Chapter L.

In that case, you say, why do you complain of our persecutions? You ought rather to be grateful to us for giving you the sufferings you want. Well, it is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger.  Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained.  This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of life eternal. But we are overcome. Yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore we conquer in dying;74    [Vicimus cum occidimur.] we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. Call us, if you like, Sarmenticii and Semaxii, because, bound to a half-axle stake, we are burned in a circle-heap of fagots. This is the attitude in which we conquer, it is our victory-robe, it is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished; on account of this, indeed, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and recklessness you object to in us, among yourselves lift high the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucius of his own will left his right hand on the altar: what sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of Ætna: what mental resolution! A certain foundress of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile: what a noble witness of her chastity! Regulus, not wishing that his one life should count for the lives of many enemies, endured these crosses over all his frame: how brave a man—even in captivity a conqueror! Anaxarchus, when he was being beaten to death by a barley-pounder, cried out, “Beat on, beat on at the case of Anaxarchus; no stroke falls on Anaxarchus himself.” O magnanimity of the philosopher, who even in such an end had jokes upon his lips! I omit all reference to those who with their own sword, or with any other milder form of death, have bargained for glory.  Nay, see how even torture contests are crowned by you. The Athenian courtezan, having wearied out the executioner, at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the face of the raging tyrant, that she might at the same time spit away her power of speech, nor be longer able to confess her fellow-conspirators, if even overcome, that might be her inclination. Zeno the Eleatic, when he was asked by Dionysius what good philosophy did, on answering that it gave contempt of death, was all unquailing, given over to the tyrant’s scourge, and sealed his opinion even to the death. We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty under the very eyes of friends encouraging, confers on those who bear it honor proportionate to the blood which the young men shed. O glory legitimate, because it is human, for whose sake it is counted neither reckless foolhardiness, nor desperate obstinacy, to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment; for whose sake you may for your native place, for the empire, for friendship, endure all you are forbidden to do for God!  And you cast statues in honour of persons such as these, and you put inscriptions upon images, and cut out epitaphs on tombs, that their names may never perish. In so far you can by your monuments, you yourselves afford a sort of resurrection to the dead. Yet he who expects the true resurrection from God, is insane, if for God he suffers!  But go zealously on, good presidents, you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. Therefore God suffers that we thus suffer; for but very lately, in condemning a Christian woman to the leno rather than to the leo you made confession that a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death.75    [Elucidation XI.] Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us.  The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.76    [Elucidation XII.] Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God’s grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. On this account it is that we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the Highest.

CAPUT L.

At vero, dum cruciatibus sese objiciunt, dum animam lubentes projiciunt, id non facere eos more gentilium, quibus desperatio et gloriae pruritus eam contemmendi doloris et mortis viam sternit, sed more fortissimi militis, qui bellum sumit, licet non amet, et de victoria gaudet, in cujus tamen consecutione trepidavit. Fatendum itaque eam veram esse constantiam, quae factis sese, non verbis prodat, apud Deum gratiam, non apud homines laudem quaerat, et contemplatione exemploque obstinationis suae inconcussae plures quotidie qui amplectantur ipsam gignat, 0530Bquam unquam ex omnibus omnium philosophorum scholis, capti verborum lenociniis, discipuli exierint.

