Exhortation to Martyrdom 1–17

“You who are weaned from milk, you who are drawn from the breast, expect affliction upon affliction, expect hope upon hope, yet a little, yet a little, through contempt of lips, through another tongue.” You too, then, according to Isaiah, since you are no longer fleshly nor infants “in Christ,” but have advanced “in” your spiritual “stature,” most God-fearing Ambrose and most pious Protoctetus, and no longer “have need of milk” but “of solid food,” hear, as those “weaned from milk” and “drawn from the breast,” how it is prophesied that for athletes who have been weaned there comes not simple affliction but “affliction upon affliction.” But the one who does not thrust away the affliction “upon affliction,” but like a noble athlete accepts it, at once accepts also “hope upon hope,” which he will enjoy not long after the affliction “upon affliction”; for such is the meaning of “yet a little, yet a little.”

But even if those who are strangers to the language of the holy Scriptures should despise and belittle us, calling us either impious or foolish, let us remember that the hope “upon hope,” which will be given back to us “yet a little” while, will be given back “through contempt of lips, through another tongue.” And who would not accept “affliction upon affliction,” in order at once to accept also “hope upon hope,” reckoning with Paul “that the sufferings of the present time,” by which we as it were purchase blessedness, “are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” from God? And especially since “the momentary lightness of our affliction” (“light” both being and being called so for those who are not weighed down by their circumstances), the more it abounds, the greater and more abundant “weight of eternal glory it works for us,” if, in the time of those who afflict us and wish, as it were, to crush our souls, we turn our ruling faculty away from our toils and look, not at the toils that are present, but at what is laid up by the grace of God, because of endurance in them, for those who have competed “lawfully” in Christ. For he multiplies his benefits, and beyond the worth of the contestant's labors grants as much as it befits God to give, who does not reckon stingily, who gives great gifts and who knowingly magnifies his graces toward those who, as far as they could, by despising the earthen vessel have shown their love for him with the whole soul.

I think that God is loved with the whole soul by those who, through great eagerness for communion with God, draw it away and separate it not only from the earthly body but from every body. For them it is no struggle and no tearing away to lay aside “the body” “of humiliation,” when the occasion allows them, through what is called death, to put off the body “of death,” and to be heard when they pray as the apostle did and say, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” For which of those who groan “in the tent” because they are weighed down by the corruptible body will not also give thanks, having first said, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” when he sees that, delivered through this communion from “the body of death,” he will holily cry out, “Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord”? But if this seems hard to anyone, he has not “thirsted” “for God,” the mighty, “the living,” nor longed for God “as the deer longs for the springs of water,” nor said, “When shall I come and appear before the face of God?” Nor has he considered within himself what the prophet considered, when it was said to him, “Where is your God?” and “every day” he poured out “his soul” within himself, rebuking it when, through weakness, it was still very sorrowful and troubled, and saying, “For I shall pass through into the place of the wonderful tent, even to the house of God, with the voice of rejoicing and thanksgiving, the sound of one keeping festival.”

So I would pray that throughout the whole present contest you would remember the great reward laid up in heaven for those who are persecuted and reviled “for righteousness' sake” and for the sake of the Son of Man, and would rejoice and be glad and leap for joy, as the apostles once rejoiced that they were counted worthy “to be dishonored for his name.” And if you should ever feel your soul shrinking back, let the mind of Christ that is in us say to it, when it wishes, as far as it can, to throw him too into confusion: “Why are you very sorrowful, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I will give thanks to him,” and so on. Would that the soul might never be troubled at all, but even before the courts themselves and before the naked swords brought down on the neck might be guarded by the peace of God that surpasses “all understanding,” and be calm, reckoning that those who are away “from the body” are at home with the Lord of all himself. But if we are not so great as always to keep our calm, at least let the trouble of the soul not pour out or show itself to those outside, so that we may have room for a defense before God, saying to him, “My God, my soul is troubled within me.” And the word urges us to remember also what is said in Isaiah in this way: “Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be overcome by their contempt.” For it is absurd, when God is so plainly present in the motion of heaven and of the things in it, and in what is accomplished on land and sea by his divine art in the births, constitutions, nourishment, and growth of animals and plants of every kind, to shut our eyes and not look to God, and to turn our eyes instead to the fear of people who will shortly die and be handed over to the judgment they deserve.

