Drawback upon their Triumph. 155 one dispraise such merit; no one lower by unkind detraction the unimpaired fidelity of such as did not fall. When the ap-stanpointed term for recanting was over, whoever had not made tium. his submission within the time, was understood to confess himself a Christian. It is the highest kind of victory, for a man to be seized by the hands of the Gentiles, and to confess the Lord; it is the next step unto glory, to reserve himself to the Lord, by withdrawing away beforehand. The former is publicly and the latter privately a Confessor. The one conquers an earthly judge; the other, contenting himself with God's judgment, preserves a pure conscience in integrity of heart. In the former case courage enjoys a readier employment; in the latter self-caution a longer exercise: the one, when his hour approached, was found prepared; the other who postponed it, relinquishing his property, did shew by his retiring, that he would not recant; no doubt he would have made Confession, had he too been seized. 3. These heavenly crowns of Martyrs, these spiritual excellences of Confessors, these great and eminent attainments of brethren who stand upright, are saddened by one cause of stangrief, which is, that the violence of the enemy has torn from tium. us a portion of our own bowels, and cast it away in his devastating cruelty. How, dearest brethren, shall I rule myself on this point? Amidst the changeful tide of feeling, with what words or in what manner shall I speak to you? Tears more than words are wanted, to express the pain with which we have to mourn this blow to our community, and lament the manifold losses of a once numerous society. For who has so hard or iron an heart, who is so lost to brotherly love, as amidst the manifold dismemberment among us, and standing amongst the melancholy and disfigured remnants, to refrain his eyes from weeping, and not rather in the outbreaking of grief to express with tears before words, the sorrow that he feels within? I grieve, brethren, I grieve with you; my own truth, my individual stedfastness, offers no flattering beguilement of my pain; for no blow so reaches the shepherd as that which falls upon his flock. I join my breast to each, I partake the sad weight of sorrow and mourning. I lament with them that lament; I weep with them that weep; I feel myself prostrate amongst the fallen. Those VI. 156 Corruption of the Church from long peace. TREAT. darts of the foe who grappled us, have pierced my limbs ; through my body those cruel swords have gone. Amid the blow of persecution my mind could not remain independent, and unaffected; in the fall of my brethren, I too have suffered downfal. 4. Still, brethren beloved, the cause of truth must be kept in view; and we must not allow the gathered darkness of this fearful persecution so to blind our mind and understanding, as to leave nothing of light and illumination, for the perceiving of what God requires. If we apprehend the cause of our losses, we have then a remedy for the blow. It has pleased the Lord to prove His family; and as long repose had corrupted the discipline which had come down to us from Him, the Divine judgment awakened our faith from a declining, and, should I so speak, an almost slumbering state; and whereas we deserved yet more for our sins, the most merciful Lord hath so moderated all, that what has past has seemed rather a trial of what we were, than an actual infliction. Every one was applying himself to the increase of wealth; and forgetting both what was the conduct of believers under the Apostles, and what ought to be their conduct in every age, they with insatiable eagerness for gain devoted themselves to the multiplying of possessions. The Priests were wanting in religious devotedness, the ministers in entireness of faith; there was no mercy in works, no discipline in manners. Men wore their beards disfigured, and women distained their complexion with a dye. The eyes were changed from what God made them, and a lying colour was passed upon the hair. The hearts of the simple were misled by treacherous artifices, and brethren became entangled in seductive snares; ties of marriage were formed with unbelievers; members of Christ abandoned to the heathen. Not only rash swearing was heard, but even false; persons in high place were swoln with contemptuousness, poisoned reproaches fell from their mouths, and men were sundered by unabating quarrels. Numerous Bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and a similar neglect of religious duties in Alexandria A. D. 223; twelve years after the death of Severus. Thirty-eight years in Africa, according to Sulpicius, viz. from Severus to Decius, (A. D. 212-250.) vid. Fell. c Origen (in Gen. Hom. x.) speaks of Consequent defection in the persecution. 157 example to others, despising their sacred calling, engaged themselves in secular vocations, relinquished their Chair, deserted their people, strayed among foreign provinces, hunted the markets for mercantile profits; tried to amass large sums of money, while they had brethren starving within the Church, took possession of estates by fraudulent proceedings, and multiplied their gains by accumulated usuries. 