Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| If it is wrong to flee, it is worse to persecute. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
8. If it is wrong to flee, it
is worse to persecute.
But although1424
1424 Cited
by Socrates iii. 8. | they have done
all this, yet they are not ashamed of the evils they have already
contrived against me, but proceed now to accuse me, because I have been
able to escape their murderous hands. Nay, they bitterly bewail
themselves, that they have not effectually put me out of the way; and
so they pretend to reproach me with cowardice, not perceiving that by
thus murmuring against me, they rather turn the blame upon themselves.
For if it be a bad thing to flee, it is much worse to persecute; for
the one party hides himself to escape death, the other persecutes with
a desire to kill; and it is written in the Scriptures that we ought to
flee; but he that seeks to destroy transgresses the law, nay, and is
himself the occasion of the other’s flight. If then they reproach
me with my flight, let them be more ashamed of their own persecution1425 . Let them cease to conspire, and they who
flee will forthwith cease to do so. But they, instead of giving over
their wickedness, are employing every means to obtain possession of my
person, not perceiving that the flight of those who are persecuted is a
strong argument against those who persecute. For no man flees from the
gentle and the humane, but from the cruel and the evil-minded. ‘Every one that was in distress,
and every one that was in debt1426 ,’ fled from
Saul, and took refuge with David. But this is the reason why these men
desire to cut off those who are in concealment, that there may be no
evidence forthcoming of their wickedness. But herein their minds seem
to be blinded with their usual error. For the more the flight of their
enemies becomes known, so much the more notorious will be the
destruction or the banishment which their treachery has brought upon
them1427
1427 Hist. Arian. §§34, 35. | ; so that whether they kill them outright,
their death will be the more loudly noised abroad against them, or
whether they drive them into banishment, they will but be sending forth
everywhere monuments of their own iniquity.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|