49. In this place, a tear or two mingled with joy on account of what comes next in my theme, rises to my eyes, and, as it were, the battle, engagement, and strife, when river and sea come together and strive for mastery. For from what came last I am affected with the joy, but from what went before I am moved to the tears, not merely on account of the Christians and the contumely that befell them, whether moved by the Evil One, and permitted by God for our correction on account of our pride: but also on account of that man's soul, and those that were drawn away together with him into the same perdition.
50. Some people bewail their concluding plagues, and their torments in this world, because the present life is the only thing they believe in, and they cannot reach with their minds into the next, neither do they believe there is any account taken, or retribution in store for the things done in this life: but they lead the life of brute beasts, existing only upon what comes day by day, and the Present; measuring happiness by one thing alone, comfort in this world, and by its opposite, their disappointments, they estimate unhappiness. But it strikes me one should bewail them more for their torments in the next world, and the punishment that is stored up for the wicked: and yet I do not mention the greatest of |29 all, their being shut out from God: how vast an aggravation that is of their punishment!
51. How should I not weep for the unhappy man himself; for the persecutors more than for the persecuted? How not bewail yet more than those that went over to the side of evil, the man that carried them with him? But rather, to the one side, it was no hardship to suffer for Christ's sake, nay the most welcome thing possible, and that not only for the next world, but for the glory and freedom of speech that they bestowed upon themselves by means of their dangers: but to the other side, before the torments in store and threatened, came those they have suffered now: and better were it for them if they had been punished a longer time in this world, than to have been reserved for the yet juster punishments of the future state. Thus much for the sake of the law that forbids us to exult over the fall of an enemy, and demands sympathy from those that stand upright: and now it is time for me to return to the rest of my subject.
52. What was this so great zeal in a bad cause, what this love of impiety, what this running after destruction, whence became such an enemy of Christ this former disciple of Christ, he that was conversant in so many words of Truth, and who had preached and heard of the things that lead unto salvation? For no sooner had he inherited the empire than he publicly professed his impiety, as if ashamed of ever having been a Christian, and on this account bearing a grudge against the Christians in whose name he had participated: and the very first of his audacities, according to those who boast of his secret doings, into which details am I forced to enter! with unhallowed blood he rids himself of his baptism, setting up the initiation of abomination against the initiation |30 according to our rite, "a swine wallowing in the mire," according to the proverb; and he unconsecrates his hands by cleansing them from the bloodless sacrifice by means whereof we are made partakers with Christ, both in His sufferings and in His divinity. With victims and with sacrifices he inaugurates his palace, using evil counsellors for an evil reign.
53. But since I have mentioned victims and the man's superstition, or more properly unhappy condition , as regards such matters, I do not know whether I ought to commit to writing the miracle that was whispered about, or to disbelieve those that report it; for I myself am wavering in my judgment, and know not to which side to incline, inasmuch as things justly claiming to be believed are mixed up with others totally unworthy of credit. For that some sign from heaven should have been given to mark the novelty and impiety of the crime, is not to be reckoned among things incredible, but amongst such as have often happened before on the eve of very great changes; but that this sign was given in the manner reported is, to me at any rate, a matter of great astonishment, as well as to all such as wish and believe that things pure are manifested in a pure manner.
54. The story is, that when he was sacrificing, the entrails of the victim displayed the figure of the Cross enclosed within a garland, which sight struck the others with horror and dismay, and the conviction of our gaining the victory; but the instructor in impiety it filled with |31 confidence, as he pretended, as showing that we were circumscribed and hemmed in, for in this way did he extemporize the explanation of the Cross and the circle around it. Kow this is what excites my wonder, and if false, let the winds bear it away; but if true, then here is Balaam again prophesying and Samuel raised, or seems so, by the woman having a familiar spirit; and the devils, as they go out, confessing Jesus, and the Truth is shown forth by its adversaries. It may be that this was so ordered that he (Julian) should be checked in his impious course, for the Deity, ever inclining towards mercy, knows how to invent new and singular ways of salvation; but what is told by many, to believe also is not unreasonable.
