On Flight in Persecution 1–11

You asked recently, brother Fabius, whether one should flee in persecution or not, because some news or other was being reported. At the time I said something against it, as suited the place and the occasion, and, because of the importunity of certain persons, I carried the subject away with me only half treated, intending now to set it out more fully in writing, since your inquiry had commended it to me and the state of the times had already laid it on me in its own right. For the more frequently persecutions threaten, the more we must attend to examining how faith ought to receive them. And the examination must be attended to among you, who, by not receiving the Paraclete, the guide into all truth, are naturally still beset by other questions as well. So we also give your inquiry an order, noting that we must first determine the character of persecution itself, whether it comes from God or from the devil, so that it may be easier to be clear about how to meet it. For the examination of anything is plainer once its author is known.

It is indeed enough to lay down that nothing happens without the will of God. But we shall not at once, by this statement, give room to other discussions, lest we be called away from the present point, if someone should reply: “Then evil too is from God, and sin is from God; nothing is any longer in the devil, nothing even in ourselves.” The present question is persecution. Concerning it, meanwhile, I would say that nothing happens without the will of God, bearing in mind that persecution above all is worthy of God and, if I may say so, necessary, namely for the approval or the rejection of his servants. For what is the outcome of persecution, what other effect does it have, but the approval or rejection of faith, by which the Lord will surely examine his own? Persecution is this judgment of the Lord, through which one is judged either approved or rejected. Now judgment belongs to God alone. This is that winnowing fan which even now cleanses the Lord's threshing floor, the church, winnowing the mixed heap of the faithful and separating the wheat of the martyrs from the chaff of the deniers; and these are also the ladders of which Jacob dreamed, showing some the way up to higher things and others the way down to lower. So persecution may also be understood as a contest. By whom is the contest proclaimed, if not by the one who sets out the crown and the prizes? You read the edict of this contest in the Apocalypse: with what prizes he invites to victory above all those who have properly conquered in persecution, having wrestled in conquering, truly, not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness. So you will recognize that the judging of the contest belongs to the same president of the games who invites to the prize. The whole of what happens in persecution is the glory of God, who approves and rejects, sets up and puts down. And what pertains to the glory of God will surely come about by his will. But when is God more believed than when he is more feared, than in the time of persecution? The church is in awe. Then faith too is more watchful in its readiness, and more disciplined in fasts and stations and prayers and humility, in mutual diligence and love, in holiness and sobriety. For there is room only for fear and hope. So from this very fact it is shown to us that persecution, which makes God's servants better, cannot be ascribed to the devil.

Someone may argue that iniquity is not from God but from the devil, and that persecution consists of iniquity (for what is more iniquitous than that the priests of the true God, all followers of the truth, should be treated like the worst criminals?), and that persecution therefore seems to come from the devil, by whom the iniquity is worked of which persecution consists. We ought to know, since there is neither persecution without the devil's iniquity nor testing of faith without persecution, that the iniquity necessary for the testing of faith provides persecution not with its authorship but with its service: God's will concerning the testing of faith, which is the reason for persecution, comes first, and the devil's iniquity follows as the instrument of persecution, which is the means of testing. For in other respects too, as far as iniquity is the rival of justice, so far it is the material for bearing witness to that of which it is the rival, so that justice is perfected in iniquity as strength is perfected in weakness. For the weak things of the world have been chosen by God to put the strong to shame, and its foolish things to put wisdom to shame. So iniquity too is employed, so that justice may be proved by putting iniquity to shame. Therefore, since service is not a matter of choice but of servitude (for persecution is the Lord's choice, for the testing of faith, while the devil's iniquity is the service, for equipping persecution), we believe that persecution comes about through the devil, perhaps, but not from the devil.

