Antidote for the Scorpion’s Sting

But we must not yet speak of the good of Martyrdom, unless first of its obligation; nor of its utility before its necessity. Divine authority comes first, whether God has willed and commanded such a thing, so that those who deny it to be good may not be persuaded it is fitting, unless they have been subdued. It is right that heretics be compelled to duty, not enticed. Stubbornness must be overcome, not persuaded. And assuredly that will be judged sufficiently best which shall be proved to have been established and commanded by God. Let the Gospels wait a little, while I draw their root from the Law as the first source; while I elicit from thence the will of God, from whence I also recognize him. I am, he says, your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an image of those things that are in heaven, and that are on the earth beneath, and that are in the sea under the earth. You shall not worship them, nor serve them. For I am the Lord your 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. According to these things also in Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and again: Do not forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve, and to him shall you cleave; and in his name shall you swear.

You shall not go after other gods, from among the gods of the nations that are round about you, because your God is a jealous God among you: lest being angry he be indignant, and destroy you from the face of the earth. But also setting forth blessings and curses: Blessings, he says, if you hear the commandments of the Lord your God, whatsoever I command you today, and do not err from the way which I have commanded you, by going away to serve other gods, whom you know not. Concerning the utter extirpation of all these: You shall utterly destroy, he says, all the places in which the nations served their gods, which you shall possess as an inheritance: upon the mountains and the hills, and under every thick tree you shall dig up their altars, overthrow and break in pieces their pillars, and cut down their groves, and burn the graven images of their gods with fire, and destroy their name from that place.

He further urges that when they had entered the land of promise and had destroyed its nations: Take heed to yourself that you do not follow them after they have been destroyed from before you, that you do not seek after their gods, saying: as the nations do to their gods, so will I also do. But also this: If a prophet, he says, shall rise up among you, or one dreaming a dream, and shall give you a sign or a wonder, and it come to pass, and shall say: let us go and serve other gods, whom you know not: do not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer; because the Lord your God is testing you, whether you fear him with all your heart and with all your soul. After the Lord your God shall you walk, and him shall you fear, and his commandments shall you keep, and his voice shall you hear, and him shall you serve, and to him shall you cleave.

But that prophet and that dreamer shall die: for he has spoken to lead you astray from the Lord your God. But also in another chapter: But if your brother from your father or mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife who is in your bosom, or the friend who is part of your soul, shall secretly say: let us go and serve other gods, whom you know not, nor your fathers, from among the gods of the nations that are near you, or far off; do not be willing to go with him, and do not listen to him. Your eye shall not spare him, nor shall you have mercy, nor shall you conceal him: you shall surely report him; your hands shall be upon him first to kill him, and the hands of all the 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 any of them had been established to have passed over to other gods by the persuasion of wicked men, that all the inhabitants of it should be slain, and all its devoted things become a curse, and all its spoils be gathered into all its open places, and burned with fire together with all its vessels, and with all its people in the sight of the Lord God. And it shall not be habitable, he says, for ever, it shall not be built again, nor shall anything of its devoted thing cleave to your hands, so that the Lord may turn away from the fierceness of his anger. The order of curses also he began from the execration of idols: Cursed is the man who makes a graven or molten image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman, and places it in a secret place. But in Leviticus: You shall not follow, he says, idols, and you shall not make for yourselves molten gods.

I am the Lord your God. And elsewhere: The children of Israel are my servants and bondmen, 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 shall you set up a graven pillar among you, nor shall you place a figured stone in your land. I am the Lord your God. And these things indeed were first spoken by the Lord through Moses, pertaining of course to all whomsoever the Lord God of Israel has likewise led out of Egypt, that is, of the most superstitious age, and out of the house of human bondage.

But also thereafter every mouth of the Prophets resounds with the voices of the same God, heaping up his same law by the renewal of the same commandments, and proclaiming nothing else first so principally as to beware of every making and worshipping 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 noses, and smell not; a mouth, and they speak not; hands, and they handle not; feet, and they walk not. They that make them shall be like unto them, and all they that trust in them.

Nor do I think it need be disputed whether God rightly forbids His name and honour to be attached to falsehood, whether He rightly refuses to allow those whom He has torn away from the error of superstition to return again into Egypt, whether He rightly does not suffer those whom He has chosen for Himself to depart from Him. And so neither will He wait for it to be reconsidered by us, whether He wished the discipline He willed to establish to be observed, whether He justly avenges it when abandoned, since He willed it to be observed: for He would have established it in vain if He had not wished it to be observed; and He would have wished it to be observed in vain if He had not wished to enforce it. It follows, then, that I must prove these ordinances of God against superstitions to be both firmly established and also enforced, since from these the whole rationale of martyrdoms will be constituted.

Moses was absent with God on the mountain, when the people, impatient of so necessary an absence, seek to have gods produced for them, gods which He rather would destroy. Aaron is pressed, and orders the earrings of their women to be cast into the fire. For they were about to lose, to their own judgment, the true ornaments of their ears, the voices of God. The wise fire pours out for them the image of a calf, rebuking there those who have their heart where their treasure also is, namely in Egypt, among other animals the consecrator also of a certain ox; and so three thousand men, slain by their nearest kinsmen, because they had offended God their nearest kinsman, dedicated both the beginnings and the deserts of their transgression.

