Persecution, confusion, and clarity—today’s readings trace the Church from flames in Rome to doctrinal precision in the Trinity. In Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, we witness the first two great imperial assaults on Christianity: Nero’s calculated cruelty after the fire of Rome in 67, when believers were sewn into skins, burned as torches, and blamed for a catastrophe they did not cause, and Domitian’s more systemic oppression beginning in 81, marked by legal coercion, confiscations, and the execution of both leaders and ordinary saints. Yet Foxe reminds us that persecution did not extinguish the faith; it refined it, even as Peter, Paul, Timothy, and many others sealed their testimony in blood. Augustine then brings the struggle inward in The Confessions (Book 5, Chapter 11), recounting how Helpidius’s public defense of the New Testame ...