On the Lapsed 8

For some, alas, everything fell away and passed from memory. They did not even wait to be arrested before going up, to be questioned before denying. Many were conquered before the battle, laid low without an encounter, and did not even leave themselves the plea that they seemed to sacrifice to idols unwillingly. Of their own accord they ran to the forum; they hastened willingly to death, as though they had long desired it, as though they were embracing an opportunity they had gladly wished for. How many were put off there by the magistrates when evening pressed, how many even begged that their ruin should not be deferred! What compulsion can such a one plead to clear himself of his crime, when he rather used compulsion himself in order to perish? When he came willingly to the Capitol, when he freely approached to comply with the dreadful deed, did his step not falter, his sight grow dim, his inward parts tremble, his limbs give way? Were his senses not stunned, his tongue not stuck, his speech not failing? Could a servant of God stand there and speak and renounce Christ, who had already renounced the devil and the world? Was not that altar, to which he had gone to die, a funeral pyre to him? Ought he not to have shuddered at and fled the devil's altar, which he had seen smoking and reeking with a foul stench, as the funeral and tomb of his life? Why, wretch, do you bring an offering with you, why a victim to supplicate? You yourself have come to the altars as an offering, you yourself as a victim: there you have sacrificed your salvation; your hope, your faith you have burned up there in those deadly fires.