Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As far as your question goes, brother, you now have my answer and my exhortation on the point. But if anyone goes on to ask whether persecution ought to be fled, he must also look ahead, of necessity, to the next question: whether, if it ought not to be fled, it may at least be bought off. So let me offer you a further point on this, laying it down that persecution, which we have established is not to be fled, is likewise not to be bought off. There is a difference of price involved; but just as flight is a free-of-charge redemption, so a cash redemption is a form of flight. And it is certainly born of the same cowardice. What you fear, you buy off—therefore you flee; you stood your ground on your feet, but you ran with your coin; the very fact that you "stood firm" by way of a payoff means you fled. But for you to redeem with money a man whom Christ redeemed with his own blood—how unworthy this is of God and of his design, God who did not spare his own Son for your sake, that he might become a curse for us (for "cursed is he who hangs on a tree"), who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer opened not his mouth, but offered his back to the whips and his cheeks to the blows, and did not turn his face from spitting, and was numbered among the wicked, and was delivered up to death, even death on a cross—all of this, so that he might win us back from our sins. The sun withdrew on the day of our purchase; our release from bondage is transacted in the underworld, and our contract is ratified in the heavens; the everlasting gates were lifted up, that the King of Glory might enter, the Lord of hosts, having bought man from the earth—indeed from the underworld itself—into the heavens. Who, then, is the man who now wrestles against him, who indeed cheapens a ransom purchased at so great a cost—namely, the most precious blood of an unblemished lamb? So it is now better to flee than to make oneself cheaper still, if a man will not cost himself as much as he cost his Lord. And the Lord, for his part, redeemed that man from the angelic powers holding the world in their grip, from the spiritual forces of wickedness, from the darkness of this age, from eternal judgment, from everlasting death; but you, instead, strike a bargain for him with an informer, or a soldier, or some petty grafter tucked under the governor's cloak and in his purse, as they say—treating as stolen goods the very man whom Christ bought openly before the whole world, and indeed set free. Will you then value as a free man, and possess by payment, one you can only truly possess at the same price it cost the Lord—namely, at the price of his own blood? Why, then, do you use Christ, who dwells in that man, to buy back that man from other men? Simon tried nothing different when he offered the apostles money for the Spirit of Christ. So this man too, in redeeming himself, will hear the same sentence pronounced on him who tried to buy the Spirit of Christ: "May your money perish with you, because you thought the grace of God could be had for a price." Who would not despise such a man as no better than an outright denier? For what does the extortioner say? "Give me money." Certainly—so as not to hand you over, since he is selling nothing other than what he was going to do anyway, in exchange for your reward. When you pay, you clearly wished not to be handed over; but were you not already liable to being exposed, even without being handed over? So then, in refusing, by your unwillingness, to be handed over, you refuse, by that same unwillingness, to be exposed—and by that refusal you have denied that you are the very thing you did not want exposed. "No," you say, "in refusing to have exposed what I am, I have confessed that I am the very thing I do not want exposed—namely, a Christian." Well then, you might claim the title of martyr for yourself, if you steadily show forth Christ; but a man who buys himself off shows forth nothing. If perhaps you confessed before one man, then by your unwillingness to confess before more, you have denied him. Salvation itself will judge that the man has fallen, precisely by his escaping; he has fallen, then, who chose to escape. Denial is itself nothing other than the refusal of martyrdom. Is a Christian "saved" by money, and does he keep coin on hand for this very purpose—so as not to suffer—while all along he grows rich against God? But Christ was rich in blood on his behalf. Blessed, then, are the poor, for theirs, it is said, is the kingdom of heaven—those who hold only their soul, nothing else, in the general confiscation. If we cannot serve both God and mammon, can we really be redeemed both by God and by mammon? For who will serve mammon more than the man mammon has bought? Finally, what precedent do you use to justify buying off arrest? When the apostles were harassed by persecutions on every side, when did they ever free themselves with money—money which, of course, they were not short of, given the proceeds of properties laid at their feet? Indeed, with so many wealthy believers, men and women, who even supplied them with material comforts, when did an Onesiphorus, an Aquila, or a Stephanas ever come to their rescue in this fashion during persecution? As for Paul—when the governor Felix hoped to receive money for his release from the disciples (a matter Paul himself discussed privately with Felix), neither Paul himself nor his disciples paid anything on his behalf. And these were the very disciples who wept because he would not be turned from his resolve to go up to Jerusalem, and would not take precautions against the persecutions foretold to await him there; in the end they said only: "The Lord's will be done." And what was that will? Surely that he should suffer for the name of the Lord, not that he should be ransomed. For just as Christ laid down his life for us, so it is fitting that the same be done for him by us as well—and not only for him, but even for the brothers, for his sake. This too John teaches: that we are bound not merely to count the cost for the brothers, but rather to die for them. It makes no difference whether the Christian you should not ransom is someone else, or yourself. And this, in fact, is exactly what the will of God amounts to: look at the very structure of kingdoms and empires, ordained, of course, by God, in whose hand is the heart of the king; every day such elaborate schemes are devised for swelling the treasury—taxes, tolls, levies, tributes—and yet never once, to this day, has any such scheme been devised specifically against Christians, some tax on the head or the sect, though a harvest so enormous could be reaped from a multitude so vast, known to everyone. We were bought with blood, we were numbered by blood; we owe no coin for our heads, because Christ is our head; it does not befit Christ to be priced in money. How could martyrdoms even happen, to the glory of the Lord, if we bought off the freedom to practice our religion with a bribe? And so whoever bargains for that freedom with a payoff sets himself against the divine order. Since, then, Caesar has laid on us no tax of this kind, as a religion liable to tribute—nor indeed could any such tax ever be levied—now, with Antichrist already pressing close and gaping not for the money of Christians but for their blood, how can anyone quote Scripture to me: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's"? A soldier, an informer, or an enemy shakes me down, demanding nothing for Caesar—indeed, acting quite against what is right, since he lets a man legally guilty under human law go free for a bribe. That is a different coin than the one I owe to Caesar—the tax coin, belonging to him to whom the matter at hand pertained, owed by tributaries as tributaries, not owed by free men. Or how am I to render to God the things that are God's—namely, his own image and likeness, stamped with his own name, that is, the Christian man himself? What, indeed, do I owe to God—as I owe the tax-coin to Caesar—except the blood which his own Son poured out for me? But if I owe God my very self and my blood, and I now find myself in the very moment when what I owe to God is being demanded of me, then in trying to escape that demand I am defrauding God of what is owed him. I would keep the command well, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's—but rendering to God what is God's by denying him!
XIII.