Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Love binds brothers together, lays the foundation of peace, and gives unity its tenacity and strength — greater even than hope and faith, going ahead of both good works and martyrdom, and abiding with us forever in the kingdom of heaven. Strip patience away from it, and it languishes, unable to endure; take from it the power to bear and to hold out, and it survives on no root or strength whatsoever. Hence when the apostle spoke of love, he tied to it forbearance and patience. Love, he says, is magnanimous, love is kind; it does not envy, is not puffed up, is not provoked, harbors no evil thought; it loves everything, believes everything, hopes for everything, bears with everything. By this he shows that love can persevere so tenaciously precisely because it has mastered the art of bearing all things. Elsewhere he writes: supporting one another in love, laboring earnestly to preserve oneness of spirit through the tie that binds peace together. He thus proved that neither unity nor peace can endure unless brothers uphold each other through mutual forbearance and safeguard, with patience as intermediary, the tie that concord depends on.
What then of refraining from oaths and curses, of not demanding back what was taken from you, of turning the other cheek to the one who struck you, of forgiving a brother who wrongs you not just seventy times seven but every offense without limit, of loving your enemies and praying for those who oppose and persecute you — could any of this be endured without the strength that patience and forbearance supply? We see it accomplished in Stephen: as the Jews were killing him with violence and stones, he begged not vengeance for himself but pardon for his murderers, saying, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Fittingly the first martyr of Christ, running ahead of those martyrs who would follow him to a glorious death, proclaimed not only the Lord's suffering in his preaching but also mirrored its gentle, long-suffering character in his own conduct. How, then, could rage, quarreling, or rivalry — none of which belong in a Christian — find any place here? Let patience occupy the heart, and such things can gain no foothold there; should they try to force entry, they are swiftly driven out and depart, leaving the heart a peaceful dwelling where the God of peace loves to reside. So too the apostle admonishes and instructs us: do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed until the day you are redeemed; put away from yourselves every trace of bitterness, wrath, indignation, clamor, and blasphemy. For once a Christian has escaped the fury and fleshly turmoil as though from the tossing of the sea, and has begun to grow calm and mild within the harbor of Christ, no room remains in his breast for either anger or strife, since it is not permitted him to return evil for evil, nor even to hate.
Patience is equally needed for the flesh's assorted troubles and for the body's frequent, punishing torments, under which humankind is worn down and shaken every day. When that command was first broken, bodily soundness departed together with immortality, and weakness arrived along with death; soundness cannot return until immortality itself is restored, so we are bound to wrestle continually against this frailty and weakness of the flesh — a contest sustainable only through the strength patience supplies. To test and prove us, assorted pains are inflicted and manifold trials imposed: loss of property, the heat of fevers, the agony of wounds, the death of loved ones. Nothing distinguishes the unjust from the just so clearly as this — in hardship the unjust grumbles and blasphemes out of impatience, while the just is proved through patience, just as it is written: in grief be patient, and in your humbling hold on to patience, for fire is what tests gold and silver.
So Job was tried and proved, lifted to the very pinnacle of praise for the virtue of patience. What great weapons the devil hurled at him, what torments he mounted against him! He was struck with the loss of his household goods, burdened with the death of his many children: a man rich in property and a father blessed with children, in an instant neither lord nor father any longer. Next came ravaging sores, and a gnawing plague of worms consumed his wasting, festering limbs. Determined to leave no torment Job had failed to undergo, the devil turned even his wife into a weapon, resorting to that ancient trick of his malice, as if a woman could once again be his means of deceiving and beguiling everyone, just as she had been at the beginning. Yet none of these grave and repeated onslaughts broke Job; instead, amid those hardships and pressures, God's blessing was proclaimed through his triumphant patience. Tobit likewise, after the splendid deeds of his righteousness and mercy, was tested through the loss of his sight; and the patience with which he bore his blindness earned him, in that same measure, great praise from God for his patience.
So that the good of patience may shine more brightly still, dearest brothers, let us weigh, by contrast, the harm impatience brings. Just as patience belongs to Christ as a good, so impatience, conversely, belongs to the devil as an evil; and just as someone in whom Christ lives and remains proves to be patient, so whoever's mind the devil's wickedness has seized always turns out impatient. Let us look back to the very first beginnings. The devil could not bear, with any patience, that humanity had been formed after God's own likeness; this is what first destroyed him, and through it he brought ruin on others too. Adam, unable to patiently keep the heavenly command concerning the deadly food, fell into death, failing to guard, under patience's watch, the grace he had received from God. To murder his brother, Cain grew impatient over the favor shown to Abel's sacrifice and offering; and because Esau descended from greater things to lesser, impatience over the delay cost him his birthright. As for the Jewish people, faithless and thankless toward God's kindnesses — was not the very crime that first drove them from God one of impatience? Unable to endure the wait while Moses conversed with God, they dared to demand pagan idols, so that a bull's head and an earthen image might be named as guides for their journey; nor did that same impatience ever leave them, since, forever intolerant of instruction and divine guidance, they went so far as to kill their own prophets and every righteous man, rushing at last even to the cross and the Lord's blood. Impatience produces heretics within the church too, and, mimicking the Jews, drives those rebels against Christ's peace and love into hostile, furious hatreds. Not to catalogue every instance, whatever patience builds toward glory through its works, impatience utterly tears down into ruin.
