Collected Works 16 part 1/2

I. You asked lately, brother Fabius, whether or not one ought to flee in persecution, since some announcement or other was being made. On that same occasion I said something by way of objection, suited to the place and time and to the importunity of certain persons, and I carried away with me a matter but half handled, intending now to report more fully upon it in writing — a matter which your consultation had commended to it, and which the condition of the times had already, by its very name, laid upon me. For the more frequent the persecutions that threaten, the more must examination be undertaken as to how faith ought to receive them. And that examination is to be undertaken among yourselves, who, if perchance by not receiving the Paraclete, the leader into all truth, are deservedly still entangled in other questions besides.

Therefore we have also given order to your consultation, observing that it behooves us first to determine concerning the very status of persecution — whether it comes from God or from the devil — so that it may the more easily be established concerning its handling; for the examination of every matter is plainer once its author is known. It is enough, indeed, to lay down as a rule that nothing is done without the will of God; but we shall not at once give place by this pronouncement to other digressions, lest we be called away from the present point, if anyone should reply: 'Then both evil is from God and transgression is from God, and now there is nothing in the devil, nothing even in ourselves.' The question now is about persecution;

concerning this in the meanwhile let me say that nothing is done without the will of God, considering that it is above all things worthy of God and, so to speak, necessary, namely for the testing — or the rejecting — of his servants. For what is the outcome of persecution, what other effect, but the approving and the rejecting of faith, whereby the Lord has assuredly examined his own? By this title persecution is a judgment, through which a man is judged as either approved or rejected; and further, judgment belongs to God alone.

This is that winnowing-fan which even now cleanses the Lord's threshing-floor — the Church, that is — winnowing the mixed heap of the faithful and separating the wheat of the martyrs from the chaff of the deniers (Matt 3:12). This too is the ladder which Jacob dreams of, showing to some an ascent to the higher regions, to others a descent to the lower (Gen 28:12). If it is fitting that persecution be understood also as a contest, by whom is the combat proclaimed, if not by him who sets forth the crown and the prizes? You read the edict of that contest in the Apocalypse, with what prizes he invites to victory those especially who have, properly speaking, conquered in persecution by overcoming, having wrestled in truth not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness (Eph 6:12);

thus you will recognize that to the same president of the games belongs the arbitration of the contest — he who invites to the prize. The whole of what is transacted in persecution is the glory of God, who approves and rejects, who sets up and casts down; but what pertains to the glory of God will assuredly come to pass by his will. But when is God more believed in, save when he is more feared — save in the time of persecution? The Church is in a state of astonishment: then also faith is on active service, more solicitous and more disciplined in fastings and stations and prayers and humility, in mutual diligence and love, in sanctity and sobriety; for nothing is then at leisure save for fear and hope.

So then from this very fact it is shown to us that it cannot be attributed to the devil — that which makes the servants of God better. II. If, since iniquity is not from God but from the devil, and persecution consists of iniquity — for what is more iniquitous than that the priests of the true God, all followers of the truth, should be treated after the manner of the most guilty? — persecution therefore seems to come from the devil, by whom iniquity is set in motion, of which persecution consists: we ought to know how far it is that neither can persecution exist without the iniquity of the devil, nor the testing of faith without persecution — for the sake of the testing of faith that is necessary — that iniquity presents to persecution not patronage but ministry;

for God's will concerning the testing of faith — which is the ground of persecution — goes before, while the iniquity of the devil follows as the instrument of persecution, which is the ground of the testing. For elsewhere too, in as much as iniquity is the rival of righteousness, in so much is it matter for the testimony of that of which it is the rival, so that righteousness is perfected by iniquity just as strength is perfected in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). For the weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong, and the foolish things of the world, that he may confound the wise (1 Cor 1:27). Thus iniquity too is employed, that righteousness may be proved, confounding iniquity.

Therefore, since it is a ministry not of choice but of servitude — for the choice is the Lord's, namely persecution for the sake of the testing of faith, while the ministry is the iniquity of the devil for the equipping of persecution — thus we believe that persecution comes about through the devil, if you will, but not from the devil. Nothing shall be lawful to Satan against the servants of the living God, unless the Lord permit it, either that he may destroy Satan himself through the faith of the elect victorious in temptation, or that he may show forth as his own the men who have fallen away to him. You have the example of Job, to whom the devil could inflict no temptation unless he had received power from God — not even against his substance, unless the Lord had said, Behold, all that is his I give into your hand, but against himself do not stretch out your hand (Job 1:12).