Satan will be allowed nothing against the servants of the living God unless the Lord permits it, either to destroy Satan himself through the faith of the elect, victorious in temptation, or to expose as his those who have defected to him. You have the example of Job, on whom the devil could bring no temptation unless he had received power from God, not even against his property, unless the Lord had said, “Behold, all that he has I give into your hand, but do not stretch out your hand against himself.” In fact he did not stretch it out until, when he asked for this too, the Lord had said, “Behold, I hand him over to you; only preserve his life.” So also he asked for an opportunity to tempt the apostles, not having it except by permission, since the Lord says to Peter in the gospel, “Behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail”: that is, that the devil might not be permitted so much that faith would be endangered. This shows that both are in God's keeping, the shaking of faith and its protection, since both are sought from him: the shaking by the devil, the protection by the Son. And surely, since the Son of God has the protection of faith in his power, which he asks from the Father, from whom he receives all power in heaven and on earth, how could the devil have the shaking of faith in his own hand? But in the lawful prayer, when we say to the Father, “Do not lead us into temptation” (and what greater temptation is there than persecution?), we profess that it comes from him from whom we ask to be spared it. For this is what follows: “But deliver us from the evil one”, that is, do not lead us into temptation by handing us over to the evil one. For we are delivered from the devil's hands when we are not handed over to him into temptation. Nor did the devil's legion have power over the herd of swine unless it had obtained it from God; so far is it from having power over God's sheep. I can say that even the bristles of the swine were then numbered with God, not to speak of the hairs of the saints. The devil seems, perhaps, to have power of his own over those who do not belong to God, since the nations were once for all reckoned by God as a drop of a bucket, and dust of the threshing floor, and spittle, and so exposed to the devil as a possession left, in a way, vacant. But against those of God's household nothing is allowed him by his own power, since the examples recorded in the Scriptures show when it is allowed, that is, for what causes. For either the right to tempt is granted him for the sake of testing, whether he is challenged or is the challenger, as above; or the sinner is handed over to him for the sake of rejection, as to an executioner for punishment, like Saul (“And the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul,” it says, “and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him and choked him”); or for the sake of restraint, as the apostle reports that a stake was given him, an angel of Satan, to buffet him; and not even this kind is permitted to the devil for humbling the saints by vexation of the flesh unless at the same time the strength of endurance may be perfected in weakness. For the apostle himself also handed Phygelus and Hermogenes over to Satan, that they might be corrected and not blaspheme. You see now that the devil receives power more readily even from God's servants; so far is he from possessing it in his own right.

Since, then, these examples occur more in persecutions, since then more than at other times we are approved or rejected, and then more than at other times humbled or corrected, these things must be permitted or commanded to happen universally by him by whom they are also done in part, namely by him who says, “I am he who makes peace and creates evils,” that is, war; for that is the opposite of peace. And what is war to our peace but persecution? If the outcomes of persecution above all bring either life or death, either a wound or healing, you have its author: “I will strike and I will heal; I will make alive and I will put to death.” “I will burn them,” he says, “as gold is burned, and I will test them,” he says, “as silver is tested.” For when we are burned up by the heat of persecution, then we are tested for the firmness of our faith. These will be the fiery darts of the devil, through which the burning and smelting of faith is carried out, but by the will of God. Who could doubt this I do not know, unless it be a plainly trifling and chilly faith, which gets hold of those who come together timidly in church. For you say: “Since we assemble without order, and assemble together, and flock to church in great numbers, we are sought out by the heathen, and we fear lest the heathen be stirred up.” Do you not know that God is Lord of all? If God wills it, then you will suffer persecution; but if he does not will it, the heathen will keep quiet. You should certainly believe it, if indeed you believe in that God without whose will not even a sparrow sold for a penny falls to the ground. And we, I think, are worth more than many sparrows.

If, then, it is clear from whom persecution comes, we can now take up your question and determine from this very preliminary discussion that one must not flee in persecution. For if persecution comes from God, what comes from God is in no way to be fled from; a twofold reason defends this: what comes from God ought not to be avoided, and it cannot be escaped. It ought not to be avoided, because it is good; for everything that God has approved must be good. And is it not for this reason that it is set down in Genesis, “And God saw that it was good”? Not because he would not have known it was good unless he had seen it, but to indicate by this wording that what God has approved is good. There are indeed many things that come from God and come to someone's harm. Yet a thing is good for this very reason, that it comes from God, as divine, as rational. For what is divine and not rational, not good? What is good and not divine? And if it seems otherwise to someone's perception, man's perception does not prejudge the state of things, but the state prejudges the perception. For each state is something definite, and gives the perception the law of perceiving the state as it is. But if what comes from God is good in its state (for nothing from God is not good, because it is divine, because it is rational), but seems evil to the perception, the state will be safe and the perception at fault. In their state, chastity and truth and justice are excellent things, and yet they displease many people's perception. Is the state, then, made over to the perception? So persecution too is good in its state, because it is a divine and rational arrangement, but it displeases the perception of those to whose harm it comes. You see that even that evil has its reason with God, when someone in persecution is overthrown from salvation, just as that good too happens by reason, when someone advances to salvation through persecution. Unless someone perishes or is saved before the Lord without reason, he will not be able to call persecution evil, which is good even on its evil side, since it is administered by reason. So if persecution is in any case good, because this is established from its state, we rightly determine that what is good ought not to be avoided, because it is a sin to refuse what is good, all the more because God has approved it; and further that it cannot be avoided, because it comes from God, whose will cannot be escaped. Therefore those who think one should flee either charge God with evil, if they flee persecution as an evil (for no one avoids a good), or think themselves stronger than God, if they think they can escape when God has willed something of the kind to happen.

