Although it is unfitting, most beloved brethren, amid this eagerness for speaking to bring in any trembling, and it least becomes me to weaken the glory of so great a devotion by confessing that I have begun to doubt, yet again and again I say that the mind is broken by its very deliberation: for it is kindled by the desire of setting forth the praise, and is held back from speaking by the greatness of the virtue, since it is either unseemly to be silent or perilous to say too little—except that this one thing comes to the aid of one thus in turmoil, that it may seem he can easily be pardoned who did not fear to dare.
Wherefore, most beloved brethren, although the faculty of talent is overburdened by the power of the subject, so that however far it advances in expressing the dignity of martyrdom, so much it is oppressed by the very weight of the praise, and weakened by the estimation of all those things of which it is precisely then speaking, and, ensnared within itself by its own discourse, fails and, with the reins not free nor loosed, cannot pour forth into the open eloquence of speech the force of so great a praise—yet there will be, unless I am deceived, some fidelity in the utterance, which, fortified by the discourse of the very work, may freely pour out what the consciousness of an intellect unequal to the speaking would keep back.
Since therefore, most beloved brethren, entangled in so many and so great matters, we strive with all zeal and labor to prove the surpassing and most beautiful fruits of salvation, I do not fear lest, terrified by any dread of cowardice, I be either called back or extinguished, since, if anyone should be willing to look upon the matter of which we treat, once the seat of devotion has been weighed and its very greatness pondered, he would rather marvel that it could have been dared—wherein, placed as I am, both the vastness of the subject presses me down, and the fervor of its vow urges a mind confounded with joy into the straits of the spirit. For who is there whom this matter does not terrify, who is there whom it does not overthrow with awe of its own wonder? For there is indeed, unless I am deceived, even in the very strength of conscience a marvelous dread that at once agitates and inflames us:
the deeper you gaze into its power, the more, from the very sight of its venerable brightness, it sends forth in advance the awe of its own sanctity. For you ought surely to consider how great a glory it is, out of a life however defiled by a stain of foulness and by contagions of a polluted body, however slightly contracted unjustly, and out of a guilt of the world incurred over so long a time, to expiate all this by the remedies of a single stroke, whereby both the reward can be increased and the guilt excluded. Whence all the consummation and estate of life is placed in martyrdom. This is the foundation of life and faith, this the safeguard of salvation, this the bond of liberty and honor: and although there are other things through which light may be attained, yet it is by pains that better plead our cause that we come to the nearness of the promised reward.
For weigh how great a glory it is to set a mind—severed from the desires of this life and from all commerce with nature and the world—against the crisis of the adversary, and neither to shudder at the savagery of the torturer, but that a man be so animated that not even by the pain by which he is thought to be extinguished is he moved, and takes this to the increase of his virtue, which he who punishes thinks to be for the torment. For though against the hardening ribs the rebounding claw recoils into the wound, and as the scourges go the returning thong is dragged along with a torn-away part of the body, yet he stands unmoved, braver in his very pains, revolving with himself this one thing only: that in that cruelty of the executioners, Christ himself, for whom he suffers, suffers more.
For seeing that, if he should deny the Lord, he would undergo for him a guilt for which he ought to have conquered, it is necessary that he seem to endure all things to whom the victory is due by reason of his suffering. Therefore, since martyrdom is the highest thing, there are three matters which we have proposed to say concerning it: what it is, how great it is, for what purpose it is profitable. What then is martyrdom? The end of sins, the boundary of peril, the guide of salvation, the master of patience, the home of life; which being accomplished, even those things perish which could have been reckoned among the torments of a future crisis.
Through this both a testimony is rendered to the Name, and the majesty of the Name is enlarged—not that it could of itself be diminished, or its greatness be broken by the wickedness of him who assails it, but that it redounds to the heaping up of glory, while the terror of the crowd raging round about gives to grief undaunted spirits, and adds to the title of the threatening malice its gnashing; so that the mind grows for itself in the fight as much as he thought himself to conquer, through whom Christ willed to crown a man.