Ergo, inquitis, cur querimini quod vos insequamur, si pati vultis, cum diligere debeatis per quos patimini quod vultis? Plane volumus pati , verum eo more, quo et bellum nemo quidem libens patitur, cum et trepidare et periclitari sit necesse ; tamen et proeliatur omnibus viribus , et vincens in proelio gaudet, qui de proelio querebatur, quia et 0531A gloriam consequitur et praedam . Proelium est nobis, quod provocamur ad tribunalia, ut illic sub discrimine capitis pro veritate certemus. Victoria est autem, pro quo certaveris, obtinere. Ea victoria habet, et gloriam placendi Deo, et praedam vivendi in aeternum. Sed obducimur , certe cum obtinuimus: ergo vicimus, cum occidimur; denique evadimus, cum obducimur: licet nunc sarmenticios et semaxios appelletis, quia ad stipitem dimidii axis revincti sarmentorum ambitu exurimur. Hic est habitus victoriae nostrae; haec palmata vestis ; tali curru triumphamus. Merito itaque victis non placemus; 0532A propterea enim desperati et perditi existimamur. Sed haec desperatio et perditio penes vos, in caussa gloriae et famae, vexillum virtutis extollunt. Mucius dextram suam libens in ara reliquit: o sublimitas animi! Empedocles totum sese Catanensium Aetnaeis incendiis donavit: o vigor mentis! Aliqua Carthaginis conditrix rogo secundum matrimonium dedit: o praeconium castitatis! Regulus, ne unus pro multis hostibus viveret, toto corpore cruces patitur: o virum fortem et in captivitate victorem ! Anaxarchus, cum in exemplum ptisanae pilo contunderetur: Tunde, tunde, aiebat , Anaxarchi follem , 0533A Anaxarchum enim non tundis : o philosophi magnanimitatem, qui de tali suo exitu etiam jocabatur! Omitto eos qui cum gladio proprio aliove genere mortis mitiore de laude pepigerunt. Ecce enim et tormentorum certamina coronantur a vobis. Attica meretrix , carnifice jam fatigato, postremo linguam suam comestam in faciem tyranni saevientis exspuit, ut exspueret et vocem, ne conjuratos confiteri posset, si etiam victa voluisset. Zeno Eleates, consultus a Dionysio quidnam philosophia praestaret, quum respondisset, contemptum mortis , flagellis tyranni subjectus sententiam suam ad mortem usque signabat. Certe Laconum flagella, sub oculis etiam hortantium propinquorum acerbata, tantum honorem tolerantiae domui (6) conferunt, 0534A quantum sanguinis fuderint. O gloriam licitam, quia humanam, cui nec praesumptio perdita, nec persuasio desperata deputatur in contemptu mortis et atrocitatis omnimodae, cui tantum pro patria, pro agro , pro imperio, pro amicitia pati permissum est, quantum pro Deo non licet! Et tamen illis omnibus et statuas defunditis, et imagines inscribitis, et titulos inciditis in aeternitatem; quantum de monumentis potestis scilicet, praestatis et ipsi quodammodo mortuis resurrectionem. Hanc qui veram a Deo sperat, si pro Deo patiatur, insanus est. Sed hoc agite, boni Praesides, meliores multo apud populum, si illis Christianos immolaveritis. Cruciate, torquete, damnate, atterite nos: probatio est enim innocentiae nostrae iniquitas vestra. Ideo nos 0535A haec pati Deus patitur. Nam et proxime, ad lenonem damnando christianam potius quam ad leonem, confessi estis labem pudicitiae apud nos atrociorem omni poena et omni morte reputari. Nec quicquam tamen proficit exquisitior quaeque crudelitas vestra: illecebra est magis sectae. Plures efficimur , quoties metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum . Multi apud vos ad tolerantiam doloris et mortis hortantur, ut Cicero in Tusculanis, ut Seneca in Fortuitis, ut Diogenes, ut Pyrrhon, ut Callinicus. Nec tamen tantos inveniunt verba discipulos, quantos 0536A Christiani factis docendo. Illa ipsa obstinatio, quam exprobratis, magistra est. Quis enim non contemplatione ejus concutitur ad requirendum, quid intus in re sit? Quis non, ubi requisivit, accedit, ubi accessit, pati exoptat, ut totam Dei gratiam redimat, ut omnem veniam ab eo compensatione sanguinis sui expediat? Omnia enim huic operi delicta donantur. Inde est, quod ibidem sententiis vestris gratias agimus; ut est aemulatio divinae rei et humanae, cum damnamur a vobis, a Deo absolvimur.