“But,” someone says, “I do my part: I flee, lest I perish if I deny; it is his part, if he wills, to bring me back into the open even as I flee.” First answer me this: are you certain that you will deny if you do not flee, or uncertain? If certain, you have already denied, because by presuming that you will deny you have given away the very thing about which you presumed; and you flee in vain lest you deny, since, if you are going to deny, you have already denied. But if you are uncertain, why, since your fear is equally uncertain between the two outcomes, do you not presume that you can also confess and rather be saved, so that you do not flee, just as you presume that you will deny, so that you do flee? Now either both are in our power or the whole is in God's. If confessing or denying is in our power, why do we not presume the better, that is, that we shall confess? Unless you are willing to confess but unwilling to suffer; but to be unwilling to confess is to deny. But if the whole is in God's power, why do we not leave the whole to his judgment, acknowledging his strength and power, that just as he can bring us back into the open when we flee, so he can also shield us when we do not flee, even when we live in the midst of the people? What sort of thing is it that, in fleeing, you honour God as able to bring you out into the open even as you flee, but, when it comes to bearing witness, you dishonour him by despairing of his power to protect? Why do you not rather say, from this side, that of constancy and trust in God: “I do my part; I do not leave; God, if he wills, will himself protect me”? It is rather our part to stand under God's judgment than to flee under our own. Rutilius, a most holy martyr, after he had so often fled persecution from place to place and had even bought off the danger, as he thought, with money, was, after all the security he had provided for himself, unexpectedly seized, brought before the governor, torn apart by tortures (as a punishment, I believe, for his flight), and then given to the flames; and so he rendered to the mercy of God the suffering he had avoided. What else did the Lord wish to show us by this example than that we must not flee, since flight profits nothing if God does not will it?

“But,” someone says, “he fulfilled a command by fleeing from city to city.” So a certain man wished to argue, but he too was a fugitive; and so do those who likewise refuse to understand the sense of that declaration of the Lord, so as to use it as a cloak for their cowardice, although it had its own persons and times and occasions. “When they begin,” he says, “to persecute you, flee from city to city.” We maintain that this applies properly to the persons of the apostles and to their times and occasions, as the following sayings will prove, which apply only to the apostles: “Do not go into the way of the nations, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But for us the way of the nations lies open too, in which we were also found and in which we walk to the end, and no city is excepted, since we preach throughout the whole world; nor has the care of Israel been laid on us in any special way, except that we must preach to all nations. Even if we are arrested, we shall not be brought into their councils nor scourged in their synagogues, but we shall certainly be set before Roman authorities and tribunals. So the condition of the apostles also required the command to flee, since the preaching was first to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So that the preaching might be completed among those among whom it had to be completed first, that the children might take the bread before the dogs, it was commanded them then to flee for a time; not in order to elude danger on the ground of persecution as such (on the contrary, he foretold that they would suffer persecutions and taught that these must be endured), but for the advance of the proclamation, lest, if they were crushed at once, the spreading of the gospel should perish too. For they were not to flee into some city as if to keep silent there, but as men who would proclaim everywhere and for that reason undergo persecutions everywhere, until they had completed their teaching. In short, he says, “You will not finish the cities of Israel.” So the command to flee was confined within the borders of Judea. But for us no limit of Judea applies to the preaching, since the Holy Spirit has now been poured out on all flesh.

So Paul and the apostles themselves, remembering the Lord's command, declare it before Israel, which they had now filled with their teaching: “It was necessary that the word of God be delivered to you first; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the nations.” And from then on they themselves turned, as their predecessor had laid down, and went into the way of the nations and entered the cities of the Samaritans, so that their sound might go out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. If, then, the exception concerning the way of the nations and entry into the cities of the Samaritans has ceased, why should not the command to flee, issued at the same time, have ceased too? In short, from the time when Israel had had its fill and the apostles passed over to the nations, they neither fled from city to city nor hesitated to suffer. Indeed Paul too, who had allowed himself to be let down over the wall to escape persecution, since the command was in force up to that time, the same man, now at the close of his ministry and the fulfilment of the command, when the disciples earnestly begged him not to commit himself to Jerusalem, where he would suffer what Agabus had prophesied, did not give way to their anxiety, but on the contrary said, “What are you doing, weeping and troubling my heart? For I would wish not only to suffer chains but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.” And so they all said, “The will of the Lord be done.” What was the will of the Lord? Surely no longer to flee persecution. Otherwise, those who would rather he had avoided persecution could have put forward the Lord's earlier will, by which he had commanded flight. Therefore, since even under the apostles themselves the command to flee was temporary, like the rest of those directions, what ceased among our teachers cannot continue among us, even if it had not been issued specifically to them; or else, if the Lord willed it to continue, the apostles sinned, who did not take care to go on fleeing to the end.