In short, he did not stretch out his hand except after the Lord, to him as he petitioned, had said this also: Behold, I deliver him to you; only preserve his life (Job 2:6). So also against the apostles he sought the faculty of tempting, not having it, that is, save from permission, since the Lord in the gospel says to Peter: Behold, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not (Luke 22:31-32) — that is, that only so much be permitted to the devil as would put faith in jeopardy. By which it is shown that both are with God — the shaking of faith and its protection — since both are sought from him: the shaking from the devil, the protection from the Son.

And assuredly, since the Son of God has the protection of faith in his own power, which he petitions from the Father, from whom he receives all power in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18), how is it that the devil should have the shaking of faith in his own hand? But in the lawful prayer, when we say to the Father: Lead us not into temptation — and what greater temptation is there than persecution? — we profess that it befalls from him from whom we implore its pardon; for this is what follows: But deliver us from the evil one (Matt 6:13), that is, do not lead us into temptation by permitting us to the evil one; for then we are delivered from the hands of the devil, when we are not handed over to him in temptation. Nor did the devil's legion have power over the herd of swine, unless it had obtained it from God (Mark 5:12-13);

so far is it from having power over the sheep of God. I can also say that even the bristles of the swine were then numbered before God, much more the hairs of the saints (Matt 10:30). The devil does seem to have a power of his own, if perchance, over those who do not belong to God — those reckoned by God as but 'a drop of a bucket and the dust of the threshing-floor and spittle' among the nations (Isa 40:15), and thereby exposed to the devil into a kind of empty possession; but as for the household of God, nothing is lawful to him out of his own power, since, when it is lawful — that is, out of what causes — the examples marked in the Scriptures demonstrate.

For either, from the cause of testing, the right of tempting is granted to him — the man being provoked or provoking, as in the instances above — or, from the cause of rejection, the sinner is handed over to him as to an executioner for punishment, as Saul was — for it says: And the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord kept troubling him and choking him (1 Sam 16:14) — or, from the cause of restraint, as the apostle relates that there was given to him a stake, an angel of Satan, to buffet him (2 Cor 12:7), lest we be ignorant that this species is permitted to the devil, for the humbling of the saints through the vexation of the flesh, that at the same time virtue — of endurance, that is — may be perfected in weakness. For the apostle himself also handed over Phygelus and Hermogenes to Satan, that they might be amended, lest they blaspheme (cf. 1 Tim 1:20).

You see now that even from the servants of God the devil more readily receives power — so far is he from possessing it of his own property. III. Since therefore these examples too occur rather in persecutions — inasmuch as we are then rather approved or rejected, and are then rather humbled or amended — it must needs be that these things are done in a catholic (universal) manner, permitted or commanded by him from whom they come even in part, namely by him who says: I am he who makes peace and creates evils (Isa 45:7), that is, war; for this is contrary to peace. And what war is there to our peace but persecution? If the outcomes of persecution above all bring either life or death, either a wound or a healing, you have the author of the same: I will smite and I will heal, I will make alive and I will put to death (Deut 32:39).

I will burn them, he says, as gold is burned, and I will prove them, he says, as silver is proved (Zech 13:9). For when we are burned up by the fire of persecution, then are we proved as to the tenor of our faith. These will be the 'fiery darts' of the devil (Eph 6:16), by which the burning and the smelting of faith is administered — out of God's will, nevertheless. Of this who could doubt, I know not, unless indeed a plainly frivolous and lukewarm faith, catching those who timidly assemble in the church. For you say:

'Since we assemble in a disorderly manner,' one says, 'and assemble all at once and flock together in great numbers to the church, we are inquired after by the nations and we fear lest these nations be stirred up.' Do you not know that God is the Lord of all, and that if God will it, then you shall suffer persecution, but if he will not, the nations shall keep silent? You should certainly believe, if indeed you believe in that God without whose will not even one sparrow of a farthing's worth falls to the ground; but we, I think, are worth more than many sparrows (Matt 10:29,31). IV. Therefore, if it is established from whom persecution comes, we can now bring in your consultation and determine, from this very preliminary treatise, that one ought not to flee in persecution.

For if persecution comes from God, in no way should that be fled which comes from God, as a twofold reasoning defends: because that which comes from God ought neither to be shunned nor can be evaded. It ought not to be shunned, because it is good; for everything that has seemed good to God must needs be good. And is it not for this reason that in Genesis it is thus set down: And God saw that it was good (Gen 1) — not that he was ignorant of its being good unless he had seen it, but that by this expression he might portend that to be good which had seemed good to God? Many things indeed there are which come from God and come to someone's harm — nay, it is good for this very reason, because it comes from God as divine and rational; for what that is divine is not rational, is not good? What that is good is not divine?

