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ST. AUGUSTIN

THE CITY OF GOD, BOOKS I-II

[Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.]


BOOK I.

ARGUMENT: AUGUSTIN CENSURES THE PAGANS, WHO ATTRIBUTED THE CALAMITIES OF
THE WORLD, AND ESPECIALLY THE RECENT SACK OF ROME BY THE GOTHS, TO THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND ITS PROHIBITION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS. HE
SPEAKS OF THE BLESSINGS AND ILLS OF LIFE, WHICH THEN, AS ALWAYS, HAPPENED
TO GOOD AND BAD MEN ALIKE. FINALLY, HE REBUKES THE SHAMELESSNESS OF THOSE
WHO CAST UP TO THE CHRISTIANS THAT THEIR WOMEN HAD BEEN VIOLATED BY THE
SOLDIERS.

PREFACE, EXPLAINING HIS DESIGN IN UNDERTAKING THIS WORK.

   THE glorious city of God(1) is my theme in this work, which you, my
dearest son Marcellinus,(2) suggested, and which is due to you by my
promise. I have undertaken its defence against those who prefer their own
gods to the Founder of this city,--a city surpassingly glorious, whether we
view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and
sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in
the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits
for, expecting until "righteousness shall return unto judgment,''(3) and it
obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace. A
great work this, and an arduous; but God is my helper. For I am aware what
ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of
humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine
grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. For
the King and Founder of this city of which we speak, has in Scripture
uttered to His people a dictum of the divine law in these words: "God
resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."(4) But this, which
is God's prerogative, the inflated ambition of a proud spirit also affects,
and dearly loves that this be numbered among its attributes, to

  "Show pity to the humbled soul,
   And crush the sons of pride."(5)

And therefore, as the plan of this work we have undertaken requires, and as
occasion offers, we must speak also of the earthly city, which, though it
be mistress of the nations, is itself ruled by its lust of rule.

CHAP. I.--OF THE ADVERSARIES OF THE NAME OF CHRIST, WHOM THE BARBARIANS FOR
CHRIST'S SAKE SPARED WHEN THEY STORMED THE CITY.

   For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to
defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed, being reclaimed from their
ungodly error, have become sufficiently creditable citizens of this city;
but many are so inflamed with hatred against it, and are so ungrateful to
its Redeemer for His signal benefits, as to forget that they would now be
unable to utter a single word to its prejudice, had they not found in its
sacred places, as they fled from the enemy's steel, that life in which they
now boast themselves.(1) Are not those very Romans, who were spared by the
barbarians through their respect for Christ, become enemies to the name of
Christ? The reliquaries of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles
bear witness to this; for in the sack of the city they were open sanctuary
for all who fled to them, whether Christian or Pagan. To their very
threshold the blood-thirsty enemy raged; there his murderous fury owned a
limit. Thither did such of the enemy as had any pity convey those to whom
they had given quarter, lest any less mercifully disposed might fall upon
them. And, indeed, when even those murderers who everywhere else showed
themselves pitiless came to those spots where that was forbidden which the
license of war permitted in every other place, their furious rage for
slaughter was bridled, and their eagerness to take prisoners was quenched.
Thus escaped multitudes who now reproach the Christian religion, and impute
to Christ the ills that have befallen their city; but the preservation of
their own life--a boon which they owe to the respect entertained for Christ
by the barbarians--they attribute not to our Christ, but to their own good
luck. They ought rather, had they any right perceptions, to attribute the
severities and hardships inflicted by their enemies, to that divine
providence which is wont to reform the depraved manners of men by
chastisement, and which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous
and praiseworthy,--either translating them, when they have passed through
the trial, to a better world, or detaining them still on earth for ulterior
purposes. And they ought to attribute it to the spirit of these Christian
times, that, contrary to the custom of war, these bloodthirsty barbarians
spared them, and spared them for Christ's sake, whether this mercy was
actually shown in promiscuous places, or in those places specially
dedicated to Christ's name, and of which the very largest were selected as
sanctuaries, that full scope might thus be given to the expansive
compassion which desired that a large multitude might find shelter there.
Therefore ought they to give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee
for refuge to His name, that so they may escape the punishment of eternal
fire--they who with lying lips took upon them this name, that they might
escape the punishment of present destruction. For of those whom you see
insolently and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are
numbers who would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they
not pretended that they themselves were Christ's servants. Yet now, in
ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the risk of being
punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely oppose that name under
which they fraudulently protected themselves for the sake of enjoying the
light of this brief life.

