Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting

From a small thing the earth festers a great evil, the scorpion. As many poisons as kinds, as many destructions as species, as many pains as colours: Nicander writes of them and paints them. And yet all have one gesture of violence, from the tail, not the mouth; and the tail will be whatever is extended from the hind part of the body and strikes. … So too the scorpion's: that series of knots, poisoned within by a fine little vein, rising with an arched thrust, draws tight at the top a hooked sting, on the principle of a torsion engine; hence they also name after the scorpion the war engine that drives its missiles by drawing back. That sting is also a tube of open fineness, and where it pierces it pours the venom into the wound. Summer is the season most familiar with the danger; its savagery sets sail with the south and south-west winds. Among remedies, natural ones are most used; magic too binds something on; medicine meets it with the knife and the draught. For some even drink a protection beforehand, in haste; but intercourse drains it, and they are thirsty again. For us faith is the defence, if it is not itself struck by distrust, in making the sign at once, adjuring the beast, and bringing the heel down on it. In this way we often help even the heathen, endowed by God with that power which the apostle consecrated when he disregarded the viper's bite.

What, then, does this pen promise, if faith is safe on its own? That it may be safe on its own in another way too, when it suffers its own scorpions. These too are a bitter small thing, of various kinds, armed in one way, and made ready at a fixed time, none other than the time of heat. Among Christians this is persecution. So when faith is in a heat and the church is burning, after the figure of the bush, then the Gnostics break out, then the Valentinians creep forth, then all the opponents of martyrdom boil up, hot themselves to strike, to pierce, to kill. For since they know that many are simple and untaught, and weak as well, and that most are Christians as the wind blows and as it pleases them, they understand that such people are never better approached than when fear has loosened the entrances of the soul, especially when some atrocity has already crowned the faith of the martyrs. So first, still trailing the tail, they apply it to the feelings, or lash as if at empty air: “Should innocent men suffer such things?”, so that you would think him a brother, or one of the better heathen. “Is a sect that harms no one to be treated so?” Then they drive it in: “Men are perishing without cause.” For “perishing”, and “without cause”, is the first thrust. Then they strike home: “But simple souls do not know what is written, and how, where and when and before whom one must confess; except that it is not simplicity but vanity, indeed madness, to die for God, when he is the one who is to save me. Will he who ought to save kill? Christ died for us once, was killed once, so that we might not be killed. If he asks for a return, does he too expect salvation from my death? Or does God demand men's blood, especially when he refuses that of bulls and goats? Certainly he prefers the sinner's repentance to his death. And how does he desire the death of those who are not sinners?” Whom would not these, and any other inventions of heretical poisons, fix, if not into ruin, then into doubt; if not into death, then into gall? But you, if faith is awake, dash your anathema on the spot on the scorpion, as with a sandal, and leave it dying in its own pus. But if it has sated its blow, the poison penetrates and hurries to the vitals; at once all the former senses grow numb, the blood of the mind congeals, the flesh of the spirit withers, nausea for the Name grows sharp. Now the mind itself looks for somewhere to vomit, and so the weakness, once struck, breathes out its wounded faith either into heresy or into the world.

And now, in the present state of affairs, it is the middle of the heat, the very dog-days of persecution, from the dog-headed one himself, no doubt. Some Christians fire has proved, some the sword, some the beasts; others, having meanwhile tasted martyrdom by clubs and claws besides, go hungry in prison. We ourselves, like hares marked for the hunt, are besieged from afar, and the heretics go about their usual business. So the time has warned me to mix with my pen a native antidote against our native little beasts. You who read it will drink it. … If the words of the Lord are sweet above honey and the honeycomb, from there come its spices. If God's promise flows with milk and honey, the things that lead there taste of it. But woe to those who turn sweet into bitter and light into darkness! For in the same way those who oppose martyrdoms, interpreting salvation as perdition, change sweet into bitter as much as light into darkness; and so, by preferring this most wretched life to that most blessed one, they put bitter for sweet as much as darkness for light.

But we must learn first not about the good of martyrdom but about the duty of it, and not about its usefulness before its necessity. The divine authority comes first: whether God willed and commanded anything of the kind, so that those who deny that it is good may not be persuaded that it is expedient until they have been subdued. It is fitting that heretics be compelled to their duty, not enticed. Hardness must be conquered, not coaxed. And surely whatever is proved to have been established and commanded by God will be sufficiently judged in advance to be excellent. Let the Gospels wait a little, while I set out their root, the Law, while I draw out God's will from the place where I also recognize God himself: “I am,” he says, “God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself a likeness of the things that are in heaven, and that are on the earth beneath, and that are in the sea under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them. For I am the Lord your God.” Likewise in the same Exodus: “You yourselves have seen that I spoke to you from heaven. You shall not make for yourselves gods of silver, and gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.” In accordance with these, in Deuteronomy too: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your soul.” And again: “Do not forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him alone and cleave to him, and you shall swear by his name. You shall not go after strange gods, of the gods of the nations that are around you, because the Lord your God is jealous over you, lest he be angry and indignant and destroy you from the face of the earth.” And also, setting out the blessings and curses: “Blessings,” he says, “if you hear the commandments of the Lord your God, whatever I command you today, and do not stray from the way which I have commanded you, going off to serve other gods whom you do not know.” And concerning those gods, which are to be rooted out in every way: “You shall utterly destroy,” he says, “all the places in which the nations whom you will possess as an inheritance served their gods, on the mountains and hills and under the thick trees; and you shall dig up their altars, overthrow and smash their little statues, and cut down their groves, and burn the carved images of their gods with fire, and destroy their name from that place.” He presses further, for the time when they had entered the land of promise and destroyed its nations: “Take heed to yourself, that you do not follow them after they have been destroyed from before you, that you do not seek out their gods, saying, ‘As the nations do to their gods, so I too will do.’” And also: “If a prophet himself,” he says, “arises among you, or one who dreams a dream, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and it comes to pass, and he says, ‘Let us go and serve other gods whom you do not know,’ you shall not listen to the word of that prophet or dreamer, because the Lord your God is testing you, whether you fear God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall go after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and hear his voice, and serve him, and be joined to him. But that prophet or dreamer shall die; for he has spoken to lead you astray from the Lord your God.” And also under another head: “But if your brother, of your father or of your mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife who is in your bosom, or the friend who is equal to your own soul, entreats you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ whom you do not know, nor did your fathers, of the gods of the nations that are around you, near or far, you shall not be willing to go with him, and you shall not listen to him. Your eye shall not spare him, nor shall you long for him, nor shall you save him; you shall surely inform against him. Your hands shall be upon him first to kill him, and the hands of your people afterwards, and you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God.” He adds also concerning cities, that if any of them was found to have gone over to other gods at the persuasion of wicked men, all its inhabitants should be killed, and everything in it made accursed, and all its spoil gathered into all its streets and burned with fire, with all its vessels and all the people, in the sight of the Lord God; “and it shall not be inhabitable,” he says, “for ever; it shall not be rebuilt any more, nor shall anything of its accursed things cleave to your hands, so that the Lord may turn from the indignation of his anger.” He also began the series of curses with the execration of idols: “Cursed is the man who makes a carved or molten abomination, the work of a craftsman's hands, and sets it up in secret.” In Leviticus, too: “Do not follow idols,” he says, “and you shall not make molten gods for yourselves. I am the Lord your God.” And elsewhere: “The sons of Israel are my servants, my children. These are they whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You shall not make for yourselves things made with hands, nor shall you set up for yourselves a carved statue, nor shall you place a stone as a landmark in your land. I am the Lord your God.”

