Behold, most beloved brethren, peace has been restored to the Church, and what lately seemed difficult to the unbelieving and impossible to the faithless, our security has been repaired by the help and vengeance of God. Our minds return to gladness, and, the storm of the pressure and the cloud being dispersed, tranquillity and serenity have shone forth again. Praises must be given to God, and His benefits and gifts must be celebrated with thanksgiving—though our voice has not ceased to give thanks even in persecution; for the enemy cannot be permitted so much that we, who love God with our whole heart and soul and strength, should not always and everywhere proclaim with glory His blessings and praises.
The day longed for by all our prayers has come, and after the horrible and foul darkness of a long night, the world, irradiated by the light of the Lord, has shone bright. With joyful gazes we behold the confessors, illustrious by the heralding of a good name and glorious by the praises of valor and faith; clinging with holy kisses, we embrace the longed-for ones with a divine and insatiable desire. There is present a white-robed cohort of the soldiers of Christ, who broke the turbulent ferocity of the pressing persecution by a steadfast encounter, prepared for the endurance of prison, armed for the toleration of death. You fought bravely against the world, you offered a glorious spectacle to God, you were an example to the brethren who should follow. The devout voice spoke Christ, in whom it confessed that it had once for all believed:
Those illustrious hands, which had been accustomed to nothing but divine works, resisted the sacrilegious sacrifices; the mouths sanctified by heavenly food, after the body and blood of the Lord, spurned the profane contagions and the relics of idols; your head remained free from the impious and wicked veil by which there the heads of those sacrificing were veiled captive; the brow, pure with the sign of God, could not bear the crown of the devil, but reserved itself for the crown of the Lord. With what a joyful bosom does Mother Church receive you as you return from the battle! How blessed, how rejoicing she opens her gates, that you may enter in united bands, bearing back trophies from the prostrated enemy! With the triumphant men come also women, who together with the world conquered also their sex.
There come also virgins and boys with the glory of their warfare doubled, passing beyond their years in virtues. Nor, moreover, does the rest of the multitude of those who stood fail to follow your glory; with badges of praise near at hand and almost joined to yours, it accompanies your footsteps. In them too is the same sincerity of heart, the same integrity of tenacious faith. Resting upon the unshaken roots of the heavenly precepts and strengthened by the evangelical traditions, neither appointed exiles, nor destined torments, nor the punishments of property and body terrified them. Days were appointed for testing the faith; but he who remembers that he has renounced the world knows no day of the world, nor does he who hopes for eternity from God now reckon earthly times.
Let no one, brethren, let no one mutilate this glory; let no one weaken with malignant disparagement the incorrupt firmness of those who stood. When the day appointed for those who deny has passed, whoever has not professed within the day has confessed himself to be a Christian. The first title of victory is to confess the Lord when seized by the hands of the heathen; the second step to glory is, having been withdrawn by a cautious retirement, now to be reserved for God. The former is a public, the latter a private confession; the one conquers the judge of the world, the other, content with God as his own judge, keeps a pure conscience by the integrity of his heart; in the former is a readier fortitude, in the latter a safer solicitude.
The former was found already ripe as his hour drew near; the latter has perhaps been deferred—he who, having left his patrimony behind, withdrew for this reason, because he was not going to deny: he would surely have confessed, had he too been seized. These heavenly crowns of the martyrs, these spiritual glories of the confessors, these greatest and most excellent virtues of the brethren who stood, one sadness saddens, that the violent enemy, by the slaughter of his ravaging, has cast down a torn-away portion of our own bowels. What shall I do in this place, most beloved brethren, wavering in the varied tide of my mind—what or how shall I speak? There is need of tears rather than of words to express the grief by which the wound of our body must be wept, by which the manifold loss of a people once numerous must be lamented.
For who is so hard and iron-hearted, who so forgetful of brotherly love, that, set amid the manifold ruins of his own and the mournful remnants disfigured with much squalor, he could prevail to keep his eyes dry and not, with weeping bursting forth at once, pour out his groans in tears sooner than in voice? I grieve, brethren, I grieve with you; nor does my own integrity and private soundness flatter me to the soothing of my griefs, since the shepherd is the more wounded in the wound of his flock. With each one I join my breast; I share the mournful burdens of sorrow and death. With those who mourn I mourn, with those who weep I weep, with those who lie prostrate I believe myself to lie prostrate.
