When you, Demetrian, frequently barked against me and clamored against God — who is the one and true God — with sacrilegious mouth and impious words, I had rather contemptuously disregarded you, judging it more modest and better to spurn in silence the ignorance of one going astray than to provoke by speaking the madness of a frenzied man. Nor did I do this without the authority of divine instruction, since it is written: «Speak nothing into the ears of the imprudent, lest perchance, when he hears, he deride your sensible words»; and again: «Answer not the imprudent according to his imprudence, lest you become like him»; and we are bidden also to keep what is holy within our conscience and not to set it out to be trampled upon by swine and dogs, the Lord speaking and saying:
«Give not what is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them with their feet.» For when you would often come to me, more out of a zeal for contradicting than out of a wish to learn, and, resounding with clamorous outcries, would prefer shamelessly to thrust forward your own opinions rather than patiently to hear ours, it seemed foolish to engage with you, since it would be easier and lighter to beat back with shouts the stirred-up waves of a turbulent sea than to restrain your frenzy by arguments. Certainly both the labor is fruitless and there is no effect in offering light to the blind, speech to the deaf, wisdom to the brute, since neither can the brute perceive nor the blind admit light nor the deaf hear.
Considering these things, I have often kept silent and conquered an impatient man by patience, since I could neither teach one unwilling to learn, nor restrain an impious man by religion, nor curb a raging man by gentleness. But since you say that very many complain, and that it is laid to our charge that wars rise more frequently, that pestilence and famine rage, and that long stretches of clear weather hold back the rains and showers, it is no longer fitting to be silent, lest what we keep silent should begin to be reckoned no longer modesty but mistrust, and lest, while we scorn to refute the false accusations, we should seem to acknowledge the charge.
I answer, therefore, both you, Demetrian, and likewise the rest whom you have perhaps stirred up, and whom, by sowing hatred against us with your slanderous words, you have made companions to yourself in greater number through the sprouting of your own root and origin; yet I believe that they will admit the reason of our discourse. For one who has been moved to evil by a deceiving lie will far more readily be moved to good by the truth. You have said that it comes about through us, and that all these things by which the world is now shaken and pressed ought to be imputed to us, because your gods are not worshipped by us.
In this matter, you who are ignorant of divine knowledge and a stranger to truth must first of all know this: that the age has now grown old, and does not stand by those strengths by which it stood before, nor avail by that vigour and might by which it formerly prevailed. This the world itself now proclaims, even though we keep silent and bring forth no proofs from the Holy Scriptures and from the divine preachings; and it testifies to its own decline by the failing of its affairs. There is not in winter so great an abundance of showers for nourishing the seeds, nor in summer the wonted heat for ripening the grain; the spring is not so glad with its temperateness, nor is the autumn so fruitful with its tree-borne yield.
Less are slabs of marble dug out of the worn and exhausted mountains; the spent mines yield less wealth of silver and gold, and their impoverished veins are diminished day by day. The farmer fails and dwindles in the fields, the sailor on the sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the forum, justice in the court, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. Do you suppose that so great a substance can subsist in a thing growing old as could once flourish in its still fresh and lively youth? Whatever now verges toward its setting and its end, near now to its close, must of necessity be diminished.
So the sun at its setting casts forth its rays with a splendour less bright and fiery; so the moon, its course now declining, is thinned with waning horns; and the tree which was before green and fruitful becomes afterward barren with withering branches, misshapen by old age; and the spring which before flowed abundantly with overflowing veins, failing with old age, scarcely trickles with a little moisture. This sentence has been pronounced upon the world; this is the law of God, that all things which have arisen should set, and things grown should grow old, and the strong be weakened, and the great be diminished, and when they have been weakened and diminished, be ended. You impute it to the Christians that single things are diminished as the world grows old.
What if the aged also should impute it to the Christians that they have less vigour in old age, that they do not, as before, thrive in the hearing of the ears, the running of the feet, the keenness of the eyes, the strength of their powers, the sap of their inner parts, the bulk of their limbs? And whereas once the long-lived life of men advanced beyond eight hundred and nine hundred years, now it can scarcely reach the number of a hundred. We see grey hairs in children; the hair fails before it grows; nor does the span of life end in old age, but it begins from old age. So at its very rising birth hastens toward its end; so whatever is now born degenerates by the old age of the world itself, that no one should wonder that single things in the world have begun to fail, since the world itself is now wholly in decline and at its end.
