TERTULLIAN'S ADDRESS TO MARTYRS PART V

V. I say no more of the motive of fame. Desire for notoriety too, and a certain mental disease, have ere this trampled on all these same contests of cruelty and torture. How many civilians does a desire for |p60 notoriety in arms bring to the sword! For the same reason they actually descend into the arena to the very wild beasts, and regard themselves as greatly improved in looks by their bites and scars. Persons, too, ere this, have hired themselves out to the flames to traverse a certain space in a burning tunic. Others have run the gauntlet of the beast-fighters’ whips11 with most enduring shoulders. These things, blessed ones, the Lord hath permitted to be in the world not without cause, but both for our encouragement now, and for our confusion in that day (2 Tim. iv. 8), if we through dread have avoided suffering for the truth’s sake unto salvation those things which others have eagerly entered upon for vanity’s sake unto perdition.