By those darts of the raging enemy my own members at the same time were struck, the raging swords passed through my own bowels. The mind could not be immune and free from the assault of persecution; in the prostrated brethren my affection too was prostrated. Yet account must be taken, most beloved brethren, of what has happened; nor ought the dark gloom of the hostile persecution so to have blinded the mind and sense, that no light remained, no brightness, whereby the divine precepts might be perceived. If the cause of the disaster is recognized, the remedy for the wound is also found.
The Lord willed His family to be tried, and because the long peace had corrupted the discipline divinely handed down to us, the heavenly censure raised up a faith that was lying down and, I might almost say, sleeping; and although by our sins we deserved more, the most merciful Lord so moderated all things, that all that has happened seemed rather a testing than a persecution. Each one was eagerly bent on increasing his patrimony; and forgetful of what believers had either done before under the apostles or ought always to do, they brooded with the insatiable ardor of covetousness over the enlarging of their estates. There was no devout religion in the priests, no untainted faith in the ministries, no mercy in works, no discipline in morals.
The beard was spoiled in the men, in the women the form was painted; the eyes were adulterated after the hands of God made them, the hair colored with a lie. To deceive the hearts of the simple, crafty frauds; to circumvent the brethren, deceitful purposes. To join the bond of matrimony with unbelievers; to prostitute the members of Christ to the heathen. Not only to swear rashly, but even still to forswear; to despise those set over them with proud swelling; to curse one another with venomed mouth; to dissent from one another with obstinate hatreds. Very many bishops, who ought to be both an encouragement and an example to the rest, despising the divine stewardship, became stewards of worldly kings; forsaking the chair, deserting the people, wandering through foreign provinces, they hunted the markets of gainful trafficking.
While the brethren were hungering in the church, to desire to have silver lavishly; to seize estates by insidious frauds; to multiply usury by mounting interest. What did we not deserve to suffer, such as we are, for sins of this kind, when long before the divine censure had forewarned and said: 'If they forsake My law and walk not in My judgments, if they profane My ordinances of justice and observe not My precepts, I will visit their iniquities with a rod and their offenses with scourges'? These things were foretold to us and predicted beforehand.
But we, unmindful of the law that was given and of the observance due to it, brought this upon ourselves by our own sins: that while we despised the Lord's commandments, we should come, through harsher remedies, to the correction of our offense and the testing of our faith; and not even at last, late though it was, were we converted to the fear of the Lord, so as to undergo patiently and bravely this our correction and this divine proving. At the very first words of the threatening enemy, the greatest number of the brethren betrayed their faith; nor were they laid low by the onset of the persecution, but threw themselves down by a voluntary fall. What, I ask, had come that was unheard of, what novelty, that the sacrament of Christ should be dissolved by headlong rashness, as though through events strange and unforeseen?
Did not the prophets foretell these things beforehand, and the apostles afterward? Did they not, full of the Holy Spirit, ever proclaim the afflictions of the just and the perpetual injuries done by the heathen? Does not the divine Scripture, ever arming our faith and strengthening the servants of God with a heavenly voice, say: 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve'? Does it not again, showing the wrath of the divine indignation and forewarning the fear of punishment, declare: 'They worshiped those whom their own fingers had made; and man was bowed down and the man was humbled, and I will not forgive them'? And again God speaks, saying: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.'
In the Gospel, too, the Lord afterward—a teacher in His words and a perfecter in His deeds, teaching what should be done and doing whatever He had taught—did He not forewarn of all that is now being done and shall be done? Did He not also appoint beforehand eternal punishments for those who deny, and saving rewards for those who confess? From certain men, O abomination, all these things slipped away and departed from memory. They did not even wait until, being seized, they might mount up; until, being questioned, they might deny. Before the battle line many were conquered, laid low without an engagement; nor did they leave themselves even this—that they might seem to have sacrificed to idols unwillingly. They ran of their own accord to the forum, hastened of themselves to death, as if they had long desired this, as if they were embracing an opportunity given which they had gladly longed for.
How many there were put off by the magistrates as evening drew on—how many even begged that their destruction be not deferred! What violence can such a one plead, to clear himself of his crime, when he himself rather did violence that he might perish? When the ascent to the Capitol was made of one's own accord, when men of themselves drew near to the service of so dreadful a deed, did not the step falter, the sight grow dim, the bowels tremble, the limbs give way? Did not the senses become stupefied, the tongue cleave, the speech fail? Could a servant of God stand there and speak and renounce Christ—he who had already renounced the devil and the world? Was not that altar, to which he had drawn near to die, a funeral pyre to him?
