The Soldier Who Refused

It happened only the other day. The bounty of our most excellent emperors was being paid out in the camp, and the soldiers were coming forward wearing laurel crowns. One of them was more a soldier of God, and steadier than the rest of his brothers, who had supposed they could serve two masters. His head alone was bare, the useless crown in his hand — and by that one oddity he was already known to everyone as a Christian. He stood out, and nobly. So they all began to point him out, jeering from a distance, grinding their teeth close up. The muttering carried to the tribune just as the man had stepped out of the ranks. The tribune put the question to him at once: “Why are you turned out so differently from everyone else?” He said he was not free to wear the crown with the rest. Pressed hard for his reasons, he answered, “I am a Christian.” What a soldier — a man whose boast is in God! [a]

Then the case was heard and a vote taken. The matter was referred to a higher court, and the offender was taken to the prefects. He put off the heavy cloak at once — the unburdening had begun. He loosed the military boot from his foot, beginning to stand on holy ground. He gave up the sword, which had not been needed even for the protection of our Lord. The laurel crown dropped from his hand as well. And now, clothed in purple with the hope of his own blood, his feet shod with the readiness the good news gives, belted with the sharper word of God, fully equipped in the apostle’s armor, and crowned more worthily with the white crown of a martyr, he waits in prison for the bounty of Christ.

After that, hard judgments began to be passed on what he had done — by Christians, for all I know, since the pagans’ judgments are no different. He was headstrong, they said, and reckless, and too eager to die: taken to task over a mere matter of dress, he had brought trouble on everyone who bears the Name. He alone was brave, apparently, among so many soldier-brothers; he alone a Christian. It is plain enough that men who have rejected the prophecies of the Holy Spirit are planning to refuse martyrdom as well. So they grumble that a peace so good and so long is being put at risk for them. And I have no doubt that some of them are already turning their backs on the Scriptures, packing their bags, ready to run from city to city — because that is the only part of the good news they care to remember. I know their shepherds, too: lions in peacetime, deer in a fight.

As for the questions used to force confessions out of us, we shall deal with those elsewhere. But they also put forward the objection: “Where are we forbidden to be crowned?” I shall take that point up here, where it belongs, since it is in fact the whole substance of the present quarrel. On the one hand, the people asking who are uninformed but genuinely troubled can be taught; on the other, the people who try to defend the sin can be answered — above all the laurel-crowned Christians themselves, for whom the whole thing is merely a matter for debate, as though it might be counted no offense at all, or at worst a doubtful one, on the grounds that it can be argued about. That it is neither innocent nor doubtful I shall now show.

I maintain that no one of the faithful ever has a crown on his head except at a time of testing. That holds for every one of them — from those still under instruction, to confessors and martyrs, or else, as the case may be, deniers. Consider, then, where the custom we are chiefly asking about got its authority. You may raise the question why it is kept; meanwhile it is evident that it is kept. So an offense committed against a practice that can be defended — defended on the strength of its reputation, and ratified well enough by everyone’s agreement — cannot be treated as no offense, or as an uncertain one. The practice is not in doubt, so we are free to ask the reason for the thing — but without prejudice to the practice, not in order to pull it down, but rather to build it up, so that you may keep it all the more carefully once you are satisfied about its reason as well. [i]

But what kind of procedure is this — to bring a practice up for debate after you have fallen away from it, and to go looking for the explanation of once having kept it after you have dropped it? A man may want to look as though he is investigating it in order to show that he did no wrong in giving it up; but it is still clear that he did wrong earlier, in keeping it presumptuously. If he did no wrong today in accepting the crown, then he offended before, when he refused it. This treatise, then, is not for men who are in no fit state to inquire, but for those who genuinely want to be taught, and who bring not a question to argue over but a request for advice. That is the desire a true inquiry always comes from. And I praise the faith that believed it right to comply with the rule before it had learned the reason for it.