— But if it seems otherwise to anyone's perception, the perception of man does not prejudge the status of things, but the status prejudges the perception; for each several status is a certain fixed thing and gives to perception the law of so perceiving the status as it is. But if, while in its status the thing is good which comes from God — for nothing from God is not good, because it is divine, because it is rational — yet to perception it seems evil, the status will be in safety, the perception in fault. In their status chastity and truth and justice are excellent things, which displease the perception of many; is the status therefore made over to perception? So too persecution in its status is good, because it is a divine and rational disposition, but to the perception of those to whose harm it comes it is displeasing.

But he who sees that even that evil is held to be rational with God — when someone in persecution is overthrown from salvation — just as that good comes about by reason, when someone from persecution advances into salvation (unless indeed someone perishes irrationally before the Lord or is saved irrationally) — he will not be able to call persecution an evil, seeing that even on the side of evil it is good, since it is administered by reason. So then, if persecution is in any way good, because it stands upon its status, we rightly define that what is good ought not to be avoided, because it is a transgression to refuse what is good, the more so because it has seemed good to God; and further, that it cannot even be avoided, because it comes from God, whose will cannot be avoided.

Therefore those who think one ought to flee either reproach God with evil, if they flee persecution as an evil — for no one shuns a good — or they think themselves stronger than God, in supposing that they can escape, if God should have willed some such thing to come to pass. V. 'But what is my own,' one says, 'I flee, lest I perish if I shall have denied; it is his affair, if he will, to bring me back into the midst even as I flee.' Answer me this first: are you certain that you will deny if you do not flee, or uncertain? For if certain, you have already denied, because by presuming that you will deny you have pledged that of which you presumed, and you flee in vain lest you deny, you who, if you are going to deny, have already denied;

but if you are uncertain, why, from the equality of an uncertain fear between either outcome, do you not also presume that you can confess and be saved the more by not fleeing, just as you presume that you will deny, in order to flee? Now then, either both are in us, or the whole is in God. If it is in us either to confess or to deny, why do we not presume that which is better, that is, that we shall confess? — unless perhaps you do not wish to confess, that you may not suffer; but to be unwilling to confess is to deny. But if the whole is in God, why do we not leave the whole to his arbitration, acknowledging his virtue and power, that just as he can lead us out into the midst when we flee, so he can also overshadow us when we do not flee, nay even when we move about in the very midst of the people?

How is it that toward fleeing you render honor to God, as to one who could bring you forth into the midst even as you flee, but toward standing firm you dishonor him, despairing of the power of protection from him? How much better, on this side of constancy and confidence in God, do you say: 'What is my own I do: I do not depart; God, if he will, will himself protect me'! This rather is our part — to stand under God's arbitration than to flee under our own.

Rutilius, that most holy martyr, after he had so often fled persecution from place to place, and had even, as he supposed, bought off the danger with money, was, after all the security he had provided for himself, suddenly seized when he least expected it and brought before the governor; he was torn apart by tortures — as a chastisement for his flight, I believe — and then, given over to the flames, he rendered up to the mercy of God that very suffering which he had sought to avoid. What else did the Lord wish to show us by this lesson than that we are not to flee, because flight profits nothing if God be unwilling?

'Nay,' says someone, 'it was because he fulfilled the precept by fleeing from city to city.' Thus indeed a certain man wished to argue — himself a fugitive too — as do those who likewise refuse to understand the meaning of that pronouncement of the Lord, so that they may use it as a veil for their own timidity, although it had its own persons, its own times, and its own occasions. 'When they begin to persecute you,' He says, 'flee from city to city.' We maintain that this pertains properly to the person of the apostles, and to their times and their occasions, as the sequel of the sense will prove, which fits none but the apostles: 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and enter not into the city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'

But to us both the way of the Gentiles lies open — in which we too have been found and along which we walk even to the end — and no city is excepted, since throughout the whole world we preach; nor has any care of Israel been laid upon us beyond the ordinary, save insofar as we must preach to all the nations also. And even if we are apprehended, we shall not be led into their councils nor scourged in their synagogues, but shall assuredly be handed over to Roman authorities and tribunals. Thus, then, the condition of the apostles required also the precept of flight, since the gospel had first to be preached to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

In order, then, that the preaching might first be received among those with whom it had first to be accomplished — so that the children might take the bread before the dogs — He therefore bade them flee for that time; not for the sake of eluding the danger which properly bears the name of persecution — for He foretold that they would suffer persecutions and taught that these must be endured — but for the sake of the advance of the proclamation, lest, when they were straightway crushed, the dissemination of the gospel too should perish. For they were not, as it were, to steal away silently into some city, but rather, as men who were everywhere to proclaim and thereby everywhere to undergo persecutions, until they had filled up their teaching. 'You shall not,' He says at last, 'finish the cities of Israel'; so far was the precept of flight confined within the borders of Judaea.

