Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] The apostles taught everything according to God, wished to preach everything as gospel. Where do you show me that they reinstated a command to flee from city to city? For they could not have laid down anything so contrary to their own example — ordering flight, when it was precisely from chains or from islands, where they were held not for fleeing but for confessing the Name, that they wrote to the churches. [2] Paul bids the weak be borne with — obviously men who are not fleeing; for how could the absent be borne with? Rather, he says they are to be borne with in patience, if they stumble through weakness of faith; and likewise the fainthearted are to be consoled — not, however, sent off into flight.
So too, when he warns us not to give the devil a foothold, he is not counseling flight but teaching restraint of anger; and when he says the time is to be redeemed, because the days are evil, he wants us to gain the opportunity not by flight but by wisdom of conduct. Moreover, the one who bids us shine like children of light does not bid us hide in flight like children of darkness. He prescribes standing firm, unmoved — hardly a posture for those made mobile by flight — and girded: girded for flight, or for meeting the gospel head-on? He points out weapons, too, which men bent on fleeing would have no need of; among them the shield, "with which you may quench the darts of the devil" — resisting them, without doubt, and catching the full force of his assault.
[3] Likewise John teaches that we must lay down our lives even for our brothers, let alone for the Lord; this cannot be fulfilled by men who are fleeing. And finally, mindful of his own Apocalypse, in which he had heard the fate of the fearful, he too warns from his own understanding that fear must be cast out: "Fear," he says, "is not in love; but perfect love casts fear outside, because fear has punishment" — the fire of the lake, that is — "and he who fears is not perfected in love" — in the love of God, that is. And who, then, will flee persecution, but the one who fears? And who will fear, but the one who does not love? [4] And if you consult the Spirit — what does that word of the Spirit prove more clearly? For almost all of it exhorts to martyrdom, not to flight, so that we too may recall these words of it: "You are being made a public spectacle? Good for you; for he who is not made a spectacle before men is made a spectacle before the Lord. Do not be ashamed: righteousness leads you out into the open; why be ashamed when you carry praise with you? It becomes power, when you are seen by men." And likewise elsewhere: "Do not wish to depart in your beds, nor in miscarriages and soft fevers, but in martyrdoms, so that he who suffered for you may be glorified."
X.