That One Must Die for the Son of God 14–15

What do you say, most foolish king? Am I sent by you to these punishments, to a penalty of this kind, unjustly or justly? If unjustly, the cross will be yours who fix me to it, not mine whom you fix; if justly, the guilt of my crime, not your punishment, will begin to torment me. For the rest, as regards the end, it makes no difference whether I die by a nail or a lance through you, with hands bound behind my back or stretched out and spread, face down, bent, or upright and raised; it makes no difference whether you kill me resting in my bed or cut my neck with the sword as I stand or take off my head with an axe, whether you bind me to a stake or a cross, roast me with fire or bury me alive in the ground, throw me from a rock or sink me in the sea, whether, straining with great force, you knock my head far from me with one huge blow of the blade or play in my body, fixing it very slowly with an arrow subtler than all subtlety; though your cruelty make a hundred thousand forms of punishment, from all of them through this death you inflict only immortality will come to me. I cannot but rejoice when you heap such things on me, since I know that through these punishments every punishment can be ended. For those things too that are outside and that I think can happen through your savagery, I judge are no concern of mine: whether birds or dogs tear my body and cling to it, whether wild beasts, while you watch with those cruel eyes, leap on me, and, lying on the ground, I am reduced to the bones by claws and teeth, since after all this I am safe with God. For when you have consumed my body with such and so great forces of your bestial savagery, the maker of all things will remake and restore it, and indeed from corruption to eternal incorruption. But for you, our most unjust persecutor, you must know that punishment without end is coming, and do not think you will go unpunished, who have thought fit that the name of God's only Son should be put under your feet, to be trampled impiously and wickedly. The voice of the blessed apostle is: “That the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come,” which we shall possess if we choose to be killed by you rather than deny the Son of God. When that revelation and splendour shines over all of us who believe, his servants will be blessed for ever, placed in his kingdom; you, on the contrary, if you decide to persist in your faithlessness, will be in the outer darkness, as a deserter from the army and an assailant of the truth, who have done the will of the devil; whence you must, unless you draw yourself out of his snares, be tormented with him in unquenchable fire, as it is written. We say this not of ourselves; for of you transgressors, of you blasphemers who deny that the only Son of God is the true Son, and of all who refuse to believe in him, we read it set down in the most holy prophet: “Their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched.” You will always be, if you remain in this madness, in inextricable darkness. For as we who confess the Son of God, having obtained the rewards of immortality, will possess everlasting light, so you, his denier, must be carried off to the setting and to eternal darkness. You will be led by the way you hold, not, as the Arians lie to you, to heaven, but to the hated citadel of the world, to the left-hand road of the wicked and to impious Tartarus; for it is the way of that renegade whose whole will you, his attendant, are found to fulfil; it is, I say, the way of that serpent who turned you from the heavenly road to hold this way of injustice. This is that broad and spacious way of which the Lord tells in the Gospel, saying: “How broad and spacious is the way that leads to destruction.” If, then, you will not take thought for yourself, there can be no doubt that you are among those whom blessed John strikes, saying: “Already the axe is laid to the root of the trees; if any does not bear good fruit, it will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” You, then, and all who share with you, since you are most bitter trees bearing fruits of death, sinning as you do against God, unless you pass over to the heavenly road, will be cut down and, thrown headlong, will come sooner than it can be said into the deep abyss, whence you will without doubt see those whom you now unjustly persecute, as that rich man then saw Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the friends of God, and of all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. You will not escape those punishments, Constantius, unless you first believe that the only Son of God is the true Son of God, then, as has often been said, confess that he has always reigned and reigns with the Father, that is, without beginning and end, and pass over from the abominable gathering of the Arians to the catholic church, from death, that is, to life, and confess, as we catholics confess, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are a perfect Trinity and have one Godhead.

So you hate Christians and persecute them in every way, as though your malevolence could conquer those who, having entered the hard and rough road, though they are an object of contempt, mockery, and hatred to you, are willing throughout this present life to be poor, lowly, obscure, subject to your injuries, believing that by bearing for God all things known to be bitter they will come to those excellent rewards which the apostle tells are to be obtained, “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, which the Lord has prepared for those who love him.” Therefore, since God will give those things to those who love him, we who love God, when we displease you, when we are struck by you, trust that we please God. For your deadly sentence can have no authority to punish us for ever, since you who condemn are to be condemned, and indeed so that you pay everlasting penalties. But we whom you torture, tear, and kill, eternal joys will receive, a vast and immeasurable happiness will hold us, and everlasting blessedness will take us in. Know, then, that power has rather been given us by God, that while you think you condemn us we condemn you, while you presume you can punish us we punish you, Constantius the sacrilegious, since he whom you deny deigned to give us, his bishops, authority that what we bind on earth should be bound in heaven too. We endure temporal evils for God, so that we may obtain eternal goods; we flee the temporal things offered us by you as goods, because eternal evils follow those goods of yours. For this reason we have chosen to endure the present things you think harmful to us, so that, while the illustrious confession perseveres in us, we may deserve to obtain eternal and immortal goods; just as you, with those who, fearing you, are found to have obeyed your will and deserted God's commands, since they deigned to choose present goods rather and despise future ones, will fall into immortal evils. “For they are more desirable than gold and much precious stone, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For your servant keeps them; in keeping them there is great reward.” We know that this life which you labour so hard to take away is very short; we know that the goods and evils of this life are brief, but that the goods of that eternal life which we long to obtain are everlasting; for we know that for these brief goods in which you delight and which you enjoy, eternal evils will follow for you, and for us Christians, whom you despise and do not cease tearing with all the forces of your rule, eternal goods will follow for these brief evils. You have read that this is so in the hundred and twenty-fifth psalm: “The Lord has done great things with them”; and below: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves”; and in the hundred and twenty-eighth: “Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways. You shall eat the labours of your fruits; blessed are you, and it shall be well with you.” It will surely be well for ever with those who have not denied the Son of God, who will enjoy the labour of their holy confession; but for you, if you decide always to remain in this madness in which you now live, it will be ill for ever, receiving what Judas Iscariot now receives. Then we shall see you a suppliant, and yet all the lamentation of your repentance will be ineffective, since it is here that either everlasting life or death is gained. We want you to know that we always turn these things over in our heart, that we think of them day and night: your everlasting punishments and the eternal rewards and merits of God's servants; what he threatens as punishment to you, the denier and persecutor of his name, and what on the contrary he promises as everlasting glory to those who confess him.