It is an easy thing to demand, straight off, where it is written that we should not be crowned. But is it written that we should be crowned? In pressing so hard for the warrant of Scripture on the other side, men prejudge the case: the support of Scripture ought to have to appear on their side just as much. For if it is to be said that being crowned is lawful on the ground that Scripture does not forbid it, it can be turned around with equal force — the crown is unlawful precisely because Scripture does not command it. What is discipline to do? Accept both, as if neither were forbidden? Or refuse both, as if neither were commanded? But “the thing which is not forbidden is freely permitted.” I would rather say that what has not been freely permitted is forbidden.

And how long are we going to keep dragging the saw back and forth along this line, when we have an ancient practice that has settled the question in advance? If no passage of Scripture has laid it down, custom certainly has confirmed it — and custom without doubt flowed from tradition. How can anything come into use if it was not handed down first? Even where tradition is pleaded, you say, written authority must be produced. So let us ask whether a tradition that is not written down ought not to be admitted. Certainly we shall say it ought not — provided that no other practices we keep on the ground of tradition alone, with the backing of custom afterwards, give us any precedent for it. [l]

To take the matter briefly, I shall begin with baptism. When we are about to go into the water — and a little before it, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the one presiding — we solemnly declare that we renounce the devil, and his parade, and his angels. Then we are plunged under three times, making a somewhat fuller pledge than the Lord laid down in the Gospel. Then we are lifted out, like newborn children, and we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey; and from that day we go a whole week without our daily bath. We take also, in gatherings before daybreak and from no hand but the presiders’, the sacred meal of the thanksgiving — which the Lord commanded to be eaten at mealtimes, and directed to be taken by everyone alike. As often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the dead as birthday honors. We count it unlawful to fast, or to kneel in worship, on the Lord’s day, and we enjoy the same freedom from Easter to Pentecost. It pains us if any wine or bread, even our own, is spilled on the ground. At every step forward and every movement, going in and coming out, putting on our clothes and our shoes, at the bath, at the table, when the lamps are lit, on the couch, on the seat — in every ordinary action of daily life — we trace the sign on the forehead.

If you insist on a positive command of Scripture for these rules and others like them, you will find none. Tradition will be held out to you as what began them, custom as what strengthened them, and faith as what keeps them. That reason supports tradition and custom and faith, you will either see for yourself or learn from someone who has. In the meantime you will believe that there is some reason here, and that it is owed your submission. [s]

Let me add one more case, since it will be worth showing you how things stood among the ancients too. Among the Jews it is so usual for the women to have the head veiled that they are recognized by it. I ask, in this instance, for the law. I set the apostle aside. If Rebecca drew her veil down the moment she caught sight of her betrothed in the distance, this modesty of one private woman cannot have made a law — or if it did, it made one only for women who have the reason she had. Then let virgins alone be veiled, and only when they are on their way to be married, and not until they have recognized the husband intended for them. And if Susanna, who was unveiled at her trial, also supplies an argument for veiling women, here too I can say that the veil was a voluntary thing. She had come as an accused woman, ashamed of the disgrace she had brought on herself, properly covering her beauty because by then she was afraid of pleasing anyone. But I should not suppose that when it was her aim to please she took her walks veiled in her husband’s garden. Grant, though, that she was always veiled. In her case as well, or in fact in anyone else’s, I ask for the law of dress. If I nowhere find a law, it follows that tradition handed this fashion over to custom, to find its sanction afterwards in the apostle, out of the true interpretation of reason.

These examples, then, make it plain enough that you can defend the keeping of even an unwritten tradition once custom has established it — long-continued observance being the proper witness for a tradition. Even in civil matters custom is accepted as law where there is no statute; and it makes no difference whether it rests on writing or on reason, since reason is in fact the basis of law. But, you say: “If reason is the ground of law, then from now on everything anyone brings forward that has reason for its ground will have to count as law.” Or do you think that every believer is entitled to originate and establish a law, so long as it agrees with God, helps discipline and promotes salvation — when the Lord says, “Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” And not merely about a court’s verdict, but about every decision in matters we are called on to weigh, the apostle also says, “If you are ignorant of anything, God will reveal it to you.” He himself was in the habit of giving counsel where he had no command from the Lord, and of laying down rules on his own authority, since he had the Spirit of God, who guides into all truth. So his advice, on the warrant of divine reason, has become the equal of nothing less than a divine command.

