To Fortunatus: Exhortation to Martyrdom 0.1–10

You have asked, dearest Fortunatus, that, since the weight of afflictions and persecutions presses upon us, and since at the end and consummation of the world the hostile time of Antichrist has already begun to draw near, I should compose from the divine Scriptures exhortations for preparing and strengthening the minds of the brothers, with which I might rouse the soldiers of Christ for the spiritual and heavenly contest. I had to comply with so necessary a wish, so that, as far as our modest ability suffices, aided by divine inspiration, some arms, as it were, and defenses might be brought out from the Lord's precepts for the brothers who are about to fight. For it is too little that we rouse the people of God with the trumpet of our voice unless we strengthen the faith of believers, and their courage dedicated and devoted to God, by the divine reading.

What better fits our care and concern than to prepare by constant exhortations the people divinely entrusted to us, an army set in the heavenly camp, against the weapons and darts of the devil? For no one can be a fit soldier for war who has not first been trained on the drill field; nor will he who seeks to win the athlete's crown be crowned in the stadium unless he first practices the use and skill of his strength. The adversary with whom we wage battle is old, the enemy ancient. Six thousand years are now almost completed since the devil first attacked man. By long experience itself he has learned every kind of temptation and every art and snare for throwing us down. If he finds the soldier of Christ unprepared, if untrained, if not watchful with an anxious and whole heart, he surrounds him in his ignorance, deceives him in his carelessness, cheats him in his inexperience. But if anyone, keeping the Lord's precepts and clinging bravely to Christ, stands against him, he must be conquered, for Christ, whom we confess, is unconquered.

And so as not to draw my discourse out at length, dearest brother, and weary the hearer or reader with the abundance of a fuller style, I have made a compendium: I have set out headings which everyone ought to know and hold, and under them I have joined passages of the Lord's words, and I have confirmed what I set out by the authority of the divine reading, so that I may seem not so much to have sent you a treatise of my own as to have supplied material to those who compose treatises. This serves each person with greater usefulness. For if I were to give a garment already made and finished, it would be my garment for another to use, and perhaps, made for someone else, it would be found to fit poorly the build of his stature and body. But as it is, I have sent the very wool and purple from the Lamb through whom we have been redeemed and given life; when you receive it, you will make yourself a tunic as you wish, and you will rejoice the more in it as your own, your personal garment. You will also show what we have sent to others, so that they too may make it up as they judge best, and so that all, their old nakedness covered, may wear the garments of Christ, clothed with the sanctification of heavenly grace.

I have also foreseen this useful and wholesome plan, dearest brother, in an exhortation so necessary, one that is to make martyrs: that the delays of our own words must be cut away, and the circuits of human speech withdrawn, and only those things set down which God speaks, by which Christ exhorts his servants to martyrdom. The divine precepts themselves must be supplied like weapons to those who fight. Let them be the exhortations of the military trumpet; let them be the battle signal for the fighters. From them let ears be roused, from them let minds be instructed, from them let the strength of both soul and body be made firm for every endurance of suffering. Let us only, who by the Lord's permission have given believers the first baptism, prepare each one for the other also, instilling and teaching that this baptism is greater in grace, loftier in power, more precious in honor: a baptism in which angels baptize, a baptism in which God and his Christ exult, a baptism after which no one sins any more, a baptism that completes the growth of our faith, a baptism that joins us to God at once as we depart from the world. In the baptism of water the remission of sins is received; in the baptism of blood, the crown of virtues. This is a thing to be embraced and desired and sought with all the prayers of our petitions, so that we who have been servants of God may also be his friends.

In exhorting and preparing our brothers, then, and arming them with firmness of courage and faith for proclaiming their confession of the Lord and for the battle of persecution and suffering, it must be said in the first place: I. That idols which man makes for himself are not gods (for things that are made are not greater than their maker and fashioner, nor can they protect and save anyone, since they themselves perish from their temples unless they are saved by man); and that neither are the elements to be worshiped, which serve man according to the arrangement and command of God. II. When the idols have been destroyed and the nature of the elements shown, it must be shown that God alone is to be worshiped. III. Then must be added what threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols. IV. Further, it must be taught that God does not readily pardon idolaters. V. And that God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death. VI. After this must be joined that, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ, because he put nothing before us, and for our sake he preferred evil things to good, poverty to riches, servitude to lordship, death to immortality; whereas we in our sufferings are to prefer the riches and delights of paradise to the world's poverty, eternal lordship and kingdom to temporary servitude, immortality to death, God and Christ to the devil and Antichrist. VII. It must also be impressed that those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world must not, if they begin to be in straits and afflictions, wish to go back again to the world and lose what they have escaped. VIII. That rather one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown. IX. That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved. X. That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack. XI. And lest anyone be terrified and disturbed at the afflictions and persecutions we suffer in this world, it must be proved that it was foretold that the world would hate us and would stir up persecutions against us, so that from the very fact that these things happen the faithfulness of the divine promise may be evident in the rewards and prizes that will follow afterwards; and that nothing new happens to Christians, since from the beginning of the world the good have labored and the righteous have been oppressed and killed by the unrighteous. XII. In the last part must be set out what hope and what reward await the righteous and the martyrs after the conflicts and sufferings of this time. XIII. And that we shall receive more in the recompense for suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself.