Then, therefore, is all the strength of faith brought forth, then is belief proved, when you have come into the talk of the mob and into reproach, and when against those popular frenzies you have steadied yourself with a religious mind, confuting and repelling, of course, whatever profane speech has hurled under your person to the injury of Christ: so that, as a barrier set against the opposing sea struggles back, though the waves strike it and the recoiling flood beats it again and again, yet its strength clings immovable and, covered by the foaming waves, does not succumb, until the force, dispersed through the crags, subsides, and the sea, cast up over them, spends its blow upon the open spaces of the shore. For what is there in those men but empty speech and idle chatter and a depraved delight of the mind in words, as it is written:
'They have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not: the foolish heart of them is made gross, lest at any time they should be converted and I should heal them.' For there is no doubt that he said this of all those whose hard mind and stubborn wildness of breast, driven from the life-giving devotion, dissents in disagreement, with madness leading, with fury snatching, and, in short, with every monstrousness harrying them, whereby they are alike goaded and borne along: so that, while their own deeds would suffice for their punishment, the very crime of the persecution they have stirred up should burden their punishment. All this looks to the praise of martyrdom, all this the glory of the passion illumines, in which the hope of the future time is discerned, in which Christ himself works, whose examples are enacted, which we seek, whose power it is by which we resist.
And since in this place there is something to bring forward, this is surely a supreme and admirable condescension, which we can neither conceive with the mind nor fulfill with words. For what more could he have bestowed upon us in his lavish tenderness than that he should first show in himself what he would crown in others? He became mortal that we might be able to be immortal, and endured the outcome of the human lot, through whom human things are governed: so that what he suffered may seem to have been for our benefit, he granted confession, he underwrote martyrdoms, in short he bound up, unto a saving remedy, by the merits of his own birth, all those things by which the light could be suppressed—by pre-eminent lowliness, by divine power.
Whosoever have deserved to be worthy of this thing have escaped all this most wretched defilement of the world, and, subject to the condition of death, have lived. For there is no doubt how much they obtain from the Lord who have preferred the name of God to their own safety, so that on that day of judgment their gore should make them better, and their own blood should show them to be worthy. Death indeed makes life more entire; death rather leads on to glory. So, as often as the grains, stretched out on milky stalks, swell with rains, the fruitful harvests are gathered in summer; so, as often as the vine is cut back with the pruning-knife, it is better clothed by the bursting shoots. For whatever profits by its own injury yields also to the coming of the time to come.
Indeed it has often profited the husbandman to send in flames, that the heat of the wandering fire might loosen the hidden breathing-vents of the earth: it has profited to scorch the light stubble with crackling fire, that thus the teeming crop might raise itself higher, and the thicker ear might flower on the laboring stalks. So too such is the case of martyrdom—at first a mishap, afterward a fruit—which by death condemns life, that by death it may keep life safe. For what is so surpassing and sublime as, amid so many instruments of the executioners, to preserve with steadfast devotion the whole virtue of faith?
What is so great and most beautiful as, amid so many swords of those standing round, to profess with a voice repeated again and again the Lord of one's liberty and the author of one's salvation—especially if you set before your eyes that there is nothing more detestable than disgrace, nothing more foul than servitude; that now you ought to seek nothing else, to desire nothing else, than to be snatched from the disasters of the age, to be stripped of the evils of the world, and, amid the ruins of a world now on the very point of perishing, to dwell a stranger to earthly contagion. For what have you to do with this light, to whom eternal light is promised? What with this commerce of life and nature, whom the vastness of heaven demands? Let that lust for living, to be sure, hold him—but him whom afterward, in inexpiable evil, the raging fire shall torment with an eternal vengeance for his crimes.
