TERTULLIAN'S ADDRESS TO MARTYRS PART IV

IV. We know from the Lord’s teaching that the flesh is weak, the spirit ready (Matt. xxvi. 41). Let us not therefore flatter ourselves, because the Lord allowed that the flesh. is weak. For He said first that the spirit was ready because He wished to show which ought to be subject to the other; namely, that the flesh should be subservient to the spirit, the weaker to the stronger, so that itself also may receive strength from it. Let the spirit confer with the flesh about the salvation of both, not now thinking of the hardships of the prisOn, but of the actual contest and battle. The flesh perhaps will fear the heavy sword and the uplifted cross,9 and the fury of the beasts and the extremest punishment of fire and all the ingenious devices of the torturer. But against all this, let the spirit place before itself and the flesh the fact that these tortures, although bitter, have yet been endured by many without complaint, nay, have even been |p58 willingly sought after, for the sake of fame and glory, and that, not only by men but also by women, so that you too, blessed women, may answer for your own sex. It would be a long tale were I to enumerate one by one those who have killed themselves with the sword; led to such an act by their own determination. Of women there is a ready example in the violated Lucretia, who stabbed herself in the sight of her relatives to win praise for her chastity. Mucius burnt his own right hand on the altar that fame might preserve the memory of his deed. Philosophers have achieved less—Heraclitus, who smeared himself with ox-dung, and burnt himself to death; Empedocles, who leaped down into the fires of Mount Ætna; Peregrinus, who no long time ago threw himself upon a funeral pyre—since, even women have despised the flames: Dido, for instance, lest she should be com­pelled to wed again, after the loss of her dearly beloved husband; and Hasdrubal’s wife, who, when Karthage was already burning, saw her husband a suppliant before Scipio, and flew with her children into the flames of her native city. Regulus, a general of the Romans, when captured by the Karthaginians, refused to allow his single self to be exchanged for many Karthaginian prisoners, but preferred to be restored to the enemy; and then, crammed into a kind of chest, was pierced all over with nails driven in from the outside, and experienced so many crucifixions. A woman has even voluntarily desired the wild beasts and even asps—reptiles surely more dreadful than bull or bear—which Cleopatra applied to herself lest she should fall into the hands of her enemy. But, you |p59 will say, the fear of death is not so great as that of tortures. Indeed? then the Athenian harlot10 succumbed to the executioner !—she who, being privy to a conspiracy, was tortured by the tyrant, yet refused to betray the conspirators, and in the end spat out her tongue, which she had bitten off, in the tyrant’s face, so that he might know that tortures would avail nothing in her case, though he might go on to the bitter end. Moreover, that highest solemnity to-day amongst the Lacedemonians, the flagellation, is no secret; for in that religious ceremony all the noble youths are scourged before the altar, their parents and relatives standing by and encouraging them to endure to the end. For honour and glory will be reckoned with greater reason if the soul rather than the body yield itself to stripes. Consequently, if it is allowed to earthly glory to have such sway over the powers of body and mind so that the sword and fire, and the cross, and beasts and tortures are despised for the sake of the reward of human praise, I am able to assert that those sufferings of yours which lead to the attain­ment of celestial glory and divine reward are unworthy of mention. Is the glass bead of such value? How much more the true pearl! Who, then, is not bound to undergo most willingly as much for the real as others do for the false?