Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let us see now whether the Lord's other pronouncements agree with a perpetual command to flee. First of all, if persecution comes from God, what sense does it make for the very one who inflicts it also to order that it be fled? If he wanted it evaded, better that he never send it in the first place, lest he seem to work against his own will with another will of his own; for either he wanted us to suffer persecution or to flee it: if to flee, how can we suffer? If to suffer, how can we flee? And besides, how great is the inconsistency between the sentence commanding flight and the invitation to suffering, which is the very opposite of flight! [2] "Whoever confesses me, I too will confess him before my Father": how will the one who flees confess? How will the one who confesses flee? "Whoever is ashamed of me, of him I too will be ashamed before my Father": I avoid the suffering, I am ashamed of the confession. "Blessed are they who have suffered persecution for my name's sake": unhappy, then, are they who, fleeing on command, will not have suffered. "He who endures to the end will be saved": how then can you, commanding me to flee, want me to endure to the end? If such a diversity of sentences does not sit well with the gravity that befits God, it becomes clear from these very words too that the command to flee had, at the time, its own particular reason — the one we have shown.
[3] "But," he says, "foreseeing the weakness of some, the Lord in his kindness nonetheless also pointed out the harbor of flight." As if he were not capable, even without flight, and without so shameful, unworthy, and servile a refuge, of keeping safe in persecution those he knew to be weak! On the contrary, he never coddles the weak, but always refuses to indulge them — teaching first of all that the persecutors are not to be fled, but rather not to be feared: "Do not fear those who kill the body but can do nothing to the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
[4] And then what does he prescribe for the fearful? "Whoever holds his own life dearer than he holds me does not deserve me," and "whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." And finally, in the Apocalypse, he offers the fearful not flight, but, along with the rest of the reprobate, a share in the lake of fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
VIII.