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and prophetic Teacher. For never word came from his mouth, but it has been, or shall be fulfilled.
But the envious and wicked Adversary of the generation of the righteous, when he saw the mightiness of his testimony, and his blameless conversation from the first, and how that he was now crowned with the crown of immortality, and had borne away a prize that could not be spoken against, contrived that his poor body might not be obtained by us, though many much desired to secure it, and to communicate[1] over his holy remains. For some suggested to Nicetes, the father of Herod, and brother of Alce, that he should persuade the governor not to give up his body, "lest," said he, "they leave the Crucified and take to worshipping this fellow." And these things they said, as instigated and supported by the Jews, who even watched us when some of us were about to take his body from the fire, for they little knew how impossible it was for us either to forsake the worship of Christ, who suffered for the salvation of the whole world of them that be saved, or to pay worship to any other. For to Him truly we pay adoration, forasmuch as He was the Son of God; but the martyrs, as the disciples and followers of the Lord, we revere as they deserve, for their incomparable loyalty to their King and Master, praying that we may be made their partners and their fellow-disciples.
Then the centurion, seeing the earnestness of the Jews, laid out the body and burnt it, as was their custom; and so we afterwards gathered up his bones, more valued than stones of much price, and purer than fine gold, and laid them up in a fitting treasure-house. There assembling, as we may, in joy and in triumph, the Lord shall grant unto us to celebrate the birth-day[2] of his martyrdom, both to the remembering of them who wrestled before in the cause, and the training and preparing of those that shall come after.
- ↑ That is, probably, to meet for prayer and the celebration of the Eucharist with the body in their sight. The same feeling has shewn itself almost in all ages, in the interment of the dead in the church and churchyard.
- ↑ The Church always celebrated the day of martyrdom as that on which the Saint was truly born, and not what we call the birth-day. The following translation from an old writer may serve to explain this view. "We celebrate not the day of birth, since it is the entrance to sorrow and all trials; but it is the day of death we celebrate, as the lying down of all sorrows, and the escape from all trials. We celebrate the day of death, because these die not when they seem to die."—Comment, in Job. Lib. 3.