And these first words were spoken through Moses, applying surely to all whom the Lord God of Israel should likewise bring out of the Egypt of a most superstitious world and out of the house of human slavery. But thereafter too every mouth of the prophets sounds with the words of the same God, who heaps up his same law by renewing the same precepts and proclaims nothing else first so emphatically 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 do not see, ears and do not hear, nostrils and do not smell, a mouth and do not speak, hands and do not handle, feet and do not walk. Those who make them and trust in them will be like them.”

Nor should I think it needs discussion whether God rightly forbids his name and honour to be made over to a lie, whether he rightly does not wish those whom he has torn away from the error of superstition to go back again into Egypt, whether he rightly does not allow those whom he has chosen for himself to depart from him. So neither will it be expected of us to reconsider whether he willed the discipline he chose to institute to be observed, and whether he rightly avenges its desertion when he willed it to be observed; since he would have instituted it in vain if he had not willed it to be observed, and would have willed it observed in vain if he had not willed to vindicate it. It follows, then, that I should prove these determinations of God against superstitions to have been both enforced and vindicated, since the whole rationale of martyrdoms will rest on them.

Moses was away with God on the mountain, when the people, impatient of his so necessary absence, sought to produce gods for themselves, by which they rather destroyed themselves. Aaron is pressed, and orders the earrings of their women to be put into the fire. For they were about to lose, to their own condemnation, the true ornaments of the ears, the words of God. The wise fire cast for them the image of a calf, branding them as having their heart where their treasure also was, namely in Egypt, which among other animals consecrates a certain ox too. So three thousand men, slain by their nearest kin because they had offended God, their nearest parent, dedicated both the beginnings and the deserts of transgression. In Numbers, when Israel had turned aside at Shittim, they go off to indulge their lust with the daughters of Moab; they are invited to the idols, so as to commit sexual immorality in spirit too; in short, they eat of their polluted offerings, then worship the gods of the nation and are initiated into Baal of Peor. For this idolatry too, the sister of adultery, twenty-three thousand, cut down by the swords of their own people, appeased the divine wrath. After the death of Joshua son of Nun they forsook the God of their fathers and served idols, the Baals and the Astartes; and the Lord in his anger delivered them into the hands of plunderers, and they were plundered by them and sold to their enemies, and they could not stand at all before the face of their enemies. Wherever they went, his hand was upon them for evil, and they were greatly distressed. After this God set Judges over them, whom we understand as Censors. But they did not persist in obeying these either. As soon as one of the judges had died, they went on to sin more than their fathers, going after the gods of others and serving and worshipping them. So the Lord was angry: “Since,” he says, “this nation has transgressed my covenant, which I made with their fathers, and has not listened to my voice, I too will not turn to remove a man from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died.” And so through nearly all the annals of the judges and then of the kings, the strength of the surrounding nations being kept in reserve, Israel paid for the wrath of God by war and captivity and the yoke of foreigners, as often as they turned aside from him, above all into idolatry.

If, then, it is clear that idolatry has from the beginning been forbidden by so many and such great precepts, and never committed with impunity, as so many and such great examples show, and that no crime is reckoned so arrogant before God as a transgression of this kind, we ought readily to understand that the purpose of the divine warnings and executions was even then to support martyrdoms, not only as not to be doubted but as to be endured, since he had made room for them by forbidding idolatry. For otherwise martyrdoms would not happen. And surely he had laid down his authority in advance, willing those things to happen for which he had made room. For now we are stung about the will of God, and the scorpion redoubles the blow, denying this will, accusing this will, so as either to insinuate another god whose will this is not, or nonetheless to destroy ours, whose will it is, or to deny God's will altogether, if it cannot deny God himself. But we, who contend elsewhere about God and about the rest of the body of each heretical doctrine, now draw fixed lines in advance for a single kind of encounter, defending as the will of no other god than the God of Israel that will which made room for martyrdoms, both from the precepts by which idolatry was always forbidden and from the judgments by which it was punished. For if in keeping a precept I suffer violence, this will in a way be a precept of keeping the precept: that I suffer that through which I shall be able to keep the precept, namely the violence, whatever it may be, that threatens me as I guard against idolatry. And surely he who imposes a precept exacts obedience. He cannot, then, have been unwilling for those things to happen through which obedience will be established. It is laid down for me that I call no other god God, nor fashion a god even by speaking, with the tongue no less than with the hand, nor worship or in any way venerate another besides that One who so commands, whom I am also ordered to fear, lest I be forsaken by him, and to love with my whole being, so as to die for him. Serving as a soldier under this oath, I am challenged by the enemy. I am their match, unless I surrender to them. In defending this oath I fight it out in the battle line; I am wounded, cut down, killed. Who willed this end for his soldier, if not he who sealed him with such an oath?

