature is not thereby at once abolished, so that another should be reckoned under its name. On the contrary, the nature is preserved, even though life is besmeared; nor does Christ know any other men than those of whom He says: 'Who do men say that I am?' and: 'As you would that men should do to you, so do you also to them.' See whether He has preserved the race from which He both expects testimony to Himself and to which He entrusts the office of justice. But if I should demand that those heavenly men be shown to me, more easily will Aratus sketch among the stars Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne.

But who forbade the Lord to determine plainly that the confession of men was to be made there also, where He openly declared that His own would be—so that it should have been put thus: 'Whoever shall confess Me before men in heaven, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven'? He ought to have rescued me from that error of an earthly confession, which He would not have wished to be undertaken, if He had enjoined a heavenly one—since I had known no other men but the inhabitants of earth, seeing that not even man Himself had as yet then been beheld in heaven. And moreover, what credibility of realities would there be, that after my departure, being lifted up to the regions above, I should there be tested, whither I could be placed only when already tested; that I should there be examined concerning my reception, whither I could not arrive unless already fit to be admitted?

For the Christian heaven lies open before the way; because there is no way into heaven except for him to whom heaven lies open; and whoever has reached it will enter in. What porter-powers do you affirm to me, after the Roman superstition—a certain Barnus and Forculus and Limentinus? What powers do you post from the gates? If ever you have read in David: 'Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, O everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter in'; if likewise you have heard in Amos:

'He who builds His ascent into the heavens, and pours out His outpouring upon the earth'—then know that that ascent has been thenceforth leveled by the footsteps of the Lord, and the entrance thenceforth unbarred by the might of Christ; and that no delay or inquiry will meet Christians at the threshold, since they are not to be scrutinized there, but recognized; nor to be interrogated, but admitted. For even if you still think heaven closed, remember that its keys the Lord left here to Peter, and through him to the Church, which each one, being here interrogated and having confessed, will bear away with himself. But the devil asserts that confession must be made there, in order to persuade that here it must be denied. Fine credentials indeed shall I send ahead, good keys shall I carry with me—the fear of those who kill only the body but do nothing to the soul:

I shall be commended by deserting this precept; honorably shall I stand in the heavenly places, I who could not stand in the earthly; I shall withstand the greater powers, I who yielded to the lesser; I shall assuredly deserve to be admitted, I who was excluded. There still remains this to say: if confession is to be made in the heavenly places, then here also there is denial. For where the one is, there is the other; for all rival things run together. Persecution too, then, will have to be carried on in the heavens, which is the material of confession or denial. Why then, most audacious heretic, do you delay to transfer the whole order of the Christian's shaking-ordeal into the regions above, and above all to lodge there the very hatred of the Name, in the very place where Christ presides at the Father's right hand?

There you will establish also the synagogues of the Jews, the fountains of persecutions, before which the apostles suffered scourgings; and the peoples of the nations with their own circus, where they readily shout in chorus: 'How long the third race?' But you must exhibit in that same place also our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and members of our household, by whom betrayal has been arranged; likewise kings and governors and armed powers, before whom the cause must be fought out. There will certainly be also a prison in heaven, lacking the sun, or unwelcomely bright; and chains perhaps made of the zones, and for a rack the very axis that turns.

Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstorms will be at hand; if to be burned, lightnings are ready to hand; if to be slaughtered, the hand of armed Orion will do the work; if to be finished off by beasts, the North will send forth the she-bears, the Zodiac its bulls and lions. 'He who shall endure these things unto the end, the same shall be saved.' Is then the end also in the heavens, and the suffering and the killing and the first confession? And where is the flesh that is necessary for all these things? Where the body, which alone can be killed by men? This assured reasoning has committed these things to us even in a sportive manner; nor will anyone thrust away the bar of this objection, so as not to be compelled to transfer the whole order of persecution, its whole cause, form, and equipment, to that place where he has granted confession its forum.

Indeed, confession is derived from persecution, and persecution is ended in confession; nor can those things fail to follow together which arrange both the entrance and the exit—that is, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, both the hatred of the Name is here, and persecution breaks out here, and betrayal produces here, and interrogation compels here, and the executioner's cruelty rages here; and this whole order confession or denial cancels out on earth. Therefore, if the rest is here, confession is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, the rest is not here. But in fact the rest is not elsewhere, and therefore neither is confession in heaven.

Or if they wish there to be another rationale of a heavenly interrogation and confession, then assuredly they will also have to construct for it another order, far different and diverse from this arrangement which is noted in the Scriptures. And we can say: let them see to it, so long as this order of earthly interrogation and confession—running out from the material of persecution and public discord—is altogether kept safe; that just as it is written, so it must be believed, and just as it is heard, so it must be understood. Here we sustain the whole order, since the Lord Himself appoints no other region of the world. For what does He subjoin after the term of confession and denial? 'Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth, but a sword'—assuredly upon the earth.

