Gods Who Need Defending

Now look at the very thing this argument is mostly about: that you harass us, though we are innocent; that in contempt of God you attack and crush God’s servants. In your reckoning it counts for little that your life is stained with every kind of gross vice, with the guilt of deadly crimes, with the whole sum of bloody plunder; that true religion is overthrown by false superstitions; that God is not sought at all and not feared at all. On top of all that you wear down God’s servants, men dedicated to his majesty and his name, with unjust persecutions. It is not enough for you not to worship God yourself; you must go further and persecute the men who do, with a hostility that is itself sacrilege. [a]

You do not worship God, and you will not allow him to be worshipped either. Men who revere not only those foolish idols and images made by human hands, but even freaks and monsters besides, please you well enough. The one man who displeases you is the man who worships God. In your temples the ashes of the victims and the heaps of slaughtered cattle smoke everywhere, while God’s altars are either nowhere at all or else hidden. Crocodiles and apes and stones and snakes get your worship, and God alone on this earth goes unworshipped — or, if he is worshipped, not without punishment for it.

You drive the innocent, the upright, the men dear to God out of their homes. You strip them of their property, load them with chains, shut them in prison, and put them to death by the sword, by wild animals, by fire. And you are not even satisfied to have our suffering over quickly, with the pain spent in one plain, swift stroke. You set long tortures going, tearing our bodies apart; you multiply punishment on punishment, cutting into what is inside us. Your brutality and savagery cannot rest content with the ordinary tortures; your inventive cruelty keeps devising new kinds of pain.

What is this insatiable madness for shedding blood? What is this endless craving for cruelty? Choose one of two things instead. Being a Christian is either a crime or it is not. If it is a crime, why do you not simply put to death the man who confesses it? If it is not a crime, why do you persecute an innocent man? Torture would be in order if I denied it. If, afraid of your punishment, I lied and covered up what I had been, and covered up that I had not worshipped your gods, then I might deserve to be tormented; then I ought to be forced by pain into confessing my crime. That is how it goes in every other examination: the guilty deny the charge brought against them, and they are tortured so that bodily suffering can wring out the admission that the crime is real — the admission the tell-tale voice refuses to make. [c]

But as it is, I confess of my own free will. I shout it. Over and over, in the same words, I bear witness that I am a Christian. So why do you apply tortures to a man who admits it — a man who destroys your gods not in hidden and secret corners but out in the open, in public, in the middle of the marketplace, in the hearing of your magistrates and your governors? Whatever it was you found to blame in me before, it was a small thing; the thing you really ought to hate and punish has only grown, since by calling myself a Christian in a crowded place, with the people standing all around, I am shaming both you and your gods by an open, public announcement.

Why do you set yourselves against the weakness of our body? Why struggle with the frailty of this earthly flesh? Take on the strength of the mind instead. Break down the power of the soul, destroy our faith, beat us in argument if you can, overcome us by reason. Or, if your gods have any divinity and any power in them, let them get up and take their own part; let them defend themselves by their own majesty. What good can they do the men who worship them, if they cannot avenge themselves on the men who do not? For if the avenger counts for more than the one avenged, then you are greater than your gods. And if you are greater than the ones you worship, you ought not to be worshipping them; they ought to be worshipping you and fearing you as their lord. It is your championship that defends them when they are injured, and your protection that keeps them, shut up as they are, from perishing. You ought to be ashamed to worship what you yourself defend. You ought to be ashamed to hope for protection from what you yourself protect.

If only you would hear them and see them when we put them on oath — when they are whipped with unseen lashes and driven out of the bodies they have taken over by the torture of our words; when they howl and groan at a human voice and at the power of God, and, feeling the strokes and the blows, confess the judgment that is coming! Come and admit that what we say is true. You say these are the gods you worship — then believe the ones you worship. Or if you would rather believe yourself, then the one who has now taken possession of your own breast, who has now darkened your mind with the night of ignorance, will speak about you where you can hear him. [d]

You will see that the ones you beg are begging us, that the ones you fear and adore are afraid of us. You will see them standing bound under our hands, trembling like prisoners — these beings you look up to and revere as lords. That alone ought to put you to shame in those errors of yours: to see and hear your gods giving themselves away the moment we question them, unable, even in front of you, to hide their frauds and their tricks.