You have, then, the will of my God. This blow has been met. Let us now consider another stroke, concerning the character of that will. It would be a long task to show that my God is good, which the Marcionites have already learned from us. Meanwhile it is enough that he is called God for it to be necessary to believe him good. For whoever presumes God to be evil cannot hold to both: he will have either to deny that he whom he has thought evil is God, or to call good him whom he has declared God. Good, then, will be the will also of him who will not be God unless he is good. The goodness of the very thing God has willed, martyrdom, I mean, will prove this too, because only one who is good has willed what is good. I contend that martyrdom is good in the sight of the same God by whom idolatry is both forbidden and punished. For martyrdom resists and opposes idolatry, and only good can resist and oppose evil. Not that I deny there is rivalry both of evils among themselves and of goods; but the case here is different. For martyrdom does not contend with idolatry out of some common rivalry but out of its own grace; for it frees from idolatry. What frees from evil, who will not declare good? What else is the opposition of idolatry and martyrdom but that of death and life? Martyrdom will be reckoned life in the same measure as idolatry is reckoned death. Whoever calls life an evil has death to call good.

This too is a perversity of men: to shake off what saves, to take up what destroys, to seek out what is dangerous, to avoid medicines, in short to desire to die sooner than to be cured. For many flee from the help of medicine: many are foolish, many timid and falsely modest. And certainly medicine has a kind of savagery, with the scalpel and the cautery and the burning of mustard; yet to be cut and burned and stretched and bitten is not evil for that reason, since it brings useful pains; nor will it be refused because it merely grieves, but applied because it grieves of necessity. The fruit excuses the horror of the work. Indeed the man who howls and groans and bellows under the doctor's hands will afterwards load those same hands with fees, proclaim them the best of craftsmen, and deny that they were cruel. So martyrdoms too rage, but for salvation. God too will be permitted to heal for eternal life by fires and swords and every harsh thing. You will even admire the physician in this, that he applies remedies whose qualities are almost equal to those of the complaints, helping as it were by a reversal, bringing relief through the very things from which one suffers. For he checks fevers by loading them further with heat, quenches burning by tormenting it rather with thirst, draws off the excess of bile with bitter little draughts, and stops a flow of blood by opening a little vein besides. But you will think God, and a jealous God at that, is to be blamed if he has chosen to contend with the cause and do good by rivalling the injury: to undo death by death, to scatter killing by killing, to dispel torments by torments, to dissipate punishments by punishments, to confer life by taking it away, to help the flesh by harming it, to save the soul by snatching it away. What you think perversity is reason; what you judge cruelty is grace. So, since God heals eternal things by momentary ones, magnify your God for your good; you have fallen into his hands, but you have fallen happily. He too has fallen into your sicknesses.

Man always makes work for the physician first; in short, he brought the danger of death on himself. He had received from his Lord, as from a physician, a quite useful rule for living according to the law: he might eat of everything and refrain only from one little tree, which the physician himself knew to be unsuitable for the time being. He listened to the one he preferred and broke his abstinence. He ate the forbidden thing and, glutted with transgression, suffered indigestion unto death, fully deserving to perish altogether, because he willed it. But the Lord, bearing with the fever of the offence until the medicine could be tempered in due time, gradually compounded remedies, all the disciplines of faith, themselves rivals of the fault, cancelling the word of death by the word of life, filing away the hearing of transgression by the hearing of devotion. So even when that physician commands us to die, he shuts out the lethargy of death. Why does man now resent suffering from the remedy what he did not resent suffering then from the fault? Does he dislike being killed for salvation who did not dislike being killed for perdition? Will he feel sick at the antidote who gaped for the poison?

But if God had set martyrdoms before us under the name of a contest, in which we might try our strength against the adversary, so that man might now steadfastly overthrow the one by whom he was willingly overthrown, here too it is God's generosity rather than his harshness that presides. For having torn man out of the devil's throat through faith, he willed him now through courage also to trample on him, so that he might not only have escaped the enemy but also have vanquished him. He who had called us to salvation was pleased to invite us to glory as well, so that we who rejoice at being freed may also exult at being crowned. With what favour the world celebrates those games, the contentious festivals and superstitious contests of the Greeks, both of their religions and of their pleasures, Africa too has now been allowed to see. The individual cities still keep pestering Carthage with congratulations on being granted the Pythian games after its stadium had grown old. So among them it has been thought most fitting to hold a trial of pursuits, to weigh the skills of body and voice for excellence, with the prize as informer, the show as judge, and pleasure as the verdict. Where the fights are bare, wounds are not lacking: fists shake, heels butt, gloves mangle, whips lacerate. Yet no one will be found reproaching the president of the games for exposing men to violence. Actions for injury stay outside the stadium. But consider what those bruises and gore and weals trade for: crowns, of course, and glory and dowry, public privileges, civic pensions, portraits, statues, and, such as the world can offer, eternity from fame and resurrection from memory. The boxer himself does not complain that he is in pain, for he wants it; the crown presses on the wounds, the palm hides the blood; he swells more with victory than with injury. Will you think him hurt whom you see happy? Not even the loser will reproach the president of the games with his fall. Will it be unbecoming for God to bring his own arts and disciplines out into the open, into this arena of the world, as a spectacle to men and angels and all the powers? To test flesh and soul for steadfastness and endurance? To give to this one the palm, to this one honour, to that one citizenship, to that one pensions? Even to reject some and remove them in disgrace after punishment? No doubt you prescribe to God at what times or in what ways or places he is to judge his household, as though it did not befit the judge also to judge in advance.

