Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 49, 50 143
mob through injustice, make a boast of it. As if all the power
you have over us were not of our own free choice! Surely it
is only if I will it to be so, that I am a Christian; you -will
therefore condemn me, only if I -will to be condemned.; since
the power you have over me, you do not possess unless I will
it, your power therefore belongs to my -will, not to your own
authority. So also the mob vainly rejoices at the way in which
we are tormented; for in the same way the joy is ours, which
they claim for themselves, as we prefer to be condemned rather
than to fall away from God: while, on the contrary, those that
iate us ought to mourn, not to rejoice, because we have attained
that which we have chosen.
CHAP. L. 'So,' you say, 'why do you complain that we
persecute you, if you wish to suffer, since you ought to love
those by whose means you suffer what you -wish ?' Certainly
we -wish to suffer, but in the way in which a soldier also suffers
war. Nobody indeed willingly suffers, since both panic and
•danger are ine-vitably to be faced; and yet the man who complained
about battle fights -with all his strength and rejoices
when he conquers in battle, because he attains both glory and
booty. Our battle is that we are summoned before tribunals,
to fight there for the truth at the risk of our hves. But to
•obtain that for which one has struggled is a victory, a victory
that carries -with it both the glory, of pleasing God, and the
spoil, which is eternal hfe. But, you will say, we are convicted;
yes, but it is after we have won the day; therefore we have
•conquered, when we are killed. Thus we escape, when we are
•con-victed. You may call us now 'faggoted' and 'axle-men,'
because bound to a stake the length of half an axle we are
burned by the faggots surrounding us. This is the garb of our
-victory, this our garment decked with palm-leaves, such is the
•chariot in which we triumph. Naturally therefore we do not
please those whom we conquered; for that is the reason why
Tve are regarded as desperate and reckless men. But this desperation
and recklessness in your midst exalts the standard of
-virtue in the cause of glory and renown. Mucins gladly left his
right hand on the altar; ' Oh loftiness of spirit!' Empedocles
freely gave his whole body to Etna's fires at the instance of the
people of Catana: ' Oh what strength of mind!' We read of
some foundress or other of Carthage who sacrificed her second
marriage to the funeral-pyre: ' Oh noble encomium of chastity!'
Regulus, lest his own single life should be spared in exchange
for so many enemies, suffers tortures all over his body: 'What