To Abraham it was once said by God, “Go out from your land”; but to us perhaps it will shortly be said, “Go out from the whole earth.” It is good to obey this, so that he may quickly show us the heavens, in which is what is called the kingdom of heaven. Now one can see that life is full of contests over many virtues, and full of those who contend. For many others besides those who belong to God's portion will be thought to have contended for self-control; and some to have died with courage, keeping their purpose toward the common Master; and those skilled in the arguments under examination to have cultivated prudence; and those who set themselves to live justly to have given themselves to justice. And against each virtue there wars either “the mind of the flesh” or most external things. But over piety only “the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the people for God's own possession” contends; for the rest of mankind do not show even in appearance that, if there should be things that fight against the pious, they are resolved to die for piety, preferring death with piety to life with impiety. And each of those who wish to belong to the chosen race obeys God when he hears him say at every time, even when those who under pretence of having many gods are godless plot against him: “You shall have no other gods besides me,” and, “You shall not remember the name of other gods in your hearts, nor shall it be named from your mouth.” Therefore God is “believed with the heart unto righteousness” by such people, and “confessed with the mouth unto salvation” by such people, since they understand that they will not be justified unless they so believe God with their heart so disposed, nor will they be in salvation unless their speech corresponds to their inner disposition. For those deceive themselves who think that to attain the goal in Christ it is enough that “with the heart one believes unto righteousness,” even if “with the mouth one confesses unto salvation” is not added. And one may say that it is better to honor God “with the lips” while the heart is “far” from him than to honor him with the “heart” while the mouth does not confess “unto salvation.”

If the one who says, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything,” and what follows, speaks these words as though “You shall not bow down to them” and “nor shall you serve them” differ from each other, perhaps the one who is inwardly devoted to idols serves them, while the one who is not so devoted, but out of cowardice (which he calls accommodation) plays the part, in order to seem pious as the many are, does not serve idols but does bow down to them. And I would say that those who abjure Christianity in court, or before the court, do not serve idols but do bow down to them, applying the name of the Lord God, the name “God,” to vain and lifeless matter. In this way the people who were defiled “with the daughters of Moab” bowed down to idols and did not serve them. For it is written in these very words: “They invited them to the sacrifices of their idols, and the people ate of their sacrifices, and they bowed down to their idols and were initiated into Baal of Peor.” And observe that it is not said, “and they served their idols”; for it was not possible, after so many signs and wonders, that in a single moment they should be persuaded by the women with whom they committed fornication to believe that the idols were gods. Perhaps in the same way at the making of the calf in Exodus they “bowed down” without serving the calf, which they had watched being made. So we must regard the present temptation as a trial and test of our love for God. “For the Lord is testing you,” as it is written in Deuteronomy, “to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” But you, when tested, “will walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments,” and especially “You shall have no other gods besides me,” “and you will hear his voice and be joined to him,” who takes you from the places here and joins you to himself in what the apostle called “the growth of God” in him.

Moreover, if “every” evil “word is an abomination to the Lord” your God, how great an “abomination” must we consider the evil word of denial, and the evil speech that proclaims another god, and the evil oath by the Fortune of men, a thing without real existence? When it is put to us, we must remember him who taught, “But I say to you, do not swear at all.” For if he who swears by heaven transgresses against the throne of God, and he who swears by the earth commits impiety by deifying what is called “the footstool of God's feet,” and he who swears by Jerusalem sins, although it is the city of the great King, and he who swears by his own head offends, how great a sin must we consider it to swear by anyone's Fortune? At that time we must remember also this: for every idle word you will give “account on the day of judgment.” For what other word is so idle as the oath in denial? But the enemy will probably wish to outwit us by whatever means he can, so that we bow down “to the sun or the moon or all the host of heaven.” But we shall say that the word of God “did not command” these things. For created things must by no means be worshiped when the Creator is present, sufficient, and reaching to hear the prayer of all. Nor would the sun himself wish to be worshiped by those who belong to God's portion, and probably not by anyone else; but imitating him who said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God the Father,” he would, as it were, say to anyone wishing to worship him: “Why do you call me god? There is one true God. And why do you worship me? ‘For you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ I too am created; why would you worship one who worships? For I too worship and serve God the Father, and obeying his commands I am subjected ‘to futility because of him who subjected me in hope,’ and I too, though now bound to a corruptible body, shall be set free ‘from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’”

We may expect also some prophet of impiety, perhaps not one but several, who will speak to us as the Lord's “word, which” the Lord “did not command,” or as a word of wisdom what is foreign to wisdom, in order to kill us by the word of his mouth. But then too, when the sinner stands against us, let us say: “But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a dumb man who does not open his mouth; and I became like a man who does not hear.” For deafness to impious words is good, when we despair of correcting those who speak the worse things.