CHAP. 2.--THAT IT IS QUITE CONTRARY TO THE USAGE OF WAR, THAT THE VICTORS
SHOULD SPARE THE VANQUISHED FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR GODS.

   There are histories of numberless wars, both before the building of
Rome and since its rise and the extension of its dominion; let these be
read, and let one instance be cited in which, when a city had been taken by
foreigners, the victors spared those who were found to have fled for
sanctuary to the temples of their gods;(2) or one instance in which a
barbarian general gave orders that none should be put to the sword who had
been found in this or that temple. Did not AEneas see

               "Dying Priam at the shrine,
   Staining the hearth he made divine? "(3)

Did not Diomede and Ulysses

  "Drag with red hands, the sentry slain,
   Her fateful image from your fane,
   Her chaste locks touch, and stain with gore
   The virgin coronal she wore?"(4)

Neither is that true which follows, that

  "Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,
   And Greece grew weak."(5)

For after this they conquered and destroyed Troy with fire and sword; after
this they beheaded Priam as he fled to the altars. Neither did Troy perish
because it lost Minerva. For what had Minerva herself first lost, that she
should perish? Her guards perhaps? No doubt; just her guards. For as soon
as they were slain, she could be stolen. It was not, in fact, the men who
were preserved by the image, but the image by the men. How, then, was she
invoked to defend the city and the citizens, she who could not defend her
own defenders?

CHAP. 3.--THAT THE ROMANS DID NOT SHOW THEIR USUAL SAGACITY WHEN THEY
TRUSTED THAT THEY WOULD BE BENEFITED BY THE GODS WHO HAD BEEN UNABLE TO
DEFEND TROY.

   And these be the gods to whose protecting care the Romans were
delighted to entrust their city! O too, too piteous mistake! And they are
enraged at us when we speak thus about their gods, though, so far from
being enraged at their own writers, they part with money to learn what they
say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these authors are reckoned worthy of
a salary from the public purse, and of other honors. There is Virgil, who
is read by boys, in order that this great poet, this most famous and
approved of all poets, may impregnate their virgin minds, and may not
readily be forgotten by them, according to that saying of Horace,

   "The fresh cask long keeps its first tang."(1)

Well, in this Virgil, I say, Juno is introduced as hostile to the Trojans,
and stirring up AEolus, the king of the winds, against them in the words,

  "A race I hate now ploughs the sea,
   Transporting Troy to Italy,
   And home-gods conquered"(2) . . .

And ought prudent men to have entrusted the defence of Rome to these
conquered gods? But it will be said, this was only the saying of Juno, who,
like an angry woman, did not know what she was saying. What, then, says
AEneas himself,--AEneas who is so often designated "pious?" Does he not
say,

  "Lo! Panthus, 'scaped from death by flight,
   Priest of Apollo on the height,
   His conquered gods with trembling hands
   He bears, and shelter swift demands?"(3)

Is it not clear that the gods (whom he does not scruple to call
"conquered") were rather entrusted to Aeneas than he to them, when it is
said to him,

  "The gods of her domestic shrines
   Your country to your care consigns?"(4)