55. He had descended into one of those sanctuaries, inaccessible to the multitude, and feared by all (as would that he had feared the way leading unto hell before proceeding to such extremities), in company with the man that was as bad as many sanctuaries put together, the wise in such things, or sophist more rightly to be called; for this is a kind of divination amongst them to confer with darkness, as it were, and the subterranean demons concerning future events: whether that they delight more in darkness, because they are darkness, and makers of the darkness of wickedness, or that they shun the contact of pious persons above ground, because through such they lose their power. But when, as my fine fellow proceeded in the rites, the frightful things assailed him, unearthly noises, as they say, and unpleasant odours, and fiery apparitions, and other fables and nonsense of the sort, being terror-struck at the novelty (for he was yet a novice in these matters), he flies for help to the Cross, his old remedy, and makes the sign thereof against his terrors, and makes an ally of Him whom he persecuted. And what follows is yet more horrible. |32
56. The Seal prevailed: the demons are worsted, the terrors are allayed. And then what follows? The wickedness revives, he takes courage again; the attempt is repeated, the same terrors return; again the sign of the Cross, and the vanishing demons; the neophyte in despair. The celebrant is at hand, explaining away the truth: "We have made ourselves abominable, we have not terrified them;" the worse side conquers, for these were his words: and by dint of talking he persuades, and by persuading he leads his disciple into the pit of perdition. And no wonder at it, for a vicious disposition is more ready to follow what is better than to be checked by what is better. Now what he said, did, or was deceived in, before he was sent up again, those may know who initiate and are initiated into these rites: at any rate he reascends full of the demon both in mind and in his actions, and indicating by the frenzy of his eyes whom he had been worshipping; if indeed he was not possessed with a demon from the very day on which he first took up with such bad ideas; but then, it became more conspicuous, in order that he might not have gone down there in vain, and become partaker with demons: a thing which those people call "enthusiasm," putting a handsome name upon it. Now his first actions were as related above.
57. But when the birth-pains were growing strong, and the magician was bursting forth to light, he became aware of something (either as being a man clever in wickedness and without a rival in impiety, or whether he was put up to it by those who anointed him for this end), that to carry on the war openly, and to preside in person over the impious attempt, besides being both rash and stupid, was in |33 all respects most damaging to his object: for that we should become the more obstinate when oppressed, and would oppose to tyranny our zeal in the cause of religion; inasmuch as generous spirits are wont to grow restive against compulsion, and after the manner of a flame fanned by the wind, to blaze up so much the more, the more violently they are blown down. And this he discovered not only from reflection, but had it proved to him by the history of the previous persecutions, which have only made the Christian more honoured instead of more feeble, strengthening him in piety, and like heated iron dipped in water, steeling him by means of his dangers; but if he carried on the war with artifice, and coloured violence with cajolery, and like covering round a hook with the bait, so covered his tyranny with wheedling, his enterprise would become at once ingenious and likely to be successful.
58. For, besides his other motives, he begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants, and for this reason he contrives now to use compulsion, and yet not seem to do so. That we might suffer, and yet not gain honour as though suffering for Christ's sake. What folly in the first place if he thought it would be unknown on whose account these dangers were run, and that he could hide the truth by his cunning devices! But the more he plotted against our honours so much the greater and more conspicuous was he making them.
59. In the second place, if he imagined that we braved danger out of love of glory, and not of the Truth, let the Empedocleses amongst those people play at such a game, and their Aristacuses, and their Empedotimuses, and their Trophoniuses, and a lot more of such unlucky folks |34 ----of whom the one, after making a God of himself, as he fancied, by means of the Sicilian crater, and sent himself up to a better termination of existence, was betrayed by that dear little sandal, vomited np by the fire, and was proclaimed not a god amongst men, but a man of vanity, no philosopher, nay, not even possessed of common intelligence; whilst those who out of the same itch and ambition buried themselves in certain inaccessible caves, and were afterwards detected, did not reap so much honour from the deception as they did disgrace from the discovery.
60. It is sweeter to Christians to suffer for religion's sake, even though they may be unknown to all men, than it is to others to enjoy glory combined with impiety; for we make small account of pleasing men, but our whole aim is at honour from God, or rather at something above this honour, we being true lovers of wisdom and lovers of God, craving for assimilation to the Good for the sake of the Good itself, not for the honours in store for us there. Eor this is the second class of the praiseworthy actions----the doing anything for reward, and on account of recompense: as the third is of those that shun wickedness out of fear of punishment. Such and of such character are our societies: and this is easy, for those who choose, to prove from many examples.
