Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 14–15

Plainly he advises the Romans to be subject to all authorities, because there is no authority except from God, and because it does not bear the sword without cause, and because it is God's minister, and also, he says, an avenger for wrath on him who does evil. For he had said before: “For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Do you want not to fear the authority? Do good, and you will receive praise from it. It is therefore God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, fear.” So he does not order you to be subject to the authorities as an occasion for evading martyrdom, but as an encouragement to live well, even out of regard for them, as helpers of justice, as ministers of the divine judgment, which here too judges the guilty in advance. Then he goes on to show how he wants you to be subject to the authorities, ordering you to render “tribute to whom tribute is due, customs to whom customs,” that is, the things that are Caesar's to Caesar and the things that are God's to God; but man belongs to God alone. Peter, of course, had likewise said that the king is indeed to be honoured, but so that the king is honoured when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from claiming divine honours; since father and mother too will be loved along with God, not put on a par with him. For the rest, it will not be lawful to love even one's own life above God.

Are the letters of the apostles also shifting, then? And are we, simple souls everywhere and doves only, glad to go astray? From a desire to live, I suppose. But suppose it is so, that the sense departs from the letters: yet that the apostles suffered, we know; that teaching is plain. I understand it simply by running through the Acts; I look for nothing more. The prisons there, the chains, the scourges, the stones and swords, the onslaughts of the Jews and the gatherings of the nations, the charges of the tribunes, the hearings before kings, the tribunals of proconsuls, and the name of Caesar need no interpreter. That Peter is beaten, that Stephen is overwhelmed, that James is slain like a victim, that Paul is dragged away: these things are written in their own blood. And if the heretic wants the credibility of a public record, the archives of the empire will speak, as the stones of Jerusalem would. We read the lives of the Caesars: Nero was the first to stain with blood the rising faith at Rome. Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross. Then Paul obtains the birthright of Roman citizenship, when he is born again there by the nobility of martyrdom. Wherever I read these things, I learn to suffer; nor does it matter to me which teachers of martyrdom I follow, the thoughts of the apostles or their deaths, except that I recognize their thoughts in their deaths too. For they would not have suffered anything which they had not first known must be suffered. When Agabus had prophesied Paul's chains, even with a gesture, the disciples, weeping and praying that he would not commit himself to Jerusalem, prayed in vain. For he, animated by what he had always taught, said, “Why are you weeping and saddening my heart? For I would wish not only to suffer chains in Jerusalem but also to die for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.” And so they gave way, saying, “The will of the Lord be done,” trusting, of course, that sufferings belong to God's will. For they had tried to hold him back not with the counsel of dissuasion but with that of love, as longing for the apostle, not as dissuading him from martyrdom. But if even then Prodicus or Valentinus had been standing by, suggesting that confession is not to be made on earth before men, all the less for fear that God should thirst for human blood, or that Christ should demand a return for his suffering, as though he too would obtain salvation from it, he would at once have heard from the servant of God what the devil heard from the Lord: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me. It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” And he ought to hear it now too, since long afterwards he has poured out these poisons, which will not easily harm any of the weak, unless someone has not drunk this potion of ours, out of faith, beforehand, or even afterwards.