What now, if he had exposed faith to martyrdoms not under the name of a contest but for its own advancement: ought it not to have some crowning of hope, toward which it could press its effort and on which it could hang its prayer, where it might strive to rise, since earthly offices too are eager for promotion? Or how are there many mansions with the Father, if not according to the variety of merits? How will star differ from star in glory, except by the diversity of their rays? Further, if for this reason some extension of brightness also suited the loftiness of faith, such a gain ought to have been something that cost much: labour, torture, torment, death. But consider the compensation, when flesh and soul are paid out, than which nothing in man is dearer, the one the hand of God, the other his breath: the very things are paid out for advancement whose advancement it is, the very things are spent which become gain, the price and the reward are the same. God had also foreseen other weaknesses of the human condition: the snares of the adversary, the deceits of things, the nets of the world, faith endangered even after the bath, many perishing again after salvation, who had soiled the wedding garment, who had not provided oil for their lamps, who had to be sought through mountains and forests and carried back on the shoulders. He therefore set up second comforts and last defences: the combat of martyrdom and the bath of blood that follows. Of its happiness David says: “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is he to whom God has not imputed sin.” For properly nothing can now be reckoned against martyrs, who in that bath lay down life itself. So “love covers a multitude of sins”: love which, loving God with all its strength, with which it fights in martyrdom, and with all its soul, which it lays down for God, forges a man into a martyr. Will you call these remedies, counsels, judgments, and even spectacles of God cruelty? Does God covet man's blood? And yet I would dare to say he does, if man too covets the kingdom of God, if man too covets sure salvation, if man too covets a second regeneration. No exchange is invidious in which the reckoning of favour or of injury is shared.

Let the scorpion still strike, brandishing a murderous God: I shall certainly shudder at the foul breath of blasphemy stinking from a heretic's mouth; but I shall embrace even such a God, with confidence in the reason by which he himself declared himself more than a murderer, in the person of his Wisdom, by the voice of Solomon. “Wisdom,” he says, “has slaughtered her children.” Sophia is wisdom. Wisely, surely, she slaughtered them, since it was for life; and reasonably, since it was for glory. O ingenious parricide! O artful crime! O argument of cruelty, which kills so that the one it has killed may not die! And what follows then? “Wisdom is sung with hymns at the ways out”: for the departures of martyrs are sung. “Wisdom acts boldly in the streets”: for she does well to slaughter her children. “On the tops of the walls she speaks with confidence,” when indeed, according to Isaiah, one cries out, “I am God's”; and another shouts, “In the name of Jacob”; and another writes, “In the name of Israel.” O good mother! I too wish to be numbered among her children, so as to be killed by her; I wish to be killed, so as to become her son. But does she only slaughter her children, or torture them too? For I hear God say elsewhere as well: “I will burn them as gold is burned, and I will test them as silver is tested”: surely through the tortures of fires and punishments, through martyrdoms that examine faith. The apostle too knows what kind of God he has described when he writes: “If God did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us, how has he not also with him given us all things?” You see how divine Wisdom slaughtered even her own proper Son, the firstborn and only-begotten, who was indeed to live, and even to bring the rest back to life. I can say with the Wisdom of God: it is Christ who gave himself up for our sins. So Wisdom has even slain herself. Words have meaning not by their sound alone but by their sense, and they are to be heard not only with the ears but with the mind. He who does not understand believes God cruel. And yet for the one who does not understand, a statement has also been set down to restrain 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 the world, to be sure, has been permitted to appease the Diana of the Scythians, or the Mercury of the Gauls, or the Saturn of the Africans with human victims; and in Latium to this day human blood is given to Jupiter to taste in the middle of the city; and no one questions it, or fails to presume some reason, or an inscrutable will of his god. If our God too had demanded martyrdoms for himself under the name of his own sacrifice, who would have reproached him with a deadly religion, mournful rites, an altar that is a pyre, and a priest who is an undertaker, and not rather have reckoned happy the one whom God had devoured?

We press on, then, on one step, and challenge on this point alone: whether martyrdoms have been commanded by God, so that you may believe them commanded with reason, once you know they have been commanded, since God has commanded nothing without reason. For the death of his devout ones is honoured in his sight, as David sings: not, I think, this common death, which is everyone's debt (and this death is even ignominious, from the record of transgression and the deserving of condemnation), but the death that is undergone in him, in witness to religion and in the battle of confession for righteousness and the sacrament. As Isaiah says: “See how the righteous man perishes, and no one takes it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one notices; for the righteous man perishes before the face of unrighteousness, and his burial will be in honour.” Here too you have both the foretelling and the rewarding 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 killed, and by his brother at that. So that ungodliness might more readily pursue another's blood, it began with its own; and it pursued, in short, the blood not only of the righteous but of the prophets too. David is hounded, Elijah put to flight, Jeremiah stoned, Isaiah sawn asunder, Zechariah slaughtered between the altar and the temple, leaving on the stones the lasting stains of his blood. He who was the very close of the law and the prophets, called not a prophet but an angel, is beheaded in a shameful murder as the fee for a dancing girl. And surely those who were led by the Spirit of God were directed by him into martyrdoms, suffering even what they had foretold.