5. For sins like these what do we not deserve to suffer, after warning and word of divine judgment already given? If they forsake My law, and walk not in My judg- Ps. 89. ments, if they break My statutes, and keep not My command-30. ments, I will visit their transgressions with the rod, and their sins with scourges. These things were afore declared and predicted. But we, becoming mindless of the rule and conduct assigned to us, have been acting in so guilty a wise, that from our contempt of the Lord's commandments we are, by remedies the more severe, reduced to a correction of our sins, and test of our faith. Neither at the last were we so turned to the fear of the Lord, as to submit ourselves with patience and fortitude to this His rebuke and trial upon us. At the first voice of threat from the enemy, a large number of brethren betrayed their faith; not being thrown down by the actual persecution, but throwing down themselves by a voluntary fall. Tell me, what unusual, what new thing had happened, that as if at an event unheard of and unimagined, the vow to Christ was broken with this precipitous rashness? Did not the Prophets of old, did not the Apostles after them, declare these things? Did they not predict, full of the Holy Spirit, the sufferings of the just and the cruelties of the heathen? Does not the Holy Scripture say, which is ever giving weapons to our faith, and heartening God's servants by its heavenly voice; Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Deut. 6, Him only shalt thou serve? And again, manifesting the greatness of the wrath of God, and warning us of the 10. dreadfulness of His punishments, says it not further; They Is. 2, 8, worship them whom their fingers have made; and the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself, and I will forgive them not? And again, God speaks and says, He that sacrificeth unto any God, save unto the Lord only, he Exod. shall utterly be destroyed. 13. Mat. 4, 9. 22, 20. TREAT. VI. 158 Voluntary sacrificings on heathen altars. 6. In the Gospel likewise afterward, the Lord, Instructor by His words, and Fulfiller by His deeds, teaching what to do, and doing all which He taught, did He not before advise us of all that is now happening, or is yet to happen? Did He not assign eternal penalty to them that deny Him, and rewards unto salvation to them that confess? Alas! there are, from whom all this is fallen and passed out of memory. They did not even wait to be arrested before they went up, or questioned before they made their denial. Many were they that fell before the fight, laid low without meeting the foe, and not even leaving it to themselves to seem unwilling in sacrificing to the idols. They ran to the Marketplace of their own accord, of their own will they hasted to their death; as if they had always wished it, as if embracing an opportunity, to which they had all along been looking. How many, whom the magistrates put off at the time, through press of nightfall, and how many who even entreated that their undoing might not be delayed! How can any one make violence an excuse for his guilt, when the violence was rather on his own part, and to his own destruction? When they came (thus willingly) to the Capitol, when they spontaneously submitted themselves to the commission of that dreadful deed, was there no tottering in the limbs, no blackness upon the face, no sickness of the heart and collapsing of the arms? Did not the senses die, the tongue cleave, and speech fail? Could the Servant of God stand there, and speak, and renounce Christ, he who before had renounced the Devil and the world? The altar where he went to perish, was it not a funeral-pile? altare. From an altar of the Devil, which he witnessed in the smoke and redolence of its vile odour, ought he not to shudder at it and flee off, as from the death and sepulchre of his existence? Why bring an offering, wretched man, why present a victim, for slaughter? You are yourself an offering for the altar, you are yourself come as a victim: you have slaughtered there your own salvation, your hope; your faith was burnt in those funereal flames. ara. aras. 7. Many, however, were unsatisfied with doing destruction e An allusion to the solemn question asked at Baptism. vid. supr. iv. 6. and 1 Pet. 3, 21. d It was usual in the provincial cities to give the Roman name to the citadel. Thus we read of a Capitol at Capua, Verona, Treves, &c. upon themselves; men were urged to their ruin by mutual encouragements, and the fatal cup of death was offered from mouth to mouth. That nothing might be wanting to their load of guilt, even infants in their parents' arms, carried or led, were deprived while yet tender of what was granted them in the commencement of life. Will not these children in the day of judgment say, "We did no sin; it was not our will to hasten from the Bread and Cup of the Lord', to an unhallowed pollution. We perish through unfaithfulness not our own, perfidia. and our parents on earth have robbed us of the parentage in heaven: they forfeited for us the Church as a Mother, and God as a Father; and thus while young and unaware, and ignorant of that grievous act, we are included in a league of sin by others, and perish through their deceit." 11. 8. Neither, alas! is there any equal and weighty motive, to excuse so grievous an act. A man had to leave his country, and suffer loss of his property; yet who can be born and die, and not one day either be leaving his native land, or suffering loss of his possessions? Only, let him not leave Christ; let the loss of salvation and of the home eternal be his dread. Lo, the Holy Spirit cries out by the Prophet, Depart ye, go ye out Is. 52, from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out from the midst of her, be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord. Yet those who are vessels of the Lord and the Temple of God, to escape touching the unclean thing, and being polluted and violated by a deadly food, will not come out from the midst, nor depart. Elsewhere likewise the voice is heard from heaven, afore instructing what the Servants of God ought to do, and saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not Rev. 18, partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. He who comes out and departs, becomes not a partaker of the sin: but whoever is found a companion in the guilt, will be sharer of the plagues. Hence it is that the Lord commands us in persecution to retire and escape, both teaching us to Vid. infr. §. 16. The Bishops of the Church were, as was natural, the chief objects of attack in the persecution. Fabian of Rome was martyred. Others, among whom was S. Cyprian and S. Dionysius of Alexandria, fled. In like manner S. Athanasius fled in the Arian persecution. (vid. Ath. Apol. de fug.) and 4. |