7. But I have no fear of death, says one, nor of the act of dying, but of a miserable death, of being beheaded. Did John then, I ask, die miserably? for he was beheaded. Or did Stephen die miserably? for he was stoned; and all the martyrs have thus died wretchedly, according to this objection: since some have ended their lives by fire; and others by the sword; and some cast into the ocean; others down a precipice; and others into the jaws of wild beasts, have so come by their death. To die basely, O man, is not to come to one’s end by a violent death, but to die in sin! Hear, at least, the prophet moralising on this very matter, and saying, “The death of sinners is evil.”1243 He does not say that a violent death is evil; but what then? “The death of sinners is evil.”1244 And justly so; for after the departure from this life, there is an intolerable punishment; undying vengeance, the envenomed worm; the fire unquench- able, the outer darkness, the chains indissoluble; the gnashing of teeth, the tribulation, and the anguish, and the eternal justice.1245 8. Since therefore such evils await sinners, what advantage can it be to them, though they should end their days at home, and in their bed? Even so, on the other hand, it can do no harm to the righteous to lay down the present life through sword, or steel, or fire, when they are to depart to the good things that are immortal. Truly “the death of sinners is evil.” Such a death was that of the rich man, who despised Lazarus. He, when he had terminated his life by a natural end, at home and on his bed, and with his relatives about him, experienced after his departure to the other world a fiery torment; nor was he able to obtain there even a little comfort, out of all the pleasure he had enjoyed in the present life! But not so was it with Lazarus; for when lying upon the pavement, while the dogs came and licked his sores, he had suffered a violent death (for what could be more painful than hunger?), but on his departing hence he enjoyed eternal blessings, luxuriating in the bosom of Abraham! In what respect, then, did it injure him that he died a violent death? or what did it profit the rich man, that he died not with violence? 9. But, says some one, “We have no fear of dying by violence, but of dying unjustly; and of being punished in a similar way with the guilty,—we who have had nothing to do with 1243 In this rendering of the Septuagint there is a coincidence with that of the Targum, and the Vulgate, Æthiopic, and Arabic versions. But the Syriac is conformable with the Hebrew. The discrepancy may be accounted for by a slight difference in the reading of the vowel points. 1244 Ps. xxxiv. 21. This passage is quoted by Bishop Latimer at the close of a sermon upon the epistle for the twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, preached A.D. 1552. His words are, Mors peccatorum pessima. “Death to sinners is the worst thing that can happen unto them.” “What meaneth he by that? he signifieth unto us, that the wicked be not enough punished here, therefore it shall be worse with them after their death. So that it shall be a change: they that have their pleasure here, and live according to their desires, they shall come to afflictions in the other world.” 1245 See Hom. III. on Rom. i. 18. 527 Homily V