The Confessors Who Kept the Ancient Faith

But perhaps, it may be suggested, we invent these charges out of hatred of novelty and zeal for antiquity. Whoever is inclined to listen to such a suggestion, let him at least believe the blessed Ambrose. Lamenting the bitterness of the times, he says in the second book of his work addressed to the emperor Gratian: “Enough now, Almighty God! We have atoned enough, with our own ruin and our own blood, for the slaughter of confessors, the banishment of priests, and the wickedness of so extreme an impiety. It is plain beyond question that those who have violated the faith cannot remain in safety.” And again in the third book of the same work: “Let us keep the commands of our predecessors, and not cross with crude rashness the boundary markers we have inherited from them. No elders, no powers, no angels, no archangels dared to open that sealed book of prophecy; to Christ alone was kept the right of explaining it. Who of us would dare to unseal the priestly book sealed by confessors and already consecrated by the martyrdom of many? Those who had been forced to unseal it afterward sealed it again, condemning the fraud that had been practiced on them, while those who had not dared to tamper with it proved themselves confessors and martyrs. How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?” [a]

We proclaim it indeed, venerable Ambrose, we proclaim it, and we applaud and admire. For who is so out of his mind that, though he cannot overtake them, he does not at least earnestly long to follow those whom no force could turn from defending the faith of their ancestors? No threats could do it, no flattery, not life, not death, not the palace, not the imperial guards, not the emperor, not the empire itself, not men, not demons. In return for their steadfastness in holding to religious antiquity, the Lord counted them worthy of so great a reward that through them he restored churches that had been destroyed and brought new life to peoples who were spiritually dead. He put back on the heads of priests the crowns that had been torn from them. With a fountain of believing tears, which God opened in the hearts of the bishops, he washed out those abominable, I will not say letters, but blots of new impiety. Lastly, when almost the whole world was overwhelmed by a ruthless storm of unexpected heresy, he called it back from new misbelief to the ancient faith, from the madness of novelty to the soundness of antiquity, from the blindness of novelty to the light it had at first. [e]

But in this virtue of the confessors, which we may well call divine, we must note especially that the defense they then took up, in appealing to the ancient church, was the defense not of a part but of the whole body. For it was not right that men of such eminence should uphold, with so huge an effort, the vague and conflicting notions of one or two men, or exert themselves to defend some ill-advised alliance of some petty province. Instead, holding to the decrees and definitions of the universal priesthood of holy church, as heirs of apostolic and catholic truth, they chose to give themselves up rather than betray the faith of universality and antiquity. That is why they were counted worthy of such great glory: not only to be reckoned confessors, but rightly and deservedly to be reckoned foremost among confessors.