Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Phileas on the Early Christian View of Martyrdom in 307CE

For they learned that our Lord Jesus Christ endured man’s estate on our behalf, that He might destroy all sin, and furnish us with the provision needful for our entrance into eternal life. “For He thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, taking upon Him the form of a servant: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross.” For which reason also these Christ-bearing martyrs sought zealously the greater gifts, and endured, some of them, every kind of pain and all the varied schemes of torture not merely once, but again and again; and though the guards showed their fury against them not only by threats in word, but also by deeds of violence, they did not swerve from their resolve, because perfect love casts out fear.
And to narrate their virtue and their manly endurance under every torment, what language would suffice? For as every one who chose was at liberty to abuse them, some beat them with wooden clubs, and others with rods, and others with scourges, and others again with thongs, and others with ropes. And the spectacle of these modes of torture had great variety in it, and exhibited vast malignity. For some had their hands bound behind them, and were suspended on the rack and had every limb in their body stretched with a certain kind of pulleys. Then after all this the torturers, according to their orders, lacerated with the sharp iron claws the whole body, not merely, as in the case of murderers, the sides only, but also the stomach and the knees and the cheeks. And others were hung up in mid-air, suspended by one hand from the portico, and their sufferings were fiercer than any other kind of agony by reason of the distention of their joints and limbs. …

While this state of matters went on, some died under their tortures, putting the adversary to shame by their constancy. And others were thrust half-dead into the prison, where in a few days, worn out with their agonies, they met their end. But the rest, getting sure recovery under the application of remedies, through time and their lengthened detention in prison, became more confident. And thus then, when they were commanded to make their choice between these alternatives, namely, either to put their hand to the unholy sacrifice and thus secure exemption from further trouble, and obtain from them their abominable sentence of absolution and liberation, or else to refuse to sacrifice, and thus expect the judgment of death to be executed on them, they never hesitated, but went cheerfully to death. For they knew the sentence declared for us of old by the Holy Scriptures: “He that sacrifices to other gods,” it is said, “shall be utterly destroyed.” And again, “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

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