Now question this teacher in earnest, keeping your regard for tradition intact, no matter who first set it going. Look not at the author but at the authority — and above all at the authority of custom itself, which we ought to respect for this very reason, that we may not be left without an interpreter. Then, if reason too is God’s gift, what you learn will not be whether custom has to be followed by you, but why.

The case for Christian practice grows stronger still when nature, which is the first rule of all, supports it — and nature is the first to lay it down that a crown does not belong on the head. Ours, I take it, is the God of nature, who shaped man; and so that man might want, and appreciate, and share in the pleasures his creatures afford, he fitted him with certain senses that work through bodily parts which are, so to speak, their own instruments. Hearing he planted in the ears; sight he lit up in the eyes; taste he shut up in the mouth; smell he sent drifting into the nose; touch he fixed in the fingertips. Through these organs of the outer man, doing duty for the inner man, the enjoyment of God’s gifts is carried by the senses to the soul. [x]

So what is it in flowers that you enjoy? For it is the flowers of the field that are the particular material of crowns, or at any rate the chief one. Their scent, you say, or their color, or both together. And which senses take in color and scent? Sight and smell, I suppose. And which parts of the body have those senses been assigned to? The eyes and the nose, unless I am mistaken. Then use flowers with sight and smell, since those are the senses they are meant to be enjoyed by; use them by means of the eyes and the nose, the parts those senses belong to. You have the thing itself from God, and the manner of using it from the world — but an unusual manner does not rule out using the thing in the ordinary way. Let flowers, then, be what they are when they are free and loose — things to be looked at and smelled — even when they have been fastened into each other and tied together with thread and rush. You call it a crown, let us say, when you have a bunch of them bound in a row, so that you can carry many at once and enjoy them all at the same time. Very well: lay them in the fold of your robe if they are so uncommonly pure, strew them over your couch if they are so exquisitely soft, drop them into your cup if they are so perfectly harmless. Take pleasure in them in as many ways as they appeal to your senses.

But what taste for a flower, what feeling for anything about a crown except its band, do you have in your head — which can tell no color, draw in no sweet scent, and judge no softness? It is as much against nature to long after a flower with your head as it is to crave food with your ear or sound with your nostril. And everything that is against nature deserves to be branded a monstrosity among all people; among us it is to be condemned as sacrilege besides, against God, the Lord and Maker of nature.

So you are demanding a law of God. You have the one that is common to all, in force the whole world over, engraved on the tablets of nature — the one the apostle himself is accustomed to appeal to. He does it about the woman’s veil: “Does not even nature teach you?” He does it in writing to the Romans, where he says that the nations do by nature the things the law requires, and so points at once to a law within nature and to a nature that reveals law. And in the first chapter of that same letter he vouches for nature again, when he says that males and females exchanged among themselves the natural use of the creature for one against nature, as the punishment that fell to them for their error. [y]

It is by nature’s teaching, first of all, that we know God himself — calling him God of gods, taking it for granted that he is good, and calling on him as Judge. Is it a question with you, then, whether nature ought to be our guide in enjoying his creatures, so that we are not carried off in the direction in which God’s rival has corrupted the whole creation, and man along with it — the creation that had been made over to our race for certain uses? That is why the apostle says that it too was made subject to emptiness against its will, stripped clean of the character it began with, first by empty uses, then by base and unjust and godless ones. That is exactly what happens in the pleasures of the shows: the creature is dishonored by men who perceive well enough, by nature, that everything the shows are got up out of belongs to God, but who have not the knowledge to see as well that the devil has altered every bit of it. But we have dealt with that subject sufficiently, for the sake of our own show-lovers — and in a work written in Greek.