Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Yes, they say, if God cares for you, why then are you persecuted and murdered? Or does he himself hand you over to this? But we do not suppose that the Lord willed us to fall into these circumstances; rather, he foretold prophetically what was going to happen, namely that on account of his name we would be persecuted, we would be murdered, we would be impaled. So he did not desire our persecution as such; rather he declared in advance what we would undergo, forming in us through that prediction a capacity for endurance, and through it he also pledged the inheritance. And yet we are not punished alone, but together with many others. But those men, they say, being criminals, justly undergo their punishment.
Unwillingly, then, they bear witness on our behalf to the justice of those who are unjustly punished for the sake of justice. But the injustice of the judge does not touch providence; for a judge ought to govern his own verdict, not be manipulated like a marionette on threads, deriving his impulses solely from something external. He is tested, at any rate, by the very act of judging, just as we too are tested both in our choice of what is preferable and in our endurance; and even if we do no wrong, still the judge looks upon us as though we did — for he does not know our true circumstances, nor does he wish to learn them, but is swept along by an empty prejudice, and by this very fact is himself judged. They persecute us, then, not because they have found us to be unjust, but because they suppose that the mere fact of being Christian is itself a crime of life — supposing both that we ourselves live in this way and that we urge others to choose the same manner of life.
But why, they say, are you not helped when you are persecuted? For how are we wronged, as far as we ourselves are concerned, when we are released by death to the Lord, and undergo, just as a change of age, so too a change of life? And if we think rightly, we shall be grateful to those who have furnished the occasion for our swift journey away, if through love we bear our witness; and if we did not seem base men to the many, and if they too knew the truth, all would leap upon the road, and there would be no selecting out. But indeed our faith, being the light of the world, convicts unbelief. For Anytus and Meletus could kill me, certainly, but they could not harm me in any way at all — for I do not think it lawful for the better to be harmed by the worse. So that each of us may say with confidence: God stands as my ally, so I have nothing to dread; what could a mortal accomplish against me? For righteous souls rest within God's hand, and no torment shall ever reach them.
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