Martyrs in Bears' Skins
“// was a fashion in the primitive persecutions, to invest Christians with bears’ shifts, and then to bait them as bears; and it is a usual practice of Satan and his itistruments first to blast the reputation of religious per so7ts and then to persecute ihem as offetidersr It is written of the worthies of old that “they had trial of cruel mockings.” TertulHan says that in the primitive times the saints were called herds of asses, vile fellows, the disciples of a man crucified, Galileans, Nazarites, eaters of men’s flesh, and drinkers of men’s blood. The heathen painted the God of the Christians with the head of an ass, and with a book in his hand, to signify that, though Christians pretended to knowledge, they were a company of fools.
The like custom remains still. Good men are first slandered and then censured. They lay to our charge deeds which we never dreamed of, and then they pile on the adjectives of denunciation, and condemn us without mercy. Thanks be to God, a saint in a bear’s skin is none the less a saint: the Lord knows the wolf in the sheep’s skin, and the sheep in the bear’s skin: he is not deceived by falsehood so as to judge his children unjustly. Not even for the present are the reputations of the godly injured in the sight of God, and as for the future, they shall suffer no tarnishing. Soon there shall be a resurrection of good names as well as of bodies: the Lord shall restore the honour and renown of each slandered believer.
Meanwhile, let us not be so easily led into harsh judgments as we have been. Let us refuse to regard our own brethren as wild beasts because wicked men thrust the bear’s skin upon them. From us, at least, let them receive tokens of the charity which thinketh no evil. Persistently let each follower of the Lord Jesus say of reproach cast upon a brother, “I will not believe it.” A believer in Christ should be an unbeliever in the world’s manylies: this rule would rob slander of half its power. By holy confidence in our fellow-Christians we should snap the bowstring of malice, and burn its arrows in the fire.
As for ourselves, we are not made of such pliant stuff that we would alter our course to escape the calumny of men. We will not move a hair’s-breadth because of
“the dread of tyrant custom, and the fear Lest fops should censure us, and fools should sneer.”