'For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law; and a man's foes shall be those of his own household.' For thus it comes about that brother delivers up brother to death, and father his son, and the children rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. 'And he who shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' So thoroughly does this whole order of the Lord's sword—sent not into heaven, but onto the earth—establish there also that confession which, by enduring unto the end, is destined to suffer death. XI. By the same pattern, therefore, we maintain that the rest too pertains to the state of martyrdom.

'He who,' He says, 'shall value even his own soul more than Me, is not worthy of Me'—that is, he who has preferred to live by denying Me rather than to die by confessing Me; and, 'he who shall find his soul, shall lose it; but he who shall have lost it for My sake, shall find it.' For in like manner he finds it who denies, by making a profit of his life, so that he shall lose it in Gehenna who thinks to make a profit of it by denying. But he shall lose it for the present who, having confessed, is killed—yet he is also destined to find it unto life eternal. In short, the governors themselves, when they exhort to denial, say: 'Save your soul!' and: 'Do not lose your soul!' How would Christ speak, if not in the very way in which a Christian is dealt with?

But when He forbids premeditating a reply before the tribunal, He is instructing His own servants; He promises that the Holy Spirit will answer; and when He wills that a brother be visited in prison, He enjoins care for the confessor; and when He affirms that God will execute vengeance for His elect, He consoles their sufferings; even in the parable of the seed withered after springing up, He figures the burning heat of persecutions. If these things are not received in the manner in which they are pronounced, they doubtless have a meaning other than they sound, and there will be one thing in the words, another in their senses—as in allegories, as in parables, as in riddles.

Whatever wind of argumentation, therefore, these scorpions may have conceived, upon whatever sharp point they may have dashed themselves, there is now but one line to draw: they will be summoned to the realities themselves, whether they be settled according to the Scriptures. For then something else will be signified in the Scriptures, if that very thing be not found in the realities. For what is written, this must needs come to pass. And then, moreover, what is written will come to pass, if it come to pass in no other way. But behold, we are indeed held in hatred by all men for the Name's sake, just as it is written; and we are betrayed even by our nearest kin, just as it is written; and we are brought before the powers, and interrogated, and tortured, and confess, and are slaughtered, just as it is written. So the Lord decreed.

If He decreed these things otherwise, why do the things He decreed not come to pass otherwise—that is, in the manner in which He decreed them? But in fact they do not come to pass otherwise than He decreed; therefore just as they come to pass, so He decreed, and just as He decreed, so they come to pass. For neither would it have been permitted for them to come to pass otherwise than He decreed, nor would He Himself have decreed otherwise than He willed them to come to pass. So these Scriptures will signify nothing other than what we recognize in the realities—or else, if those things which are foretold are not yet enacted, how are these which are enacted not foretold? For these things which are enacted are not foretold, if those which are foretold are other things and not these which are enacted. But now, since the very things are in the realities which in the words are believed to be spoken otherwise, what would happen, if they were found to be done otherwise?

But this would be a perversity of faith: not to believe what is proven, and to presume upon what is not proven. To which perversity I shall oppose this also: that if these things, which are enacted just as they are written, are not the very things which are foretold, then other things too ought not to be enacted just as they are written, lest they too, by the example of these, be in danger of being excluded—seeing that there is one thing in the words and another in the realities; and it remains that they cannot even be regarded as foretold when they come to pass, if they are foretold otherwise than they are destined to come about. And how shall those things be believed which will not have been foretold, because they are not foretold in the manner in which they come to pass? Thus the heretics, by not believing the things that are foretold as though they were proven, believe those things which are not even foretold. XII.

Who now would know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ? Those whom the Lord both adopted to Himself as disciples, to be taught all things without doubt, and ordained for us as masters, to teach all things without doubt. To whom rather would He have declared the figure of His speech than to those to whom He revealed the image of His glory—to Peter, John, James, and afterwards to Paul, whom He also made a partaker of paradise before his martyrdom? Or do these too write otherwise than they mean—masters of deception, not of truth? Peter indeed, to the people of Pontus: 'For what glory is it,' he says, 'if, not as offenders, you endure that you should be punished?'

'For this is grace: for to this also you have been called, since Christ also suffered for us, leaving you Himself as an example, that you might follow His footsteps.' And again: 'Beloved, do not be terrified at the burning which takes place among you for your testing, as though something strange were befalling you. For inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that you may also rejoice, exulting, at the revelation of His glory. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you—provided that none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a spy into another's affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify the Lord in that name.'