What sluggishness of mind is this, then — what blind, stupid madness of fools — to refuse to come out of darkness into light; to refuse, while tangled in the nets of eternal death, the hope of never dying; not to fear God when he threatens and says: “Whoever sacrifices to any gods, and not to the Lord alone, will be rooted out.” And again: “They worshipped the things their own fingers made. The common man has bowed down, and the man of rank has humbled himself, and I will not forgive them.” [f]

Why do you humble yourself and bend down to false gods? Why do you bow your body like a prisoner in front of silly images and things made out of earth? God made you to stand upright. The other animals look downward, pressed low, their bodies bent toward the ground; your posture is a high one, and your face is lifted up toward heaven and toward God. Look there. Lift your eyes there. Seek God up above, so that you may be free of the things below; lift your heart to hang on what is high and heavenly. Why throw yourself flat into the ruin of death along with the snake you worship? Why fall into the devil’s destruction, by his doing and in his company?

Keep the high standing you were born to. Stay what God made you. Let your soul match the set of your face and your body. To be able to know God, first know yourself. Leave behind the idols that human error invented. Turn to God; beg him, and he will help you. Believe in Christ, whom the Father sent to give us life and restore us. Stop injuring the servants of God and of Christ with your persecutions, since when they are hurt, God’s own vengeance defends them.

That is the reason none of us fights back when he is arrested, or avenges himself against your unjust violence, though our people are many and our numbers large. We are patient because we are certain the vengeance is coming. The innocent give way to the guilty; men who have harmed no one submit to punishments and tortures, sure and confident that nothing we suffer will go unavenged, and that the greater the injustice of our persecution, the more just and the more severe the vengeance exacted for it will be. The wickedness of godless men never rises up against the name we bear without vengeance from above following close behind it. [h]

Never mind the memories of ancient times; there is no need to go back over at length all the times vengeance was repeated on behalf of God’s worshippers. One recent case is enough to prove how quickly, and how powerfully in its quickness, our defense came — in the collapse of everything, in the destruction of wealth, in armies wasted away and forts reduced. And let nobody think this happened by chance, or call it luck; long ago the Scripture set it down and said: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” And again the Holy Spirit warns us beforehand and says: “Do not say, ‘I will avenge myself on my enemy.’ Wait on the Lord, so that he may be your help.” From this it is plain and obvious that everything now coming down from the anger of God is happening not by our doing, but for our sake.

And let nobody think that Christians are not being avenged by what is happening, on the grounds that they too seem to be struck by the same afflictions. A man feels worldly trouble as punishment when all his joy and all his glory are in the world. He grieves and groans when things go badly for him in this life, because for him things cannot go well after this life. He collects all the fruit of his living here; all his comfort ends here; here his fading, brief life counts up a little sweetness and pleasure — and once it has left this place, all that is left for him is punishment added to sorrow.

But people who are confident of good things to come suffer nothing from the assault of present evils. In fact we are never flattened by trouble, or broken down, and we do not grieve or grumble at any outward misfortune or weakness of the body. Living by the Spirit rather than by the flesh, we overcome the body’s weakness with the mind’s strength. By the very things that torment and wear us out, we know and trust that we are being tested and made strong.

Do you think we suffer trouble on the same terms as you, when you can see that the same troubles are not carried the same way by us and by you? With you there is always a loud, complaining impatience. With us there is a strong and devout patience, always quiet, always thankful to God. It claims nothing cheerful or prosperous for itself in this world; meek and gentle and steady against every gust of this heaving world, it waits for the time of God’s promise. [j]

For as long as this body lasts, its lot has to be shared with everyone else, and its bodily condition has to be the common one. Nobody in the human race is allowed to be separated from anyone else except by leaving this present life. In the meantime we are all held in one household, good and bad together. Whatever happens inside the house, we undergo by an equal fate, until, when the end of this temporary life is reached, we are sorted out into homes either of eternal death or of never dying. So we are not on your level and your equals merely because, set in this present world and in this flesh, we meet the annoyances of the world and of the flesh as much as you do. All punishment lies in the feeling of pain; so it is clear that a man is not sharing your punishment when you can see that he does not feel the pain the way you do.

