Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter IV.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.
From the saying of our Lord we know that the flesh
is weak, the spirit willing.8967
Let us not, withal,
take delusive comfort from the Lord’s acknowledgment of the
weakness of the flesh. For precisely on this account He first declared
the spirit willing, that He might show which of the two ought to be
subject to the other—that the flesh might yield obedience to the
spirit—the weaker to the stronger; the former thus from the latter getting
strength. Let the spirit hold convene with the flesh about the common
salvation, thinking no longer of the troubles of the prison, but of the
wrestle and conflict for which they are the preparation. The flesh,
perhaps, will dread the merciless sword, and the lofty cross, and the
rage of the wild beasts, and that punishment of the flames, of all most
terrible, and all the skill of the executioner in torture. But, on the
other side, let the spirit set clearly before both itself and the
flesh, how these things, though exceeding painful, have yet been calmly
endured by many,—and, have even been eagerly desired for the sake
of fame and glory; and this not only in the case of men, but of women
too, that you, O holy women, may be worthy of your sex. It would take
me too long to enumerate one by one the men who at their own
self-impulse have put an end to themselves. As to women, there is a
famous case at hand: the violated Lucretia, in the presence of her
kinsfolk, plunged the knife into herself, that she might have glory for
her chastity. Mucius burned his right hand on an altar, that this
deed of his might dwell in fame. The philosophers have been
outstripped,—for instance Heraclitus, who, smeared with cow dung,
burned himself; and Empedocles, who leapt down into the fires of
Ætna; and Peregrinus,8968
| 8968 [He is said to
have perished circa a.d.
170.] | who not long ago
threw himself on the funeral pile. For women even have despised the
flames. Dido did so, lest, after the death of a husband very dear to
her, she should be compelled to marry again; and so did the wife of
Hasdrubal, who, Carthage being on fire, that she might not behold her
husband suppliant as Scipio’s feet, rushed with her children into
the conflagration, in which her native city was destroyed. Regulus, a
Roman general, who had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians,
declined to be exchanged for a large number of Carthaginian captives,
choosing rather to be given back to the enemy. He was crammed into a
sort of chest; and, everywhere pierced by nails driven from the
outside, he endured so many crucifixions. Woman has voluntarily sought
the wild beasts, and even asps, those serpents worse than bear or bull,
which Cleopatra applied to herself, that she might not fall into the
hands of her enemy. But the fear of death is not so great as the fear
of torture. And so the Athenian courtezan succumbed to the executioner,
when, subjected to torture by the tyrant for having taken part in a
conspiracy, still making no betrayal of her confederates, she at last
bit off her tongue and spat it in the tyrant’s face, that he
might be convinced of the uselessness of his torments, however long
they should be continued. Everybody knows what to this day is the great
Lacedæmonian solemnity—the διαμαστύγωσις,
or scourging; in which sacred rite the Spartan youths are beaten with
scourges before the altar, their parents and kinsmen standing by and
exhorting them to stand it bravely out. For it will be always counted
more honourable and glorious that the soul rather than the body has
given itself to stripes. But if so high a value is put on the earthly
glory, won by mental and bodily vigour, that men, for the praise of
their fellows, I may say, despise the sword, the fire, the cross, the
wild beasts, the torture; these surely are but trifling sufferings to
obtain a celestial glory and a divine reward. If the bit of glass is so
precious, what must the true pearl be worth? Are we not called on,
then, most joyfully to lay out as much for the true as others do for
the false?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