In Numbers, when Israel had turned aside at Shittim, they go to commit fornication with the daughters of Moab, they are invited to idols, that they might also commit fornication in spirit; they eat at last of their polluted things; then they also worship the gods of that nation, and are initiated into Baal-peor. On account of this idolatry also, the sister of adultery, twenty-three thousand, slaughtered by domestic swords, made atonement to the divine wrath. After the death of Joshua the son of Nun, they forsake the God of their fathers, and serve the idols Baalim and Ashtaroth; and the Lord being angry delivered them into the hands of spoilers; and they were spoiled by them, and were sold to their enemies, and could not at all stand before the face of their enemies; whithersoever they went forth, the hand of the Lord was upon them for evil, and they were greatly distressed.

After which things God appointed over them Judges, whom we understand as censors, but not even to these did they persevere in giving heed: as soon as any one of the Judges had died, they went back to sinning more than their fathers, going after strange gods and serving and worshipping them. And so the Lord being angry said: Because indeed this people has transgressed my covenant, which I appointed with their fathers, and has not hearkened to my voice, I also will not take heed to remove a man from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he departed. And so through almost all the annals of the judges and thereafter of the kings, by reserving the strength of the surrounding nations, He dispensed His wrath against Israel by war and captivity and the yoke of foreigners, as often as they strayed from Him, chiefly into idolatry.

If therefore it is established from the beginning both that this was forbidden by so many and so great precepts, and that it was never committed with impunity, from so many and so great examples, and that no crime is reckoned so arrogant before God as a transgression of this kind, we ought readily to understand that the intent of the divine warnings and executions was even then the patron of martyrdoms, not only not to be doubted but even to be endured; for which, that is, for martyrdoms, He had made room by forbidding idolatry: for otherwise martyrdoms would not come about; and assuredly He had established His own authority beforehand, willing that those things should come about for which He had made room.

For now we are stung by the will of my God, and the scorpion redoubles his blow, denying and accusing this will, so as either to insinuate another God whose will this is not, or nonetheless to destroy our own God whose will is such, or altogether to deny the will of God if he cannot deny God Himself. But we, fighting elsewhere concerning God and concerning the rest of the body of each heretical doctrine, now draw fixed lines for a single kind of engagement, defending the will of none other God than the God of Israel, which will had made room for martyrdoms, both from the precepts of idolatry always forbidden and from the judgments of idolatry always punished. For if the precept when observed suffers violence, this will be in some manner the reason for observing the precept, that I suffer that by which I shall be able to observe the precept: namely, whatever violence threatens me as I guard against idolatry. And assuredly He who imposes the precept extorts obedience.

He could not therefore have been unwilling that those things should come about through which obedience will be maintained. It is prescribed to me that I call no other God; that I do not, even by speaking, defile God no less with my tongue than with my hand; that I worship no other, nor in any manner reverence any other, besides that one who so commands; whom I am also 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 oath of allegiance, I am challenged by enemies; I am their equal if I surrender; fighting in the line of battle in defence of this, I am wounded, I am cut down, I am slain. Who willed this end for His soldier, save He who sealed him with such an oath of allegiance?

You have therefore the will of my God: that blow has been met. 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. For the present it suffices to call Him God, so that He must needs be believed good. For whoever shall presume God to be evil will not be able to maintain both positions: he will have to deny God whom he has judged evil, or to call Him good whom he has pronounced God. Good therefore will be His will also, who, unless He be good, will not be God. The goodness of the very thing which God willed will also prove this; I mean martyrdom: because none but a good one willed what is good. I contend that martyrdom is good before that same God by whom idolatry is both forbidden and punished. For martyrdom strives against and is opposed to idolatry.

But nothing but what is good can strive against and be opposed to evil. Not as though we deny that there is rivalry, both among evil things with one another, and among good things likewise. But the condition of this title is different. For martyrdom does not contend with idolatry on the ground of some common malice, but on the ground of its own grace; for it delivers from idolatry. Who will not pronounce that which delivers from evil to be good? What else is the opposition of idolatry and martyrdom, but that of death and life? Martyrdom will be reckoned as life to the same degree that idolatry is reckoned as death. He who shall call life evil has death which he may call good. This too is a perversity of men, to shake off what is salutary, to take up what is deadly, to seek what is dangerous, to shun what is medicinal to their hurt; in short, to desire to die rather than to be healed.

For indeed many flee the aid of medicine: for many are foolish, many are timid, and shamefaced in a wrong way. And there is plainly a kind of savagery in medicine, from the scalpel, and from the cautery, from the burning of mustard; yet to be cut, and burned, and stretched is not therefore evil, because it brings useful pains: nor will it be refused merely because it causes distress; but because it causes distress of necessity, it will be applied. It will heap the horror of the operation with its reward, it will proclaim the skill of the best practitioners, and groaning under the hands of the physician, it will afterwards excuse those same hands for their fruits. He who cries out at last, and groans, will presently deny that they were savage. So also martyrdoms rage fiercely, but unto salvation; it will be lawful also for God to heal unto eternal life through fires and swords and all manner of bitterness.

But you will admire the physician even in this, that he generally applies qualities of remedies matched against the qualities of complaints: since he helps as if perversely, relieving through the very things through which one suffers. For he also checks heats by loading them further with heats, and quenches burning thirsts by rather parching them with thirst, and gathers excesses of bile with certain bitter draughts, and recalls a flow of blood by opening a vein and letting more blood flow out. But God, and indeed a jealous God, you will think blameworthy, if He willed to contend with the cause, and by rivalling the injury to bring profit, to dissolve death by death, to scatter slaughter by slaughter, to shake off torments by torments, to evaporate punishments by punishments, to bestow life by taking it away, to help the flesh by wounding it, to save the soul by snatching it away. What you think perversity is reason; what you deem savagery is grace: so does God heal the eternal by means of the momentary.