That idols are not gods, and that the elements are not to be worshiped in place of gods.

In Psalm 134: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have a mouth and do not speak; they have eyes and do not see; they have ears and do not hear; for there is no breath in their mouth. Let all who make them be like them.” Likewise in the Wisdom of Solomon: “They reckoned all the idols of the nations to be gods, which have neither the use of eyes for seeing, nor nostrils for drawing breath, nor ears for hearing, nor fingers on their hands for handling, and their feet too are slow to walk. For a man made them, and one who has borrowed his breath fashioned them. But no man can fashion a god like himself; for, being mortal, he fashions a dead thing with lawless hands. He himself is better than the things he worships, since he has lived, but they never.” Likewise in Exodus: “You shall not make for yourself an idol nor the likeness of anything.” Likewise in Solomon: “Nor, while paying heed to the works, did they recognize who was the craftsman; but they thought either fire or wind or swift air or the circle of the stars or the great water or the sun or the moon to be gods. If they supposed these to be gods because of their beauty, let them know how much more beautiful than these is their Lord; or if they marveled at their powers and works, let them understand from them that he who established these mighty things is mightier than they.”

That God alone is to be worshiped.

As it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” Likewise there: “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal; and there is none who can rescue from my hands.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim over the earth to all nations and tribes and tongues and peoples, saying with a loud voice: Fear God rather, and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them.” So also the Lord in the Gospel recalls the first and second commandment, saying: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord,” and: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hangs the whole Law and the Prophets.” And again: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only and true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

What threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols.

In Exodus: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, unless to the Lord alone.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “They sacrificed to demons and not to God.” Likewise in Isaiah: “They worshiped what their fingers had made; and man was bowed down and the man was humbled, and I will not forgive them.” And again: “To them you have poured out drink offerings, and to them you have laid sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things? says the Lord.” Likewise in Jeremiah: “Do not walk after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, and do not provoke me with the works of your hands to destroy you.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives the mark on his forehead and on his hand, he too shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his wrath, and shall be punished with fire and sulfur before the eyes of the holy angels and before the eyes of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torments shall go up for ever and ever; and they shall have no rest day or night, whoever worship the beast and its image.”

That God does not readily pardon idolaters.

Moses in Exodus prays for the people and does not obtain it: “I pray you, Lord,” he says, “this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold and silver. And now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses: “If anyone has sinned before me, I will blot him out of my book.” Likewise, when Jeremiah was interceding for the people, the Lord speaks to him, saying: “And you, do not pray for this people and do not make request for them in entreaty and prayer, for I will not hear in the time when they call on me, in the time of their affliction.” Ezekiel too proclaims this same anger of God against those who sin against God: “And the word of the Lord came to me,” he says, “saying: Son of man, whatever land sins against me so as to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand upon it and crush its staff of bread and send famine into it and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men were in its midst, Noah and Daniel and Job, they will not deliver sons or daughters; they alone will be saved.” Likewise in the first book of Kingdoms: “If a man sins by offending against a man, they will pray to the Lord for him; but if a man sins against God, who will pray for him?”

That God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death.

In Deuteronomy: “But if your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife who is in your bosom, or your friend who is equal to your own soul, asks you secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, the gods of the nations, you shall not consent to him and you shall not listen to him, and your eye shall not spare him, and you shall not conceal him; you shall surely denounce him. Your hand shall be first upon him to kill him, and the hand of all the people afterwards; and they shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God.” And again the Lord speaks and says that not even a city is to be spared, even if the whole of it has consented to idolatry: “Or if you hear in one of the cities which the Lord your God will give you to dwell in, people saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, you shall surely kill all who are in the city with the slaughter of the sword, and you shall burn the city with fire, and it shall be without inhabitant for ever. It shall not be rebuilt even now, so that the Lord may turn from the indignation of his wrath. And he will give you mercy and have mercy on you and multiply you, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God and observe his commandments.” Mindful of this command and its force, Mattathias killed the man who had come up to the altar to sacrifice. But if these commands concerning the worship of God and the scorning of idols were kept before the coming of Christ, how much more must they be kept after the coming of Christ, since he at his coming exhorted us not by words only but also by deeds, suffering after every injury and insult and being crucified as well, to teach us by his example to suffer and to die, so that there may be no excuse for a man who does not suffer for himself when he suffered for us; and since he suffered for the sins of others, much more ought each one to suffer for his own sins. And therefore he threatens in the Gospel and says: “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “For if we die with him,” he says, “we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny, he too will deny us.” Likewise John: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; whoever confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father.” Hence the Lord exhorts and strengthens us to despise death, saying: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can kill both soul and body in Gehenna.” And again: “Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

That, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ.

In the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not my disciple.” As it is written in Deuteronomy: “Those who say to father and mother, I do not know you, and did not acknowledge their own children, these have kept your precepts and observed your covenant.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “Who shall separate us,” he says, “from the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we overcome for the sake of him who loved us.” And again: “You are not your own, for you were bought at a great price. Glorify and carry God in your body.” And again: “He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.”

