He Defends His Flight

Hearing these things, and almost seeing them, through the messengers’ mournful accounts, I admit that I turned back again into the desert. I rightly concluded, as your Piety will see, that if I was being sought so that I might be sent to the prefects as soon as I was found, I would be prevented from ever coming to your Grace. And if those who would not sign against me suffered so severely as they did, and the laity who refused to hold communion with the Arians were ordered to be put to death, there was no doubt at all that the slanderers would devise ten thousand new ways of destroying me. And after my death they would use whatever means they chose against anyone they wished to injure, pouring out their lies against us all the more boldly, since there would no longer be anyone left to expose them. [a]

I fled, not because I feared your Piety (for I know your patience and goodness), but because from what had happened I perceived the spirit of my enemies. I considered that they would use every possible means to bring about my destruction, for fear that they would be made to answer for what they had done against the intentions of your Excellency. For notice: your Grace commanded that the bishops be expelled only from the cities and the province. But these worthy people presumed to go beyond your commands, and banished aged men, bishops venerable for their years, into desert, lonely and frightful places beyond the boundaries of three provinces. Some of them were sent off from Libya to the great Oasis; others from the Thebaid to Ammoniaca in Libya.

Nor was it from fear of death that I fled. Let none of them condemn me as guilty of cowardice. I fled because it is our Savior’s command that we should flee when we are persecuted and hide when we are sought, and not expose ourselves to certain dangers, nor inflame our persecutors’ rage against us still further by appearing before them. For to give oneself up to one’s enemies to be murdered is the same as murdering oneself. But to flee, as our Savior has commanded, is to know our time and to show real concern for our persecutors, so that they may not go on to shed blood and become guilty of breaking the law, “You shall not kill.” And yet these men, by their slanders against me, earnestly wish me to suffer death. What they have done again lately proves that this is their desire and murderous intention. You will be astonished, I am sure, Augustus, most beloved of God, when you hear it; it is indeed an outrage to marvel at. I ask you to hear briefly what it is.