But as for the fact that wars more frequently continue, that barrenness and famine heap up anxiety, that health is broken by raging diseases, that the human race is laid waste by the ravages of pestilence—know that this too was foretold: that in the last times evils should be multiplied and adversities varied, and that, as the day of judgement now draws near, the censure of an indignant God should be kindled more and more against the scourges of the human race. For it is not, as your false complaint and your unskilfulness ignorant of the truth boasts and clamours, that these things happen because your gods are not worshipped by us, but because God is not worshipped by you.
For since He Himself is the Lord and Ruler of the world, and all things are carried on by His will and bidding, nor can anything come to pass except what He has either done or permitted to be done—assuredly, when those things happen which show the wrath of an indignant God, they happen not on account of us by whom God is worshipped, but are inflicted by your offences and deserts, by whom God is in no way sought, nor feared, nor, when vain superstitions are forsaken, is the true religion acknowledged: so that He who is the one God should as one be worshipped by all, and entreated by all. Hear, then, Himself speaking; Himself instructing and admonishing us with His divine voice: 'You shall adore,' He says, 'the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve'; and again: 'You shall have no other gods besides me'; and again:
'Do not walk after strange gods to serve them, nor adore them; and do not provoke me by the works of your hands, to your own destruction.' A prophet likewise, filled with the Holy Spirit, attests and proclaims the wrath of God, saying: 'Thus says the Lord Almighty: Because my house is deserted, while you each pursue your own house, therefore the heaven shall withhold the dew, and the earth shall withdraw its produce; and I will bring a sword upon the land, and upon the grain, and upon the wine, and upon the oil, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labours of their hands.' Another prophet again repeats and says: 'And I will rain upon one city, and upon another I will not rain.'
'One part shall be rained upon, and the part on which I shall not rain shall be dried up. And two and three cities shall be gathered into one city to drink water, and they shall not be satisfied: yet you have not turned to me, says the Lord.' Behold, the Lord is indignant and is angry, and threatens because you do not turn to Him:
And do you wonder or complain, in this your obstinacy and contempt, if the rain falls scantily from above, if the earth lies foul with a coating of dust, if the barren soil produces but starveling, pale herbs, if the hail, beating down, weakens the vine, if the whirlwind, overthrowing, lops off the olive, if drought stays the fountain, if a pestilent breeze corrupts the air, if a diseased sickness wastes mankind—since all these things come about by sins provoking them, and God is the more exasperated when so many and so great chastisements profit nothing? For that these things happen either for the discipline of the stubborn or for the punishment of the wicked, God Himself declares in the Holy Scriptures, saying: 'In vain have I smitten your children; they received not discipline.'
And the prophet, devoted and dedicated to God, answers to these same things and says: 'You have struck them, and they grieved not; you have scourged them, and they would not receive discipline.' Behold, plagues are inflicted from on high, and there is no fear of God; behold, the stripes from above and the scourges are not lacking, and yet there is no trembling, no dread. What if even this censure did not intervene in human affairs? How much greater still would be the audacity of crimes among men, secure in their impunity? You complain that now the rich fountains, the healthful breezes, the frequent rain, and the fertile earth render you less obedience, that the elements do not so serve your advantages and your pleasures. For do you serve God, through whom all things serve you?
Do you serve Him at whose bidding all things wait upon you? You exact servitude from your own slave, and you, a man, compel a man to obey and submit to you; and although you share the same lot of being born, one condition of dying, a like substance of bodies, a common nature of souls, and although it is by equal right and on a like law that one comes into this world or afterward departs from the world—yet unless you are served according to your will, unless obedience is rendered to your bidding, you, an imperious and excessive exactor of servitude, scourge and beat, and afflict and torture with hunger, thirst, nakedness, and often with the sword and the prison. And do you not acknowledge the Lord your God, while you yourself thus wield dominion? Rightly, then, when plagues assail, the scourges and stripes of God are not lacking.
And since these things avail nothing here, nor turn individuals to God by so great a terror of disasters, there remains afterward the eternal prison, the perpetual flame, and the everlasting punishment; nor shall the groaning of those who entreat be heard there, because the terror of an indignant God was not heard here, who cries out through the prophet and says: 'Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for there is a judgement of the Lord against the inhabitants of the earth, because there is neither mercy nor truth nor knowledge of God upon the earth: cursing and lying and slaughter and theft and adultery are spread abroad over the earth; they mingle blood with blood.'
