Scorpiace

From a small thing the scorpion festers up a great evil out of the earth. As many poisons as there are kinds, so many ways of destruction; as many sorts, so many pangs; as many torments, so many colours. Nicander writes of it, and paints it. And yet the one gesture of violence in all of them is to hurt with the tail — and the tail is whatever is propagated from the hinder part of the body and lashes. So that venomous string of knots in the scorpion, the slender little vein within, rising in an arched assault, draws tight at the top its hooked sting on the principle of an engine of torture. Hence too they name from the scorpion the engine of war which, by drawing back, gives life to its missiles. That sting is also a tube, of an open thinness, by which, where it strikes, it pours both wound and venom. The familiar season of the danger is summer; with the south and south-west winds its savagery sets sail. Among remedies, natural ones avail most; magic too applies some charm round about; medicine meets it with iron and with the cup. For some, by way of haste, drink protection beforehand; but coition empties it, and they thirst again. For us, faith is the safeguard, if it too be not stricken with the diffidence of straightway sealing and adjuring, and of anointing the heel of the beast. By this means, in short, we often bring help even to the heathen, having received from God that power which the apostle dedicated when he despised the viper's bite. What then does this pen of mine promise, if faith is safe by its own resources? That faith too may be safe on other occasions by its own resources, when it suffers its own scorpions. The harsh meanness of these creatures is of a varied kind; they are armed in one way only, and equipped at a fixed season, and at no other than that of heat. Among Christians this is persecution. When, therefore, faith seethes and the Church is burnt up, as by the figure of the bush, then the Gnostics burst forth, then the Valentinians creep out, then all the opponents of martyrdoms boil up, themselves too hot to wound, to sting, to slay. For because they know that many are simple and unschooled, and at such times weak — and most of them mere Christians to the wind, and only if it please them — they understand that these are never more to be approached than when the fear of death has loosened the soul's avenues; especially when some atrocity has already crowned the faith of martyrs. And so at first, still dragging their tail among the affections, they apply it, or as it were lash at the empty air: "Should innocent men suffer such things? — so that you would take it for a brother, or one of the better heathen. Is a sect, troublesome to no one, to be treated so?" Then they drive it home: "Men perish for nothing." For "perish," and "for nothing," is the first puncture. Thereupon they strike. But simple souls do not know what is written, how, where, when, and before whom we must confess — except that even this is not simplicity, but vanity, nay, madness: "to die for God," as if for one who will save me. If he slays, who is he that ought to save me? Once Christ died for us, once he was slain, that we might not be slain. If he demands a return, does he too look for his own salvation from my death? Or does God crave the blood of men, especially if he refuses that of bulls and goats? Surely he prefers the repentance of a sinner to his death. And how can he desire the death of sinners? These and any other devices of heretical poisons — whom do they not pierce at least into a scruple, if not unto destruction? at least into bile, if not unto death? But you, if faith is awake, then and there dash the anathema against the scorpion for a slipper, and leave it dying in its own torpor. Otherwise, if it has glutted its blow, it drives in the venom, and hastens into the inward parts: at once all the former senses grow torpid, the blood of the mind congeals, the flesh of the spirit fades, a nausea for the Name grows sour. Now even the mind itself seeks where it may spew; and so, once for all, the weakness by which it was struck breathes out the wounded faith either into heresy or into the world. And now, in the present state of things, the heat is at its midpoint, the very dog-days of persecution, set on, forsooth, by the very Dog-star. Some the fire, some the sword, some the wild beasts have proved Christians; others, meanwhile, having tasted of martyrdom with cudgels and claws besides, hunger after it in prison. We ourselves, like hares, a destined prey, are besieged from afar, and the heretics go prowling after their wont. And so the time has admonished us to mix our antidote with the pen against these little beasts of our own. You who shall read, shall drink. Nor is the draught bitter. If the words of the Lord are sweet above honey and the honeycomb, the ingredients are from there. If the promise of God flows with milk and honey, of this savour are the things that lead thither. But woe to those who turn sweet into bitter, and light into darkness! For likewise those who oppose martyrdoms, interpreting salvation as perdition, transform sweet into bitter no less than light into darkness; and so, by preferring this most wretched life to that most blessed one, they put bitter for sweet, as well as darkness for light.