Ought he not to have shuddered at and fled the devil's altar, which he had beheld smoking and reeking with a foul stench, as the bier and tomb of his own life? Why, wretched man, do you bring a victim with you—why a sacrifice, when you come to make your supplication? You yourself have come to the altars as the victim, you yourself as the sacrifice; you have immolated there your own salvation, your hope, your faith; you have burned them up in those deadly fires. And for many their own destruction was not enough: by mutual exhortations the people was driven to ruin, death was offered to one another by the cup of death. And lest anything should be lacking to the heaping up of crime, infants too, placed in or dragged by their parents' hands, lost as little ones what they had obtained at the very first beginning of their birth. Will they not, when the day of judgment comes, say:
'We did nothing, nor did we of our own accord forsake the food and cup of the Lord to hasten to profane defilements: another's perfidy ruined us; we found our parents to be our murderers. They denied us the Church for a mother, they denied us God for a Father; so that, while we, little and unforeseeing and ignorant of so great a crime, were joined through others to the fellowship of crimes, we were caught by another's fraud.' And there is—oh, the grief!—no just or weighty cause that might excuse so great a crime. One's country had to be left and the loss of one's patrimony incurred. But for whom, being born and destined to die, must not country at some time be left and the loss of his patrimony be incurred? Only let not Christ be forsaken, let the loss of salvation and of an eternal abode be feared. Behold, the Holy Spirit cries through the prophet:
'Depart, depart, go out from there and touch not the unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, be separated, you who bear the vessels of the Lord.' And do those who are the vessels of the Lord and the temple of God—lest they be compelled to touch what is unclean and to be polluted and violated with deadly foods—not go out from the midst, not withdraw? Elsewhere, too, a voice is heard from heaven, forewarning what it behooves the servants of God to do, and saying: 'Go out from her, my people, that you be not partaker of her sins, and that you be not stricken with her plagues.' He who goes out and withdraws does not become a partaker of the offense; but he who is found to be the companion of the crime is himself also stricken with the plagues. And therefore the Lord, in persecution, commanded that men withdraw and flee; and that this might be done He both taught and did it.
For since the crown descends from God's favor, and cannot be received unless the hour of receiving it has come, whoever, abiding in Christ, for a time withdraws does not deny the faith but awaits the time; whereas he who fell because he would not withdraw remained behind only to deny. The truth, brethren, must not be dissembled, nor must the substance and cause of our wound be passed over in silence. The blind love of his patrimony deceived many; nor could those be ready or unencumbered to withdraw whom their own possessions bound as it were with fetters. Those were the chains to such as remained, those the bonds by which both their courage was retarded, their faith oppressed, their mind bound fast, and their soul shut in—so that they who clung to earthly things became prey and food for the serpent that, according to God's sentence, devours the earth.
And therefore the Lord, the master of good things and forewarning for the future, says: 'If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' If the rich would do this, they would not perish through their riches; storing up treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a domestic assailant. Their heart and mind and thought would be in heaven, if their treasure were in heaven; nor could he be overcome by the world who had in the world nothing whereby he might be overcome. Loosed and free, he would follow the Lord, as the apostles and many under the apostles, and not a few have often done, who, leaving behind both their goods and their kindred, cleaved to Christ with indissoluble bonds.
But how can they follow Christ who are held back by the bond of their patrimony? Or how can they seek heaven and climb to the lofty heights who are weighed down by earthly desires? They believe that they possess, when they are rather possessed—slaves of their own wealth, and not lords of their money but rather enslaved to their money. This time, these men, the apostle marks out, saying: 'Those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many hurtful desires, which plunge a man into perdition and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils, which certain men, coveting, have erred from the faith and entangled themselves in many sorrows.' But with what rewards does the Lord invite us to the contempt of household goods?
These small and slight losses of the present time—with what recompense does He requite them? 'There is no one,' He says, 'who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the kingdom of God's sake, and does not receive sevenfold as much in this present time, and in the age to come life everlasting.' These things being known, and proved from the truth of God who promises, a loss of this kind is not only not to be feared but even to be desired, since the Lord Himself again proclaims and admonishes: 'Blessed shall you be when men shall persecute you and shall separate you and shall cast you out and shall revile your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of man. Rejoice in that day and exult: for behold, your reward is great in heaven.'