'Therefore the earth shall mourn with all its inhabitants, with the beasts of the field, with the serpents of the earth, with the birds of heaven, and the fishes of the sea shall fail, so that no one judges, no one convicts.' God says that He is indignant because the knowledge of God is not in the lands, and God is not acknowledged nor feared. God rebukes and arraigns the sins of lies, of lusts, of frauds, of cruelty, of impiety, of madness; and yet no one turns to innocence. Behold, the things happen which were foretold beforehand by the words of God, and no one is admonished by his trust in present things to take thought for the future. Amid the very adversities by which the soul, scarcely cramped and shut in, draws breath, there is leisure to be wicked and, in such great perils, to judge not oneself more, but another.
You are indignant that God is indignant, as though by living wickedly you earned anything good, as though all these things which happen were not still less and lighter than your sins. You who judge others, be sometimes also a judge of yourself; look into the hidden recesses of your conscience—nay, since there is now no shame at all in offending, and men sin as though they pleased the more by the very sins, do you, who seem clear and laid bare to all, look upon yourself as well. For either you are puffed up with pride, or rapacious with avarice, or savage with anger, or prodigal at the dice, or drunken with wine-bibbing, or envious with spite, or unchaste with lust, or violent with cruelty: and do you wonder that the wrath of God grows toward the punishment of the human race, when that which is to be punished grows daily?
You complain that an enemy rises up, as though, even if an enemy were lacking, there could be peace amid the very togas; as though, even if the external arms and perils from the barbarians were checked, the weapons of domestic assault did not stalk more fiercely and grievously within, in the calumnies and injuries of powerful citizens. You complain of barrenness and famine, as though drought made a greater famine than rapacity, as though the burning fever of want did not blaze up more fiercely from the hoarding of grain-supplies and the heaping up of prices. You complain that the heaven is shut with rains, when the granaries are thus cheated on the lands. You complain that less is born, as though what is born were furnished to the needy.
You accuse pestilence and plague, when by that very pestilence and plague the crimes of individuals have been either uncovered or increased, while no mercy is shown to the sick, and avarice and rapine gape after the dead. The same men are timid for the duty of piety, but rash for impious gains, fleeing the funerals of the dying and grasping at the spoils of the dead—so that it appears that in their sickness the wretched were perhaps abandoned to this very end, that they might not, while being cared for, escape; for he who seizes the wealth of a perishing man wished that the sick man should perish. So great a terror of disasters cannot give the discipline of innocence; and amid a people dying in frequent slaughter, no one reflects that he himself is mortal. On every side men run about, snatch, seize; there is no concealment of plundering, no delay.
As though it were lawful, as though it were fitting, as though he who does not plunder felt it his own loss and detriment, so each one hastens to plunder. Among robbers there is at least some shame for their crimes; they love trackless gorges and desolate solitudes, and there the wrong is done in such a way that nevertheless the deed of the wrongdoers is veiled by darkness and night. Avarice rages openly, and, secure in its very boldness, displays in the light of the forum the weapons of unbridled greed. Hence forgers, hence poisoners, hence assassins in the midst of the city, as headlong to sin as they sin with impunity. The crime is committed by the guilty, and no innocent man is found to avenge it. There is no fear of an accuser or a judge:
The wicked obtain impunity, while the modest keep silent, the accomplices are afraid, and those who would judge are bought and sold. And therefore, through the prophet, by the divine Spirit and inspiration, the truth of the matter is brought forth, and a sure and manifest reasoning is shown: that the Lord is able to forbid adversities, but that the deserts of sinners cause Him not to come to their aid. 'Is not,' He says, 'the hand of God strong, to make them safe? or will He weigh down His ear that He should not hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and on account of your offences He turns away His face from you, that He may not have mercy.' Let sins, therefore, and offences be reckoned up; let the wounds of conscience be pondered; and let each one cease to complain of God or of us, if he understands that he deserves what he suffers.
And behold, what is the very nature of that thing about which especially our discourse is concerned—that you harass us who are harmless, that to the reproach of God you assail and oppress the servants of God? Is it too little that your life is stained by the diversity of raging vices, by the iniquity of deadly crimes, by the gain of bloody robberies; that the true religion is overthrown by false superstitions; that God is in no way either sought or feared—that besides all this you furthermore demand with unjust persecutions the servants of God, dedicated to His majesty and divinity? It is not enough that you yourself do not worship God; you furthermore persecute with sacrilegious harassment those who do worship Him.