So then, dearest brothers, now that we have carefully weighed both patience's benefits and impatience's harms, let us cling in full observance to the patience by which we remain in Christ and are able to reach God together with Christ. It is abundant and manifold, confined to no narrow limit and bound by no short border. The virtue of patience reaches wide; its richness and generosity, though springing from a single fountainhead, pour out through countless overflowing channels toward glory, and nothing in our conduct can advance toward the perfection of praise unless patience lends it the firmness needed to complete it. Patience is what commends us to God and keeps us safe: it calms anger, curbs the tongue, steers the mind; it keeps watch over peace, directs discipline; it crushes the surge of lust, holds down the swelling of pride, quenches the blaze of jealousy; it restrains the power of the wealthy and gives comfort to the poverty of the needy; among virgins it protects their blessed purity, among widows their hard-won chastity, and among the joined and married their undivided devotion. It makes people humble when things go well, strong when things go badly, gentle in the face of insult and injury. It teaches quick forgiveness toward those who wrong us, and, when we ourselves are at fault, long and earnest pleas for pardon. It defeats temptation, withstands persecution, brings suffering and martyrdom to their completion. It is patience that gives our faith's foundation its unshakeable strength, patience that lifts the growth of hope to ever greater heights. It steers our conduct so that we can hold to Christ's path as we make our way through his forbearance, and it enables us to go on as God's children as we take the Father's patience for our model.
I know too, dearest brothers, that a great many, worn down by the weight of the wrongs assailing them or grieving over those who rage and attack them, long for swift vengeance; and this too must be said before I close: set as we are amid the upheavals of this restless world and the persecutions raised against us by Jews, pagans, and heretics alike, we should wait patiently for the day of retribution and not rush toward avenging our own grief in querulous haste, for it stands written: wait for me, says the Lord, until the day I rise as witness, for my sentence falls upon the gathered nations, that I may summon kings to account and pour my anger out upon them. The Lord commands us to wait, and to bear the day of coming retribution with strong patience. He speaks likewise in the Apocalypse: do not put a seal on the words of this book's prophecy, for the moment draws near — let the one who persists in wrongdoing go on wronging, let the defiled stay defiled, but let the righteous act still more righteously, and the holy grow still more holy. See, I am coming without delay, bringing my payment with me, to give back to each according to what he has done. Hence even the martyrs, crying out and hastening in the outburst of their grief toward their own vindication, are told to wait still longer and to lend patience until the appointed times run their course and the full company of martyrs is complete. And when, it says, he had broken open the fifth mark, I saw beneath God's altar the souls of those killed for God's message and their witness to it, and they called out in a great voice: how long, holy and true Master, before you judge and repay our blood upon those living on the earth? Each of them was given a white garment and told to rest a short while longer, until the full number of their companions and brothers was reached — those who would later be killed just as they had been.
When the righteous blood's divine retribution will arrive is declared through the prophet Malachi, the Holy Spirit saying: behold, the Lord's day comes ablaze like a furnace, and every outsider and every wrongdoer will become straw for it, and the coming day will set them alight, says the Lord. We find the same thing in the psalms, where the arrival of God as judge is foretold, one to be revered for the grandeur of his scrutiny: our God will appear openly, and he will not stay quiet. Fire will blaze ahead of him, and a violent storm will swirl around him on every side. He will call the sky above and the ground below to witness, so that he can set his people apart. Assemble to him those who are his righteous ones, those who bind themselves to his covenant through sacrifice. And the sky will proclaim his justice, since God himself is the judge. Isaiah foretells this same event, saying: behold, indeed, the Lord will arrive like fire, and his chariots like a whirlwind, to pay back wrath as vengeance. For they will be judged by the Lord's fire and wounded by his sword. And again: the Lord God of the heavenly armies will march out and smash war to pieces. He will stir up conflict and shout defiance at his enemies with power: I have stayed silent — will I stay silent forever?
But who is this, who says he has already kept quiet and will not stay quiet forever? It is surely he who, led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, opened not his mouth. It is he who raised no outcry, whose voice went unheard in the public squares. It is he who neither defied nor talked back, offering his back to the whips and his cheeks to the blows, never turning his face aside from the disgrace of being spat upon. It is he who, standing accused before the priests and elders, said nothing at all, so that Pilate marveled at the deep silence he kept. This is the one who, having stayed silent through his suffering, will afterward refuse to stay silent when he takes revenge. This is our God — meaning not the god worshiped by everyone, but the God of those who believe and trust him — who, though he will not stay quiet when he appears openly at his second coming, was hidden in lowliness at his first. For having once come concealed in humility, he will now come manifest in power.
Let us wait for this one, dearest brothers — our judge and avenger, who together with his people, the church, will avenge the whole company of the righteous, all the way back to the world's first beginning. Whoever is far too eager and in too great a hurry to see his own case avenged should remember that the one who avenges has not yet had his own cause avenged either. [God the Father commanded that his Son be worshiped, and the apostle Paul, remembering that divine command, states it in these words: God raised him up and gave him a name above every other name, so that at Jesus's name every knee would bend — in heaven, on earth, and beneath it. And] in the Apocalypse the angel resists John, who wanted to worship him, saying: see that you do not do that, for I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers; worship the Lord Jesus instead. What a Lord Jesus is, and how vast his patience — worshiped as he is in the heavens, and still not yet avenged here on earth! Let us dwell on his patience, dearest brothers, amid our own persecutions and sufferings. Let us give his coming the full deference that waiting requires, and let us not, mere servants that we are, rush ahead of our Lord in irreverent, shameless haste to be vindicated. Instead let us press forward and labor, keeping watch with our whole heart, standing firm through every trial, and holding to the Lord's commands, so that when that day of wrath and retribution arrives, we will be honored alongside the righteous and those who fear God, rather than punished together with the wicked and sinful.