It is useful for us, in times when people call us to the contrary course, to consider what God wishes to teach when he says, “I am the Lord your God, a jealous God.” And I think that, just as a bridegroom who turns his bride toward living chastely, so that she gathers her whole self to her bridegroom and guards in every way against pouring herself out to anyone other than the bridegroom, would, if he were wise, show jealousy, using such a display toward the bride as a medicine; so he who speaks the oracle, especially if he appears to be “the firstborn of all creation,” says to the bride, the soul, that he is a jealous God, drawing his hearers away from all fornication with demons and with those who are thought to be gods. And as a God who is jealous in this way, he says of those who have in any way gone whoring after other gods: “They provoked me to jealousy with what is no god, they angered me with their idols; and I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation, with a foolish nation I will anger them; for a fire has been kindled from my wrath, it will burn to the lowest Hades.”

And even if the bridegroom, being wise and free from passion, does not turn his betrothed away from every defilement for his own sake, yet for her sake, seeing her defilement and abomination, he will do everything that can heal her and turn her back, offering to a nature that has free will words that turn it from fornication. What defilement, then, could you conceive worse for a soul than to proclaim in any way another god and not to confess the one who is truly the one and only Lord? And I think that, just as “he who is joined to a prostitute is one body,” so the one who confesses someone, especially in a time of torture and of the testing of faith, is blended and united with the one confessed; but the one who denies, cut off by the denial itself as by a sword from him whom he denies, suffers division, being separated from him whom he has denied. Therefore consider whether it was not as a consequence that necessarily follows, that the one who confesses is confessed and the one who denies is denied, that it was said: “Whoever confesses in me before men, I also will confess in him before my Father in heaven.” And the very Word and the very Truth might say to the one who has confessed and to the one who has denied: “With the measure you measure it will be measured back to you.” “You, then, who measured with the measure of confession toward me and filled up the measure of confession, will receive a measure of confession from me ‘pressed down, shaken together, running over,’ which will be given ‘into your lap’; and you who measured with the measure of denial and denied me will receive, in proportion to the measure of your denial, a measure of denial from me concerning you.”

How the measure of confession is filled, or is not filled but falls short, we might consider as follows. If throughout the whole time of examination and temptation we give no place to the devil in our hearts, when he wishes to defile us with evil thoughts of denial or of double-mindedness or of some plausible argument calling us toward what is hostile to martyrdom and perfection; and besides, if we do not defile ourselves with any word foreign to confession; and if we bear all the reproach from our opponents, the mockery, laughter, slander, and the pity with which they seem to pity us, supposing us to be deluded and foolish and calling us misguided; and further, if we are not dragged about and distracted by affection for our children or their mother or any of those thought to be dearest in life, toward possessions or toward this life, but turning away from all these become wholly God's and devoted to life with him and in his presence, as those who will share with his only-begotten Son and those who partake of him: then we could say that we have filled up the measure of confession. But if we fall short in even one thing, we have not filled it but have defiled the measure of confession and mixed into it something foreign. Therefore we shall need what those need who have built on the foundation “wood” or “hay” or “straw.”

And this too we must know: that we received what are called God's covenants on the terms which we made with him when we undertook to live the Christian life. And in our agreements with God was the whole way of life according to the gospel, which says: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” And we have often been more inspired on hearing also this: “For what will a man profit, if he gains the whole world but forfeits his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man is to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will repay each according to his deeds.” That one must deny oneself and take up one's cross and follow Jesus was recorded not only by Matthew, whose wording we have set out, but also by Luke and Mark. For hear Luke saying: “And he said to all, If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does a man profit if he gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself?” And Mark: “And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses it for the sake of the gospel will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? For what will a man give in exchange for his life?” Long ago, then, we ought to have denied ourselves and said, “It is no longer I who live”; and now let it be seen whether we have taken up our cross and followed Jesus, which has happened if “Christ lives” in us. If we wish to save our soul, so as to receive it back better than a soul, let us also lose it by martyrdom. For if we lose it for Christ's sake, casting it upon him in death for him, we shall gain true salvation for it; but if the opposite, we shall hear that one who has gained the whole world of the senses profits nothing through his own destruction or through having forfeited himself. And once a man has lost his own soul or forfeited it, even if he gains the whole world, he will not be able to give it “in exchange for the” lost “soul.” For the soul created “in the image of God” is more precious than all bodies. One alone has been able to give an exchange for our soul that was formerly lost: he who bought us with his own “precious blood.”