With us the strength of hope and the firmness of faith are flourishing. Among these very ruins of a decaying world our soul stands lifted up and our courage unshaken. Our patience is never anything but glad, and the mind is always sure of its God — just as the Holy Spirit speaks through the prophet and urges us on, strengthening the firmness of our hope and our faith with a word from heaven: “The fig tree will bear no fruit, and there will be no blossom on the vines. The olive’s work will fail, and the fields will yield no food. The flock will be cut off from the fold, and there will be no herd in the stalls. But I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will be glad in the God who saves me.” [k]

He is saying that the man of God, the man who worships God, leaning on the truth of his hope and founded on the steadiness of his faith, is not moved by the attacks of this world and this life. Suppose the vine fails and the olive disappoints, and the field, scorched, its grass dying of drought, withers away — what is that to Christians? What is it to God’s servants, when paradise is inviting them, when all the grace and all the abundance of the kingdom of heaven is waiting for them? They are always exulting in the Lord, rejoicing and glad in their God, and they bear the world’s evils and troubles bravely, because they are looking ahead to the gifts and the good things that are coming. For we have put off our earthly birth; we are made new and born again by the Spirit, and we live no longer to the world but to God — and we will not receive God’s gifts and promises until we come into God’s presence.

And still we are always asking that enemies be driven back, that the rains come, that trouble be taken away or at least moderated. We pour out our prayers; and, winning God over and calming his anger, we beg him constantly and urgently, day and night, for your peace and your salvation.

But let nobody flatter himself. For the present, worldly troubles fall alike on us and on the godless, on God’s worshippers and God’s opponents, because flesh and body are equal in us all — and nobody should conclude from that that these things happening are not being drawn down by you. For God’s own announcement, and the testimony of the prophets, foretold long ago that the wrath of God would come upon the unjust; that persecutions, which in human terms would hurt us, would not be lacking; and, on top of that, that vengeance would attend them, defending with a defense from heaven the people who were hurt. [m]

And how great, meanwhile, are the things happening on our behalf in that line! Something is given as a sample, so that the anger of an avenging God may be known. But the day of judgment is still ahead — the day the holy Scripture cries out against, saying: “Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction will come from God. For look — the day of the Lord is coming, cruel with wrath and anger, to lay the earth waste and to destroy the sinners out of it.” And again: “Look, the day of the Lord is coming, burning like an oven; and all the strangers and all who do wickedly will be stubble, and the day that is coming will burn them up, says the Lord.” [n]

The Lord foretells that the strangers will be burnt up and consumed — strangers, that is, to God’s own family; the godless; the people who have not been born anew in the Spirit and made children of God. That only those can escape who have been born anew and marked with the sign of Christ, God says in another place. Sending out his angels to destroy the world and kill off the human race, he threatens more terribly still for the last time: “Go and strike, and let your eye not spare. Have no pity on old or young. Kill the virgins and the little ones and the women, so that they are utterly wiped out. But do not touch any man who has the mark written on him.”

And what this mark is, and on what part of the body it is set, God shows in another place: “Go through the middle of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry out over all the abominations that are done in it.” And that the sign has to do with the suffering and the blood of Christ, and that whoever is found in this sign is kept safe and unharmed, is proved by God’s testimony as well: “And the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And I will see the blood and will protect you, and the plague of destruction will not be on you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

What came first as an image in the slaughtered lamb is fulfilled in Christ, the truth that followed after. So: when Egypt was struck, the Jewish people could not escape except by the blood and the sign of the lamb. In the same way, when the world begins to be laid waste and struck, the only man who will escape is the one found in the blood and the sign of Christ.

So look, while there is still time, to the true and eternal salvation; and since the end of the world is now close at hand, turn your minds to God, in the fear of God. Do not take pleasure in that powerless, empty mastery you have in this world over the upright and the meek: out in the field, even among the tended and fruitful grain, the weeds and the darnel have their mastery too. And do not say that these misfortunes happen because we do not worship your gods. Understand instead that this is the sentence of God’s anger: that the one who is not acknowledged for his benefits may at least be acknowledged through his judgments. [r]

Seek the Lord, late as it is. Long ago God warned you beforehand through his prophet and urged you, saying: “Seek the Lord, and your soul will live.” Come to know God, late as it is. This is what Christ at his coming warns and teaches, saying: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Believe the one who never deceives anybody. Believe the one who foretold that all of this would happen. Believe the one who will give everyone who believes the reward of eternal life. Believe the one who will call down on those who do not believe eternal punishment in the fires of Gehenna.