But not yet of the goodness of martyrdom — first of its obligation; nor before of its profit than of its necessity. The divine authority comes first: whether God has willed and commanded any such thing, so that those who deny that it is good may not be persuaded that it is advantageous, until they have first been subdued. To compel heretics to their duty, not to coax them, is fitting. Hardness is to be overcome, not persuaded. And surely that will be prejudged best enough which shall be proved to have been appointed and commanded by God. Let the Gospels wait a little, while I press out their root, the Law — while from it I elicit the will of God, from the same source where I also recognize God himself. "I am," he says, "the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. There shall not be to thee other gods beside me. Thou shalt not make to thyself an image of the things which are in heaven, and which are on the earth beneath, and which are in the sea under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor 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 to yourselves gods of silver, and gods of gold you shall not make to yourselves." According to these, in Deuteronomy too: "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 in his name shalt thou swear. You shall not go after strange gods, and the gods of the nations which are round about you, because the Lord thy God is also a jealous God in the midst of thee, lest, being angered, he be indignant and exterminate thee from the face of the earth." But also, setting forth blessings and curses: "Blessings," he says, "if you hear the precepts of the Lord your God, whatsoever I command you this day, and have not strayed from the way which I commanded you, so as to depart and serve other gods, whom you know not." Concerning the rooting out of these in every manner: "With destruction you shall destroy all the places in which the nations served their gods, which you shall possess by inheritance — upon the mountains and the hills and under the leafy trees; and you shall dig up their altars, overturn and break to pieces their little standing images, and cut down their groves, and burn with fire the graven images of those gods, and destroy their name out of that place." Still he urges, when they had entered the land of promise and exterminated its nations: "Take heed to thyself, lest thou follow them, after they have been exterminated before thy face; lest thou seek their gods, saying, As the nations do for their gods, so let me also do." But also, "If a prophet himself," he says, "shall rise up among thee, or a dreamer of a dream, and shall give thee a sign or a portent, and it come to pass, and he say, Let us go and serve other gods whom you know not — you shall not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer, because the Lord your God tempts you, whether with your whole heart and with your whole soul you fear God. After the Lord your God you shall go, 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 hold fast. But that prophet or dreamer shall die; for he has spoken to seduce thee from the Lord thy God." But also in another chapter: "If thy brother by father or mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife who is in thy bosom, or the friend who is equal to thy soul, shall ask thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom thou knowest not, nor thy fathers — of the gods of the nations which are round about thee, near or far — be not willing to go with him, and hear him not. Thine eye shall not spare him, neither shalt thou desire nor save him; in declaring thou shalt declare concerning him. Thy hands shall be upon him first, to slay him, and the hands of thy people in the last place; and you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn thee away from the Lord thy God." He subjoins also concerning cities — if any of them should be found to have gone over to other gods at the persuasion of wicked men — that all its inhabitants should be slain, and all that was in it should become accursed, and all its spoils should be gathered together unto all its outlets, and burnt with fire in all its streets, together 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 up any more, neither shall anything of its accursed thing cleave to thy hands, that the Lord may be turned away from the indignation of his anger." The series of curses too he began with the execration of idols: "Cursed is the man who shall make a graven or molten thing, an abomination, the work of a craftsman's hands, and shall set it up in secret." But in Leviticus: "Follow not idols," he says, "and molten gods you shall not make to yourselves. 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 to yourselves things made by hand, nor shall you set up for yourselves a graven standing image. Nor shall you place a stone for a mark in your land. I am the Lord your God." And these things, indeed, were spoken first by the Lord through Moses, applying surely to whomsoever the Lord God of Israel had likewise brought out of the Egypt of a most superstitious world, and out of the house of human bondage. But thereafter too every mouth of the prophets sounds with the voices of the same God, heaping up his same Law by the renewal of the same precepts, and denouncing nothing first so principally as to beware of all making 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 handle not; feet, and walk not. Like to them shall they be who make them, and who trust in them."

Nor would I think it must be debated whether God worthily forbids his name and honour to be assigned to a lie; whether worthily he is unwilling that those whom he has plucked from the error of superstition should go back again into Egypt; whether worthily he does not suffer those whom he has chosen for himself to fall away from him. So neither will he wait for us to review whether he willed that the discipline he willed to institute should be observed, and whether he justly avenges the desertion of that which he willed to be observed; since he would have instituted it in vain, had he been unwilling for it to be observed, and willed in vain for it to be observed, had he been unwilling to vindicate it. For it follows that I should prove these definitions of God against superstitions to be as fully established as also vindicated, since on these the whole reasoning of martyrdoms will rest. Moses was away with God on the mountain, when the people, impatient of an absence so necessary, sought to produce for themselves gods which it itself had rather destroyed. Aaron is pressed, and bids the earrings of their women be cast into the fire. For they were about to lose, unto judgment against themselves, the true ornaments of their ears — the voices of God. The wise fire melts out for them the effigy of a calf, branding them as having their heart there where their treasure also was — in Egypt, forsooth, the consecratrix, among the other animals, of a certain bull too. And so three thousand men, slain by their nearest kindred — because they had offended God, a kinsman nearer still — dedicated both the first 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, that they might fornicate in spirit too; they eat, in short, of their polluted things, then also adore the gods of the nation, and are initiated to Baal-Peor. For this idolatry too, the sister of adultery, twenty-three thousand, butchered by domestic swords, were offered 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 plunderers, and they were plundered by them and sold to their enemies, and could in no way stand before the face of their enemies. Wheresoever they went forth, the hand was upon them for evil, and they were sorely afflicted. After these things God set over them Judges, whom we understand to be Censors. But neither did they persevere in obeying these. As soon as any of the Judges had died, they fell to offending beyond their fathers, by going after the gods of others and serving and adoring them. And so the Lord was angry: "Since indeed," he says, "this nation has transgressed my covenant, which I made with their fathers, and has not heard my voice, I too will not turn to taking away a man from before their face out of the nations which Joshua left at his departure." And thus, through almost all the annals of the Judges, and thereafter of the Kings, the strength of the surrounding nations being reserved, by war and captivity and the yoke of the foreigners did Israel dispense the wrath of God, as often as it strayed away from him most of all into idolatry.

If, then, it is established that this was both forbidden from the beginning, out of so many and so great precepts, and never committed with impunity, out of so many and so great proofs, and that no crime is reckoned with God so haughty as a transgression of this kind, we ought of ourselves to understand that the intent of the divine denunciations and executions was, even then, lending its patronage to martyrdoms — not only not to be doubted of, but even to be endured — for which, forsooth, he had made room by forbidding idolatry. For otherwise martyrdoms would not come to pass. And surely he had built up his own authority beforehand, willing those things to come to pass for which he had made room. For now we are pricked concerning the will of God, and the scorpion redoubles its blow, denying this will, accusing this will, that he may either insinuate another God, whose will this is not, or nonetheless destroy our own, whose will is such, or altogether deny the will of God, if he cannot deny God himself. But we, contending about God elsewhere, and about the rest of the body of every heretical doctrine, now, in this one species of engagement, draw certain lines beforehand, defending — as the will of no other God than the God of Israel — that will which made room for martyrdoms, as much from the precepts forbidding idolatry always, as from the judgments punishing it. For if the precept, when observed, suffers violence, this will be in a manner the precept for observing the precept: that I should suffer that through which I shall be able to observe the precept — namely, violence, whatsoever threatens me as I guard against idolatry. And surely 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 should not name any other God; that not even by naming — no less with the tongue than with the hand — I should fashion a god; nor adore another, or in any way reverence him, save that one only who so commands; whom I am also bidden to fear, lest I be forsaken by him, and to love with all my substance, so as to die for him. Soldiering to this oath, I am challenged by enemies. I am their equal, if I give them my hand. Defending this, I fight to the end in the line of battle, am wounded, cut down, slain. Who willed this end for his soldier, save he who sealed him with such an oath?