Let that lust for living hold those for whom both to die is a punishment and to endure is a torment. But to you now the very world submits and the earth gives way, you who, while all men are dying, have been reserved for this—that you might be able to be a martyr. Or do we not behold daily funerals? We behold new modes of death made long-drawn-out, but we also gaze upon, amid raging diseases, the unheard-of destructions of some plague and the slaughter of ravaged cities, whence we can recognize how great a dignity martyrdom is to be held to have; even the pestilence has begun to compel us to recognize the glory. For indeed, most beloved brethren, look, I beg you, more fully to this, in which both salvation is turned and sublimity is reckoned:
Although I am not unaware that you too most fully know that the estate of us all is contained under judgments, and are not ignorant that this discipline has been handed down to us—that without any terror of the warfare we should guard the force of so great a Name: since we, indeed, whom the desire of eternal memory has long led away from longing for this light, whom the vows of things to come have torn asunder, and whom the desirable fellowship of Christ has separated from all vices—if here we hesitate to succumb to destruction, to offer our soul to death, then the divine benefits are no longer to be held and embraced by us, of which the reward, beyond the ardor of things, is so great that human mediocrity in speaking could scarcely fulfill it.
To our blood heaven lies open, to our blood the dwelling of hell gives way, and among the glory of all, the fairer title of blood and the more entire crown is set as a seal. As often as a soldier, laden with the triumphal spoils of the enemy, marches in, he rejoices in his wounds: so as often as a sailor, long wearied by tempests, has reached safe shores, he draws his happiness from the peril endured. For there is indeed, unless I am deceived, a glad toil through which security is found. Therefore all things are to be borne, all things to be endured, and that is not to be sought whereby you may rejoice for a brief time and be punished with perpetual burning. For we ought to remember that we are bound, as it were, by a certain covenant of a pact, from which there is either a just condition for laying hold of salvation, or a well-deserved dread of punishment:
You stand amid adversity and prosperity alike, amid arms and weapons: on this side worldly ambition, on that side heavenly greatness admonishes you. If you fear to lose safety, know that you can die. Moreover, death is to be despised by you, for whom Christ was slain. Before your eyes let there also run together the examples of the Lord's promise, let there run together the rewards offered and the dangers prepared, and consider how great a difficulty the two matters have between themselves. For you will not be able to confess unless you know how much you would harm yourself if you denied. The martyrs rejoice in heaven, fire shall take up the enemies of the truth. The paradise of God flourishes for the witnesses; eternal fire blazes upon the deniers, whom hell has embraced.
And to say nothing of the rest, this above all ought to exhort us, that the confession of one voice is preserved by Christ's perpetual confession, as it is written: 'He that shall confess me before men on earth, I also will confess him before my Father and before his angels.' Furthermore, to the heaping up of glory are added the ornaments of virtues. For he says: 'They shall shine forth also as sparks running to and fro among the reeds; they shall judge the nations and shall have dominion over the peoples.' For great is the brightness, most beloved brethren, to adorn the life of eternal salvation with an eternal passion; great the sublimity, before the face of the Lord and the sight of Christ, with the highest power to despise the torments and not to shudder.
Thus Daniel overcame the threats of the king and the rage of the roaring lions through the substance of his faith, while he believed that none other was to be worshipped than God. Thus, when the young men were set in the furnace, the fire burned upon itself, while the just endured the flames, because, by believing the Lord, they feared them as of hell. Whence they brought back worthy rewards, not dragged off to the hereafter, not reserved for the reward of eternal salvation. God saw their faith, so that what they had promised themselves after death, they deserved to enjoy alive in the body. For it cannot be estimated how great a reward was rendered in the present. If there was savagery, it gave way; if there was flame, it subsided. For there was one mind in them all, which neither violence could break, nor wrath overthrow, nor the fear of death withhold from the obedience of devotion.