Let us now see whether the Lord's other edicts agree with a perpetual command to flee. First, if persecution is from God, what sort of thing is it that the same one who brings it should order it to be fled? If he wanted it escaped, he would do better not to send it, lest he seem to transgress his own will by another will. For he wanted us either to suffer persecution or to flee it. If to flee, how to suffer? If to suffer, how to flee? And what inconsistency there would be in the sayings of one who orders flight and invites to suffering, the opposite of flight! “Whoever confesses me, I too will confess him before my Father.” How will one who flees confess? How will one who confesses flee? “Whoever is ashamed of me, I too will be ashamed of him before the Father.” If I avoid suffering, I am ashamed of confession. “Blessed are those who have suffered persecution for my name's sake.” Unhappy, then, are those who, by fleeing according to the command, will not have suffered. “He who endures to the end will be saved.” Why, then, while ordering me to flee, do you want me to endure to the end? If such a contradiction of sayings does not befit the divine gravity, it is clear from these too that the command to flee had its own reason at that time, which we have shown.

“But,” someone says, “the Lord, foreseeing the weakness of some, in his kindness nonetheless pointed out the harbour of flight as well.” For of course he was not able, without flight, that shameful, unworthy, and servile defence, to save in persecution those whom he knew to be weak! And yet he does not cherish the weak but always rejects them, teaching first that persecutors are not to be fled but rather not feared: “Do not fear those who can kill the body but can do nothing to the soul; but fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.” And then what does he lay down for the fearful? “He who values his own life more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Finally, in the Apocalypse he offers the fearful not flight but, among the other reprobate, a portion in the lake of sulphur and fire, which is the second death.

He himself too sometimes withdrew from violence, but for the same reason for which he had commanded the apostles to flee, namely, until he had completed his teaching; once it was completed, I do not say he stood firm, but he did not even ask the Father for the help of armies of angels, and he even rebuked Peter's sword. He did indeed profess that his soul was troubled even to death and that the flesh was weak, first to show you that both human substances were in him, from the properties of the soul's anxiety and the flesh's weakness, so that you would not interpret either Christ's flesh or his soul as something different, as some have now introduced; and next so that, their conditions having been shown, you might know that they can do nothing by themselves without the spirit. And so he puts first, “the spirit is willing,” so that, considering the condition of each substance, you may understand that in you there is the strength of the spirit as well as the weakness of the flesh, and may know from this what to do and by what means, and what to subject to what, namely the weak to the strong; so that you do not, as you now do, plead the weakness of the flesh while passing over the firmness of the spirit. He himself too asked the Father that, if it were possible, the cup of suffering might pass from him. You too ask, but standing firm as he did, only asking, and adding the rest as well: “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” But if you flee, how will you ask this, when you are yourself bringing about the passing of the cup, and doing not what the Father wills, but what you will?