Magnify your God as grim to your good: you have fallen into His hands, but you have fallen in happily; He too has fallen upon your sicknesses. Man always gives the physician trouble first: in short, he drew upon himself the peril of death by his own act. He had received from his Lord, as from a physician, a sufficiently useful discipline for living according to the law, that he might eat of all things indeed, but abstain from one single little tree, which the physician Himself knew to be inopportune for the time: he hearkened to him whom he preferred, and broke his abstinence, ate what was forbidden, and gorged with transgression, belched forth into death, most worthy in good faith to perish utterly, he who so willed.

But the Lord, sustaining the fever of the offence until the medicine should be tempered in due time, composed remedies little by little, all the disciplines of faith, themselves also rivals of the vice, cutting away the word of death with the word of life, filing down the hearing of transgression with the hearing of devotion; so also when that physician commands to die, He shuts out the old death. Why is man now reluctant to suffer from the remedy, who was not then reluctant to suffer from the vice? Does it displease him to be slain unto salvation, to whom it did not displease to be slain unto perdition? Will he turn with nausea from the antidote, who gaped for the poison?

But if God had proposed martyrdoms to us under the name of contest, through which we might contend with the adversary, so that he whom man had willingly let crush him might now crush in turn with constancy, here too the liberality of God presides rather than His harshness. For having snatched man from the devil's throat through faith, He willed also to make him the devil's trampler through virtue; so that he might not merely have escaped, but also have overcome the enemy. He who had called him to salvation loved to invite him also to glory; that we might rejoice as those set free, and exult also as those crowned. Those contests, those contentious solemnities and superstitious competitions of Greek religion and pleasures—with what great favour the world celebrates them, even Africa has made known. Even now individual cities trouble Carthage with their congratulations, for the gift of the Pythian games after the old age of the stadium.

So from ancient times the trial of the stadium has been deemed most worthy: to pit skills against one another, to bring forth excellence of bodies and voices, with a prize as indicator, a spectacle as judge, pleasure as verdict—in which there are no battles, yet not no wounds; fists shake, heels butt, the cestus tears, the scourge lacerates: yet no one would reproach the president of the games for exposing men to violence, for actions of injury outside the stadium, but will attend to how much those bruises and bloodshed and welts transact: crowns, namely, and glory, and endowment, public privileges, civic stipends, images, statues, and such eternity from fame as the world can bestow, and resurrection from memory. The boxer himself does not complain of feeling pain, for he wills it; the crown presses down his wounds, the palm obscures his blood; he swells more with victory than with injury. Will you think him harmed, whom you see rejoicing? But neither does the vanquished man himself reproach the agonothete for his downfall.

Will it be unbecoming for God to bring forth His arts and disciplines into the open, into this space of the world, as a spectacle to men and angels and all the powers? To test flesh and soul in constancy and endurance? To give to this one a palm, to that one honour, to another citizenship, to another stipends? Also to reject some, and to remove the chastised with ignominy? Surely you will prescribe to God at what times, or in what ways, or in what places He should judge concerning His household, as though it were not also fitting for a judge to prejudge. What now, if He had exposed faith to martyrdoms not only under the name of contest, but also of personal advancement; ought not faith to have some accumulation of hope to which its zeal might compel it, and upon which it might hang its vow, striving to ascend thereto, since even earthly offices seethe with degrees of rank? Or how are there many mansions with the Father, if not according to the variety of merits?

How also shall star differ from star in glory, unless according to the diversity of their rays? Furthermore, if it was fitting for faith that there be some bringing forth of loftiness and brightness, such a thing ought to be that reward which would cost great labour, torment, torture, death. But look upon the compensation: when flesh and soul are paid out—than which nothing in man is more precious; the one the work of God's hand, the other His breath—that the very things whose advancement it is should themselves be paid out in advancement; that the very things which gain profit should themselves be expended; the same things being both the price and the wages.

God had also foreseen these weaknesses of the human condition, the snares of the adversary, the deceits of things, the nets of the world, and that faith would be imperilled even after the washing, that very many would perish again after salvation, who had soiled the wedding garment, who had not prepared oil for their lamps, who would need to be sought through mountains and glens and carried back on shoulders. He therefore established second consolations, final defences, the combat of martyrdom, and the washing of blood thereafter secure. Concerning whose blessedness David says: Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose iniquities are covered. Blessed is the man to whom God has not imputed sin. For properly to martyrs nothing can any longer be reckoned, who in the washing lay down life itself. Thus love covers a multitude of sins—that love which, loving God with all its strength, with which it contends in martyrdom, and with all its soul, which it lays down for God, forges the man into a martyr.

Will you judge these remedies, counsels, judgements, and spectacles to be the cruelty of God? Does God lust after the blood of man? And yet I would dare to say: if man also gains the kingdom of God, if man gains certain salvation, if man also gains a second regeneration—no compensation is invidious in which the reckoning of either grace or injury is shared.