And according to certain deeper meanings Isaiah says: “I have given Egypt and Ethiopia and Syene as an exchange for you, in your place; since you became precious in my sight.” But if, loving learning in Christ and wishing at last to pass beyond learning “through a mirror” and “in a riddle,” you hasten to him who called you, you will very soon know the exact account of this and of the rest “face to face,” as friends of the Father and Teacher in heaven. For friends learn by sight and not through riddles, or by wisdom stripped of sounds, words, symbols, and types, coming into contact with the nature of intelligible things and the beauty of truth. If you believe that Paul was caught up “to the third heaven” and “was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not permitted for a man to speak,” you will know as a consequence that you will at once know more and greater things than the inexpressible words then revealed to Paul, after which he came down from the third heaven; and after that knowledge you will not come down, if, taking up the cross, you follow Jesus, whom we have as “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens.” And you yourselves, not falling away from those who follow him, will pass through the heavens, passing beyond not only earth and the mysteries of earth but also the heavens and what concerns them. For there are stored up in God sights far greater than these, which no nature in a body can contain unless it has first been freed from every body. For I am persuaded that God reserves and keeps with himself things far greater than those which the sun and moon and the chorus of stars have seen, and even the holy angels, whom God made “spirit” and “a flame of fire,” so that he may reveal them when the whole “creation” is set free “from the bondage of the enemy into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

And so one of those who are martyrs-to-be, who has more love of learning in Christ than many martyrs, will more quickly ascend beyond these things. But you, holy Ambrose, if you look carefully at a saying of the gospel, can see that perhaps none, or very few, of all who have ever lived will attain an outpouring of blessedness so exceptional and so great; and in it you too will share, if you swim through the contest without wavering. The words are these. Peter once said to the Savior: “Behold, we have left everything and followed you; what then will there be for us? And Jesus said to them” (that is, to the apostles): “Truly I say to you that you who have followed me, in the regeneration, when God sits on the throne of his glory, you also will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left brothers or sisters or parents or children or fields or houses for the sake of my name will receive many times as much and will inherit eternal life.” Because of these sayings, had I acquired as much on earth as you have, or even more, I would have prayed to become a martyr in Christ to God, so as to receive “many times as much,” or as Mark says, “a hundredfold”; for the few things that we shall leave behind if we are called to martyrdom, multiplied a hundredfold, are far more than those few. For this reason, if I am a martyr, I should wish to leave children behind too, with fields and houses, so that with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,” I may be called father of children many times more numerous and more holy, or, to speak exactly, a hundred times more. And if there are fathers of whom it was said to Abraham, “But you shall go to your fathers in peace, nourished in a good old age,” someone might say (I do not know whether truly): perhaps those fathers are ones who were once martyred and left children behind, in return for which they became fathers of the fathers of the patriarch Abraham and of other such patriarchs. For it is likely that those who left children and were martyred become fathers not of infants but of fathers.

But if someone, as though earnestly desiring the greater gifts and counting blessed the martyrs who are rich and the martyrs who are fathers, who will beget children “a hundredfold” and receive fields and houses a hundredfold, should ask whether it is reasonable that they, compared with martyrs who were poor in this life, should have their possession of spiritual things multiplied, we must say to him this: just as those who endured tortures and pains displayed a more brilliant virtue in martyrdom than those not tested in these, so those who, besides love of the body and love of life, have cut through and broken so many worldly bonds, exercising great love for God and truly taking up the living and active Word of God, sharper “than any two-edged sword,” have been able, having cut through so many bonds and made themselves wings like an eagle, to return “to the house of” their master. It is right, then, that just as those who were not tested by tortures and pains should yield first place to those who showed their endurance on the rack and the various instruments of torture and in the fire, so also reason prompts us who are poor, even if we are martyred, to give up first place to you who, for the love of God in Christ, trample on the deceptive glory that captivates the many, and on so great a possession, and on affection for children.

At the same time note the dignity of Scripture, which promises the multiplying, even a hundredfold, of brothers and children and parents and fields and houses; but a wife is not counted among them. For it is not said, “Everyone who has left brothers or sisters or parents or children or fields or houses or wife for the sake of my name will receive many times as much”; for “in the resurrection of the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.”

What, then, Joshua said to the people when he settled them in the holy land, Scripture might now say to us too. The wording is this: “Now fear the Lord and serve him in uprightness and in righteousness.” And to us, when we are being persuaded to worship idols, it will say also what follows: “Put away the foreign gods, which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.” At the beginning, when you were about to be instructed in the faith, it would reasonably have been said to you: “But if it does not please you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites, among whom you dwell in the land.” And the one instructing you would have said: “But I and my house will serve the Lord, for he is holy.” But now there is no room for these things to be said to you; for then you said, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods. The Lord our God, he is God, who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, and kept us in all the way in which we went.” And also, in your agreements about the worship of God, you long ago answered those who instructed you: “We too will serve the Lord; for he is our God.” If, then, one who breaks agreements with men is faithless and a stranger to safety, what must be said of those who by denial set aside the agreements they made with God, and run back to Satan, whom they renounced at their baptism? For to such a person we must say the words Eli spoke to his sons: “If a man sins against a man, they will pray for him; but if he sins against the Lord, who will pray for him?”