You have, then, the will of my God. This blow has been met. Let us consider, against another stroke, the quality of that will. It would be a long matter to show that my God is good, which the Marcionites have already learned from us. For the present it is enough that he is called God, so that it is necessary to believe him good. For whoever should presume God to be evil will not be able to stand in both: he will have either to deny him to be God whom he has thought evil, or to deny him to be evil whom he has pronounced God. Good, therefore, will also be the will of him who, unless he be good, will not be God. This will be proved also by the very goodness of the thing which God willed — I mean martyrdom — because none but a good Being willed a good thing. I contend that martyrdom is a good thing with the same God by whom idolatry is forbidden and punished. For martyrdom strives against and is opposed to idolatry. But to strive against and be opposed to evil can belong to none but the good. Not that I would deny that there is a rivalry of evils among themselves as well as of goods; but the case of this title is different. For martyrdom does not contend with idolatry out of some common malice, but out of its own grace; for it frees from idolatry. Who will not pronounce that good which frees from evil? What else is the opposition of idolatry and martyrdom than of death and life? Life will be reckoned to martyrdom in the same degree as death to idolatry. He who has called life an evil has death, which he may call good. There is also this perversity of men, to shake off the salutary, to take up the deadly, to shun all perilous remedies, or, in short, to desire to die rather than to be cured. For of the help of medicine too the more there are who flee it, the more are fools, the more are timid and ill-shamefaced. And there is plainly, as it were, a savagery of medicine in the lancet and in the cautery, in the burning of mustard; yet to be cut and seared and stretched and bitten is not therefore evil because it brings useful pains; nor will it be refused because it only grieves, but it will be applied because it grieves of necessity. The fruit excuses the dread of the operation. The man, in short, howling and groaning and bellowing under the physician's hands, will afterwards load those same hands with a fee, and proclaim them most skilful, and now deny that they were cruel. So martyrdoms too rage savagely, but unto salvation. It will be lawful for God too to cure unto eternal life by fires and swords and every bitter thing. But the physician you will admire even in this: that he applies nearly equal qualities of remedies against the qualities of complaints, when, as it were perversely, he helps by the very things through which one labours. For he checks heats by loading them more with heats, and quenches burning thirst rather by macerating with thirst, and binds up the excess of bile by sundry bitter potions, and recalls fluxes of blood by drawing off besides a little vein. But will you think God — and that a jealous one — to be blamed, if he willed to contend with the cause, and to be of profit by rivalling the injury — to dissolve death by death, to scatter slaying by slaying, to shake off torments by torments, to evaporate punishments by punishments, to confer life by taking it away, to aid the flesh by hurting it, to preserve the soul by snatching it away? That which you think perversity is reason; what you esteem savagery is grace. So, since God heals eternal things by means of momentary ones, magnify, to your own good, your God; you have fallen into his hands — but happily have you fallen. He too has fallen into your sicknesses. Man always is the first to make business for the physician; in short, 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 the law of living — that he should indeed eat all things, but abstain from one little tree only, which the physician himself had meanwhile known to be inconvenient. He listened to the one he preferred, and broke abstinence. He ate the unlawful, and, glutted with transgression, surfeited unto death — most worthy, in good faith, to perish wholly, since he willed it. But the Lord, having borne with the ferment of the offence until in time the medicine should be tempered, gradually composed his remedies — all the disciplines of faith, themselves too rivalling the fault, rescinding the word of death by the word of life, filing down the hearing of transgression by the hearing of devotion. So, even when that physician bids us 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? Is it displeasing to be slain unto salvation to one to whom it was not displeasing to be slain unto perdition? Will he be nauseated at the antidote who gaped for the poison?