If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were conquered,
and that when conquered they could not escape except under the protection
of a man, what a madness is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely en-
trusted to these guardians, and could not have been taken unless it had
lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and champions,
what is this but to worship, not good divinities, but evil omens?(5) Would
it not be wiser to believe, not that Rome would never have fallen into so
great a calamity had  not they first perished, but rather that they would
have perished long since had not Rome preserved them as long as she could?
For who does not see, when he thinks of it, what a foolish assumption it is
that they could not be vanquished under vanquished defenders, and that they
only perished because they had lost their guardian gods, when, indeed, the
only cause of their perishing was that they chose for their protectors gods
condemned to perish? The poets, therefore, when they composed and sang
these things about the conquered gods, had no intention to invent
falsehoods, but uttered, as honest men, what the truth extorted from them.
This, however, will be carefully and copiously discussed in another and
more fitting place. Meanwhile I will briefly, and to the best of my
ability, explain what I meant to say about these ungrateful men who
blasphemously impute to Christ the calamities which they deservedly suffer
in consequence of their own wicked ways, while that which is for Christ's
sake spared them in spite of their wickedness they do not even take the
trouble to notice; and in their mad and blasphemous insolence, they use
against His name those very lips wherewith they falsely claimed that same
name that their lives might be spared. In the places consecrated to Christ,
where for His sake no enemy would injure them, they restrained their
tongues that they might be safe and protected; but no sooner do they emerge
from these sanctuaries, than they unbridle these tongues to hurl against
Him curses full of hate.

CHAP. 4.--OF THE ASYLUM OF JUNO IN TROY, WHICH SAVED NO ONE FROM THE
GREEKS; AND OF THE CHURCHES OF THE APOSTLES, WHICH PROTECTED FROM THE
BARBARIANS ALL WHO FLED TO THEM.

   Troy itself, the mother of the Roman people, was not able, as I have
said, to protect its own citizens in the sacred places of their gods from
the fire and sword of the Greeks, though the Greeks worshipped the same
gods. Not only so, but

            "Phoenix and Ulysses fell
   In the void courts by Juno's cell
   Were set the spoils to keep;
   Snatched from the burning shrines away,
   There Ilium's mighty treasure lay,
   Rich altars, bowls of massy gold,
   And captive raiment, rudely rolled
     In one promiscuous heap;
   While boys and matrons, wild with fear,
   In long array were standing near." (1)

In other words, the place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, not
that from it none might be led out a captive, but that in it all the
captives might be immured. Compare now this "asylum"--the asylum not of an
ordinary god, not of one of the rank and file of gods, but of Jove's own
sister and wife, the queen of all the gods--with the churches built in
memory of the apostles. Into it were collected the spoils rescued from the
blazing temples and snatched from the gods, not that they might be restored
to the vanquished, but divided among the victors; while into these was
carried back, with the most religious observance anti respect, everything
which belonged to them, even though found elsewhere There liberty was lost;
here preserved. There bondage was strict; here strictly excluded Into that
temple men were driven to become the chattels of their enemies, now lording
it over them; into these churches men were led by their relenting foes,
that they might be at liberty. In fine, the gentle(2) Greeks appropriated
that temple of Juno to the purposes of their own avarice and pride; while
these churches of Christ were chosen even by the savage barbarians as the
fit scenes for humility and mercy. But perhaps, after all, the Greeks did
in that victory of theirs spare the temples of those gods whom they
worshipped in common with the Trojans, and did not dare to put to the sword
or make captive the wretched and vanquished Trojans who fled thither; and
perhaps Virgil, in the manner of poets, has depicted what never really
happened? But there is no question that he depicted the usual custom of an
enemy when sacking a city.

CHAP, 5.--CAESAR'S STATEMENT REGARDING THE UNIVERSAL CUSTOM OF AN ENEMY
WHEN SACKING A CITY.

   Even Caesar himself gives us positive testimony regarding this custom;
for, in his deliverance in the senate about the conspirators, he says (as
Sallust, a historian of distinguished veracity, writes(3)) "that virgins
and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents,
matrons subjected to whatever should be the pleasure of the conquerors,
temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning rife; in fine, all
things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing." If he had not
mentioned temples here, we might suppose that enemies were in the habit of
sparing the dwellings of the gods. And the Roman temples were in danger of
these disasters, not from foreign foes, but from Catiline and his
associates, the most noble senators and citizens of Rome. But these, it may
be said, were abandoned men, and the parricides of their fatherland.

CHAP. 6.--THAT NOT EVEN THE ROMANS, WHEN THEY TOOK CITIES, SPARED THE
CONQUERED IN THEIR TEMPLES.