But to us no limitation of Judaea belongs in our preaching, now that the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon all flesh. And so Paul and the apostles themselves, mindful of the Lord's precept, testify to it among Israel, whom they had already filled with their teaching: 'It was necessary that the word of God should first be delivered to you; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the nations.' And thenceforth, being turned, as their predecessors had appointed, they went both into the way of the Gentiles and entered into the cities of the Samaritans, so that indeed 'their sound might go forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.'

If, then, the exception of the way of the Gentiles and the entrance into the cities of the Samaritans has ceased, why should not the precept of flight, issued along with it, likewise have ceased? In short, from the time when, Israel being satisfied, the apostles passed over to the nations, they neither fled from city to city nor hesitated to suffer. Indeed Paul, who had let himself down by the wall to be delivered from persecution, in accordance with the precept that held good up to that time — this same Paul, now at the close of his office and at the consummation of the precept, when the disciples earnestly besought him not to commit himself to Jerusalem where he would suffer what Agabus had prophesied, did not subscribe to their solicitude, but on the contrary said: 'What do you mean, weeping and troubling my heart?'

'For I,' he said, 'am ready not only to suffer bonds, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.' And so they all said: 'The will of the Lord be done.' What was the will of the Lord? Assuredly, that persecution should now no longer be fled. Yet those who would rather that he had avoided persecution might well have alleged the Lord's earlier will, by which He had commanded flight. Therefore, since even under the apostles themselves the precept of flight was temporary, like the rest of the injunctions, it cannot remain in force among us, seeing that it ceased among our teachers — even though it had not been issued properly to them; or else, if the Lord wished it to remain, the apostles sinned, who did not take care to flee even to the end.

Let us now see whether the Lord's other utterances also agree with a perpetual precept of flight. First indeed, if persecution is from God, how is it that He should command us to flee that which He Himself sends? If He wished it to be escaped, He would do better not to send it, lest He should seem to contradict His own will by another will. For He willed us either to suffer persecution or to flee it: if to flee, how to suffer? if to suffer, how to flee? And now, how great is the inequality between the sentences of Him who bids us flee and Him who invites us to suffering — which is contrary to flight! 'Whoever shall confess Me, him will I also confess before My Father': how shall he confess who flees? how shall he flee who confesses? 'Whoever shall be ashamed of Me, of him will I also be ashamed before My Father':

if I shun the suffering, I confound the confession. 'Blessed are they who shall have suffered persecution for the sake of My name': wretched, then, are those who, by fleeing according to the precept, shall not have suffered. 'He who shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved': how then, while bidding me flee, dost Thou will me to endure to the end? So great a diversity of sentences, if it does not befit the divine gravity, makes it plain even from these that the precept of flight then had its own reason, which we have shown. 'But,' says he, 'the Lord, foreseeing the weakness of certain ones, through His own kindness nonetheless pointed out the harbour of flight as well.' For He was not able, even without flight, by so base and unworthy and slavish a refuge, to save those whom He knew to be weak in persecution.

Yet He does not cherish the weak, but always rejects them, teaching first that persecutors are not to be fled, but rather not to be feared: 'Fear not,' He says, 'those who kill the body, but can do nothing to the soul; but fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.' And what does He thereupon prescribe for the timid? 'He who values his own life more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who does not take up his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.' Finally, in the Apocalypse He offers the timid not flight, but, among the other reprobate, a portion in the pool of sulphur and fire, which is the second death.