But even if God had set martyrdoms before us under the name of a contest, through which we might make trial with our adversary, so that one by whom man was willingly struck down might now steadfastly strike him down — here too the liberality rather than the harshness of God presides. For the man plucked from the devil's gullet by faith he willed now to make even the trampler upon him, by power; that he should not only have escaped, but also have utterly conquered the enemy. He who had called us into salvation loved also to invite us to glory, that we who rejoiced at being freed might exult also at being crowned. Those games — the contentious solemnities and superstitious contests of the Greeks, both of religions and of pleasures — with what favour the world celebrates them, has now become plain in Africa too. Still the several cities trouble Carthage with congratulations on her being granted a Pythian game, after the old age of the stadium. So from of old it has been believed most worthy that experiments of zeal should match arts, should express the bodily and vocal presences, with the prize for index, the spectacle for judge, and pleasure for verdict. Where the combats are bare, there are not a few wounds: fists shatter, heels batter, the gauntlets tear, the scourges lacerate. Yet no one will brand the president of the game with the reproach that he exposes men to violence. Actions for injury are out of place in the stadium. But to whatever extent those bruises and gore and weals are traded for, he will attend to it — namely, crowns and glory and dowry, public privileges, civic pensions, portraits, statues, and, such as the world can afford, an eternity out of fame, a resurrection out of memory. The boxer himself does not complain of being in pain, for he wills it; the crown presses upon his wounds, the palm overshadows the blood; he swells more with victory than with injury. Will you think him hurt, whom you see glad? But neither will the conquered himself reproach the giver of the game with his own mishap. Shall it misbecome God to bring forth his arts and disciplines into the midst, into this arena of the world, into a spectacle for men and angels and all the powers — to prove flesh and soul by steadfastness and endurance? to give to this man the palm, to that one honour, to that one citizenship, to that one wages? even to reject certain ones, and remove them, chastened, with ignominy? Forsooth 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 also to prejudge. What now, if he had set forth faith unto martyrdoms not under the name of a contest, but of its own progress? Ought it not to have some heaping-up of hope, toward which it might urge its zeal and hang its vow, by which it might strive to ascend, since even earthly offices seethe up into grades? Or how are there many mansions with the Father, if not according to a variety of merits? how does star differ from star in glory, save according to the diversity of their rays? But if also for this reason some elevation of sublimity and brightness befitted faith, such a thing of reward ought to have been that which should stand at a great cost of labour, torture, torment, death. But look at the recompense: when flesh and soul are paid out — than which there is nothing dearer to man, the one being the hand of God, the other his breath — that these very things are paid out in the very advancement whose advancement they are, that the very things should be expended which are made into gain, the very prices being also the wages. God had foreseen also otherwise the infirmities of the human condition, the snares of the adversary, the deceits of things, the nets of the world, that faith would be in peril even after the laver, that very many would perish again after salvation, who would have worn out the nuptial garment, who would not have prepared oil for their torches, who would have to be sought through mountains and woods and carried back upon shoulders. He set, therefore, second consolations and last safeguards — the conflict of martyrdom and the laver of blood, thereafter secure. Of whose felicity David says: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom God has not imputed his offence." For properly to the martyrs nothing can now be reckoned, to whom in their laver the very life is laid down. So love covers a multitude of sins — that love, namely, which, loving God with all its strength, by which it contends in martyrdom, with all its soul, which it lays down for God, forges the man into a martyr. Will you call these remedies, counsels, judgments, spectacles too of God, an atrocity? Does God covet the blood of man? And yet I would dare to say so, if man too may have the kingdom of God, if man too sure salvation, if man too a second regeneration. To no one is the recompense invidious in which the reckoning either of the grace or of the injury is common.

Let the scorpion still drive at us, brandishing a homicide God; I shall plainly shudder at the foul breath of blasphemy reeking from a heretical mouth; but I will also embrace such a God out of the confidence of reason, by which reason he too pronounced himself more than a homicide, in the person of his own Wisdom, by the voice of Solomon. "Wisdom," he says, "has slain her sons." Wisdom is sapientia. Wisely, surely, did she slay them, since it was unto life; and rationally, since it was unto glory. O ingenuity of parricide! O craftsmanship of crime! O argument of cruelty, which slays for this reason — lest he die whom she shall have slain! And therefore what follows? "Wisdom is sung in the outgoings with hymns" — for the outgoings of the martyrs too are sung. "Wisdom in the broadways treats of steadfastness" — for well does she slay her sons. "But upon the topmost walls, full of confidence, she speaks" — when indeed, according to Isaiah, one here cries out, "I am of God"; and here one calls aloud, "In the name of Jacob"; and another writes, "In the name of Israel." O good mother! I too desire to be reduced among her sons, that I may be slain by her; I desire to be slain, that I may become a son. But does she only slay her sons, or also torment them? For I hear God saying elsewhere too: "I will burn them as gold is burnt, and I will prove them as silver is proved" — surely through the torments of fires and punishments, through the examining martyrdoms of faith. The apostle too knows what kind 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 also, together with him, granted us all things?" You see how the divine Wisdom slew even her own first-begotten and only-begotten Son — destined surely to live, nay, even to bring the rest back into life. I can say, with the Wisdom of God: Christ it is who delivered himself up for our offences. Now Wisdom has even slain herself. Words have a savour not by sound alone, but by sense too; nor are they to be heard with the ears only, but with the mind too. He who does not understand believes God to be cruel. And yet, even to him that does not understand, a sentence is set forth which restrains the rashness of understanding otherwise. "For who," it 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 it has been lawful in the world to appease the Diana of the Scythians, or the Mercury of the Gauls, or the Saturn of the Africans, with a human victim; and in Latium to this day human blood is tasted by Jupiter in the midst of the city, and no one reconsiders it, or does not presume it on some reason, or on 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 deathly religion and mournful rites, with an altar for a funeral pyre and an undertaker for a priest, and would not rather have reckoned him the more blessed whom God had consumed?

We stand, then, upon one step, and on this alone we make our appeal: whether martyrdoms are commanded by God, so that you may believe them commanded with reason, if you have recognized them commanded, because God has commanded nothing without reason. Since indeed honoured with him is the death of his own religious ones, as David sings — not, I think, this common death, the debt of all (for that is even ignominious, by the indictment of transgression and the desert of condemnation), but that which is approached in his own person, out of the testimony of religion and the battle of confession for righteousness and the sacred truth. As Isaiah says, "See how the just man perishes, and no one takes it to heart, and just men are taken away, and no one regards it; for from the face of injustice the just man perishes, and there shall be honour to his burial." You have here too both the preaching and the remuneration of martyrdoms. For from the beginning righteousness suffers violence. As soon as God began to be worshipped, religion was allotted envy. He who had pleased God is slain, and that by a brother. The more readily that impiety might pursue another's blood, taking its beginning from its own, it pursued — in short, not only of the just, but even of the prophets. David is harassed, Elias put to flight, Jeremiah stoned, Isaiah sawn asunder, Zechariah butchered between the altar and the temple, assigning to the flints the perennial stains of his own gore. 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 the fee for a dancing-girl. And surely those who were moved by the Spirit of God were directed by him into martyrdoms, so as now to suffer the very things which they had also foretold. So likewise the threefold brotherhood, when the dedication of the royal image pressed the city to its duty, were not ignorant of what faith — which alone in them had not been led captive — demanded: namely, that they 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 the shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware, therefore, lest you too become like the foreigners and be seized with fear, while you behold the throngs adoring them behind and before; but say in your mind, Thee, O Lord, ought we to adore." And so they spoke with a confidence conceived from God, when with vigour of soul they shook off the conditional threats of the king: "We have no need to answer this thy command. For there is our God whom we worship, able to deliver us from the furnace of fire and from thy hands; and then it will be made manifest to thee that we will neither serve thy idol nor adore thy golden image which thou hast set up." O martyrdom, perfect even without suffering! Enough they suffered, enough they were burnt, whom God therefore covered, lest they should seem to have belied his power. For Daniel too — the suppliant of none but God, and therefore accused and demanded by the Chaldeans — the shut-in and accustomed ferocity of the lions would surely at once have devoured, had Darius's worthy presumption about God deserved to be disappointed. For the rest, it behoved every preacher and worshipper of God who, being challenged to idolatry, had refused obedience, to suffer — according to that state of reason too by which the truth had to be commended both to those then present and to those who came after; for which the suffering of its very defenders should bespeak faith, because no one would have willed to be slain save one possessed of the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show faith to be a debtor of martyrdom.

