Intention completes the sacrifice; Eustathius's vigilance against heresy

And yet he received him alive and brought him down unharmed. How then did he not spare him? Because, he says, I judge such sacrifices not by the outcome of events but by the intention of those who chose beforehand. The hand did not slaughter, but the intention slaughtered. The sword did not stain the boy's throat, it did not cut his neck—yet it is a sacrifice even without blood. The initiated know what this means. And that sacrifice was made without blood precisely because it was going to be a type of this one. Do you see the image being sketched beforehand in the Old Testament? Do not doubt the reality.

This martyr, then—for our argument has shown him to be a martyr—prepared himself for countless deaths, and he endured them all in his judgment and eagerness. And of the dangers that were brought against him, he bore many through actual experience. For they drove him from his homeland and removed him into exile, and they stirred up many other things against that blessed man at that time, having no just charge to bring, but because he, having heard Paul say, "They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25), he fled the impiety and feared the transgression. But this deserves crowns, not accusation.

Consider with me the wickedness of the devil. Since the war against paganism had recently been brought to an end, and all the churches had just recovered from the harsh and successive persecutions, and not much time had passed since all the peoples had been shut out, the altars extinguished, and every frenzy of the demons destroyed—these things grieved the evil demon, and he could not calmly bear the peace of the church. So what does he do? He introduces another harsh war. The first was external, but this one was civil; and such wars are harder to guard against and easily overpower those who fall into them.

At that time, then, this blessed man was commanding the church among us, and the disease arose like a harsh plague from the regions of Egypt, and then, passing through the cities in between, it hastened to burst into our city. But he was wakeful and sober, and foreseeing all that was coming from afar, he beat back the approaching war. And like a wise physician, before the disease could burst into the city, sitting there he prepared the remedies and piloting this sacred ship with great safety, running everywhere, encouraging the sailors, the passengers, all who were sailing, preparing them to be sober and wakeful, since pirates were attacking and attempting to plunder the treasure of the faith.

Nor did he exercise this care only here, but he also sent out everywhere men who would teach, exhort, discuss, and wall off beforehand the enemy's assault. For he had been well instructed by the grace of the Spirit that the one who presides over a church must care not only for that church entrusted to him by the Spirit, but also for the whole church throughout the world. And this he learned from the sacred prayers. For if prayers must be made, he says, for the catholic church from one end of the world to the other, much more must care be shown for all of it, and one must care for all the churches alike and be anxious for them all.