Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It remains to consider whether antiquity happens to have had a sacrament of its own, and to review Christian novelty as though it belonged to some other God, and so too to some rival discipline — whose wisdom would not know how to have its own children slaughtered. Clearly, then, in Christ there is a different divinity, a different will, a different school — one that commanded martyrdoms not to be understood at all, or to be understood otherwise; one that urges no one toward such a crisis; one that promises nothing to those who suffer for it, because it does not want them to suffer — and this though, laying down the very first principles of his precepts, he says: "Happy are those hounded on account of what is right, since the reign of the heavens belongs to them"? [2] That, indeed, applies to everyone without qualification; but next, specifically to the apostles themselves: "Happy shall you be whenever men heap scorn on you and hound you and utter against you every kind of lie for my sake; be joyful and exult, since your recompense stands great in the heavens — for their forebears used their prophets the same way" — so that he was also prophesying that they themselves would be killed, after the pattern of the prophets. [3] And even if he had aimed this whole conditional persecution at the apostles alone at that time, still, through them, along with the whole sacrament, along with the propagation of the Name, along with the transmission of the Holy Spirit, the discipline of undergoing persecution must have looked ahead to us too, as heirs among the disciples and offshoots of the apostolic seed. [4] For again, when he addresses the apostles: "Look, I am sending you out like lambs among ravening wolves," and "Watch out for men, since they will deliver you up to their councils and flog you within their synagogues, and you will be haled before rulers and monarchs on my account, as a witness against them and the nations" and so on — but then he adds: "Brother will hand over brother to death, and father his child, and children will rise up against their parents and put them to death" — plainly he pronounced this iniquity against others beyond the apostles, a thing we do not find happening to the apostles. [5] For none of them suffered betrayal at the hand of a brother or a father — a text most of our own people nowadays go on to apply back to the apostles: "And every man will hold you in hatred because of my very name." How much the more, then, must this reach us, seeing we stand to be handed over even by the ones who bore us? So by this very interweaving — now addressing the apostles, now everyone — he pours out one and the same outcome of the Name upon all in whom that Name has taken up residence, together with the law of hatred against it. "But he who endures to the end, he shall be saved." Endures what, if not persecution, betrayal, execution? For to endure to the end is nothing other than to suffer the end. [6] And so: "The disciple is not above the master," he immediately continues, "nor the servant above his lord" — because, since the Master and Lord himself underwent persecution and betrayal and execution, all the more must servants and disciples weigh the same fate, lest they seem to be exempted from that iniquity as though they were somehow superior — when this very thing ought to be glory enough for them: to be leveled with the trials borne by their own Master and Lord. And building toward the endurance of these things, he warns that they should not fear those who can kill only the body but have no power to destroy the soul, but should instead set apart their fear for the one who has the power to ruin soul together with body by casting both into hell. [7] Who, then, are these destroyers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings mentioned above — mere men, I take it? And who is the master of the soul, if not God alone? Who is this threatener with fire, if not the one without whose will not even a sparrow falls to the ground — that is, neither of the two substances of a human being, flesh or soul? For even the number of the hairs on our heads is recorded with him. [8] "Fear not, then," he adds further, "you are worth more than many sparrows" — promising that they will not fall to the ground "not without cause," that is, not without reward, if we choose rather to be killed by men than by God. "So then, every man who owns me in front of others, him will I likewise own in front of my Father, he who dwells above the skies; and whoever disowns me in front of others, him will I likewise disown in front of my Father above the skies." Here, I think, is a plain definition and rationale both of confession and of denial, even though the arrangement of the two differs. [9] Whoever confesses himself a Christian bears witness that he belongs to Christ; and whoever belongs to Christ must needs be in Christ. If he stands within Christ, then surely his very act of naming himself a Christian is itself a confession made in Christ — for the one could not hold true apart from the other. Furthermore, in confessing in Christ he also confesses Christ, who is in him, since he himself is likewise in Christ, being a Christian. For if you name the day, you have thereby pointed to the thing that furnishes the day — the light — even though you have not named the light. So, even though he did not directly say "whoever has confessed me," the act of everyday confession is no different from the sense of the Lord's own pronouncement. [10] For what a man confesses himself to be — namely, a Christian — is also, through that very act, a confession of that by which he is one, namely, Christ. Likewise, whoever has denied himself a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ when he denies being a Christian; and by denying Christ in himself, in that he denies himself in Christ, he will also deny Christ. So too whoever denies in Christ will deny Christ, and whoever confesses in Christ will confess Christ. It would thus have sufficed for the Lord to have spoken only concerning confession. [11] For from the pattern of confession its opposite too — denial — would have been prejudged, namely, that the Lord answers denial with denial, in the same measure that he answers confession with confession. And therefore, since within the pattern of confession the condition of denial too is already understood, it is clear that his separate pronouncement on denial, phrased differently from that on confession, must refer to some other mode of denial — for he says "whoever denies me," not "whoever denies in me." [12] For he had foreseen that this force too would generally follow in the assault upon the Name: that one who had denied being a Christian would also be compelled, by blaspheming, to deny Christ himself as well. Just as, not long ago, in a certain contest fought — under compulsion, as though for an omen — against the faith of some, we shuddered at this very thing. So it will be idle to say: "Though I have refused the name Christian, Christ will not refuse me in turn, since it was not he whom I refused." [13] From that denial he will be held liable all the same, because in denying himself a Christian he denies Christ in himself, and so has denied Christ himself as well. But there is more — for he threatens shame with shame in return: "Whoever blushes on my account in front of others, of that one will I likewise blush before my Father above the skies." For he knew that denial is formed above all from shame, that the state of the mind settles first in the face, and that the wound to one's sense of shame comes before the wound to the body.