Tertullian, Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 1

The earth breeds a massive evil from a tiny thing: the scorpion. Nicander writes and paints it— as many poisons as kinds, as many destructions as species, as many pains as colors. Yet for all that variety, a single gesture of violence does the harm: the strike of the tail. That tail is whatever extends from the body's rear, and it lashes out. So the scorpion's segmented tail, a poisonous vein inside, rises on a curved impulse and locks a hooked barb at the summit of its torment mechanism; hence a siege engine, its projectile springing from a drawn-back position, takes its name from the scorpion. That barb is also a duct, its open fineness channeling wound and venom; with it the creature strikes and injects. Summer is the familiar season of danger; the south wind and the African wind hoist its savagery. Remedies abound in nature; magic also binds something, and medicine meets the crisis with iron and cup. Some even drink beforehand, rushing protection; but intercourse exhausts the antidote, and they thirst again.

For us, faith is the shield— if it is not itself struck by the hesitation to sign, to adjure, to drive the beast's heel at once. In this way, finally, we often come to the aid of gentiles as well, endowed by God with the power the Apostle consecrated when he despised a viper's bite. 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 belongs to these as well: varied kind, armed in one way, deployed at a set time, and driven by nothing but ardor. This, among Christians, is persecution.

When faith boils and the Church burns from the figure of the ruby, then the Gnostics burst out, the Valentinians break forth, and all the refusers of martyrdom boil over, hot themselves to offend, to stab, to kill. They know well that many are simple and unskilled, then weak, most indeed in the wind, and if it pleases, Christians— never do they perceive them more approachable than when fear of the soul has loosened the approach; especially when some atrocity has crowned the martyrs' faith. So at first, still drawing the tail from the affections, they apply it, or lash out as into a vacuum. Are innocent men to suffer this? So that you might take him for a brother, or one of the better gentiles? Is a sect that harms no one to be treated thus? Then they drive men to perish without cause. For to perish, and without cause, is the first piercing. From then on they kill.

But simple souls do not know what, how, where, when, or before whom it is written that confession must be made— unless it is not that simplicity, but vanity, indeed madness, to die for God. And: Who will save me, if the one who ought to save me kills? Christ died once for us, was killed once so that we might not be killed. If he demands a turn, does he now expect salvation from my death? Or does God demand the blood of the world's men, especially since he refuses that of bulls and goats? Certainly he prefers a sinner's repentance to death. And how does he not desire the death of sins? These poisons of the heretics, and any others— what do they not fix, whether in a scruple or in destruction? Or in bile, if not in death?

But you, if faith keeps watch, there strike the scorpion with a sandal, anathema applied, and leave the dying thing in its own sleep. Yet if the wound has had its fill, the venom announces itself and rushes to the vitals; at once all former senses grow numb, the soul's blood chills, the flesh's spirit goes cold, nausea at the Name swells. Even the mind now seeks something to vomit. And so, once struck, the weakness expires— wounded faith breathing its last either into heresy or into the world.

And now the present reality is the midday heat, the very dog-star of persecution: from the dog-headed one himself. Fire has tested some Christians, sword others, beasts others. Others in prison, having tasted martyrdom with rods and nails, hunger for it still. We ourselves, like hares marked for the hunt, are besieged from afar, and heretics prowl as is their custom. So the time has warned us to prepare a remedy against our little beasts: to compound a therapeutic writing with the pen; you who read, will drink. The draught is not bitter. If the Lord's words are sweeter than honey and comb, the seasonings come from there; if God's promise flows with milk and honey, these words taste the way that leads there. Woe to those who turn sweet to bitter and light to darkness. For just as those who resist martyrdom, interpreting salvation as perdition, turn sweet to bitter and light to darkness, so they pervert this most wretched life by preferring the most blessed one— substituting bitter for sweet, darkness for light.