A Time to Flee and a Time to Stay

And if ever in their flight they went to meet those who were hunting them, they did not do it without reason. When the Spirit spoke to them, then, as righteous men, they went and met their enemies, and by this they also showed their obedience and zeal toward God. Such was the conduct of Elijah when, at the Spirit’s command, he showed himself to Ahab; and of Micaiah the prophet when he came to the same Ahab; and of the prophet who cried out against the altar in Samaria and rebuked Rehoboam; and of Paul when he appealed to Caesar. [a]

It was certainly not through cowardice that they fled. God forbid! The flight they submitted to was rather a struggle and a war against death. For with wise caution they guarded against two things. They would not offer themselves up without reason, for that would have been to kill themselves and become guilty of death, and to break the saying of the Lord, “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” Nor would they willingly lay themselves open to the reproach of negligence, as though they were unmoved by the troubles they met in their flight, which brought with them sufferings greater and more terrible than death. For the one who dies stops suffering, but the one who flees, while he daily expects the attacks of his enemies, counts death the lighter thing. So those who finished their course in their flight did not perish dishonorably, but gained the glory of martyrdom as well as the others. That is why Job was counted a man of mighty courage: he endured to go on living under so many and such severe sufferings, which he would not have felt if he had come to his end.

So the blessed fathers too ordered their conduct this way. They showed no cowardice in fleeing from the persecutor, but rather displayed their courage of soul by shutting themselves up in cramped and dark places and living a hard life. Yet they did not wish to avoid the time of death when it arrived. Their concern was neither to shrink from it when it came, nor to forestall the sentence Providence had determined, nor to resist his arrangement, for which they knew they were being kept. They did not want to act hastily and so become the cause of terror to themselves. For it is written, “He who is hasty with his lips will bring terror on himself.”