It remains, lest antiquity perchance had its own sacred truth, to review the Christian newness — as though it had concerning God too another, and likewise a discipline at rivalry, whose Wisdom knows not how to slay her sons. Plainly, in Christ there are another divinity and will and school. Did he command martyrdoms to be either none at all, or otherwise understood — he who exhorts no one to a hazard of this kind, who promises nothing to those who suffer for him, because he is unwilling that they suffer? And therefore, deducing the first principles of his precepts, "Blessed," he says, "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 said all evil against you for my sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is very great in heaven; for so did their fathers also to the prophets" — so that he even prophesied that they too were to be slain after the example of the prophets. Although, even if he had destined this whole conditional persecution to the apostles alone for that time, surely through them — with the whole sacred truth, with the propagation of the Name, with the transmission of the Holy Spirit — the discipline of undergoing persecution would have looked toward us too, as toward heir-disciples and the shoots of the apostolic seed. For thus again he directs to the apostles: "Behold, I send you as sheep into 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 to governors and to kings you shall be brought for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations," and the rest. But when he subjoins, "Brother shall deliver brother, and father son, unto death, and children shall rise up against parents and put them to death," he plainly pronounced that iniquity against the others — which we do not find among the apostles. For none of them suffered either a brother or a father as a betrayer, which very many of us already have. Then he recalls it to the apostles: "And you shall be hated by all for my name's sake." How much more we, who must be betrayed even by our parents! So, by arranging this very betrayal now to the apostles, now to all, he pours out the same issue of the Name upon all in whom the Name shall have settled, with the law of its own hatred. "But he who shall have endured unto the end, the same shall be saved." By enduring what, save persecution, save betrayal, save slaying? For to endure to the end is nothing else than to suffer the end. And therefore, "The disciple is not above his master," at once follows, "nor the servant above his lord"; because, since the master and lord himself underwent persecution and betrayal and slaying, much more must servants and disciples weigh out the same — lest, as though superior, they should seem exempt from the iniquity, when this very thing ought to suffice them for glory, to be made equal to the sufferings of their Lord and Master. And, building toward the endurance of these, he warns that they are not to be feared who slay only the body, but cannot kill the soul; but that fear is rather to be consecrated to him who can both kill and destroy body and soul in hell. Who are these slayers of the body only, save the aforesaid governors and kings — men, I suppose? Who, too, is the master of the soul, save God alone? Who is he, save the threatener of fires? save he, without whose will not even one of the sparrows falls to the earth — that is, not even one of the two substances of man, flesh or soul? — since even the number of the hairs is registered with him. "Fear not, therefore." When he says above, "You are of more worth than many sparrows," not in vain — that is, not without recompense — does he promise that we shall fall to the earth, if we choose to be slain by men rather than by God. "Everyone, therefore, who shall confess me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. And everyone who shall deny me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven." Manifest, as I think, is the definition and reason both of the confession and of the denial, even though the arrangement is diverse. He who confesses himself a Christian testifies that he is Christ's; he who is Christ's must needs be in Christ. If he is in Christ, surely he confesses in Christ, when he confesses himself a Christian; for this cannot be, unless he is in Christ. Further, by confessing in Christ, he confesses Christ too, who is in Christ, while he himself too is in him, being a Christian. For even if you have named "day," you have shown the thing of light, which yields day, though you have not named light. So, even though he did not directly pronounce, "Whoever shall confess me," the daily act of confession is not diverse from the sense of the Lord's pronouncement. For what he is who confesses himself — that is, a Christian — that too, through which he is, he confesses — that is, Christ. Likewise he who has denied himself a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying himself to be in Christ, while he denies himself a Christian; and, denying Christ in himself, while he denies himself in Christ, he will deny Christ too. So both he who shall deny in Christ will deny Christ, and he who shall confess in Christ will confess Christ. It would have sufficed, then, even if the Lord had pronounced only concerning confessing. For from the form of confessing, its contrary too — that is, denial — would have been prejudged: that denial is requited by the Lord with denial, just as confession with confession. And therefore, since in the form of confession the condition of denial too is understood, it appears to belong to another mode of denial, that the Lord pronounced of it otherwise than of confession, saying, "Whoever shall deny me," not, "Whoever in me." For he had foreseen this force too, which would for the most part follow in the assault upon the Name: that one who had denied himself a Christian would be compelled, by blaspheming, to deny Christ himself too. As, not long ago — alas! — under that governor, we shuddered to see this fought out, with the entire faith of certain men. And so it will be in vain to say: Even if I deny myself a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied himself. For by that denial he will be held just as much, who, by denying himself a Christian, denying Christ in himself, has denied himself too. But it is more, that he threatens to shame even with shame: "Whoever shall be ashamed of me before men, I too will be ashamed of him before my Father who is in heaven." For he knew that denial is for the most part formed from shame; that the state of the mind sits upon the brow; that the wound of modesty is earlier than that of the body.