But, afterward, torments had come, and grievous tortures threatened those who resisted. He who was overcome by torments may complain of torments; he who was vanquished in pain may plead the excuse of pain. Such a one may ask and say: 'I indeed wished to contend bravely, and mindful of my oath I took up the arms of devotion and of faith; but as I fought in the engagement, the various tortures and the long torments overcame me. My mind stood firm and my faith strong, and for a long time my soul, with the racking pains, wrestled unmoved.
But when, as the cruelty of the most pitiless judge grew fierce again, the scourges now tore me, already worn out; now the cudgels bruised me; now the rack stretched me; now the iron claw dug into me; now the flame scorched me—the flesh deserted me in the struggle, the weakness of my bowels gave way; it was not my spirit but my body that failed in the pain.' Such a cause may quickly advance to pardon; such an excuse may be worthy of compassion. So once did the Lord pardon Castus and Aemilius; so did He make those who had been conquered in the first encounter into conquerors in the second battle, that they who had before yielded to the fires might become braver than the fires, and conquer there where they had been overcome.
They besought God not by the pity of tears but of wounds; not by a lamentable voice alone but by the laceration of their body and by pain: blood flowed in place of weeping, and gore ran down in place of tears from their half-burned bowels. But now, what wounds can the vanquished show, what gashes of gaping bowels, what tortures of limbs—where faith did not fall after joining battle, but treachery forestalled the engagement? Nor does the necessity of crime excuse the man who was overpowered, where the crime is of the will. And I say this not that I may burden the cases of the brethren, but rather that I may urge the brethren to the prayer of satisfaction. For since it is written:
'They who call you blessed lead you into error and disturb the path of your feet.' He who strokes the sinner with flattering caresses supplies the kindling for sinning, and does not check the offenses but nourishes them. But he who reproves with stronger counsels, at the same time as he reproves, instructs his brother and promotes him to salvation. 'Those whom I love,' says the Lord, 'I reprove and chastise.' So ought also the priest of the Lord not to deceive with deceiving compliances, but to provide saving remedies. He is an unskilled physician who handles the swelling folds of wounds with a sparing hand, and, while he keeps the poison shut up in the deep recesses of the bowels, increases it. The wound must be opened and cut, and, the putrid matter being amputated, must be cured with a stronger remedy.
Though the impatient sick man may cry out and shout and complain through his pain, he will give thanks afterward when he has felt his return to health. For there has emerged, most beloved brethren, a new kind of disaster; and, as though the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving evil and a fawning ruin. Against the vigor of the Gospel, against the law of the Lord and of God, by the rashness of certain men, communion is loosely granted to the heedless—an empty and false peace, perilous to those who give it and of no profit to those who receive it. They do not seek the patience of healing nor the true medicine of satisfaction: penitence is shut out from their breasts, the memory of the gravest and last offense is taken away.
The wounds of the dying are covered over, and the deadly blow, fixed deep within the inmost bowels, is concealed with dissembled pain. Returning from the altars of the devil, they draw near to the holy thing of the Lord with hands filthy and infected with the reek; still almost belching forth the death-bearing foods of idols, with their throats even now exhaling their crime and redolent of the deadly contagion, they assail the body of the Lord—whereas the divine Scripture meets them and cries out and says: 'Every clean person shall eat flesh; and the soul that shall eat of the flesh of the saving sacrifice, which is the Lord's, while his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from among his people.' The apostle likewise testifies and says: 'You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons;
you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.' The same apostle threatens and denounces the contumacious and obstinate, saying: 'Whoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.' All these things being scorned and despised, before their offenses are expiated, before confession of their crime is made, before their conscience is purged by sacrifice and the hand of the priest, before the offense of the indignant and threatening Lord is appeased, violence is offered to His body and blood; and now they offend more against the Lord with their hands and mouth than when they denied the Lord. They think that to be peace which certain men sell with deceiving words. That is not peace but war; nor is he joined to the Church who is separated from the Gospel.
Why do they call an injury a benefit? Why do they call impiety by the name of piety? Why, by intercepting the lamentation of penitence, do they pretend to grant communion to those who ought continually to weep and to entreat their Lord? Such men are to the lapsed of this kind what hail is to the crops, what a stormy star is to the trees, what a pestilential devastation is to the herds, what a savage tempest is to ships. They take away the solace of hope, they overturn from the root, they creep on with a sickly speech to a deadly contagion, they dash the ship upon the rocks lest it reach the harbor. This easiness does not grant peace but takes it away; nor does it confer communion but impedes it unto salvation.
