Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter VIII.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
VIII.
We keep therefore the one position, and, in
respect of this question only, summon to an encounter, whether
martyrdoms have been commanded by God, that you may believe that they
have been commanded by reason, if you know that they have been
commanded by Him, because God will not command ought without reason.
Since the death of His own saints is precious is His sight, as David
sings,8264
it is not, I think,
that one which falls to the lot of men generally, and is a debt due by
all (rather is that one even disgraceful on account of the trespass,
and the desert of condemnation to which it is to be traced), but
that other which is met in this very work—in bearing
witness for religion, and maintaining the fight of confession in behalf
of righteousness and the sacrament. As saith Esaias, “See how the
righteous man perisheth, and no one layeth it to heart; and righteous
men are taken away, and no one considereth it: for from before the face
of unrighteousness the righteous man perisheth, and he shall have
honour at his burial.”8265
Here, too, you have
both an announcement of martyrdoms, and of the recompense they
bring. From the beginning, indeed, righteousness suffers
violence. Forthwith, as soon as God has begun to be worshipped,
religion has got ill-will for her portion. He who had pleased God is
slain, and that by his brother. Beginning with kindred blood, in
order that it might the more easily go in quest of that of strangers,
ungodliness made the object of its pursuit, finally, that not only of
righteous persons, but even of prophets also. David is persecuted;
Elias put to flight; Jeremias stoned; Esaias cut asunder; Zacharias
butchered between the altar and the temple, imparting to the hard
stones lasting marks of his blood.8266
That person
himself, at the close of the law and the prophets, and called not a
prophet, but a messenger, is, suffering an ignominious death, beheaded
to reward a dancing-girl. And certainly they who were wont to be led by
the Spirit of God used to be guided by Himself to martyrdoms; so that
they had even already to endure what they had also proclaimed as
requiring to be borne. Wherefore the brotherhood of the three also,
when the dedication of the royal image was the occasion of the citizens
being pressed to offer worship, knew well what faith, which alone in
them had not been taken captive, required,—namely, that they must
resist idolatry to the death.8267
For they remembered
also the words of Jeremias writing to those over whom that captivity
was impending: “And now ye shall see borne upon (men’s)
shoulders the gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood,
causing fear to the Gentiles. Beware, therefore, that ye also do not be
altogether like the foreigners, and be seized with fear while ye behold
crowds worshipping those gods before and behind, but say in your mind,
Our duty is to worship Thee, O Lord.”8268
Therefore, having got confidence from God, they said, when with
strength of mind they set at defiance the king’s threats against
the disobedient: “There is no necessity for our making answer to
this command of yours. For our God whom we worship is able to deliver
us from the furnace of fire and from your hands; and then it will be
made plain to you that we shall neither serve your idol, nor worship
your golden image which you have set up.”8269
O
martyrdom even without suffering perfect! Enough did they suffer!
enough were they burned, whom on this account God shielded, that it
might not seem that they had given a false representation of His power.
For forthwith, certainly, would the lions, with their pent-up and
wonted savageness, have devoured Daniel also, a worshipper of none but
God, and therefore accused and demanded by the Chaldeans, if it had
been right that the worthy anticipation of Darius concerning God should
have proved delusive. For the rest, every preacher of God, and
every worshipper also, such as, having been summoned to the service of
idolatry, had refused compliance, ought to have suffered, agreeably to
the tenor of that argument too, by which the truth ought to have been
recommended both to those who were then living and to those following
in succession,—(namely), that the suffering of its defenders
themselves bespeak trust for it, because nobody would have been willing
to be slain but one possessing the truth. Such commands as well as
instances, remounting to earliest times, show that believers are under
obligation to suffer martyrdom.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