That those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world ought not to return to the world again, lest they lose what they have escaped.

In Exodus the Jewish people, prefigured as a shadow and image of us, when with God as protector and avenger they had escaped the harshest slavery of Pharaoh and Egypt, that is, of the devil and the world, were faithless and ungrateful toward God and muttered against Moses, looking back at the hardships of the desert and the toil and not understanding the divine benefits of freedom and salvation; and they sought to return to the slavery of Egypt, that is, of the world, from which they had been set free, when rather they ought to have trusted and believed in God, since he who frees his people from the devil and the world protects them once freed. “What is this you have done to us,” they say, “in bringing us out of Egypt? It was better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in this wilderness.” And Moses said to the people: “Trust; stand and see the salvation that is from the Lord, which he will work for us today. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be silent.” Warning us of this in his Gospel, that we should not return again to the devil and the world, which we have renounced and from which we have escaped, the Lord says: “No one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” And again: “And let him who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife.” And lest anyone be held back from following Christ by any desire for possessions or by fondness for his own family, he added and says: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

That one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown.

In Chronicles: “The Lord is with you as long as you are with him; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” Likewise in Ezekiel: “The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him on whatever day he goes astray.” Likewise in the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “He who perseveres to the end, he will be saved.” And again: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Forewarning us also that we must always be ready and stand firmly equipped and girded, he added and says: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you like men waiting for their master, when he comes from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds watching when he comes.” Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, that our faith may advance and grow and reach the summit, exhorts and says: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the palm? So run that you may win. And they run to receive a perishable crown, but you an imperishable.” And again: “No one serving as a soldier of God entangles himself in worldly affairs, that he may please him who approved him. And even if one contends, he will not be crowned unless he has fought lawfully.” And again: “I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God; and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewal of your mind, to prove what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God.” And again: “We are sons of God; and if sons, also heirs, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” And in the Apocalypse the exhortation of the divine preaching says the same thing: “Hold fast what you have, lest another take your crown.” This example of persevering and holding on is set forth in Exodus, where Moses, to overcome Amalek, who bore the figure of the devil, raised his outstretched hands in the sign and sacrament of the cross, and could not conquer the adversary until he persevered steadily in the sign with his hands continually raised. “And it came to pass,” it says, “when Moses raised his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he had let his hands down, Amalek grew strong. And they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur held up his hands on this side and that; and the hands of Moses became steady until the setting of the sun. And Joshua put Amalek and all his people to flight. And the Lord said to Moses: Write this, that it may be a memorial in a book, and speak it into the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved.

In Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God tests you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” And again in Solomon: “The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of affliction proves righteous men.” Paul too testifies to the same and says: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And Peter in his letter writes and says: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that befalls you, which comes to test you, and do not fall away, as though something new were happening to you. But as often as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice in all things, that at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice and exult. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the name of the majesty and power of the Lord rests on you; by them indeed it is blasphemed, but by us it is honored.”

That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack.

John proves it in his letter, saying: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in this world.” Likewise in Psalm 117: “I will not fear what man may do to me; the Lord is my helper.” And again: “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of our God. They were bound by the feet and fell, but we have risen and stand upright.” And the Holy Spirit, teaching and showing still more strongly that the camp of the devil is not to be feared, and that if the enemy declares war on us our hope rests rather in that very war, and that such a conflict brings the righteous to the reward of the divine throne and of eternal salvation, writes and says in Psalm 26: “Though a camp be arrayed against me, my heart will not fear; and though war rise up against me, in it I hope. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Likewise in Exodus the divine Scripture declares that we are rather multiplied and increased by afflictions, saying: “And the more they oppressed them, the more numerous they became and the stronger they grew.” And in the Apocalypse divine protection is promised in our sufferings: “Fear none of the things,” it says, “that you are about to suffer.” Nor does anyone else promise us safety and protection but he who also speaks through the prophet Isaiah, saying: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you and called you by your name; you are mine. And if you pass through water, I am with you, and the rivers shall not overwhelm you; and if you pass through fire, you will not be burned, the flame will not burn you; for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who saves you.” He also promises in the Gospel that divine help will not fail the servants of God in persecutions, saying: “But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And again: “Settle it in your hearts not to prepare your defense beforehand; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which they will not be able to resist.” As in Exodus he speaks to Moses when he hesitated and trembled to go to the people, saying: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God? And now go, and I will open your mouth and instruct you in what you are to say.” Nor is it hard for God to open the mouth of a man devoted to him and to breathe into his confessor steadfastness and boldness of speech, since in Numbers he even made a donkey speak against the prophet Balaam. Therefore in persecutions let no one think what danger the devil brings, but rather consider what help God gives; let not human hostility make the mind totter, but let divine protection strengthen faith, since each one, according to the Lord's promises and the merits of his faith, receives as much of God's help as he believes he receives; and there is nothing the Almighty cannot grant, unless the failing faith of the receiver gives way.