61. But he, as though he were about to deprive us of a very great honour (for the vulgar always judge of other people's feelings by their own), particularly persecuted this reputation of ours: neither did he, in common with former persecutors magnanimously proclaim his own impiety: nor does he (if not like a sovereign, at any rate like a tyrant), take his measures about us, in the way of one who thought it a fine thing to force impiety upon the nations of the world, and to tyrannize over a creed that |35 had vanquished all other creeds----he attacks our religion in a very rascally and ungenerous way, and introduces into his persecution the traps and snares concealed in arguments . Consequently, as power is divided into two parts---- persuasion and force (and what was yet more inhuman, he made over the exercise of his tyranny to mobs and to towns, of whom the frenzy is less open to blame on account of their want of reason, and inconsiderate impetuosity in everything; and this he did, not by means of a public order, but by not repressing their outbreaks, making their will and pleasure an unwritten law).
62. But the milder and more kingly part, the way of persuasion, he forsooth takes for himself; he did not, however, play this part quite perfectly, for neither is it in Nature that either the leopard should put off its spots or the Aethiopian his blackness, or the fire its burning, or the wicked one, being a murderer from the beginning, his hatred of man, or that he should put off that spiteful disposition with which he started against us. But as the story goes that the chameleon becomes all kinds of colours and readily assumes every hue except the white (for I pass by the Proteus of the fable, that Egyptian trickster), in the same way that man also was and became everything towards the Christians except clemency, and his humanity was very inhuman, and his persuasiveness compulsion, and his goodness an excuse for savageness: in order that he might appear to use force with good reason, when he had failed in persuading.
63. And this is evident from the fact that persuasion lasted but a short time, whilst much more prevalent was the argument of force that followed close upon it, in order that, as in the hunts, we might be caught either in the snares or by the pursuit; and one way at least should capture |36 us all. In the next place, he being thus disposed and prepared, uses another stratagem against us, with all possible security, though exceeding impiety; he (as is the custom with all persecutors), makes a beginning of his wickedness with those nearest to him and the company around his person; inasmuch as it was not possible to attack those outside if those within were not gained over, just as one cannot lead an army against the enemy which is mutinous towards its own general.
64. And for this reason he changes the imperial household, first selecting some individuals for death, and banishing others, not as being well disposed to the great emperor (their late master), but as being yet better disposed towards that Greater One, and thereby unserviceable to himself on both accounts. The soldiery he gains over partly by his own efforts, partly through their officers, an engine he considered most to be relied on----part of them being vanquished by the hope of promotion, part seduced by their own simplicity, and knowing no other law than the will of the emperor.
65. And still more than the army, did he make his own all that portion which he found already corrupt and unsound----time-servers then as they had been before, of whom he had enslaved one half and hoped to do the other, for he had not exterminated the whole body, |37 neither had the power who persecuted through his agency given him. so much strength against us, for there yet remained "over sixteen thousand that had not bent the knee unto Baal," neither had worshipped the Golden Image, neither had been bitten by the serpents, but had looked up to the Serpent that was hung upon a tree, and was destroyed by the sufferings of Christ. For there were many persons in office and in high station, whom there was a probability of overcoming whether by means of fear or of hope; many also of those in lower place, and only considerable through number, in attacking whom he was rebuffed like a warlike engine of unsuitable sort by some well-built wall. Nevertheless, that which escaped did not vex him so much as that which was caught encouraged him (as it naturally would a man so infatuated); and his wishes pictured to him what was hoped for as already in his possession.
66. Moreover he shows his audacity against the great symbol , which marches in procession along with the Cross, and leads the army, elevated on high, being both a solace to toil, and so named in the Roman language, and king (as one may express it) over all the other standards, whatever are adorned with imperial portraits, and expanded webs in divers dyes and pictures, and whatever, breathing through the fearful gaping mouths of dragons, raised on high on the tops of spears, and filled with wind throughout their hollow bodies, spotted over with woven scales, present to the eye a most agreeable and at the same time |38 terrible show. And when things about him were settled according to his mind, and he was, as he fancied, out of the reach of danger in his own vicinity, he then proceeds to what came next.
67. O thou most foolish, and impious, and ignorant in great matters! dost thou dare this against the great inheritance and the whole world's harvest, that passes over all limits by means of the simplicity of the Word and the folly, as ye will call it, of the preaching, the which has overcome the wise, and put an end to devils, and has shot over Time, being at once ancient and new, in the same way as ye make a special wonder of one of your own gods; since it is the former by its shadowing forth in types, the latter by the accomplishment of the mystery stored up for its due time? Didst thou not do this against the great heritage of Christ, and who wert thou, and what, and from whence? Against the great heritage, and which will never cease, even though some may rage against it, even more than thou hast done, but which will advance ever further and be exalted? (for I believe the prophecies and the things seen); that heritage which He, as God, hath created, and, as Man, hath inherited; which the Law hath typified, grace fulfilled, and Christ dedicated; which the Prophets built up, the Apostles bound together, and the Evangelists finished off!