But those who think that confession is constituted not here — that is, not within this compass of the earth, nor during this voyage of life, nor among the men of this common nature — what a presumption is it against the whole order of things to be undergone in this earth and in this life and under human powers! Forsooth, when souls have departed from their bodies, and through the several stories of the heavens have begun to be examined concerning their reception, and questioned about those secret sacred mysteries of the heretics, then it must be confessed before the true powers and the true men — Teleti, forsooth, and Abascanti and Acineti of Valentinus. For "our people," they say, "not even the Demiurge himself steadily approved as men, since he reckoned them a drop of a bucket and the dust of a threshing-floor and spittle and locusts, and even made them equal to irrational beasts of burden." Plainly, so it is written. Yet not therefore is another kind of man to be understood besides us, which, because it is established to exist, could put on a comparison, while the property of the kind and its singularity are kept safe. For neither, if life has been vitiated, so that, being judged unto contempt, it should be compared with things contemptible, is the nature straightway taken away, so that another should be reckoned under its name. Nay, the nature is preserved, even though the life is suffused; nor does Christ know any 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 you also to them." See whether he has preserved the kind from whom he expects both a testimony of himself and upon whom he enjoins the office of righteousness. But if I should demand that those heavenly men be shown to me, Aratus will more easily delineate among the stars his Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne. But who forbade the Lord to determine plainly that the confession of men too was to be made there, where he openly pronounced that his own would be — so that it should have been set down thus: "Whoever shall confess me before men in the heavens, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven"? He ought to have rescued me from this error of earthly confession, which he would have been unwilling to have undertaken, had he commanded a heavenly one; because I knew no other men besides the dwellers of earth, when not even he himself was as yet then beheld in the heavens as man. And further, what faith of the matter is it, that, after my departure, lifted up to the regions above, I should there be proved, whither I could not be set save as one already proved; that I should there be examined upon the precept, whither I could not arrive save as one to be admitted? To the Christian heaven lies open before the way; because there is no way into heaven save for him to whom heaven lies open, and he who has reached it will enter. What powers do you affirm to me to be doorkeepers, after the Roman superstition — a certain Carna and Forculus and Limentinus? What powers do you marshal at the lattices? If you have ever read in David, "Lift up, O princes, your gates, and be lifted up, you eternal 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," know that that ascent too has thence been levelled by the footsteps of the Lord, and the entrance thence unbarred by the strength of Christ; and that no delay or question will meet Christians at the threshold, who there are not to be discerned, but recognized; not to be interrogated, but admitted. For even if you still think heaven shut, remember that the Lord left its keys here to Peter, and through him to the Church — which keys each one, here interrogated and confessing, will carry with him. But the devil asserts that confession must be made there, in order to persuade that here it must be denied. Fine documents, forsooth, shall I send before me; good keys shall I carry with me — namely, the fear of those who slay only the body, but to the soul do nothing! I shall be commended by my desertion of this precept; honourably shall I stand among the heavenly, who could not stand among the earthly; I shall sustain the greater powers, who yielded to the lesser; I shall at last deserve to be admitted, being already shut out! It still occurs to add: If confession is to be made in the heavens, then denial too is to be made here. 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, do you delay, most audacious heretic, to transfer the whole order of Christian shaking into the regions above, and first of all to place there the very hatred of the Name, where, at the Father's right hand, Christ presides? There you will set up also the synagogues of the Jews, the fountains of persecutions, before which the apostles endured scourgings, and the assemblies of the nations with their circus too, where they easily shout together, "How long this third race?" But you must exhibit there too our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and our household, through whom betrayal is arranged; likewise kings and governors and the armed powers, before whom the cause must be fought out. There will certainly be a prison too in heaven, lacking the sun, or, against its will, full of light; and chains perhaps of zones; and the very axis itself that turns for a rack. Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstorms will be at hand; if to be burnt, lightnings are within reach; if to be butchered, the office of armed Orion will operate; if to be finished by beasts, the North will send forth the Bears, the zodiac its bulls and lions. He who shall have endured these things unto the end, the same shall be saved. Are there, then, also an end in the heavens, and suffering, and slaying, and a first confession? And where is the flesh, necessary to all these? where the body, which alone can be slain by men? These things sure reason has commended to us even in a sportive manner; nor will anyone thrust out the bar of this prescription, so as not to be compelled to transfer thither the whole order of persecution, all the firm equipment of its cause, wherever he gives confession its forum. Since confession is deduced from persecution, and persecution is ended in confession, those things cannot but follow together which arrange both the entrance and the exit — that is, the beginning and the end. Further, both the hatred of the Name is here, and persecution here bursts forth, and betrayal here brings forth, and interrogation here compels, and the executioner's work here rages, and confession or denial discharges this whole order on earth. If, therefore, the rest is here, then confession is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, then the rest is not here. But indeed the rest is not elsewhere, and so neither is confession in heaven. Or, if they will have the reckoning of heavenly interrogation and confession to be different, surely they will have to construct for it also its own order, far other and diverse from this arrangement which is noted in the Scriptures. And we could say: Let them see to it — provided that this order of earthly interrogation and confession, running down from the material of persecution and public discord against the Name, be safe in its own faith — so it must be believed, as also it is written; so it must be understood, as it is heard. Here I sustain the whole order, the Lord himself appointing no other region of the world. For what does he subjoin after the limit of confession and denial? "Think not that I have come to send peace on the earth, but a sword" — certainly upon the earth. "For I have come to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies are his own household." For thus it comes about that brother delivers brother unto death, and father son, and children rise up against parents and put them to death. And he who shall have endured unto the end, the same shall be saved. So entirely does this whole order of the Lord's sword, sent not into heaven but into the earth, constitute there also that confession which, by enduring unto the end, is to suffer death.