Let the scorpion still strike, brandishing the charge of a God who is a murderer: I shall indeed shudder at the foul stench of blasphemy reeking from a heretical mouth; but I shall also embrace such a God with the confidence of reason, by which reason He even pronounced Himself more than a murderer from the person of His Wisdom, by the voice of Solomon: Wisdom, he says, has slaughtered her sons. Wisdom is sapience. She slaughtered wisely, to be sure, since it was unto life; and rationally, since it was unto glory. O the ingenuity of parricide! O the craft of wickedness! O the argument of cruelty, which kills for this very reason, that he whom it kills may not die! And therefore what follows? Wisdom is sung with hymns at the exits; for the exits of martyrs too are sung. Wisdom acts in the streets with constancy, for she slaughters her sons well.

But upon the highest walls she speaks with confidence, when indeed according to Isaiah one here cries out: I am God's; and another calls: In the name of Jacob; and another writes, In the name of Israel. O good mother! I myself also desire to be reckoned among her sons, that I may be slain by her. I desire to be slain, that I may become her son. But does she only slaughter her sons; or does she also torture them? For I hear God saying elsewhere also: I will burn them as silver is burned, and I will test them as gold is tested. Surely through the torments of fires and punishments, through martyrdoms that are the trials of faith. The Apostle also knows what kind of God he has described, when he writes: If God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us, how has He not also with Him granted us all things?

You see how even His own Son, the firstborn and only-begotten, divine Wisdom has slaughtered; to live, of course, and indeed to bring the rest also back to life. I can say with the Wisdom of God: Christ is He who delivered Himself up for our sins. And now Wisdom has also slaughtered herself. Words have meaning not in sound alone, but also in sense: nor are they to be heard by the ears only, but also by the minds. He who does not understand believes God to be cruel. Although even for one who does not understand, a sentence is set forth which restrains the rashness of understanding otherwise. For who, he says, has known the mind of God? 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, have been permitted in the world to be appeased by human sacrifice.

And in Latium to this day human blood is tasted for Jupiter in the middle of the city; and no one objects, or does not presume some reason, or the inestimable will of his god. If our God also had demanded martyrdoms for Himself under the name of His own sacrifice, who would have reproached Him for a deadly religion, and mournful rites, and an altar that is a pyre, and a priest who is an undertaker? And would he not rather have counted blessed the one whom God had consumed?

We therefore stand upon one step, and on this alone do we press the challenge: whether martyrdoms have been commanded by God, so that you may believe them commanded with reason, if you shall have recognised them as commanded, because God has commanded nothing without reason. Indeed the death of His holy ones is honoured before Him, as David sings; I do not think this refers to the common death that is the debt of all: and yet even a just death is also ignominious by the declaration of transgression and the desert of condemnation; but that death which is entered upon in the very act of bearing witness to religion, and in the battle of confession, for justice and for the sacrament; as Isaiah says: See, he says, how the just man perishes, and no one takes it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no one marks it: for from the face of injustice the just man perishes, and his burial shall be honourable. Here too you have both the proclamation and the recompense of martyrdoms.

For from the beginning justice suffers violence. As soon as God began to be worshipped, religion drew envy upon itself: he who had pleased God is slain, and indeed by a brother; so that impiety, the more readily to pursue the blood of another, began with its own. And not only of just men; but also of prophets. David is harassed, Elijah is put to flight, Jeremiah is stoned, Isaiah is sawn asunder, Zechariah is slaughtered between the altar and the temple, marking with his blood enduring stains upon the stones. He himself, the closing clause of the Law and the Prophets, called not a prophet but an angel, is cut down by a shameful slaughter as the reward of a dancing girl's psaltery. And surely those who were moved by the Spirit of God were directed by Him into martyrdoms, so that even then by suffering they might confirm what they had also proclaimed.

Likewise the threefold brotherhood, when the dedication of the royal image pressed the city with its obligation, did not fail to know what faith—which alone among them had not been taken captive—required; namely, that they must die rather than commit idolatry. For they remembered Jeremiah writing to those upon whom that captivity was impending: And now you shall see gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, carried upon shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware therefore lest you also become like the strangers, and be seized with fear when you behold the crowds worshipping before them and behind them; but say in your hearts: Thee, O Lord, we ought to worship. And so they spoke with confidence granted by God, when with vigour of soul they shake off the king's conditional threats: We have no need to answer thee concerning this command of thine.

For our God whom we worship is able to deliver us from the furnace of fire, and from 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 perfect even without suffering! They suffered enough, they were burned enough, whom God therefore shielded, lest they should seem to give the lie to His power. For Daniel also, a suppliant of none but God, and for that reason denounced and demanded by the Chaldeans, would straightway have been devoured by the enclosed and accustomed ferocity of the lions, if the worthy presumption of Darius concerning God ought to have been disappointed.

But otherwise, every proclaimer and worshipper of God who, when provoked to idolatry, had refused compliance, was bound to suffer, according also to the state of that reasoning by which truth—for which the suffering of its very defenders would bear witness—ought to be commended both to those then present and to those coming after; because no one would have wished to be slain unless he were in possession of the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show that faith is a debtor to martyrdom.

It remains, lest antiquity should also have had its own mystery, to review Christian novelty, as though in Christ both the divinity and the will and the school were otherwise, and accordingly also a rival discipline, whose wisdom would not know how to slaughter its own children—as though it had ordained that martyrdoms were either none at all, or to be understood differently; that it exhorts no one to a crisis of this kind, that it promises nothing to those who suffer for it, because it does not wish them to suffer. And therefore, setting forth the first principles of its precepts, it says: Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This indeed absolutely to all, then specifically to the Apostles themselves: Blessed shall ye be when they shall dishonour you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad, for your reward is great in heaven: for so did they unto the prophets who were before them.