68. Didst thou war against the sacrifice of Christ with thy abominations, against the blood that cleansed the world with thy offerings of blood? Didst thou wage war against Peace? Didst thou lift thy hand against the Hand that was nailed for thee and through thee? Against the Gall didst thou set thine own liking; against the Cross, a trophy; against His death, subversion of religion; against His Resurrection, thy rebellion; against the Martyr, the want of martyrs? Thou persecutor next |39 to Herod, thou traitor next to Judas, except so far as not ending thy life with, a halter, as he did; thou murderer of Christ next to Pilate; thou hater of God next to the Jews!
69. Hadst thou no respect for the victims slain for Christ's sake? Didst thou not fear those mighty champions, that John, that Peter, Paul, James, Stephen, Luke, Andrew, and Thecla? And those who after them, and before them, faced danger in the cause of Truth, and who confronted the fire, the sword, the wild beasts, the tyrants, with joy, and evils either present or threatening, as though they were in the bodies of others, or rather as if released from the body! And what for? That they might not betray the Truth, even as far as a word goes; those to whom belong the great honours and festivals; those by whom devils are cast out and diseases healed; to whom belong manifestations of future events, and to whom belong prophecies; whose very bodies possess equal power with their holy souls, whether touched or worshipped; of whom even the drops of the blood and little relics of their passion, produce equal effect with their bodies!
70. All these marvels thou dost not respect, but dost contemn, thou that admirest the funeral pyre of Hercules, the result of his misfortunes and evil doings for women's sake: and that butchery of Pelops for the sake of hospitality, or of piety, in consequence whereof the descendants of Pelops were marked by their shoulders and the piece of ivory; and the castrations of Phrygians, who are fascinated by means of the pipe, and are abused after the piping; and those in the rites of King Mithras, the well-deserved or mystical brandings; and the sacrifice of |40 strangers at Tauri, and the sacrifice of the royal maid before the expedition to Troy; and the blood of Menaeceas shed for Thebes, and that of the daughters of Scedasus for Leuctra; and the Laconian youths lacerated with scourges, and their blood upon the altar so delightful to the pure and virgin goddess; thou that extollest the hemlock of Socrates, and the leg of Epictetus, and the death of Anaxarchus----persons whose philosophy was more the result of compulsion than of choice; and the leap of Cleombrotus the Ambraciote, brought about by the treatise on souls; and Pythagoras' prohibition concerning beans, and Theano's contempt of death, and that of I know not how many of those initiated into her own rites, or following the same philosophy.
71. But thou must admire at least what is here before thee, if thou dost not those just set forth, thou most philosophical and high-minded of men, that apest the Epaminondases and Scipios of old in the article of the endurance of hardship; thou that marchest on foot along with thy troops, and eatest whatever food is at hand, and praisest that kind of rulership which does everything for itself. For it is the mark of a philosophical and generous mind not to despise the virtue even of enemies, and to give more credit to the valour of foes than to the badness and cowardice of one's own side. Dost thou see these persons here without livelihood and without a home, all but without a body and without blood in their veins, and who in this respect approach near unto God? These men,
"With feet unwashed, and with the earth for bed"
(as thy Homer hath it, in order that he may do honour to one of his demons by the fiction)----these men that are |41 here below, and yet superior to things below? these that are amongst men, and yet above things human; these that are bound, and yet free; that are overcome, yet invincible; that have nothing in this world, and get all things in the world above; of whom the life is double----the one part despised, the other diligently sought after; who are through mortification of themselves immortal; through solitariness united with God; that are without desire, and with the Divinity, and without the passion of earthly love; whose is the Fountain of Light, and its irradiation even now; whose are the angelic chants, the station through the night, and the escape of the soul rapt up, before its time, unto God; to whom belong the power of purifying others, and the being purified themselves; who know no limit either in ascending or in deification; to whom belong the rocks and the heavens; to whom belong the being cast out and the thrones; whose are nakedness and a vesture of incorruptibility; whose are solitude and a solemn assembly here; whose it is to have trampled upon all pleasures, and who have the everlasting and ineffable enjoyment of pleasure; whose is the tear, the bewailing of sin, that purifies one from the world; the stretching forth of whose hands quenches the fire, quells the rage of wild beasts, blunts the edge of the sword, routs legions, and will (be sure) muzzle even thy impiety, even though thou mayest be exalted for a little while, and play the comedy of thy impiousness with thy own demons to help thee!