This is another persecution and another temptation, by which the subtle enemy, still assailing the lapsed, ranges with hidden ravaging—that the lamentation may cease, that the pain may be silenced, that the memory of the offense may vanish, that the groaning of the breast may be checked, that the weeping of the eyes may be stayed; and that the Lord, grievously offended, may not be entreated by long and full penitence, whereas it is written: 'Remember whence you have fallen, and do penance.' Let no one beguile himself, let no one deceive himself. The Lord alone can have mercy. Pardon for the sins committed against Him He alone can grant who bore our sins, who suffered for us, whom God delivered up for our sins.
Man cannot be greater than God, nor can the servant by his own indulgence remit or forgive what has been committed against the Lord by a graver offense, lest this too be added to the crime of the lapsed, if he should not know that it has been foretold: 'Cursed is the man who places his hope in man.' The Lord must be prayed to; the Lord must be appeased by our satisfaction—He who said that He would deny the one who denies, who alone has received all judgment from the Father. We believe indeed that the merits of the martyrs and the works of the just can avail much before the Judge; but that will be when the day of judgment comes, when, after the setting of this present age and of the world, His people shall stand before the tribunal of Christ.
For the rest, if anyone, rash with overhasty haste, thinks that he can grant remission of sins to all, or dares to rescind the Lord's precepts, he not only profits the lapsed nothing but even harms them. He has provoked wrath, not kept the sentence; nor has he thought that the mercy of the Lord must first be entreated, but, despising the Lord, he has presumed upon his own easiness. Beneath the altar of God the souls of the slain martyrs cry out with a great voice, saying: 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell on the earth?' And they are bidden to rest yet and to keep patience.
And does anyone suppose that one can become good by remitting and forgiving sins indiscriminately—wishing to act against the Judge, or that he can defend others before he himself is vindicated? The martyrs command that something be done: if it is just, if it is lawful, if it is not to be done by a priest of God against the Lord Himself, let the assent of him who obeys be ready and prompt, provided the moderation of him who asks be religious. The martyrs command that something be done: if the things they command are not written in the law of the Lord, then we must first know that they have obtained from the Lord what they ask, and then do what they command. For that cannot at once seem granted by the divine majesty which has been promised by human pledging.
For Moses too pleaded for the sins of the people, and yet, though he had pleaded, he did not obtain pardon for those who sinned. 'I pray, O Lord,' he said, 'this people has committed a great sin: and now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book which you have written.' And the Lord said to Moses: 'Whoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.' That friend of God, that man who often spoke with the Lord face to face, could not obtain what he asked, nor appease by his entreaty the offense of the indignant God. God praises and proclaims Jeremiah, saying:
'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; and before you came forth from the belly, I sanctified you and set you a prophet to the nations.' Yet to this same man, often interceding and praying for the sins of the people, He says: 'Do not pray for this people, and do not entreat for them in supplication and prayer; for I will not hear in the time when they shall call upon me, in the time of their affliction.' But what was more just than Noah, who, when the earth was filled with sins, alone was found just upon the earth? What more glorious than Daniel? What more robust in the firmness of faith for the performing of martyrdoms, what more blessed in God's favor—who so often both conquered when he contended, and outlived when he conquered?
What was readier than Job in works, stronger in temptations, more patient in pain, more submissive in fear, more truthful in faith? Yet even these, if they should ask, God said He would not yield. When the prophet Ezekiel interceded for the offense of the people, He says: 'Whatever land shall sin against me, so as to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand over it and break the staff of bread, and I will send famine upon it, and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men be in the midst of it—Noah and Daniel and Job—they shall not deliver sons nor daughters; they alone shall be saved.'
So far is it true that not everything that is asked lies in the prejudgment of the one asking, but in the discretion of the one giving; nor does human opinion arrogate and claim anything to itself unless the divine censure also assents. In the Gospel the Lord speaks, saying: 'Whoever shall confess me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever shall deny me, I too will deny him.' If He does not deny the one who denies, neither does He confess the one who confesses. The Gospel cannot stand firm in part and waver in part. Either both must hold good, or both must lose their force. If those who deny shall not be guilty of crime, neither do those who confess receive the reward of virtue. Moreover, if the faith that has conquered is crowned, it is necessary that the treachery which has been conquered be punished.