Defence of His Flight

Contents

Reading pages: 1–17 · 19–25

1. 1Athanasius opens his defense by naming the Arian bishops who accuse him of cowardice for fleeing, and answers their slanders only with Scripture.
2. 2Athanasius compares his accusers to the Jewish leaders who set aside God’s commandments and accused the disciples, saying they mock his flight only to lure him to his death.
3. 3Athanasius lists the bishops the Arians have exiled or killed, from Eustathius of Antioch to Paul of Constantinople, and the recent exile of Liberius of Rome and other Western bishops.
4. 5Athanasius praises the aged Hosius of Cordova, exiled for refusing to sign against him, and explains his later brief yielding as the result of violence.
5. 6Athanasius describes George’s arrival in Alexandria in Lent 357, the arrests and seizures that followed, and Sebastian’s attack on the people praying at the cemetery after Pentecost.
6. 7Athanasius tells how forty men were flogged with thorny palm rods, the dead left unburied, and sixteen bishops and two presbyters of Egypt and Libya exiled, while more than thirty bishops were put to flight.
7. 8Athanasius argues that if flight is blameworthy, persecution is far worse, and that the flight of the persecuted is itself evidence against the persecutors.
8. 9Athanasius argues that his accusers, having attacked so many bishops who defended him, plainly intend his death, against Providence which has preserved him.
9. 10Athanasius shows from the flight of Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, the apostles, and Paul, and from Christ’s command to flee, that flight in persecution is scriptural.
10. 12Athanasius shows that Christ himself, as man, hid and fled from those who sought his life: in his infancy, after healing the withered hand, after raising Lazarus, and in the temple.
11. 13Athanasius explains that Christ fled before his hour but gave himself up when it came, showing that each person has an appointed time known only to God, which the saints respected by fleeing and by facing death when it came.
12. 16Athanasius explains that the saints, following Christ, fled and hid until God’s appointed time, neither surrendering themselves rashly nor laying hands on their persecutors, as David spared Saul.
13. 17Athanasius shows that the saints went to meet their persecutors only when the Spirit directed, and that the same saints who fled earlier faced death bravely when its time came: Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, Peter, and Paul.
14. 19Athanasius argues that the saints’ flight was neither cowardice nor idleness but a trial in which God proved them like gold and preserved them as teachers.
15. 20Athanasius shows that Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, and Paul were strengthened and used by God precisely in the time of their flight.
16. 21Athanasius argues that the saints’ flight preserved the line of Christ and the preaching of the Gospel, and that in flight they taught and encouraged the faithful.
17. 22Athanasius states the rule for ordinary Christians: flee and hide when persecuted, without tempting God, but stand firm to death when caught, as the martyrs did.
18. 23Athanasius argues that persecution is learned from the devil, not from Christ or the saints, and urges trust in the Lord’s words rather than the Arians’ fables.
19. 24Athanasius describes the night attack of Syrianus on the church, his insistence on staying on his throne until the people had left, and how the monks and clergy led him out unseen through the soldiers.
20. 25Athanasius concludes that fleeing as Peter, Paul, Moses, and David did was obedience, not cowardice, exposes the scandalous lives of Leontius, Narcissus, and George, and ends with the Psalms of deliverance.