Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] "On the contrary," he says, "because in fleeing from city to city he was fulfilling a commandment." So some one has chosen to argue — himself a fugitive too — and those who likewise refuse to understand the sense of that pronouncement of the Lord's, so as to use it as a cover for their own timidity, though it had its own persons, its own times, its own reasons. "When they persecute you," he says, "in one city, flee to another." [2] We maintain that this belongs properly to the person of the apostles, and to their time and their circumstances, as the sense that follows will prove — a sense that fits none but the apostles: "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans, but go instead to the sheep of the house of Israel who have wandered off." [3] But for us the way of the Gentiles lies open — on it, indeed, we were found, and along it we walk to the end — and no city is excepted, since we preach through the whole world; nor is any special charge for Israel laid on us outside the general rule, except insofar as we must preach to all nations alike. [4] Even if we are seized, we shall not be brought before their councils nor scourged in their synagogues, but handed over, of course, to Roman powers and tribunals. [5] So then, the condition of the apostles required even the command to flee, since the preaching had first to be carried to Israel's own wandering sheep. In order, then, that the preaching might be received by those among whom it had first to be accomplished — so that the children might eat the bread before the dogs — for that reason he commanded them to flee for a time, not so as to dodge the danger under the name of persecution itself (indeed he was foretelling that they would suffer persecutions and teaching them to endure them), but for the sake of the progress of the announcement, lest, once they were crushed at the very outset, the spreading of the gospel too should perish with them. For it was not as though they were to slip quietly away into some other city, but rather as men who were to proclaim everywhere, and therefore to undergo persecutions everywhere, until they had filled up their teaching. [6] In short: "You will not have gone through all the cities of Israel," he says — so entirely was the command to flee confined within the borders of Judea. But no such Judean limitation touches our preaching, now that the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon all flesh. [7] And so Paul and the apostles themselves, mindful of the Lord's command, bore witness to it before Israel, whom by then they had filled with their teaching: "It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; but since you have thrust it away and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, see, we turn to the nations." And from then on, having turned, just as their forerunners had ordained, they went both into the way of the nations and into the cities of the Samaritans, so that their voice would carry out across the whole earth, their utterances reaching earth's farthest edges. [8] If, then, the exception of the way of the nations and the entering of the cities of the Samaritans has ceased, why should not the command to flee, issued at the same time, have ceased as well? In fact, from the moment Israel had had its fill and the apostles crossed over to the nations, they neither fled from city to city nor hesitated to suffer. [9] Yet Paul, who had once let himself be let down over a wall to be delivered from a persecution belonging to that earlier time under command, this same Paul, now at the close of his office and the fulfillment of the command, when his disciples begged him earnestly not to commit himself to Jerusalem to suffer what Agabus had prophesied, did not yield to their anxiety, but on the contrary said: "What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to suffer chains, but even to die at Jerusalem on behalf of the name that belongs to my Lord Jesus Christ." [10] And so they all said: "The Lord's will be done." And what was the Lord's will? Certainly not, by then, to flee the persecution. Yet they could just as well have set before him the Lord's earlier will, by which he had commanded flight — to those who would rather have chosen to avoid persecuting him. [11] Therefore, since even under the apostles themselves the command to flee was temporary, like the rest of his prescriptions, it cannot go on standing in force for us once it had ceased for our teachers — even if it had not been issued to them specifically; or else, if the Lord meant it to go on standing forever, then the apostles were at fault for not taking care to flee to the very end.
VII.