Whence by the grace of the Lord it came about that in them the king rather seemed to be punished, while those escape whom he had believed himself to have slain. Now I will come, most beloved brethren, to that matter from which I may be able sufficiently to show how great a virtue martyrdom is held to have: which, although it is known to all and to be sought after for the marks of its inborn brightness, yet the necessity of the time has added more to it than the desire for pleasure. For indeed it is of great gift if one be crowned at the very time when he thinks himself crowned, if perchance he should die. Therefore, since martyrdom is sublime and lofty, is it not the more necessary, when the world itself is overturned, and, part of the globe being shaken, nature failing bears witness to the monuments of the final end?
For when the rainstorm presses upon the sky, the air spreads out sad clouds of rain, and as often as a black tempest hangs over the shuddering deep, through the parted openings of the clouds the lightnings gleam again before their flashing: but also when the sea is rolled in great billows, little by little the wave lifts itself and little by little the surface whitens, until you may see it thus at last rush down, so that upon the rocks by which it is beaten back the foam is flung higher than the swollen deep spewed forth the wave. You read that it is written that we pay to the very last farthing. But this matter has been taken away from the martyrs. For indeed those who, relying on the desires of eternal salvation, have overcome the longings of life—these the promises of the Lord have made altogether inexperienced of pain.
Therefore hence first, most beloved brethren, we shall be able to weigh how great a virtue martyrdom can fulfill. And, to pass over all else, we ought to remember how great a glory it is to come to the immaculate Christ, to exist as a partaker of his passion, and to reign with the Lord in perpetual eternity; to be free from the destructions of the impending age, and not to be mingled amid the common lot with the rest in the bloody slaughter of ravaging diseases. And, to be silent about the crown—if to you, placed amid these slippery evils of nature, a departure from life were promised, would you not rejoice with all your mind? If some nearby rest were to summon you, tossing in the whirlwinds of this world, would you not reckon death as a remedy?
Placed amid the arms of the executioners and the weapons of testing interrogations, stand sublime and strong, considering how great a punishment it is to deny at that very time when you cannot enjoy the age for whose sake you had denied; for the Lord knew that grievous torments and pernicious arts of punishing were being armed unto our destruction, whereby he might make the strong ready for all endurance. 'Son,' he says, 'drawing near to the service of God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.' But also the most blessed apostle Paul cried out and says: 'To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.'
Wherefore, most beloved brethren, with firm faith and steadfast devotion we must resist with opposing virtue against all the fierce and harsh roarings of the persecutors of the age, and must not fear—we whose hope is of eternity and whose life is heavenly, and whose ardor is kindled in the longing for the light, and whose salvation rejoices in the promised immortality. But this—that the hands bound fast by constraining chains, and the heavy knots wound about the necks, press down with solid weight, or that the body, stretched on the rack, hisses upon the glowing plates—is a cause not of a blood to be sought after, but of testing. For how could we recognize the very dignity of martyrdom, unless we were compelled to desire it even with the damage of our body?
I have indeed perceived, nor does the truth deceive me, when the savage hands of those pressing on tore the limbs, and the raging torturer furrowed the mangled joints, yet did not conquer, that by the words of the bystanders it was said, 'This is a great thing, verily I know not what—not to be subdued by pains, not to be broken by anguishing torments.' But there were other voices of those speaking: 'And I think he has children. For he has a wife as a companion in his household, and yet he neither yields to the bond of his offspring nor, led away by the observance of natural affection, falls from his purpose.' The matter is to be known, the virtue to be searched out to the very depths. For no light thing is that confession, whatever it be, for the sake of which a man suffers, and can even die.
For indeed, most beloved brethren, so great is the birth of martyrdom, that through it even he is compelled to believe who wished to slay you. It is written, and we read: 'In pain endure, and in thy humility have patience, for by fire gold and silver are proved.' Since therefore the Lord proves us by earthly temptations, and Christ searches us out and weighs us by these evils of the age, we ought to congratulate ourselves and rejoice that he reserves us not for those everlasting destructions, but rejoices that we are cleansed from all contagion.
But from those whom he admits as sharers of his inheritance and gladly takes up into the kingdoms of heaven, what else at all does he seek than the striving after integrity? He himself fashioned all things—both those that unfold themselves upon the outstretched plains and those that raise themselves upon the sloping hills, and that which the vastness of heaven encompasses, and the slippery surface which the encircling sea shuts in. But if all things lie at his disposal, and he requires of us nothing but sincere deeds, we ought, as he himself said, to be like gold.
Gold indeed, when you have seen it upon the gleaming ground with a tremulous splendor beneath the light, and dissolved into liquid by the burning flames—but (for such is nearly the craft of the artificer) as often as, from the panting furnaces, the seething fire is belched forth, the rich metal is drawn out in flames through the narrow channel of the earth's opening, and by the flowing-back lumps the sand is held back—whence it is necessary to endure all things, that we may be able to be free from every wickedness, as he said through his prophet: 'And though before men they suffered torments, yet their hope is full of immortality, and being vexed in few things, in many things they shall be well disposed, because God tempted them and found them worthy of himself, and received them as a whole burnt-offering victim.'
But if ambitious dignity deters you, and the greatness of money heaped up in treasuries admonishes you—which ever turns aside the purpose of a good mind and has driven a soul devoted to its Lord into frenzied honor—I beg you, recall the heavenly words. For that also is the voice of Christ speaking: 'He that shall lose his soul for my name shall receive in this world a hundredfold, and in the world to come shall have life eternal.' Than which, assuredly, we ought to reckon nothing greater, nothing more fitting, nothing more useful. For though after the manner of precious garments the purple runs into figures, and the gold strays into beauty upon the slackening threads, and though from things dug up there be no lack of the heavy metals of treasure on which you recline:
these things, unless I am deceived, shall be reckoned empty and vain, if, while all things lie at your side, salvation alone should seem to be lacking, even as the Holy Spirit speaks, that we can give nothing in exchange for our soul. For he says: 'If thou shalt gain the whole world and lose thy soul, what shall it profit thee, or what exchange can a man give for his soul?' For all the things that we behold are empty, and, set upon weak roots, are unable to sustain the force of their own solidity. For what is grasped from the age is frustrated by the age of time. Whence, lest anything should be sweet or dear, or such as could be preferred to the desires of eternal salvation, they have been cut away by the Lord's precepts, and by proper right and private law have been set apart:
namely, lest the son should break the father set amid torments, or brother break brother, nor lest affection perchance should change into another will a breast fast bound with hardened strength; Christ by his own right established that truth alone and salvation alone are to be embraced amid great torments, wherein spouse, children, and grandchildren, wherein every progeny of the bowels is to be claimed by a happy victory. For Abraham too thus pleased God, who, tempted by the Lord, did not spare even his son: for whom perhaps he might have been pardoned, had he hesitated to slay him. Religious devotion armed his hands, and paternal piety, at the commands of the Lord who bade it, disregarded all the piety of natural affection.
Nor did he shudder to shed the blood of his own son, nor did he tremble at the voice, and as yet Christ had not been slain for him. For what is dearer than he who, lest you should today endure anything unwillingly, first suffered what he might teach? What is sweeter than he who, though he himself is our God and Lord, yet makes the man who suffers for him a co-heir of the heavenly kingdom? O great, I know not what—whether because the reasoning of conscience can scarcely restrain itself from ever marveling at great gifts, or because the majesty of God is so lavish that, while all despair of it, he offers even those things which, in the contemplation of our deeds, it had been unlawful for us to hope for. For indeed, if only eternal salvation were given, we should be held in grace for the very perpetuity of living.
But now, since he bestows heaven and the power of judging concerning the rest for a perpetual age, in what could human mediocrity make trial of hope for all these things? If you are driven by injuries, that act was prior. If you are pressed by insults, you imitate the gift of God. Whence it is but little, whatever you have endured for him who can do nothing more, except that in this all salvation consists, because he promised the whole by martyrdom. In fine, the apostle, to whom all things were ever at heart, when he marveled deeply at the measure of the promised gifts, says: 'I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory that shall be revealed in us.'
For within himself he pondered of what great worth it would be, that to him for whom it were sufficient merely to be freed from death, God should grant not only the reward of salvation, but also to ascend into heaven — that heaven which no banished light drives into night, nor does the day, by its alternating turns, open into brightness, but the serene and temperate mildness of the liquid air unfolds a pure splendour, glowing through the clear sky with fiery radiance. Now it remains, dearest brethren, that we must show to what end martyrdom is profitable; and let us assuredly teach this, that the fear of things to come rouses us to this title of glory. For those to whom great things have been promised — greater still are the things that ought to seem fearful to them. For neither does the soldier kindle himself unto arms before the hostile foe has set his weapons in motion.
Nor does anyone draw his ship up onto its mooring unless the fear of the sea has gripped his mind. But even the searching husbandman, intent upon his own resources, does not stir up the earth with the fruitful plough before the crumbling clod, having drunk in the rain, is dissolved into dust. Such is all this natural usage: not to know what profits, unless you have first perceived what destroys. Whence also a reward is given to all the saints, while torments for their deeds are inflicted upon the unjust. Therefore, since there is no one who does not know what the Lord has promised to his own, yet it is a matter of doubt with what great things he threatens: and since the discourse has so presented itself that account should be taken of both, I will briefly set forth, as I have said, both matters in a few words.
There is a raging place, Gehenna its name, which murmurs with the mighty groaning of those who lament; and with belching flames, through the horrible night of thick gloom, the smoking furnaces breathe forth ever-new fires. The mass of flames, once compressed, is blocked up, and then loosed into diverse forms of punishment. Then it rolls up within itself very many kinds of cruelty, whatsoever the devouring flame of the emitted heat may torment. Upon these — for whom the voice of the Lord was refused and his commands despised — it enforces punishment with unequal destructions; and according to the just desert of the salvation that was demanded of them, it supplies its own strength, imposing a penalty equal to the crime. And some indeed an intolerable weight bends down; others a savage force hurls headlong down the steep slope of a precipitous path, and the heavy burden of clashing chains drags them low.
There are those whom a wheel, driving them close, and an unwearied whirling torments; and those whom a body, clinging with tenacious closeness to a body, encloses, so that the fire consumes them, the iron weighs them down, and the throng of the many torments them. But as for those by whom God was ever sought after or known, never has the place of Christ failed them, where grace reposes, where the earth, luxuriant with green fields, clothes itself with nurturing grass and is fed with fragrant blossom; where the groves are lifted to a lofty summit, and where the thicker foliage of the trees clothes whatsoever the overhanging scene may shade with its curving branches. There all things are of neither cold nor heat, nor is it as when in autumn the fields rest, or again the earth, made fruitful, brings forth in the new spring.
All things are of one season; the fruits are borne of one summer: seeing that neither does the moon there serve its months, nor does the sun run its course through the moments of the hours, nor does the banished light give way into night. A glad repose possesses its peoples; a tranquil abode holds them, where a gushing spring wells up in the midst, from the bosom of a bursting channel, and glides at intervals with a hoarse circuit in winding meanders, so as to be divided at the mouths of the rivers that take their rise from it. Hence, then, is the great praise of the martyrs; hence the noble crown of the victors, to whom greater things than these are promised, to whom higher are the rewards. But that the body is exposed to wild beasts, or the threatening sword is not feared — the reason of their worthiness is shown, their election is made manifest.
For it would have been unfitting that those whom he had judged worthy of so great a gift should be kept back amid earthly vices and defilements. Deservedly indeed nothing has been denied to us, O good martyrs, whom the hope of eternity and the salvation of light awaits, whose whole devotion is seen to be heavenly and whose mind is given over to service: deservedly, I say, deservedly nothing is unlawful for you to will, to whose soul this world is despised and the alienated appearance of the age has bristled like the confused blindness of darkness — a soul to which this world has ever been in the place of a prison, its roofs held as bars, its passage ever unwilling.