So also the three brothers, when the dedication of the king's image was pressing the crowd to its duty, did not fail to know what faith, which alone in them had not been taken captive, required: namely, to die rather than commit idolatry. For they remembered Jeremiah too, writing to those on whom that captivity was impending: “And now you will see gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, carried on shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware, then, that you too do not become like the foreigners and be seized with fear when you see the crowds worshipping behind them and before them, but say in your heart: ‘You, O Lord, we must worship.’” So, with a confidence conceived from God, they said (and with what vigour of mind they shook off those conditional threats of the king!): “We have no need to answer this command of yours. For our God, whom we worship, is able to rescue us from the furnace of fire and from your hands; and then it will be made plain to you that we will neither serve your idol nor worship your golden image which you have set up.” O martyrdom made perfect even without suffering! They suffered enough, they were burned enough, whom God protected for this reason, that they might not seem to have lied about his power. For Daniel too, a suppliant of no one but God and for that reason denounced and demanded by the Chaldeans, the ferocity of the lions, shut up and accustomed to its work, would surely have devoured at once, if Darius's worthy presumption about God had been meant to be disappointed. For the rest, every preacher and worshipper of God who, challenged to idolatry, refused compliance had to suffer, in accordance also with that principle by which the truth had to be commended both to those then present and to posterity thereafter: the suffering of its very defenders would vouch for its credibility, since no one would have been willing to be killed in vain unless he possessed the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show that faith owes martyrdom.

It remains, in case antiquity perhaps had its own sacrament, to review the Christian novelty, as though it came from a different God and so also from a rival discipline, whose Wisdom does not know how to slaughter her children. Plainly, Christ has a different divinity and will and school: he has commanded either no martyrdoms at all or martyrdoms to be understood otherwise; he urges no one into danger of this kind; he promises nothing to those who have suffered for him, because he does not want them to suffer; and so, setting out the first principles of his precepts, he says, “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”! This indeed is said absolutely to all. Then specifically to the apostles themselves: “Blessed will you be when they dishonour you and persecute you and say every evil against you for my sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is very great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets also”: so that he even prophesied that they too would be killed after the example of the prophets. And yet, even if he had destined all this conditional persecution for the apostles alone at that time, surely through them, together with the whole sacrament, with the propagation of the Name, with the transmission of the Holy Spirit, the discipline of undergoing persecution too would have looked to us as well, as to hereditary disciples and shoots of the apostolic seed. For although he again addresses the apostles, “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,” and, “Beware of men, for they will hand you over to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations,” and so on, when he then adds, “Brother will hand over brother to death, and father son, and children will rise up against parents and put them to death,” he clearly declared this wickedness for others, since we do not find it among the apostles. For none of them suffered a brother or a father as betrayer, as many of ours have now. Then he returns to the apostles: “And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.” How much more we, who must be handed over by parents too? So by this very mingling, directing it now to the apostles, now to all, he pours out the same fate of the Name on all in whom the Name has settled with its law of hatred. “But he who endures to the end will be saved.” By enduring what, if not persecution, betrayal, killing? For to endure to the end is nothing other than to suffer the end. And so there follows at once, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord”: because, since the teacher and lord himself endured persecution, betrayal, and killing, much more will servants and disciples have to pay the same, lest they seem as superiors to be exempt from wickedness, when this very thing ought to suffice them for glory, to be made equal to the sufferings of their lord and teacher. To build them up for the endurance of these he warns them not to fear those who kill only the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather to devote their fear to him who can both kill and destroy body and soul in Gehenna. Who are these slayers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings mentioned above, men, I suppose? Who is master of the soul too, if not God alone? Who is this threatener of fires, if not he without whose will not even one of two sparrows falls to the ground, that is, not even one of the two substances of man, flesh or soul? For even the number of the hairs is recorded with him. “Do not fear, therefore”: when he adds, “You are worth more than many sparrows,” he promises that they will not fall to the ground in vain, that is, not without reward, if we choose to be killed by men rather than by God.

“Everyone, therefore, who confesses in me before men, I too will confess in him before my Father who is in heaven. And everyone who denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” Clear, I think, is the definition and the rationale both of confession and of denial, although the wording differs. He who confesses himself a Christian testifies that he is Christ's; he who is Christ's must be in Christ. If he is in Christ, he surely confesses in Christ when he confesses himself a Christian; for he cannot be this unless he is in Christ. Further, by confessing in Christ he also confesses Christ, in whom he is, since Christ too is in him, as he is a Christian. For if you have said “day”, you have pointed to the thing, light, which gives the day, even if you have not said “light”. So, even if the Lord did not directly declare, “He who confesses me,” the act of daily confession does not differ from the sense of the Lord's declaration. For in confessing what he is, that is, a Christian, he also confesses that through which he is, that is, Christ. Accordingly, he who has denied that he is a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ when he denies that he is a Christian; and by denying Christ in himself, while he denies himself in Christ, he will deny Christ too. So he who has denied in Christ will deny Christ, and he who has confessed in Christ will confess Christ. It would have been enough, then, even if the Lord had declared only about confessing. For from the form of confession its contrary too, denial, would have been prejudged: that denial is repaid by the Lord with denial, just as confession with confession. And so, since in the form of confession the condition of denial is also understood, it is clear that it does not concern some other kind of denial that the Lord spoke of it differently than of confession, saying, “whoever denies me,” not “in me”. For he had foreseen that this violence too would usually follow in the assault on the Name: that whoever had denied that he was a Christian would be compelled to deny Christ himself as well by blaspheming; as not long ago … we shuddered at the struggle of certain people, with their whole faith at stake, in this very way. So it will be useless to say, “Even if I deny that I am a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied him.” For by that denial he will be held just as liable, because by denying that he is a Christian, denying Christ in himself, he has also denied Christ. There is more: he threatens shame with shame as well: “Whoever is 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 shaped above all by shame, that the state of the mind shows in the forehead, that the wound of shame comes before the wound of the body.