You neither worship God nor permit Him to be worshipped at all; and whereas the rest, who venerate not only these absurd idols and images made by the hand of man, but even certain portents and monsters, find favour with you, the worshipper of God alone displeases you. Everywhere in your temples smoke the pyres of victims and the funeral-fires of cattle, while the altars of God are either nowhere or hidden. Crocodiles and dog-headed apes and stones and serpents are worshipped, and God alone upon the earth is either not worshipped, or it is not with impunity that He is worshipped. The harmless, the just, those dear to God, you deprive of home, you despoil of patrimony, you press with chains, you shut in prison, you punish with beasts, sword, and fires. Nor are you even content with the brief dispatch of our sufferings and the simple, swift shortness of our punishments:
You apply long torments to bodies to be mangled; you multiply numerous tortures for entrails to be torn; nor can your ferocity and savagery be content with the customary torments: ingenious cruelty devises new punishments. What is this rage of insatiable butchery, what this inexhaustible lust of savagery? Rather choose for yourself one of two things: to be a Christian is either a crime or it is not. If it is a crime, why do you not slay the one who confesses it? If it is not a crime, why do you persecute the innocent? For I ought to have been tortured if I denied it.
If, fearing your punishment, I were to conceal by a deceiving lie what I had formerly been and that I had not worshipped your gods, then I ought to be tortured, then driven by the force of pain to the confession of a crime—just as in other inquiries the accused are tortured who deny that they are bound by the crime of which they are charged, so that the truth of the deed, which is not brought forth by the informer's voice, may be wrung out by bodily pain. But now, when of my own accord I confess and cry out, and with frequent and repeated words again and again attest that I am a Christian, why do you apply torments to one confessing, and to one who destroys your gods not in hidden and secret places but openly, but publicly, but in the forum itself, with magistrates and governors listening?
So that, even if it were too little that you formerly arraigned in me, that may have grown for which you ought both to hate and to punish me the more. Why, while I proclaim myself a Christian in a frequented place with the people standing round, and confound both you and your gods by clear and public preaching, why do you turn yourself to the weakness of the body, why do you contend with the frailty of earthly flesh? Engage with the vigour of the mind, break the strength of the soul, destroy the faith, conquer by disputation if you can, conquer by reason. Or if there is any divinity and power in your gods, let them rise up for their own avenging, let them defend themselves by their own majesty. But what can they bestow on their worshippers, who cannot avenge themselves on those who do not worship them?
For if he who avenges is of more worth than he who is avenged, then you are greater than your gods. If, therefore, you are greater than those whom you worship, you ought not to worship them, but to be worshipped by them. Thus your vengeance defends them when wronged, just as your guardianship keeps them shut up that they may not perish. Be ashamed to worship those whom you yourself defend; be ashamed to hope for protection from those whom you yourself protect. Oh, if you would but hear and see them when they are adjured by us, are tortured by spiritual scourges, and by the torments of words are cast out from the bodies they possess—when, howling and groaning with a human voice and by divine power, feeling the lashes and stripes, they confess the judgement to come! Come and learn that the things we say are true:
And since you say that you worship the gods in this way, believe even those very ones whom you worship. Or if you are willing to believe yourself also, he who now besieges your breast, who has now blinded your mind with the night of ignorance, will speak of you out of your own self while you listen. You will see that we are entreated by those whom you entreat, feared by those whom you adore; you will see standing bound beneath our hand and trembling as captives those whom you look up to and venerate as lords. Surely even thus you may be confounded in these errors of yours, when you behold and hear your gods at once, at our questioning, betraying what they are, and, though you are present, unable to conceal those tricks and deceptions of theirs.
What sloth of mind is this, then—nay, what blind and foolish madness of the witless—not to come from darkness to the light, and, bound in the snares of eternal death, to be unwilling to take up the hope of immortality; not to fear God threatening and saying: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.' And again: 'They have adored the things which their own fingers have made, and man has been bowed down, and the man has been humbled, and I will not release them.' Why do you humble and bend yourself to false gods? Why do you bow your captive body before absurd images and earthly figments? God made you upright; and whereas the other animals are prone and depressed, their posture sinking toward the earth, to you a lofty stature is given, and a countenance raised upward to heaven and to the Lord.
Look thither; direct your eyes thither; seek God in the heights above. That you may be able to be free from the lower regions, lift your suspended breast to the heights and the heavenly things. Why do you cast yourself down into the fall of death together with the serpent whom you worship? Why do you fall into the ruin of the devil through him and with him? Keep the loftiness in which you were born. Persevere such as you were made by God. With the posture of your face and body, set your soul upright. That you may be able to know God, first know yourself. Forsake the idols which human error has devised. Turn to God; whom if you implore, He comes to your aid. Believe in Christ, whom the Father sent to give us life and to restore us. Cease to wound the servants of God and of Christ by your persecutions, whom, when wounded, divine vengeance defends.
