“HAPPY me, could I thus have fought with men, who professed themselves to be the enemies of thy name; every one would have said, that they who had recourse to tortures, and sword, and fire, to compel a Christian to deny Thee, were persecutors; and my death would have been sufficient testimony to Thy truth, O God! The battle would have been an open one, and no one would have hesitated to call, by the honest name, these men that denied Thee, and racked and murdered us; and Thy people, seeing that it was an evident persecution, would have followed their Pastors in the confession of their faith.

“But, now-a-days, we have to do with a disguised persecutor, a smooth-tongued enemy, a Constantius who has put on Antichrist; who scourges us, not with lashes, but with caresses; who instead of robbing us, which would give us spiritual life, bribes us with riches, that he may lead us to eternal death; who thrusts us, not into the liberty of a prison, but into the honours of his palace, that he may enslave us; who tears, not our flesh, but our hearts; who beheads not with a sword, but kills the soul with his gold; who sentences not by a herald that we are to be burnt, but covertly enkindles the fire of hell against us. He does not dispute with us, that he may conquer; but he flatters us, that so he may lord it over our souls.”

— St. Hilary of Poitiers

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