So that he also prophesied that they themselves would have to be slain after the example of the prophets. Although even if he had destined all this conditional persecution to the Apostles alone at that time, certainly through them, together with the whole mystery, together with the propagation of the name, together with the transmission of the Holy Spirit, the discipline of undergoing persecution would also have looked toward us as well, as heirs of the disciples and offshoots of apostolic seed. For again he directs 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 councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations.

But when he adds: And the brother shall deliver up the brother, and the father the son to death, and children shall rise up against parents and shall cause them to be put to death; he manifestly pronounced that iniquity upon the rest, which we do not find in the Apostles. For none of them suffered either a brother or a father as a betrayer, as very many of our own people already have. Then he recalls to the Apostles, And ye shall be hated by all men for my name's sake. How much more we, who must also be delivered up by parents? Thus, by this very arrangement, disposing now toward the Apostles, now toward all, he poured out the same end of the name upon all in whom the name has settled together with the law of its hatred. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. What by enduring, if not persecution, if not betrayal, if not slaying?

For to endure unto the end is nothing other than to suffer the end. And therefore: The disciple is not above his master. Immediately follows: Nor the servant above his lord; because since the master and lord himself endured persecution and betrayal and slaying, much more must servants and disciples pay out the same, lest they seem, as though superior, to be exempted from iniquity; since this very thing ought to suffice them for glory, to be made equal to the sufferings of the Lord and Master; building them up toward the endurance of which, he warns that those are not to be feared who kill only the body but are not able to kill the soul; but that fear is rather to be consecrated to him who is able to kill and destroy both body and soul in hell. Who are these slayers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings aforementioned? Men, I suppose. Who also is the lord of the soul, if not God alone?

Who is this threatener of fires, if not he without whose will not one of the sparrows falls to the ground; that is, not one of the two substances of man, flesh or soul? Because even the number of hairs is registered with him. Fear not therefore, he says above, ye are of more value than many sparrows; he promises that they shall not fall to the ground in vain, that is, not without profit; if we choose to be killed by men rather than by God. Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, I also will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. And whosoever shall deny me before men, I also will deny him before my Father who is in heaven. The definition and rationale, as I think, is clear, both of confession and of denial, even if the arrangement is different. 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, he confesses in Christ when he confesses himself a Christian. For this cannot be unless he is in Christ. Furthermore, by confessing in Christ, he also confesses Christ who is in Christ, while he himself also is in him, inasmuch as he is a Christian. For even if you say day, you point to the thing of light which furnishes the day, although you have not said light; so, even though he did not directly pronounce, "he who shall have confessed me," the act of daily confession is not different from the sense of the Lord's pronouncement. For what he who confesses himself—that is, a Christian—is, he also confesses that through which he is—that is, Christ. Likewise 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 moreover by denying Christ in himself while he denies himself to be in Christ, he will also deny Christ.

So also he who shall have denied in Christ will deny Christ. And he who shall have confessed in Christ will confess Christ. It would therefore have sufficed even if the Lord had pronounced only concerning confessing. For from the form of confession, its contrary also would be prejudged, that is, denial; that denial is repaid with denial by the Lord, just as confession with confession. And therefore, since in the form of confession the condition of denial also is understood, it appears that what the Lord pronounced concerning denial in a different manner than concerning confession—saying: He who shall deny me; not, "he who in me"—pertains to another mode of denial. For he had foreseen that this force would often follow in the assault upon the name; so that he who had denied himself a Christian would be compelled by blaspheming to deny Christ himself as well. As we shuddered not long ago, having seen this struggle carried on in this manner against the whole faith of certain persons.

And so it will be vain to say, "Even if I shall have denied myself a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ; for I did not deny him himself." For by that denial he will be held equally guilty, by which, denying himself a Christian and denying Christ in himself, he also denied him himself. Moreover, it is a greater thing that he also threatens shame with shame: He who shall be ashamed of me before men, of him also will I be ashamed before my Father who is in heaven. For he knew that denial is formed most especially from shame: that the state of the mind resides in the face; that the wound of modesty comes before the wound of the body.

But those who think that confession has been appointed not here, that is, not within this compass of the earth, nor through this passage of life, nor among men of this common nature—how great is their presumption against the whole order of things to be experienced on this earth, in this life, and under human powers? No doubt, when souls have departed from their bodies and have begun to be examined floor by floor through the heavens according to the decree, and those secret sacraments of the heretics are to be interrogated, then confession must be made before the true powers and the true men—namely the Theleti and the Abascanti and the Acineti of Valentinus. For our people, they say, not even the Demiurge himself consistently proved to be true men those whom he reckoned as the drop of a bucket and the dust of the threshing-floor and spittle and locusts, and even equated with irrational beasts. Plainly it is so written.

Yet for that reason no other kind of man is to be understood apart from us: whom, because it is established that they exist, he was also able to clothe with comparison, with both the property of the kind and its singularity preserved. For if life was debased, so as to be judged with contempt and compared to contemptible things, nature was not thereby immediately abolished, so that another might be reckoned in its name. But nature is preserved even if life is stained, and Christ knows no other men than those of whom he says: Whom do men say that I am? And: As you wish that men should do to you, so do to them. See whether he preserved the kind, from whom he both expects testimony concerning himself, and upon whom he enjoins the requital of justice. But if I demand that those heavenly men be shown to me, Aratus will more readily trace out Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne among the stars.