For this is the reason that none of us, when he is apprehended, resists, nor avenges himself against your unjust violence, although our people are exceedingly numerous and abundant. Security as to the vengeance that will follow makes us patient. The innocent yield to the guilty; the guiltless acquiesce in punishments and torments, certain and confident that whatever we suffer shall not remain unavenged, and that the greater the wrong of the persecution shall have been, by so much the juster and heavier becomes the vengeance for the persecution. Nor is anything ever undertaken by the wickedness of the impious against our name, but that divine vengeance straightway accompanies it.
To pass over the ancient memorials in silence, and not to recount with any proclamation of voice the vengeances often repeated on behalf of the worshippers of God, the proof of a recent matter is enough: that so swiftly, and in such swiftness so grandly, the defence lately followed in the ruins of affairs, the losses of wealth, the dispatch of soldiers, the diminution of the camps. Nor let anyone suppose that this happened by chance, or think it was fortuitous, since long ago the divine Scripture has laid it down and said: 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord'; and again the Holy Spirit forewarns and says: 'Say not: I will avenge myself on my enemy; but wait for the Lord, that He may be a help to you.'
Whence it is clear and manifest that not through us, but for us, all these things come about which descend from the indignation of God. Nor let anyone therefore suppose that Christians are not avenged in the things that happen, because they too seem to be touched by the onset of the things befalling. He feels the punishment of the world's adversities whose every joy and glory is in the world. He mourns and weeps if it goes ill with him in this age, who cannot fare well after this age, whose every fruit of living is gathered here, whose every solace is here ended, whose fleeting and brief life reckons here some sweetness and pleasure; for when he has departed hence, punishment now alone remains for his sorrow.
But for these, there is no grief at the assault of present evils, who have confidence in future goods. Indeed, we are neither dismayed by adversities, nor broken, nor do we grieve, nor do we murmur in any disaster of affairs or sickness of bodies. Living by the spirit rather than by the flesh, we overcome the infirmity of the body by the firmness of the mind. By the very things which torment and weary you, we know and trust that we are tested and strengthened. Do you suppose that we suffer adversities equally with you, when you see that the same adversities are borne by us and by you not equally?
Among you, impatience is always clamorous and querulous; among us, patience is strong and religious, always quiet and always thankful to God. It claims for itself nothing here as joyful or prosperous, but, mild and gentle and stable against all the whirlwinds of a fluctuating world, it awaits the time of the divine promise. For as long as this body remains common with the rest, the bodily condition too must of necessity be common, nor is it granted to the human race to be separated one from another, except by departing hence from the age. Within one house, the good and the bad are meanwhile contained together. Whatever befalls within the house, we endure by an equal lot, until, when the end of temporal time is completed, we are divided to the abodes either of eternal death or of immortality.
We are not, therefore, on that account your peers and equals, because, being still set in this world and in this flesh, we incur the discomforts of the world and the flesh equally with you. For since everything that punishes lies in the perception of pain, it is manifest that he is not a partaker of your punishment whom you see not grieving along with you. Among us the strength of hope and the firmness of faith flourish, and amid the very ruins of the failing world, the mind stands erect and the virtue unmoved, and patience is never anything but joyful, and the soul always secure in its God—just as through the prophet the Holy Spirit speaks and exhorts, strengthening the firmness of our hope and faith with a heavenly voice: 'The fig tree,' He says, 'shall not bear fruit, and there shall be no growth in the vines.'
'The labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall not furnish food. The sheep shall be cut off from the pasture, and there shall be no oxen in the stalls. But I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice in God my Saviour.' He denies that the man of God and the worshipper of God, supported by the truth of hope and founded upon the stability of faith, is moved by the assaults of this world and of the age. Though the vine deceive and the olive disappoint, and the parched field, with its herbs dying of drought, grow dry—what is this to Christians, what to the servants of God, whom paradise invites, whom all the grace and abundance of the heavenly kingdom awaits? They exult always in the Lord, and are glad and rejoice in their God, and bravely endure the evils and adversities of the world, while they look forward to the good and prosperous things to come.
For we who, having laid aside our earthly nativity, have been recreated and reborn by the Spirit, and now live not to the world but to God, shall not receive the gifts and promises of God except when we have come to God. And yet, for the warding off of enemies, for the obtaining of rains, and for the removal or tempering of adversities, we ever pray and pour forth our prayers; and for your peace and welfare, propitiating and appeasing God, we pray day and night continually and earnestly.