The apostles surely taught everything according to God; they unfolded everything in the gospel. Where do you show that they renewed the command to flee from city to city? They could not have laid down anything so contrary to their own examples as to order flight, when they were writing to the churches precisely from chains or islands, where they were held for confessing the Name, not for fleeing it. Paul orders us to bear with the weak: surely not those who flee. For how could the absent be borne with? By patience? He says they are to be borne with where they have stumbled through the weakness of their faith, just as the faint-hearted are to be comforted, yet not sent into flight. And when he warns us not to give place to the evil one, he is not suggesting the counsel of flight but teaching the restraint of anger; and if he says the time must be redeemed because the days are evil, he wants us to gain our interval not by flight but by wisdom of conduct. Moreover, he who orders us to shine as children of light does not order us to hide by flight like children of darkness. He commands us to stand unmoved, surely not moved by flight either; and girded: for flight, or for going to meet the gospel? He also shows us armour, which would not be needed by those about to flee, and among it a shield with which you can quench the devil's darts, surely by resisting and taking the whole of his violence. So also John teaches that we must lay down our lives even for our brothers, much more for the Lord. This cannot be fulfilled by those who flee. Finally, mindful of his Apocalypse, in which he had heard the end of the fearful, he too warns from his own conviction that fear must be rejected: “There is no fear,” he says, “in love; but perfect love casts out fear, since fear has punishment” (the fire of the lake, surely), “and he who fears is not perfect in love” (the love of God, that is). Further, who will flee persecution but one who fears? Who will fear but one who has not loved? And if you consult the Spirit, what does he approve more than that saying of the Spirit? For he exhorts almost everyone to martyrdom, not to flight; to mention that saying too: “You are exposed in public,” he says; “it is good for you; for he who is not exposed among men is exposed before the Lord. Do not be ashamed; righteousness brings you forward into the open. Why are you ashamed, when you are bearing praise? Power comes about when you are gazed upon by men.” So also elsewhere: “Do not desire to depart this life in beds, nor in miscarriages and soft fevers, but in martyrdoms, that he who suffered for you may be glorified.”

But some, passing over the divine exhortations, apply to themselves rather that Greek line of worldly wisdom, “He who fled will fight again”: and perhaps flee again, too. And when will he conquer who, in fleeing, was conquered? A fine soldier he presents to Christ his commander, who, so fully armed by the apostle, hears the trumpet of persecution and deserts on the day of persecution! I too will answer with something from the world: “Is it so very wretched to die?” Let him die in any way at all, either vanquished or victor. For even if he falls by denying, he has at least fought with the tortures. I would rather be pitied than blush. A soldier is more handsome pierced by a javelin in battle than safe in flight. Do you fear man, Christian, you who ought to be feared by angels, since you will judge angels; who ought to be feared by demons, since you have received power over demons too; who ought to be feared by the whole world, since the world too is judged in you? You have put on Christ, since you have been dipped into Christ, and you flee from the devil! You have cheapened Christ, who is in you; you have made yourself a fugitive before the devil. But in fleeing from the Lord you rebuke all fugitives with the vanity of their plan. A certain bold prophet too had fled from the Lord; he had crossed from Joppa towards Tarsus, as though he could sail away from God as well; but I find him, not to say on sea and on land, but even in the belly of a beast, in which he could neither die for three days nor even so escape God. How much better is the man who, if he fears the enemy of God, does not flee him but rather despises him, trusting in the Lord's protection; or who, if he stands in awe of God, all the more stands before his eyes, saying: “He is Lord, he is powerful. All things are his; wherever I am, I am in his hand; let him do what he wills; I do not leave; and if he wills that I perish, let him destroy me himself, while I keep myself for him. I would rather bring odium on him by perishing by his will than rouse his anger by escaping by my own.”

Every servant of God ought to think and act in this way, even one of lower rank, so that he may become one of higher rank, if he has climbed some step in the endurance of persecution. But when the leaders themselves, that is, the deacons and presbyters and bishops themselves, flee, how will a layman be able to understand in what sense it was said, “Flee from city to city”? So when the officers flee, which of the rank and file will be persuaded to stand his ground in the battle line? Certainly the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, as Moses, when the Lord had not yet been revealed as Christ but was already figured in him, said: “If you destroy this people,” he says, “destroy me too together with them.” But Christ, confirming his own figures, says that he is a bad shepherd who, seeing the wolf, flees and leaves the sheep to be torn. A shepherd of that kind will be thrown off the farm; the wages of his service will be withheld from him in compensation; indeed restitution for his master's loss will be exacted even from his former savings. For to him who has, it will be given; but from him who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away. So Zechariah threatens: “Rise, sword, against the shepherds, and pluck out the sheep, and I will bring my hand upon the shepherds.” Against them Ezekiel and Jeremiah too inveigh with the same threats: that they not only wickedly feed on the sheep, pasturing themselves instead, but also scatter the flock and make it a prey to all the beasts of the field, since they have no shepherd. This never happens more than when the church is abandoned by its clergy in persecution. If anyone also acknowledges the Spirit, he will hear him branding fugitives. Further, if it is neither fitting nor even lawful for those who are over the flock to flee when the wolves rush in (for he who declared such a shepherd bad surely condemned him, and whatever is condemned has without doubt become unlawful), then those in charge of the church ought not to flee in persecution. But if the flock ought to flee, the one in charge of the flock ought not to stand firm; he would stand without cause, to protect a flock that would not want his protection, since it would have, of course, the licence to flee.