will confess in me before men, in him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven; and whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I deny also before my Father who is in heaven." [Matthew 10:32–34] [What] if a Christian is to be stoned . . . burned . . . butchered . . . [or] put an end to by beasts . . . ? He who will endure these assaults to the end, the same shall be saved. . . . For what does He add after finishing with confession and denial? "Think not that I have come to send peace on earth, but a sword,"—undoubtedly on the earth. "For I have come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." [Matthew 10:34–35] For so is it brought to pass, that the brother delivers up the brother to death, and the father the son: and the children rise up against the parents, and cause them to die. And he who endures to the end let that man be saved. [Matthew 10:22] So that this whole course of procedure characteristic of the Lord's sword, which has been sent not to heaven, but to earth, makes confession also to be there, which by enduring to the end is to issue in the suffering of death. In the same manner, therefore, we maintain that the other announcements too refer to the condition of martyrdom. "He," says Jesus, "who will value his own life also more than me, is not worthy of me," [Luke 14:26] —that is, he who will rather live by denying, than die by confessing, me; and "he who finds his life shall lose it; but he who loses it for my sake shall find it." [Matthew 10:39] Therefore indeed he finds it, who, in winning life, denies; but he who thinks that he wins it by denying, will lose it in hell. On the other hand, he who, through confessing, is killed, will lose it for the present, but is also about to find it unto everlasting life. Who, now, should know better the marrow of the Scriptures than the school of Christ itself?—the persons whom the Lord both chose for Himself as scholars, certainly to be fully instructed in