But John, exhorting us to lay down our lives even for our brothers, denies that there is fear in love. 'For perfect love casts out fear, since fear has punishment; and he who fears is not made perfect in love.' What fear does he give us to understand, if not the author of denial? What love does he affirm to be perfect, if not the one that puts fear to flight and animates confession? By what punishment does he punish fear, if not by that which the denier is destined to reap, being killed with body and soul in Gehenna? But if we must die for our brothers, how much more, he teaches, must we die for the Lord—being sufficiently instructed to urge these things from his own Apocalypse as well? For the Spirit had commanded the angel of the church of the Smyrnaeans:

'Behold, the devil will cast some of your number into prison, that you may be tested for ten days. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.' Likewise to the church of Pergamum, concerning Antipas, the most faithful martyr, slain in the dwelling-place of Satan. Likewise to the church of Philadelphia, that it would be delivered from the final trial, because it had not denied the name of the Lord.

Thereafter to each of the victors He promises: now the tree of life and pardon from the second death; now hidden manna with a white pebble and an unknown name; now the power of the iron rod and the brightness of the morning star; now to be clothed in white and not to be blotted out of the book of life, and to be made a pillar in the temple of God, inscribed with the name of God and of the Lord and of the heavenly Jerusalem; now to sit with the Lord upon His throne—which was once denied to the sons of Zebedee. Who then are these so blessed victors, if not properly the martyrs? For theirs are the victories whose also are the battles; and theirs the battles whose also is the blood.

But meanwhile, too, beneath the altar the souls of the martyrs rest peacefully, and feed their patience with the confidence of vengeance, and, clothed in robes, lay claim to the whiteness of glory, until others also complete the fellowship of their glory. For again there is revealed an innumerable multitude, clad in white and distinguished with the palms of victory—triumphing, that is, over Antichrist; as one of the elders says: 'These are they who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their garment and made it white in the blood of the Lamb.' For the flesh is the clothing of the soul. The filth indeed is washed away by baptism, but the stains are whitened by martyrdom. For Isaiah too promises the snow-white and the wool-white in place of the scarlet and the crimson.

Great Babylon too, when she is described as drunk with the blood of the saints, has her drunkenness ministered without doubt from the cups of martyrdoms; and what their dread is destined to bring back is likewise shown. For among all the reprobate—nay, before all—are the fearful. 'But to the fearful,' he says, 'together with the rest, there is a portion in the lake of fire and brimstone.' Thus their fear, which love casts out, has punishment. XIII. But Paul the apostle—concerning the persecutor who first shed the blood of the Church, and afterward, changing the sword for a stylus and turning the blade into a plough, a ravening wolf of Benjamin, thereafter himself bringing food according to Jacob—how does he commend martyrdoms as now to be desired even for himself!

When, rejoicing over the Thessalonians, he says: 'so that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your endurance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions which you sustain—a proof of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of His kingdom, for which you also suffer.' Just as also to the Romans: 'and not only so, but we even exult in afflictions, being certain that affliction perfects endurance, and endurance proof, and proof hope; and hope does not disappoint.' And again: 'but if we are children, then heirs also—heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer together, that we may also be glorified with Him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy of the glory which is destined to be revealed in us.'

And therefore, a little later, he says: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall affliction, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? According as it is written: For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through Him who loved us. For we are persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' And to the Corinthians too, enumerating his own sufferings, he certainly laid it down beforehand that one must suffer:

'in labors more abundantly, in prisons very many times, in deaths often; from the Jews five times I received forty stripes save one, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned,' and the rest. And if these should seem to be hardships rather than martyrdoms, yet again: 'for which cause,' he says, 'I take pleasure in infirmities, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ.' Also in the passages above: 'we who are afflicted in all things, but not crushed; and are in want, but not utterly in want; who are harassed by persecutions, but not forsaken; who are cast down, but do not perish; always carrying about the mortification of Christ in our body.'

'But even if,' he says, 'our outer man is corrupted'—namely the flesh, by the violence of persecutions—'yet the inner man is renewed day by day'—namely the soul, by the hope of the promises. For that which is present, temporal and light in our affliction, works, by an excess upon excess, an eternal weight of glory, for us who look not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are not seen. 'For the things that are seen are temporal'—speaking of the hardships—'but the things that are not seen are eternal'—pledging concerning the rewards. And writing to the Thessalonians about his chains, he assuredly affirmed those blessed to whom it had been granted not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for Him: 'having,' he says, 'the same conflict which you both saw in me and now hear of.'

'For even if I am poured out as a libation upon the sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice together with you all; and in like manner do you also rejoice and rejoice together with me.' You see how he defines the felicity of martyrdom, for which he obtains a solemn joy through mutual gladness. In short, when he had come near to the fulfillment of his own vow, how, exulting over the prospect of it, he writes to Timothy: 'For I am now being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand; I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; there remains the crown which the Lord will render to me on that day'—namely, of his passion. And he himself had also said enough above: 'It is a faithful saying. For if we have died together with Christ, we shall also live together with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign together with Him; if we deny, He also will deny us; if we do not believe, He remains faithful, He cannot deny Himself.'