He Himself too shrank from violence at times, but for the same reason for which He had commanded the apostles to flee — namely, until He should fulfil His teaching; and when that was accomplished, I do not say that He merely stood His ground, but He did not even desire help from the Father of the hosts of angels, rebuking even Peter's sword. He indeed also professed a soul sorrowful even unto death and a weak flesh, that He might show you first that in Himself both human substances existed, by the property of the soul's sorrow and the frailty of the flesh, lest you should interpret, as certain men have now brought in, either the flesh or the soul of Christ to be something other; and then, having demonstrated their conditions, that you might know that these avail nothing of themselves without the spirit; and therefore He prefaces:

'The spirit is willing,' so that, considering both conditions of each substance, you may understand that in you also there is the fortitude of the spirit as well as the weakness of the flesh, and may thereupon know what to make of what, and what to subject to what — namely, the weak to the strong — lest, as you now do, you plead the weakness of the flesh but dissemble the firmness of the spirit. He Himself also asked of the Father that, if it were possible, the cup of suffering might pass from Him: ask thou too, but standing as He did; only asking, but adding also the rest: 'Yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt.' But how, in fleeing, wilt thou ask this, thyself providing for thyself the removal of the cup, and doing not what the Father wills, but what thou wilt?

The apostles taught all things assuredly according to God, and wished to evangelize all things. Where dost thou show that they reinstated the precept of fleeing from city to city? For they could not have established anything so contrary to their own examples, as to enjoin flight — they who, precisely when they were most of all confined by chains or in islands, held there for confession, not for flight from the name, wrote to the churches. Paul bids the weak be supported — assuredly not the fleeing; for how could the absent be supported? But he says they are to be borne with in patience, if they should stumble through the weakness of their faith; so too the faint-hearted are to be consoled, yet not sent into flight.

But even when he admonishes us not to give place to the evil one, he does not suggest the counsel of flight, but teaches the tempering of wrath; and if he says that the time is to be redeemed because the days are evil, he wills us to gain our profit not by flight, but by wisdom of conduct. Moreover, He who bids us shine as sons of light does not bid us hide by flight as sons of darkness. He commands us to stand immovable — assuredly not to be mobile by flight — and girded: for flight, or for the encounter of the gospel? He also shows the arms, which would not be needed by those about to flee; among which is the shield too, with which 'you may extinguish the darts of the devil,' resisting without doubt and receiving all his force.

Accordingly John too teaches that our lives are to be laid down even for the brethren, much more for the Lord; and this cannot be fulfilled by those who flee. Finally, mindful of his own Apocalypse, in which he had heard the end of the timid, he himself also, from his own understanding, admonishes that fear must be cast off: 'Fear,' he says, 'is not in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment' — namely, the fire of the pool; 'and he who fears is not made perfect in love' — the love of God, that is. Furthermore, who will flee persecution but he who fears? who will fear but he who does not love? But if you consult the Spirit, what does the Spirit approve more than that discourse? For almost all its utterances exhort to martyrdom, not to flight, that we may remember this one too:

'Art thou made public?' it says. 'It is good for thee; for he who is not made public among men is made public in the Lord. Be not confounded: righteousness brings thee forth into the midst; why art thou confounded, bearing praise? Power is given thee, when thou art gazed upon by men.' So too elsewhere: 'Desire not to depart in your little beds nor in miscarriages and soft fevers, but in martyrdoms, that He may be glorified who suffered for you.' But some, setting aside these divine exhortations, apply to themselves rather that Greek line of a worldly maxim: 'He who fled will fight again for himself.' That perhaps he may flee again? And when will he conquer, who, when he fled, was conquered?

A fine soldier for Christ his commander does he prove himself, who, having been so fully armed by the apostle, deserts on the very day of persecution as soon as he hears the trumpet of persecution! I too will answer something out of the secular world: 'Is it then so wretched a thing to die?' Let him die, in whatever way, whether conquered or conqueror; for even if he fall by denying, still he has fought amid torments. I would rather have a man to be pitied than to be blushed for; fairer is the soldier lost in the battle of the fray than safe in flight. Dost thou fear a man, O Christian — thou whom the angels ought to fear, since thou art to judge angels? whom the demons ought to fear, since thou hast received power over the demons too? whom the whole world ought to fear, since in thee too the world is judged?

Hast thou put on Christ — since thou hast been baptized into Christ — and yet dost flee the devil? Thou hast cheapened the Christ who is in thee, in making thyself a fugitive together with the devil. But in fleeing the Lord thou reproachest all fugitives with the vanity of their design: a certain spirited prophet too had fled the Lord, having crossed from Joppa to Tarshish, as though to sail away even from God; but God found him — I do not say on sea and land, but even in the belly of the beast, in which he could neither die within three days nor thus escape God. How much better is the servant of God who, whether fearing the lord of iniquity, does not flee him but rather despises him, trusting assuredly in the protection of the Lord; or whether he stands in awe of God, all the more takes his stand under His eyes, saying: