CHAPTER L.

Our sufferings are our triumph. Our endurance in your view redounds to our discredit; the fortitude of others to their honour. You may gain popularity by your injustice, but our sufferings and practical example continually attract new converts.

'WHY then,' you say, 'do you complain that we attack you, if you are willing to suffer; when you ought to love those at whose hands you suffer what you desire?' We are, certainly, willing to suffer; but it is in the same way as a soldier desires war. No one endures war willingly, since alarm and risk are involved in it: the battle nevertheless is carried on with every nerve; and he who complains of it, yet rejoices in it when victorious, because he is acquiring glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals, there to contend for the truth at the risk of our lives. It is our victory, too, in that we obtain that for which we contend. This victory gains for us both the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of eternal life. But we are overwhelmed; yet only when we have won our cause; therefore we conquer, when we are slain; and in fact we escape, even when we are overwhelmed. You can call us then, if you like, 'faggot-men,' and 'half-axle-men,' because we are bound to the stock of a half-axle, and surrounded with faggots when we are burned. This is the robe of our victory, this is our triumphal vestment, in such a chariot do we celebrate our triumph. [145] 

Naturally, therefore, we displease those whom we vanquish; for on those grounds we are deemed desperate and reckless men. But this very desperation and recklessness, with you, in the cause of glory or fame, uplifts the banner of valour. Mucius cheerfully left his right hand upon the altar: what a noble-spirited deed! Empedocles gave his whole person to the Aetnean fires of Catina : what strength of mind! Some virgin foundress of Carthage wedded the funeral pile for her second nuptials : what a commendation of chastity! Regulus suffered tortures in his whole body, lest his own single life should be spared in exchange for many enemies: what a brave man, and a victor even in captivity! Anaxarchus, when brayed with a pestle like barley, kept saying, 'Pound, pound away at the bag of Anaxarchus, for you pound not Anaxarchus himself:' what a great-souled philosopher, to even jest upon his own, and such a death! I pass over those who bargained for fame with their own swords, or some other milder kind of death; for lo, even rivalries of tortures are crowned by you. An Athenian harlot, when the executioner was weary, at last spit out her own tongue, which she had bitten off, in the face of the cruel tyrant, that she might also spit out her own voice, and with it the possibility of confessing her accomplices, in case she should succumb and wish to do so. Zeno Eleates, when consulted by Dionysius as to the advantage gained from philosophy, replied 'A contempt of death;' and when subjected by the tyrant to scourgings, continued to express his opinion up to the point of death. [146] Certainly, the scourgings of the Spartans ¹²⁸, embittered by the presence of relatives who encouraged them, conferred a reputation on the family for endurance, in proportion to the quantity of blood which they extracted. Here is a glory, licensed, because of human origin; which is attributed neither to the presumption of recklessness, nor to the persuasion of despair, in its contempt of death and every kind of cruelty; which is as much allowed to be endured for country, territory, empire, or friendship, as it is forbidden to be suffered for God! And yet you cast statues, and write inscriptions, and engrave titles, for all those men to last into eternity: and as far as you can, by means of monuments, you yourselves afford them a kind of resurrection from the dead. If he who hopes for this fact from God, suffers for God, he is deemed insane.

But pursue your course, excellent governors, and you will be more popular with the multitude if you sacrifice the Christians to their wishes. Crucify, torture, condemn, crush us. For the proof of our innocence is found in your injustice. It is on this account that God suffers us to suffer this. For quite recently, when you condemned a Christian woman to the beastly lust of men instead of to an actual wild beast ¹²⁹, you confessed that a stain upon chastity is accounted more heinous with us than any torture or [147] any death. Yet no cruelty of yours, though each were to exceed the last in its exquisite refinement, profits you in the least; but forms rather an attraction to our sect. We spring up in greater numbers as often as we are mown down by you : the blood of the Christians is a source of new life ¹³⁰.

Many amongst yourselves have exhorted to the endurance of pain and death, as for example Cicero in the 'Tusculan Disputations,' Seneca in his book 'On Chances,' Diogenes, Pyrrho, and Callinicus. Yet they by their words secured not so many disciples as the Christians have gained by their practical example. That very obstinacy which you assail is the teacher. For who is not aroused by the sight of it to enquire what the inward motive can be? who, when he has enquired, does not adopt it? and who, when he has adopted it, does not choose to suffer, in order that he may acquire the whole grace of God, and also obtain all pardon from Him by the yielding up of his blood? For all sins are pardoned by this act. Hence it is that, at the moment of your sentencing us, we give thanks: and since there is an antagonism between divine and human things, when we are condemned by you, we stand acquitted by God. [148]