But those who think that confession has been appointed not here, that is, not within this circuit of the earth, nor during this passage of life, nor before men of this common nature, what presumption is theirs, against the whole order of things that are to be experienced on this earth and in this life and under human authorities! No doubt, when souls have left their bodies and begun to be examined at each storey of the heavens about their reception, and to be questioned on those secret sacraments of the heretics, then confession must be made before the true powers and the true men: the Teleti, of course, and the Acineti and the Abascanti of Valentinus! “For even the Demiurge himself,” they say, “did not consistently approve our men, whom he reckoned as a drop from a bucket and the dust of the threshing floor and spittle and locusts, and even likened to irrational beasts.” Plainly, it is so written. Yet that does not mean we must understand another kind of man besides ourselves, whom, since it is certain that we exist, he could clothe with a comparison while keeping both the property and the uniqueness of the race. For if life has been corrupted, so that, judged contemptible, it was compared to contemptible things, nature has not at once been taken away, so that another should be reckoned under its name. Nature is preserved, even if life is overspread with shame; and Christ knew no other men than those of whom he says, “Who do men say that I am?” and, “As you wish men to do to you, so you also do to them.” See whether he has kept to the race from whom he expects testimony to himself and to whom he commands the reciprocity of justice. But if I demand to be shown those heavenly men, Aratus will sooner sketch Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne among the stars. And who prevented the Lord from plainly determining that men's confession too was to be made there, where he openly declared his own would be, so that it would have read: “Whoever confesses in me before men in heaven, I too will confess in him before my Father who is in heaven”? He ought to have rescued me from this error of earthly confession, which he would not have wanted undertaken if he had commanded a heavenly one; for I knew no other men than the inhabitants of the earth, since not even man himself had yet been seen in heaven at that time.

Further, what credibility is there in the idea that after my departure, lifted up to the heights, I should be tested there, where I would not be placed unless already tested; that I should be examined there about my reception, where I could not arrive unless I was to be admitted? For a Christian, heaven lies open before the way does, since there is no way into heaven except for one to whom heaven lies open; and whoever reaches it will enter. What doorkeeping powers do you assert to me, after the Roman superstition, some … Barnus, Forculus, and Limentinus? What powers do you station at the barriers? If you have ever read in David, “Lift up your gates, you princes, and let the eternal gates be lifted up, and the King of glory shall come in”; if you have likewise heard in Amos, “He who builds his ascent into the heavens and founds his outpouring upon the earth”: know that that ascent was thereafter levelled by the Lord's footsteps, and the entrance thereafter unbarred by the power of Christ, and that no delay or questioning will meet Christians at the threshold, since there they are not to be distinguished but recognized, not questioned but admitted. For even if you think heaven is still closed, remember that the Lord left its keys here to Peter and through him to the church, keys which everyone who has been questioned here and has confessed will carry with him. But the devil asserts that confession must be made there, so as to persuade us that denial must be made here. Fine credentials, obviously, I shall send ahead; good keys I shall carry with me: the fear of those who kill only the body but do nothing to the soul! I shall be commended for deserting this precept; I shall stand honourably in heaven, I who could not stand on earth; I shall withstand greater powers, I who gave way to lesser ones; I shall deserve, no doubt, to be admitted, when I am already shut out!

It remains to say further: if confession is to be made in heaven, denial is too. For where one is, both are; rivals always meet. Persecution too will have to be carried on in heaven, since it is the material for confession or denial. Why then do you hold back, most audacious heretic, from transferring the whole order of the Christian ordeal to the heights, and above all from placing there the very hatred of the Name, where Christ presides at the Father's right hand? There you will also set up the synagogues of the Jews, fountains of persecution, in which the apostles endured scourgings, and the peoples of the nations with their circus, of course, where they readily shout, “How long the third race?” But you must also produce there our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and the members of our household, through whom betrayal has been arranged; likewise kings and governors and armed authorities, before whom the case is to be fought out. There will certainly also be a prison in heaven, without sun or lit against its will, and chains perhaps made from the zones, and for a rack the very axis that turns. Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstones will be at hand; if burned, thunderbolts are ready; if slaughtered, the hand of armed Orion will do the work; if finished off by beasts, the north will send out the Bears, and the zodiac bulls and lions. “He who endures these to the end, he will be saved.” Is the end, then, also in heaven, and the suffering, and the killing, and the first confession? And where is the flesh, necessary for all these? Where is the body, which alone can be killed by men? Sound reason has made us say these things, even in a playful manner; and no one will push aside the barrier of this argument so as not to be compelled to transfer the whole order of persecution, its whole cause, form, and apparatus, to the place where he has given confession its court. For confession is derived from persecution, and persecution ends in confession; and things that arrange the entrance and the exit, that is, the beginning and the end, cannot but go together. Further, the hatred of the Name will be here, and persecution breaks out here, and betrayal brings forward here, and interrogation compels here, and the executioner rages here; and confession or denial completes this whole order on earth. Therefore, if the rest is here, confession is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, the rest is not here. But the rest is not elsewhere; so neither is confession in heaven. Or if they want there to be a different rationale for a heavenly interrogation and confession, they will certainly have to construct for it an order of its own, far different from this arrangement which is recorded in the Scriptures. And we can say: let them see to it, so long as this order of earthly interrogation and confession, which runs its course from the material of persecution and public discord, is kept wholly intact, as a matter of faith, so that it is to be believed as it is written and understood as it is heard. Here we endure the whole order, since the Lord himself appoints no other region of the world. For what does he add after the declaration on confession and denial? “Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth, but a sword”: on earth, certainly. “For I have come to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his household.” For so it comes about that brother hands over brother to death, and father son, and children rise up against parents and cause them to die. “And he who endures to the end, he will be saved.” So this whole order of the Lord's sword, sent not into heaven but onto the earth, appoints confession too to be there, which, by enduring to the end, is to suffer death.