Yet what prevented the Lord from plainly determining there also that confession of men was to be made, where he openly declared that his own would be? So that it might have been set down thus: "Whoever shall have confessed me before men in the heavens, I also will confess him before my Father who is in the heavens"? He ought to have rescued me from this error of earthly confession, which he did not wish to be undertaken, if he had enjoined a heavenly one, because I knew no other men than the inhabitants of the earth; since not even then had a man yet been seen in the heavens. What further trustworthiness is there in things, that after death, being lifted up to the heights, I should be proved there, where I would be placed only when already proved? That I should be examined there by decree, where I could not arrive unless I were to be admitted?

For the Christian, heaven lies open before the road; because there is no road to heaven except for him to whom heaven lies open; and whoever shall have reached it will enter. What powers do you affirm to me as doorkeepers, after the manner of Roman superstition—a certain Janus and Forculus and Limentinus? What powers do you array at the barriers? If you have ever read in David, Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter. If likewise you have heard in Amos: Who builds his ascent into the heavens and founds his vault upon the earth; know that that ascent has been levelled thence by the footsteps of the Lord, and the entrance has been unlocked thence by the powers of Christ, and that no delay or questioning will meet Christians at the threshold, who have not to be recognized there as strangers, but acknowledged as known; not to be interrogated, but to be admitted.

For even if you still think heaven is closed, remember that the Lord left its keys here to Peter, and through him to the Church—keys which each one here, when questioned and having confessed, will carry with him. But the devil insists that confession must be made there, so as to persuade that denial must be made here. Fine credentials, forsooth, shall I send ahead, good keys shall I carry with me—the fear of those who kill only the body but can do nothing to the soul: I shall be commended by the desertion of this precept; I shall stand honourably in the heavenly places, who could not stand in the earthly; I shall endure the greater powers, who yielded to the lesser; I shall deserve at last to be admitted, having already been shut out. There is yet more to say: if confession must be made in the heavens, then denial must also be made here; for where the one is, there is both; for all rival things run together.

Persecution too will have to be carried on in the heavens, which is the occasion of confession or denial. Why then do you hesitate, most audacious heretic, to transfer the whole order of Christian conflict to the heights, and first of all to place there the very hatred of the name, where Christ presides at the right hand of the Father? There you will establish also the synagogues of the Jews, the fountains of persecutions, before which the Apostles endured floggings, and the peoples of the nations with their circus, where they readily cry out together, "How long, the third race?" But you will also have to produce there our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and members of our households, through whom betrayal is arranged; likewise kings and governors and armed powers, before whom the cause must be pleaded.

There will certainly also be a prison in heaven, lacking the sun, or luminous to the ungrateful, and chains perhaps made of the zones of the sky, and a rack that is the very axis that turns; then if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstorms will be at hand; if to be burned, thunderbolts are ready; if to be slaughtered, the hand of armed Orion will do the work; if to be finished by beasts, the north will send out its bears, the zodiac its bulls and lions. Whoever shall have endured these things to the end, that one will be saved. So then, is the end also in the heavens, and the suffering, and the slaughter, and the first confession? And where is the flesh, necessary for all these things? Where is the body? Which alone can be killed by men.

This reasoning, certain even to the point of absurdity, has been enjoined upon us, and no barrier of this prescription will thrust out anyone, so that he is not compelled to transfer the whole order of persecution, the whole firm preparation of its cause, to the place where he shall have given a forum to confession. For 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, the hatred of the name is here, and persecution breaks out here, and betrayal brings forth here, and interrogation compels here, and the executioner rages here, and the whole of this order on earth is discharged by confession or denial.

Therefore if the rest are here, then assuredly the rest are nowhere else; and so neither is confession in heaven, nor is confession elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, then neither are the rest here, and for a heavenly confession they will certainly have to construct for it another order of its own, far different and diverse from this arrangement which is noted in the Scriptures, and we can say, Let them see to it, provided that this order of earthly interrogation and confession, flowing from the material of persecution and public discord against the name, be kept safe in its own faith; so that it is to be believed as it is written, and understood as it is heard. Here I sustain the whole order, the Lord himself designating no other region of the world. For what does he add after the conclusion of confession and denial? Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not, but to send a sword—certainly on earth.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the son against his mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. For so it comes about that brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father the son, and children shall rise up against their parents and cause them to die. And he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. So the whole order of the Lord's sword, sent not into heaven but into the earth, establishes confession also there, which, enduring to the end, will suffer death.

By the same principle, therefore, we maintain that the other things also pertain to martyrdom. Whoever, he says, shall have valued even his own soul more than me, is not worthy of me; that is, whoever shall have preferred to live by denying me rather than to die by confessing. Whoever shall have found his soul shall lose it; but whoever shall have lost it for my sake shall find it. For indeed he finds it who shall have denied, by gaining his life; but he will lose it into gehenna, who thinks to gain it by denying. But he loses it for the present who, having confessed, is slain; yet he is to find it in eternal life. The governors themselves, when they urge denial, say, Save your soul, and do not lose your soul. In what manner would Christ speak, if not in the manner in which the Christian is dealt with?