By the same form, then, we maintain that the rest too pertains to the state of martyrdom. "He who shall have made even his own soul of more account than me," he says, "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 have found his soul shall lose it; but he who shall have lost it for my sake shall find it." For likewise he finds it who denies, by making a gain of life; but he shall lose it in hell who thinks to make a gain of it by denying. But he shall lose it for the present who, having confessed, is slain — yet also is going to find it unto eternal life. "Spare," they say, "thine own soul!" and, "Do not lose thine own soul!" How would Christ speak, save as a Christian is dealt with? But when he forbids us to meditate an answer before the tribunal, he instructs his servants; he promises the Holy Spirit will answer; and when he wishes a brother to be visited in prison, he enjoins care for those about to confess; and when he affirms that God will execute vengeance for his elect, he consoles their sufferings; even in the parable of the sermon he figures, in the turf withered after springing up, the heat of persecutions. If these things are not taken as they are pronounced, without doubt they have a savour beyond what they sound, and there will be one thing in the words, another in the senses — as allegories, as parables, as riddles. Whatever wind of argument, then, these scorpions shall have conceived, against whatever sharp point they shall have driven themselves, there is now one line: they shall be challenged to the very facts, whether they are transacted according to the Scriptures. Since then something else will be signified in the Scriptures, if that very thing be not found in the facts. For what is written must come to pass. Further, that will then come to pass which is written, if nothing else comes to pass. But behold, we are held in hatred by all men for the Name's sake, as it is written; and we are betrayed even by our nearest, as it is written; and we are brought to the powers, and interrogated, and tortured, and confess, and are butchered, as it is 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, and as he declared, so they come to pass. For neither would it have been lawful for them to come to pass otherwise than he declared, nor would he himself have declared otherwise than he willed them to come to pass. So these Scriptures will signify nothing else than what we recognize in the facts; or, if those things which are foretold are not yet being transacted, how are those things being transacted which were not foretold? For these things which are being transacted are not foretold, if the things foretold are different, and not these which are being transacted. But now, because the very things are in the facts which are believed to be said otherwise in the words, what would happen if they were found done otherwise? But this will be the perversity of faith: not to believe things proved, and to presume things not proved. To which perversity I will also oppose this: that, if these things which are so transacted as they were written shall not be the very things which are foretold, then those things too ought not to be so transacted as they were written, lest they too, by the example of these, be in peril of being shut out — since there is one thing in the words, another in the facts — and it remains that not even the foretold things should seem to be foretold, when they have come to pass, if they are foretold otherwise than they are to come to pass. And how shall those things be believed which shall not be foretold as they come to pass? So the heretics, by not believing as proved the things which are foretold, believe those things which were not even foretold.

Who now should know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ? — those whom the Lord both adopted to himself as disciples, surely to be taught all things, and ordained to us as masters, surely to teach all things. To whom rather would he have declared the figure of his own voice than to those to whom he revealed the effigy of his glory — to Peter, John, James, and afterward to Paul, whom he made a partaker of paradise too before his martyrdom? Or do they too write otherwise than they think, masters of deceit, not of truth? Peter indeed, to the Pontians: "For what glory is it," he says, "if, not as offenders, you endure being punished? For this is grace, and to this you were called, since Christ too suffered for us, leaving you himself for an example, that you may follow his footsteps." And again: "Beloved, be not alarmed at the burning which is wrought among you for a trial, as though a new thing befell you. For inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that in the revelation of his glory also you may rejoice, exulting. If you are dishonoured in the name of Christ, blessed are you, because the glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you — provided none of you suffer as a homicide, or a thief, or a malefactor, or a spy upon another's affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not blush, but let him glorify the Lord in that name." John, indeed, exhorts us to lay down our lives even for the 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 allow to be understood, save the author of denial? What love does he affirm to be perfect, save the putter-to-flight of fear and the inspirer of confession? With what punishment does he punish fear, save that which the denier is to bring back, being slain with body and soul in hell? But if we must die for the brethren, how much more for the Lord does he teach us to die, being sufficiently instructed also out of his own Apocalypse to urge these things! For the Spirit had charged the angel of the Church of the Smyrnaeans: "Behold, the devil shall cast some of your number into prison, that you may be tried for ten days. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." Likewise to the Church of the Pergamenes, concerning Antipas, the most faithful martyr, slain in the dwelling-place of Satan. Likewise to the Church of the Philadelphenes, that one would be freed from the last trial who had not denied the Lord's name. Thereafter to each conqueror he promises now the tree of life and pardon from the second death, now the hidden manna with a white stone 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 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 on his throne — which was once denied to the sons of Zebedee. Who are these so blessed conquerors, save properly the martyrs? For theirs indeed 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 placidly, and feed their patience on the confidence of vengeance, and, clothed in robes, lay claim to the white of brightness, until others too fulfil the consortship of their glory. For again an innumerable multitude is revealed, clothed in white and marked with the palms of victory — triumphing, forsooth, 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 clothing of the soul is the flesh. The filth indeed is washed away by baptism, but the stains are made white by martyrdom. For Isaiah too promises out of the red and scarlet a snowy and woolen whiteness. Great Babylon too, when she is described as drunk with the blood of the saints, her drunkenness is without doubt supplied by the cups of martyrdoms; and what the dread of these is to bring back is likewise shown. For among all the reprobate — nay, before all — are the timid. "But for the timid," he says, "and thereafter the rest, a portion in the lake of fire and brimstone." So fear, which in his epistle love casts out, has punishment.