In the same way, then, we maintain that the other sayings too concern the state of martyrdom. “He who values even his own life more than me,” he says, “is not worthy of me”, that is, he who would rather live by denying me than die by confessing me; and, “He who finds his life will lose it, but he who loses it for my sake will find it.” For he who denies finds it, by gaining life, only in such a way that he who thinks he gains it by denying will lose it in Gehenna. But he who confesses and is killed loses it for the present, but he will also find it in eternal life. Indeed the governors themselves, when they urge denial, say, “Save your life!” and, “Do not lose your life!” How would Christ speak, if not in the way the Christian would be treated? And when he forbids them to prepare their answer before the tribunal, he is instructing his servants and promising that the Holy Spirit will answer; and when he wants a brother in prison to be visited, he commands care for the confessor; and when he affirms that God will avenge his elect, he consoles their sufferings; and in the parable of the seed that withered after it sprouted he pictures the heat of persecutions. If these sayings are not to be taken as they are spoken, then without doubt they mean something besides what they sound, and there will be one thing in the words and another in the sense, as in allegories, parables, and riddles.

Whatever wind of argument, then, these scorpions catch, with whatever sharpness they drive themselves on, there is now only one line: they will be challenged to the facts themselves, whether they are being carried out according to the Scriptures. For something else will be signified in the Scriptures only if that very thing is not found in the facts. For what is written must come to pass. Further, what is written will have come to pass if it does not come to pass otherwise. But see: we are hated by all men for the Name's sake, just as it is written; and we are handed over even by those nearest to us, just as it is written; and we are brought before the authorities, and questioned, and tortured, and confess, and are slaughtered, just as it is written. So the Lord decreed. If he decreed these things otherwise, why do the things he decreed not come about otherwise, that is, as he decreed? But they come about just as he decreed; therefore as they come about, so he decreed, and as he decreed, so they come about. For neither would they have been allowed to come about otherwise than he decreed, nor would he have decreed otherwise than he willed them to come about. So these Scriptures will not signify anything other than what we recognize in the facts. Or, if the things foretold are not yet happening, how is it that the things that are happening were not foretold? For these things that are happening were not foretold, if the things foretold are other and not these that are happening. But now, since the very things are found in the facts which are believed to have been meant otherwise in the words, what would happen if they were found to have been done otherwise? But this will be a perversity of faith: not to believe what is proved, and to presume what is not proved. Against this perversity I will also set this: if these things, which are carried out just as they are written, are not the very things foretold, then other things too ought not to be carried out as they are written, lest they too, following the example of these, be in danger of exclusion, if there is one thing in the words and another in the facts; and it follows that they would not seem foretold even when they have come about, if they are foretold otherwise than as they are to come about. And how will things be believed which will not have been foretold, because they were not foretold as they come about? So the heretics, by refusing to believe that the things foretold are as they have been proved to be, believe things that were never foretold.

Who, now, would know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ, those whom the Lord both adopted as his disciples, to be taught all things, and appointed as our teachers, to teach all things? To whom would he rather have explained the figure of his words than to those to whom he revealed the likeness of his glory, Peter, John, and James, and afterwards Paul, whom he also made a sharer in paradise before his martyrdom? Or do they too write otherwise than they think, teachers of deceit, not of truth? Peter, indeed, writing to those in Pontus: “For how great is the glory,” he says, “if you endure, not being punished as wrongdoers? For this is grace; to this you were called, since Christ too suffered for us, leaving you himself as an example, so that you may follow in his steps.” And again: “Beloved, do not be terrified at the burning which is taking place among you to test you, as though something new were happening to you. For inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that at the revelation of his glory you may also rejoice and exult. If you are dishonoured in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because glory and the Spirit of God rest upon you; only let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a spy on others' affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not blush, but glorify the Lord in that name.” John, indeed, exhorts us to lay down our lives even for our brothers, and says that there is no fear in love: “For perfect love casts out fear, since fear has punishment, and he who fears is not perfect in love.” What fear would it be best to understand here, if not the one that brings about denial? What love does he declare to be perfect, if not the one that puts fear to flight and gives courage to confession? With what punishment would he punish fear, if not that which the denier will bear, to be killed body and soul in Gehenna? And if he teaches that we must die for our brothers, how much more for the Lord, he who was well enough instructed by his Apocalypse too to urge these things? For the Spirit had commanded the angel of the church of the Smyrnaeans: “Behold, the devil will cast some of your number into prison, that you may be tested for ten days. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Likewise to the angel of the Pergamenes, concerning Antipas, the most faithful martyr, killed where Satan dwells. Likewise to the angel of the Philadelphians, that he who had not denied the Lord's name would be delivered from the final trial. Then to each of the victors he promises now the tree of life and exemption from the second death; now the hidden manna with a white stone and an unknown name; now authority with a rod of iron and the brightness of the morning star; now to be clothed in white and not to be blotted out of the book of life, and to become 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 refused to the sons of Zebedee. Who are these victors, so blessed, if not, properly speaking, the martyrs? For theirs are the victories whose are the fights, and theirs are the fights whose is the blood.

Meanwhile, too, the souls of the martyrs rest peacefully under the altar, and feed their patience on confidence of vengeance, and, clothed in robes, take on the whiteness of glory, until others also fill up the fellowship of their glory. For again a countless multitude is revealed, clothed in white and marked by palms of victory, triumphing, of course, over the Antichrist, as one of the presbyters says: “These are they who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their robe and made it white in the blood of the Lamb.” For the flesh is the clothing of the soul. Dirt, indeed, is washed away by baptism, but stains are made white by martyrdom. For Isaiah too promises snow and wool from red and scarlet. When great Babylon too is described as drunk with the blood of the saints, without doubt her drunkenness is served with the cups of martyrdoms; and what the fear of them will bring is equally shown. For among all the reprobate, indeed before them all, come the fearful. “But for the fearful,” he says, and then for the rest, “their portion is in the lake of fire and sulphur.” So the fear which love casts out has punishment.