But when he forbids premeditation of an answer before the tribunal, he instructs his servants and promises that the Holy Spirit will answer; and when he wishes a brother to be visited in prison, he enjoins care for the confessor; and when he affirms that God will avenge his elect, he consoles their sufferings: even in the parable of the seed, after the scorched clod, he figures the heat of persecutions. If these things are not received in the manner in which they are pronounced, they doubtless mean something beyond what they sound; and there will be one thing in the words, another in the meanings—as allegories, as parables, as enigmas. Whatever wind of argument these scorpions have conceived, wherever they have driven their sting, there is now one single line: they will be challenged as to the actual facts, whether they are transacted according to the Scriptures. For then something else will be signified in the Scriptures, if the very same thing is not found in the facts. For what is written, that must come to pass.

Furthermore, then what is written will come to pass, if something other does not come to pass. But behold, we are also hated by all men for the sake of the name, as it is also written; and we are betrayed even by those nearest to us, as it is also written; and we are brought before the powers, and interrogated, and tortured, and confess, and are slaughtered, as it is also written. So the Lord declared. If he declared these things otherwise, why do they not come to pass otherwise than he declared, that is, in the manner in which he declared? But they do not come to pass otherwise than he declared: therefore as they come to pass, so he declared, so they come to pass. For neither could it have been permitted for things to come to pass otherwise than he declared; nor would he himself have declared otherwise than he willed things to come to pass. Thus the Scriptures will not signify anything other than what we recognize in the facts.

Or if those things which are foretold are not yet being done, how are these things being done which were not foretold? For these things which are being done are not foretold, if those are the things foretold and not these which are being done. But now, because the very same things are in the facts as in the words, they are believed to have been spoken otherwise; what would happen if they were found to have been done otherwise? But this is the perversity of faith—not to believe what is proved, and to presume what is not proved.

To which perversity I will also oppose this: that if these things which are being done just as they are written are not to be the very things foretold, then those things which ought not to be done just as they are written, lest they too be endangered by the example of these—it follows that something else is excluded in the words, something else in the facts; and it remains that the foretold things are not seen to be foretold when they have come to pass, if they are foretold otherwise than they are to come to pass. And how will those things be believed which will not have been foretold, because they will not have been foretold in the manner in which they come to pass? Thus the heretics, by not believing the things foretold as they have been proved, believe those things which have not even been foretold.

Who now would know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ? Those whom the Lord also adopted as disciples for himself, to be taught all things without exception; To whom would he rather have declared the form of his voice, than to those to whom he revealed the image of his glory—Peter, James, and John, and afterwards Paul, whom he also made a partaker of paradise before his martyrdom? Or do they too write otherwise than they think, deceitful teachers, not of truth? Peter indeed writes to the Pontics: For what glory is it, he says, if when you sin and are punished, you endure it? For this is grace, and to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you himself as an example, that you should follow in his steps.

And again: Beloved, do not be astonished at the fiery trial which is taking place among you as a test, as though something strange were happening to you: but inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that you may also rejoice and be glad at the revelation of his glory. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, blessed are you, because the glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you, provided that none of you suffers as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a meddler in others' affairs. But if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in that name. John indeed exhorts us that we should also lay down our lives for our brethren, denying that there is fear in love: For perfect love casts out fear: because fear has punishment; and he who fears is not perfect in love. What fear does he prefer to be understood, if not the author of denial?

What perfect love does he affirm, if not that which puts fear to flight and animates confession? What punishment does he punish with fear, if not that which the denier is to receive, when he is to be killed in body and soul in gehenna? But if he teaches that we must die for our brethren, how much more for the Lord, being sufficiently instructed also from his own Apocalypse to urge these things! For the Spirit had commanded to 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 Pergamenes, concerning Antipas the most faithful martyr slain in the dwelling-place of Satan. Likewise to the Philadelphians, that he who had not denied the name of the Lord would be delivered from the final trial.

Thereafter he promises to every victor now the tree of life and pardon from the second death; now hidden manna with a white stone and an unknown name; now power of an 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 become 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 on his throne, which was once denied to the sons of Zebedee. Who are these so blessed victors, if not properly the martyrs? For the victories belong to those whose battles they are; and the battles belong to those whose blood it is. But also meanwhile the souls of the martyrs rest peacefully beneath the altar, and nourish their patience with confidence of vengeance, and clothed with robes, they enjoy the bright whiteness of glory, until others also fill up the fellowship of their glory.

For again an innumerable multitude clothed in white and distinguished with palms of victory are revealed; triumphing, that is, over Antichrist, as one of the elders says: These are they, he says, who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb: for the clothing of the soul is the flesh. Stains indeed are washed away by baptism, but spots are made white by martyrdom. Because also Isaiah promises that from scarlet and crimson they shall become white as snow and as wool. Also when great Babylon is described as drunk with the blood of the saints, without doubt her drunkenness is supplied by the cups of martyrdoms, and what the dread of these is to bring upon her is equally shown. For among all the reprobate; nay, before all of them: But as for the fearful, he says, and the rest thereafter, their portion is in the lake of fire and brimstone. Thus the fear in his Epistle, which love casts out, has punishment.

