PERSEVERANCE
711
PERSEVERANCE
We could cite many more passages of the Acta of
martyrs of Egypt, thus reproducing more or less
exactly, yet unmistakably, the account of the per-
secution of Diocletian as given by Eusebius. In fact
almost every chapter of the eighth book of his "His-
tory" is represented there by one or more passages,
also some chapters of the seventh and ninth books,
and of the book on the Martyrs of Palestine, so that
there can be no serious doubt as to the existence of
a Coptic history of the persecution of Diocletian based
on Eusebius. This may have been a distinct work, or
it may have been part of the Coptic church history, in
twelve books, of which considerable fragments are
known to be extant (see Egypt, History). From
that same Cojstic church history were taken, possibly,
the several excerpts from Eusebius to be found in the
"History of the Patriarchs" of Severus of Ashmunein
(Egypt, p. 362d), and it might be one of the Coptic
and Greek works to which this author refers as having
been used by him [Graffin-Nau, "Patrologia Orien-
talis", I, 115; cf. Crum, "Proceedings of the Soci-
ety of Biblical Archaeology", XXIV (1902), 68 sqq.].
However, it seems more likelj' that the Coptic and
Greek works spoken of by Severus were lives of the
individual patriarchs, the compilers of which may
have used either Eusebius' original text or moreprob-
abl.v the Coptic work in question.
There are also in the Acts of martyrs of Egypt clear traces of other sources of information as to the per- secution of Diocletian. This is generally the case with some of the more legendary pieces. For instance, in the introduction to the "Acts of Epime", we read that Diocletian, formerly a Christian (probably here confused with Julian the Apostate), apostatized and made for himself seventy gods, calling the first of them Apollo, and .so on. Then he called a council of dignitaries of the empire and told them that Apollo and the rest of the gods had appeared to him, and demanded a reward for having restored him to health and given him the victory. In behalf of all, Romanus the Stratelates suggested to oblige all the subjects of Diocletian to worship his gods under penalty of death. Is it not clear that the first author of the narrative must have read in some form or other the ninth chap- ter of Lactantius' "De mortibus persecutorum "? In what other source could we have found that Dio- cletian acted on the advice of a council, and that of Apollo, no matter whether the god volunteered his advice or Diocletian sought it? Can it be a mere co- incidence that both Lactantius and the Coptic WTiter explain practically in the same way Diocletian's deter- mination to persecute the Christians?
Eusebius, Hisloria ecdesiastica in P. G., XX: Idem. De mar- tyribus PahssiinfE {ibid.); both works also, in Englisli tr. (which we follow) with Prolegomena and notes by McGiffert in Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, new series, I (Oxford, 1890); Lactantius, De morte persecutorum in P. L., VII; Gregg. The Decian Persecution (Edinburgh, 1897) ; Healt, The Valerian Persecution (Boston, 1905); Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian (Cambridge, 1876) ; Schoenaich, Die Christenverfolgung des Kaisers Decius (Jauer, 1907) ; Tillemont, Memoires pour servir d I' histoire eccUsiastique des six premiers si^cles, III-V; Hyvernat, Les actes des martyrs de VEgypte tires des manuscrits coptes de la bibliothigue Vaticane, etc., I (Paris, 1886-87) ; Balestki and Hyvernat, Acta Martyrum, I in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum OrientaKum: Scriptores Coptic!, I (third series, Paris, 1907); Pereira, .Acta Martyrum, ibid., Scriptores Xlhi- opici. XXVIII (second series, Paris, 1907); Am^lineau. Contes et Tomans de I'Egypte chrHienne (Paris, 1888). For a complete bibli- ographv of the material at hand see Bollandists (Peeters). Bibl. Hagiogr. Orient. (Brussels, 1910). The only important addi- tion to be made to this very useful work is the recent publication of Winstedt, Coptic texts on Saint Theodore the General, St. Theo- dore the Eastern, etc. (with English tr., London, 1910).
H. Hyvernat.
Perseverance, Final (pemevemriHa jlnali.'i), is the preservation of the state of grace till the end of life. The expression is taken from Matt., x. 22, "He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved." A temporary continuance in grace, be it ever so long, evidently falls short of the obvious meaning of the
above phrase, if it fails to reach the hour of death.
On the other hand the saying of St. Matthew does not
necessarily imply a lifelong and unbroken continu-
ance in grace, since it is of faith that lost grace can be
recovered. Between the temporary continuance or
imperfect perseverance and the lifelong continuance
or most perfect perseverance there is room for final
perseverance as commonly understood, i. e., the pres-
ervation of grace from the last conversion till death.
It may be viewed as a power or as an actual fact. As
a power it means the ensemble of spiritual means
whereby the human will is enabled to persevere unto
the end if it duly co-operates. As an actual fact it
means the de facto preservation of grace and implies
two factors, one internal, i. e., the steadfast use of the
various means of salvation, the other external, i. e.,
the timely coming of death while the soul is at peace
with God. Theologians, aptly or not, call the former
active and the latter passive perseverance. There
may be passive perseverance without active, as when
an infant dies immediately after Baptism, but the
normal case, which alone is considered here, is that of
a good death crowning a greater or lesser duration of
well-doing. By what agency the combined stability
in holiness and timeliness of death are brought about
is a problem long debated among Christian writers.
The Semipelagians of the fifth century, while forsak-
ing the sweeping ethical naturalism of Pelagius and
admitting on principle the graces of the will, contended
nevertheless, that the final perseverance of the justified
was sufficient'y accounted for by the natural power of
our free will; if sometimes, in order to tally with con-
ciliar definitions, they called it a grace, it was but a
misnomer, as that grace could be merited by man's
natural exertions. Oppositely, the Reformers of the
sixteenth century, partly followed by the Baianist and
Jansenist school, so minimized the native power and
moral value of our free will as to make final persever-
ance depend on God alone, while their pretended
fiducial faith and inadmissibility of grace led to the
conclusion that we can, in this world, have absolute
certainty of our final perseverance.
The Catholic doctrine, outlined by St. Augustine, chiefly in "De dono perseverantiae " and "De correp- tione et gratia ' ' , and the Council of Orange in Southern Gaul, received its full expression in the Council of Trent, sess. VI, c. xiii, can. 16 and 22: (1) The power of persevering. — Canon 22 (Si quis dixerit justificatum vel sine special! auxilio Dei in accepta justitia perse- verare posse, vel cum eo non posse, anathema sit), by teaching that the justified cannot persevere without a special help of God, but with it can persevere, not only condemns both the naturalism of the Semipelagians and the false supernaturalism of the Reformers but also clearly implies that the power of perseverance is neither in the human will alone nor in God's grace solely, but in the combination of both, i. e., Divine grace aiding human will, and human will co-operating with Divine grace. The grace in question is called by the Council "a special help of God", apparently to distinguish it both from the concurrence of God in the natural order and habitual grace, neither of which were denied by the Semipelagians. Theologians, with a few exceptions, identify this special help with the sum total of actual graces vouchsafed to man. (2) Actual perseverance. — The Council of Trent, using an expression coined by St. Augustine, calls it {magnum v.ique in finem perseveranlice dnnum) the great gift of final perseverance. "It consists", says Newman, "In an ever watchful superintendence of us on the part of our All-Merciful Lord, removing temptations which He sees will be fatal to us, succouring us at those times when we are in particular peril, whether from our negligence or other cause, and ordering the course of our life so that we may die at a t ime when He sees that we are in the state of grace." The supernatural char- acter of such a gift is clearly asserted by Christ : "Holy