But the apostle Paul, changed from the persecutor who first shed the church's blood, afterwards exchanging the sword for the pen and turning the sword into a ploughshare, the ravening wolf of Benjamin who then himself brings food, according to Jacob: how he commends martyrdoms, now desirable to himself as well! When rejoicing over the Thessalonians he says: “So that we boast of you in the churches of God for your endurance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions which you endure, a manifestation of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of his kingdom, for which you also suffer.” So too to the Romans: “And not only that, but we exult in afflictions too, sure that affliction perfects endurance, and endurance approval, and approval hope, and hope does not put to shame.” And again: “And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” And so afterwards: “Who,” he says, “will separate us from the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us. For we are persuaded that neither death nor life nor power nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And to the Corinthians too, listing his sufferings, he certainly laid down that we must suffer: “In labours more abundantly, in prisons very often, in deaths many times; from the Jews five times I received forty lashes less one; three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned,” and the rest. If these seem hardships rather than martyrdoms, yet again he says, “For which reason I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ.” And earlier too: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; in want, but not utterly destitute; harassed by persecutions, but not forsaken; cast down, but not perishing; always carrying about in our body the dying of Christ.” “But even if,” he says, “our outer man is wasting away” (the flesh, that is, by the violence of persecutions), “yet the inner man is renewed day by day” (the soul, that is, by the hope of the promises). “For our present light and momentary affliction is working out for us, beyond all measure, an eternal weight of glory, as we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary” (speaking of hardships), “but the things that are not seen are eternal” (pledging the rewards).

Writing from his chains to the Thessalonians, he surely declared blessed those to whom it had been granted not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him: “Having the same contest,” he says, “which you both saw in me and now hear of in me. For even if I am poured out upon the sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice with you all; likewise you too rejoice and rejoice with me.” You see how he defines the happiness of martyrdom, when he gives it the solemnity of mutual joy. And when at last he came near to his desire, how he writes to Timothy, exulting at the prospect of it: “For I am already 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 the crown which the Lord will give me on that day”: the crown of suffering, that is. He himself had also said enough above: “The saying is faithful: for if we have died with Christ, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny, he too will deny us; if we do not believe, he is faithful; he cannot deny himself.” “Do not, then, be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner,” because he had said before: “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.” For we suffer with power, out of love toward God, and with a sound mind, when we suffer for our innocence. But wherever he enjoins endurance, for what does he foresee it more than for sufferings? Wherever he tears us away from idolatry, what does he hold out against it more than martyrdoms?

Plainly he advises the Romans to be subject to all authorities, because there is no authority except from God, and because it does not bear the sword without cause, and because it is God's minister, and also, he says, an avenger for wrath on him who does evil. For he had said before: “For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Do you want not to fear the authority? Do good, and you will receive praise from it. It is therefore God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, fear.” So he does not order you to be subject to the authorities as an occasion for evading martyrdom, but as an encouragement to live well, even out of regard for them, as helpers of justice, as ministers of the divine judgment, which here too judges the guilty in advance. Then he goes on to show how he wants you to be subject to the authorities, ordering you to render “tribute to whom tribute is due, customs to whom customs,” that is, the things that are Caesar's to Caesar and the things that are God's to God; but man belongs to God alone. Peter, of course, had likewise said that the king is indeed to be honoured, but so that the king is honoured when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from claiming divine honours; since father and mother too will be loved along with God, not put on a par with him. For the rest, it will not be lawful to love even one's own life above God.

Are the letters of the apostles also shifting, then? And are we, simple souls everywhere and doves only, glad to go astray? From a desire to live, I suppose. But suppose it is so, that the sense departs from the letters: yet that the apostles suffered, we know; that teaching is plain. I understand it simply by running through the Acts; I look for nothing more. The prisons there, the chains, the scourges, the stones and swords, the onslaughts of the Jews and the gatherings of the nations, the charges of the tribunes, the hearings before kings, the tribunals of proconsuls, and the name of Caesar need no interpreter. That Peter is beaten, that Stephen is overwhelmed, that James is slain like a victim, that Paul is dragged away: these things are written in their own blood. And if the heretic wants the credibility of a public record, the archives of the empire will speak, as the stones of Jerusalem would. We read the lives of the Caesars: Nero was the first to stain with blood the rising faith at Rome. Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross. Then Paul obtains the birthright of Roman citizenship, when he is born again there by the nobility of martyrdom. Wherever I read these things, I learn to suffer; nor does it matter to me which teachers of martyrdom I follow, the thoughts of the apostles or their deaths, except that I recognize their thoughts in their deaths too. For they would not have suffered anything which they had not first known must be suffered. When Agabus had prophesied Paul's chains, even with 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, said, “Why are you weeping and saddening my heart? For I would wish not only to suffer chains in Jerusalem but also to die for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.” And so they gave way, saying, “The will of the Lord be done,” trusting, of course, that sufferings belong to God's will. For they had tried to hold him back not with the counsel of dissuasion but with that of love, as longing for the apostle, not as dissuading him from martyrdom. But if even then Prodicus or Valentinus had been standing by, suggesting that confession is not to be made on earth before men, all the less for fear that God should thirst for human blood, or that Christ should demand a return for his suffering, as though he too would obtain salvation from it, he would at once have heard from the servant of God what the devil heard from the Lord: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me. It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” And he ought to hear it now too, since long afterwards he has poured out these poisons, which will not easily harm any of the weak, unless someone has not drunk this potion of ours, out of faith, beforehand, or even afterwards.