But Paul the Apostle, who was a persecutor, who first shed the blood of the Church, afterwards exchanging the sword for the pen, and turning the blade into a ploughshare; the ravening wolf of Benjamin, thereafter himself bringing food according to Jacob—in what manner does he commend martyrdoms, now desirable even for himself! When rejoicing concerning the Thessalonians: So that, he says, we glory in you among the Churches of God for your endurance and faith, in all your persecutions and tribulations, which you endure as a token of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of his kingdom, for which you also suffer. As also to the Romans: Not only so, but also glorying in tribulations; knowing that tribulation works endurance, and endurance proof, and proof hope, and hope does not put to shame. And again: But if children, then heirs; heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. And therefore afterwards: Who, he says, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, according as it is written: For thy sake we are killed 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 I am 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. But also enumerating his own sufferings to the Corinthians, he certainly set forth that one must suffer: In labours more abundantly, in imprisonments more frequently, in deaths often; from the Jews five times I received forty stripes save one, thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, and the rest.

Which things if they shall seem to be hardships rather than martyrdoms, yet again: Wherefore, he says, I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ. Also in the earlier passage: We who are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; and who are in want, yet not utterly in want; for we are persecuted, yet not forsaken; who are cast down, yet not destroyed: always bearing about in our body the dying of Christ Jesus. But even if, he says, our outward man is corrupted—the flesh, that is, by the violence of persecutions—yet the inward man is renewed day by day—the soul, that is, by the hope of promises. For that which is at present, the temporal and light weight of our tribulation works for us beyond all measure an eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal—speaking of hardships; but the things which are not seen are eternal—promising rewards. But writing to the Thessalonians from his bonds, he certainly declares blessed those 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 saw in me, and now hear of in me. For even if I am poured out as a libation upon the sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice with you all, and in like manner do you also rejoice and rejoice with me. You see how he defines the blessedness of martyrdom, for which he acquires solemnity from mutual joy. As finally when he had come nearest to the fulfilment of his desire, how does he write to Timothy exulting at the prospect of it? For I am already 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—of his passion, that is. Sufficiently also he himself spoke above: Faithful is the saying: For if we died with Christ, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Be not therefore ashamed of the martyrdom of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; because he had foretold: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. For we suffer by power out of love toward God, and with a sound mind, when we suffer on account of innocence. But also wherever he enjoins endurance, for what does he look to it more than for sufferings?

Wherever he tears away from idolatry, what does he set before it more than martyrdoms?

He plainly admonishes the Romans to be subject to all authorities, because there is no authority except from God, because it does not bear the sword without cause, and because it is the minister of God; and also an avenger, he says, in wrath upon him who does evil. For he had also said before: For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you wish then not to fear the authority? Do good, and you will have praise from it. For it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, fear. Thus he does not bid you be subject to the authorities on the occasion of frustrating martyrdom, but in the provocation of living well, even with regard to them, as helpers of justice, as ministers of divine judgment, prejudging here even concerning the guilty.

Then also he sets forth in what manner he wishes you to be subject to the authorities, commanding you to render to whom tribute is due, tribute; to whom custom, custom; that is, the things that are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things that are God's to God; but man belongs to God alone. Peter had of course agreed, that the king indeed is to be honoured; yet so that the king is honoured when he attends to his own affairs, when he is far from divine honours; because father and mother also are to be loved, when they are not to be compared with God. Otherwise, not even a soul will be permitted to be loved above God.

Are then also the letters of the Apostles unstable? And are we throughout simple souls, and merely doves, willingly going astray? I believe it is from love of life. So be it then, that the meaning departs from their letters. Yet what we know the Apostles suffered is manifest teaching; this alone I understand as I run through the Acts; I seek nothing further; prisons there, and chains, and scourgings, and stones, and swords, and assaults of Jews, and gatherings of nations, and the pronouncements of tribunes, and the hearing-chambers of kings, and the tribunals of proconsuls, and the name of Caesar need no interpreter. That Peter is beaten, that Stephen is crushed, that James is sacrificed, that Paul is torn asunder, these things are written in their own blood. And if the heretic shall wish to trust the Commentaries, the records of the empire will speak, as do the stones of Jerusalem. We read the Lives of the Caesars; Nero first stained with blood the rising faith at Rome.

Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross. Then Paul attains the birthright of a Roman citizen, when he is reborn there by the nobility of martyrdom. These things, wherever I shall henceforth read them, teach me to suffer; nor does it matter to me what teachers of martyrdom I follow—whether the convictions or the deaths of the Apostles; except that I also recognise the convictions in the deaths. For they would have suffered nothing which they had not first felt must be suffered. When Agabus had also by gesture prophesied to Paul his chains, the disciples weeping and praying that he should not commit himself to Jerusalem prayed in vain. For he, animated as he had always taught: Why do you weep, he says, and break my heart? But I not only desire to be bound at Jerusalem, but also to die for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ. And so they yielded, saying: The will of the Lord be done; trusting, that is, that sufferings pertain to the will of God.

For they had attempted to detain him not with the counsel of dissuasion, but of affection, as those who longed for the Apostle, not as those who discouraged martyrdom. But if at that time Prodicus or Valentinus had been standing by, suggesting that confession should not be made on earth before men; and less still, lest God should thirst for human blood, and Christ should demand in return the exchange of his passion, as though he too had obtained salvation from it; he would have heard at once from the servant of God what the devil had heard from the Lord: Get behind me, Satan, you are an offence to me; it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. But even now he ought to hear, inasmuch as much later he poured out these poisons; easily harmful to none of the weak except those who shall not have first drunk, or even drunk more deeply of this our draught from faith.