Tertullian, Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 1

A massive evil oozes from something tiny: the scorpion of the earth. Nicander writes and paints it— as many poisons as kinds, as many destructions as species, as many pains as colors— yet only one gesture of violence from the tail does the harm. That tail is whatever extends from the body's rear, and it strikes. So the scorpion's segmented series, a poisonous internal vein rising on a curved impulse, locks a barbed dart at the summit of torment with mechanical precision; hence a siege engine that snaps back to launch its projectile takes its name from the scorpion. That dart is also a hollow tube, its wide thinness opening into the wound and the venom; with it the creature stabs and injects. Summer is the familiar season of danger; the south wind and the African wind whip the creature into savagery. Remedies abound in nature; magic also binds some; medicine meets the crisis with iron and cup. Some even drink beforehand, rushing protection; but intercourse exhausts them, and they thirst again. For us, faith is the shield— if it is not itself struck by the hesitation to sign, to adjure, to press the beast's heel immediately. In this way, finally, we often help even the gentiles; granted by God that power which the Apostle dedicated when he shrugged off the viper's bite (Acts 28:3-6). So what does this pen promise, if faith is safe on its own account? That it may be safe on its own account in other matters too, when it endures its own scorpions. A bitter mediocrity afflicts them as well, and a varied breed; they are armed in one way, recruited at a set time, and only by ardor. This is persecution among Christians. When faith boils, and the Church burns from the figure of the ruby, then the Gnostics burst forth, then the Valentinians break out, then all the refusers of martyrdom boil over, hot themselves to offend, to stab, to kill. For they know that many simple and unskilled people, then the weak, and for the most part those tossed on the wind, and if it pleases, Christians, are never more approachable than when fear has loosened the soul's defenses; especially when some atrocity has crowned the martyrs' faith. So at first, still drawing the tail from the affections, they apply it, or flail as if at empty air. Are innocent people to suffer this? So you might think a brother, or a better gentile? Is a sect that harms no one to be treated so? Then they drive people to perish without cause. For to perish, and without cause, is the first fixation. From then on they strike. But simple souls do not know what, how, where, when, or before whom to confess— unless not simplicity but vanity, rather madness, is to die for God. And: Who will save me, if the one who ought to save me kills me? Christ died once for us, was killed once so we would not be killed. If he demands a repeat, does he now expect salvation from my death? Or does God demand the blood of the world's men, especially when he refused that of bulls and goats? Certainly he prefers the sinner's repentance to death (Ezekiel 18:23). And how does he not desire the death of sins? These ravings of heretical poisons, and any others— do they not fix a person either in a scruple or in destruction? Or in bile, if not in death? But you, if faith watches, there strike the scorpion with a sandal, and leave the anathema dying in its own sleep. Moreover, if the blow is satisfied, the venom signals and rushes to the vitals; immediately all former senses go numb, the soul's blood freezes, the flesh's spirit dies out, nausea at the Name grows. Now the mind itself seeks something to vomit. And so the struck infirmity, the wounded faith, exhales either into heresy or into the world. And now the present reality is the middle ardor, the very dog days of persecution: from the dog-star itself. Fire tested some Christians, sword others, beasts others. Still others tasted martyrdom in prison and are starving, on top of beatings and nails. We ourselves, like hares, destined quarry, are besieged from afar, and heretics rage as usual. So the time has warned us to brew a theriac with a tempered pen against our little beasts; you who read, drink. The draught is not bitter. If the Lord's words are sweeter than honey and comb (Psalm 119:103), those are the pigments; if God's promise flows with milk and honey, they taste what they make. Woe to those who turn sweet to bitter, light to darkness. For just as those who refuse martyrdom, interpreting salvation as perdition, turn sweet to bitter and light to darkness, and thus pervert this most wretched life for the blessed one, they substitute bitter for sweet and darkness for light (1 Peter 2:20).