But Paul the apostle, of a persecutor — who first shed the blood of the Church — afterwards changing the sword for the pen and turning the falchion into a ploughshare, "a ravening wolf of Benjamin," thereafter himself bringing food, according to Jacob — how does he commend martyrdoms as now even to be desired by himself! when, rejoicing over the Thessalonians, "That we may glory," he says, "in you in the Churches of God, for your endurance and faith in all persecutions and afflictions which you sustain, a showing-forth of the just judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of his kingdom, for which also you suffer." As also to the Romans: "And not only so, but even exulting in afflictions, knowing that affliction perfects endurance, endurance proof, proof hope; and hope does not confound." And again: "But if sons, then heirs — heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer together, that we may also be glorified together with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy of the glory which shall be revealed in us." And therefore afterwards, "Who," he says, "shall separate us from the love of Christ? affliction, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? — according as it is written: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter; but in all these we are more than conquerors for his sake who loved us. For we are persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other condition, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." But also to the Corinthians, enumerating his sufferings, he surely laid down beforehand that we must suffer: "In labours more abundantly, in prisons very much, in deaths often; from the Jews five times I received forty save one; thrice I was beaten with rods, once stoned," and the rest. Which, if they shall seem rather inconveniences than martyrdoms, yet again, "Wherefore," he says, "I take pleasure in infirmities, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ." Also in what goes before: "Who in all things are afflicted, but not straitened; and lack, but are not in utter want; since we are harassed by persecutions, but are not forsaken; who are cast down, but do not perish; always bearing about the dying of Christ in our body." "But even if," he says, "our outward man is corrupted" — the flesh, namely, by the force of persecutions — "yet the inward is renewed day by day" — the soul, namely, by the hope of the promises. "For that which at present is the temporal and light thing of our affliction works, by excess upon excess, an eternal weight of glory for us, who 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 the inconveniences; but the things which are not seen are eternal — pledging the rewards. But writing to the Thessalonians concerning his chains, he surely 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 upon the sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice together with you all; likewise do you also rejoice and rejoice together with me." You see how he defines the felicity of martyrdom, for which he acquires a solemnity out of mutual joy. As soon, in short, as he was made nearest to his own vow, how, exulting at the prospect of it, he writes to Timothy: "For I am now being poured out, 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 a crown" — namely, of suffering — "which the Lord will render to me in that day." Sufficiently too had he himself addressed them above: "Faithful is the saying. For if we have died together with Christ, we shall also live together; if we endure, we shall also reign together; if we deny, he too will deny us; if we believe not, he is faithful, 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 by power we suffer, out of love toward God, and with a sound mind, when we suffer for innocence. But also, wherever he commands endurance, for what does he provide it more than for sufferings? wherever he tears us away from idolatry, what does he tear off before martyrdom more for it?

Plainly he warns the Romans to be subject to all powers, because there is no power save from God, and because not without cause it bears the sword, and because it is a ministry of God, but also "an avenger," he says, "unto wrath against him who has done evil." For he had also premised: "For princes are not a terror to a good work, but to an evil. But if you will not fear the power, do good, and you shall have praise from it. For it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, fear." So, not on the occasion of frustrating martyrdom does he bid you be subject to the powers, but in the provocation to living well, even under their regard, as of helpers assigned to righteousness, as of ministers of the divine judgment, which here too prejudges concerning the guilty. Then he also follows out in what way he wishes you to be subject to the powers, bidding you render to whom tribute, tribute; to whom toll, toll — that is, the things which are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things which are God's to God. But man is God's alone. Peter, forsooth, had laid down that the king indeed must be honoured — yet so that the king be honoured then, when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from divine honours; because father and mother too will be loved with God, but will not be compared with him. For the rest, it will not be lawful to love even one's own soul above God.

Now therefore the letters of the apostles too are illustrious. And are we everywhere simple souls, and only doves, gladly going astray? Out of a desire of living, I suppose. But let it be so, that the sense recedes from their letters. Yet that the apostles suffered, the manifest teaching shows. This alone I understand as I run down the Acts; I seek nothing further. The prisons there, and the chains and scourges and stones and swords, and the onsets of the Jews, and the assemblies of the nations, and the indictments of tribunes, and the audience-chambers of kings, and the tribunals of proconsuls, and the name of Caesar, have no need of an interpreter. That Peter is struck, that Stephen is crushed, that James is sacrificed, that Paul is torn — these things are written in their own blood. And if the heretic should wish for the warrant of the records, the documents of the empire will speak, as the stones of Jerusalem. We read the Lives of the Caesars: at Rome Nero was the first to stain with blood the rising faith. Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross. Then Paul attains the birthright of Roman citizenship, when he is born again there by the nobility of martyrdom. Wherever I shall now read these things, I learn to suffer; nor does it matter to me which masters of martyrdom I follow — the senses or the ends of the apostles — except that in their ends too I recognize their senses. For they would have suffered nothing which they had not first known must be suffered. When Agabus had prophesied Paul's chains even by a gesture, the disciples, weeping and praying that he would not commit himself to Jerusalem, prayed in vain. For he, animated by what he had always taught, "Why do you weep," he said, "and sadden my heart? But I would not only suffer chains at Jerusalem, but even die for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ." And so they yielded, saying, "The will of the Lord be done"; trusting, forsooth, that sufferings pertain to the will of God. For not by counsel of dissuasion, but of love, had they tried to hold him back — as desiring the apostle, not as dissuading martyrdom. But if even then a Prodicus or a Valentinus had stood by, suggesting that confession is not to be made on earth before men — nay, that God does not thirst for human blood, nor Christ demand a return of suffering, as though he too were to obtain salvation out of it — he would at once have heard from the servant of God what the devil heard from the Lord: "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me. It is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve." But even now he ought to hear it, inasmuch as long afterward he has suffused these poisons, easily harmful to none of the weak — nor even so, if anyone shall have first drunk, or even drunk upon it, this our potion out of faith.