   Why, then, need our argument take note of the many nations who have
waged wars with one another, and have nowhere spared the conquered in the
temples of their gods? Let us look at the practice of the Romans themselves
let us, I say, recall and review the Romans, whose chief praise it has been
"to spare the vanquished and subdue the proud," and that they preferred
"rather to forgive than to revenge an injury;"(4) and among so many and I
great cities which they have stormed, taken, and overthrown for the
extension of their dominion, let us be told what temples they were
accustomed to exempt, so that whoever took refuge in them was free. Or have
they really done this, and has the fact been suppressed by the historians
of these events? Is it to be believed, that men who sought out with the
greatest eagerness points they could praise, would omit those which, in
their own estimation, are the most signal proofs of piety? Marcus
Marcellus, a distinguished Roman, who took Syracuse, a most splendidly
adorned city, is reported to have bewailed its coming ruin, and to have
shed his own tears over it before he spill its blood. He took steps also to
preserve the chastity even of his enemy. For before he gave orders for the
storming of the city, he issued an edict forbidding the violation of any
free person. Yet the city was sacked according to the custom of war; nor do
we anywhere read, that even by so chaste and gentle a commander orders were
given that no one should be injured who had fled to this or that temple.
And this certainly would by no means have been omitted, when neither his
weeping nor his edict preservative of chastity could be passed in silence.
Fabius, the conqueror of the city of Tarentum, is praised for abstaining
from making booty of the images. For when his secretary proposed the
question to him, what he wished done with the statues of the gods, which
had been taken in large numbers, he veiled his moderation under a joke. For
he asked of what sort they were; and when they reported to him that there
were not only many large images, but some of them armed, "Oh," says he,
"let us leave with the Tarentines their angry gods." Seeing, then, that the
writers of Roman history could not pass in silence, neither the weeping of
the one general nor the laughing of the other, neither the chaste pity of
the one nor the facetious moderation of the other, on what occasion would
it be omitted, if, for the honor of any of their enemy's gods, they had
shown this particular form of leniency, that in any temple slaughter or
captivity was prohibited?

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE CRUELTIES WHICH OCCURRED IN THE SACK OF ROME WERE IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THE CUSTOM OF WAR, WHEREAS THE ACTS OF CLEMENCY RESULTED
FROM THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST'S NAME.

   All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the recent
calamity--all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery--was the
result of the custom of war. But what was novel, was that savage barbarians
showed themselves in so gentle a guise, that the largest churches were
chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to
whom quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from them none
forcibly dragged; that into them many were led by their relenting enemies
to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by
merciless foes. Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the
name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this,
and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one from praising
it, is mad. Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the
barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and
marvellously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, "I
will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with
stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from
them."(1)

CHAP. 8.--OF THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES WHICH OFTEN INDISCRIMINATELY
ACCRUE TO GOOD AND WICKED MEN.

   Will some one say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even
to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, but because it was the mercy of Him who
daily "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust."(2) For though some of these men, taking
thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform, some, as the
apostle says, "despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering,
after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves
wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of
God, who will render to every man according to his deeds:"(3) nevertheless
does the patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the
scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so, too, does the mercy
of God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of God
arrests the wicked to punish them. To the divine providence it has seemed
good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which
the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which
the good shall not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life,
and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we
might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to
enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men
often suffer.

   There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by
those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the
good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by
its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's
happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.(4) Yet often, even in
the present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His
own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest
punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on
the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly divine punishment, it
would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so of the
good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality
confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that
these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who
sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of His
service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and
covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not
suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because
there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness
of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though
exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as
the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under
the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and
as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by
the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges,
clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it
is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while
the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what
ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with
the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a
fragrant odor.

CHAP. 9.--OF THE REASONS FOR ADMINISTERING CORRECTION TO BAD AND GOOD
TOGETHER.

   What, then, have the Christians suffered in that calamitous period,
which would not profit every one who duly and faithfully considered the
following circumstances? First of all, they must humbly consider those very
sins which have provoked God to fill the world with such terrible
disasters; for although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral,
and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all
faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills. For every
man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of
the flesh. Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and
abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, yet he slips into some
sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less
account. But not to mention this, where can we readily find a man who holds
in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting
pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now
smites the earth as His predictions threatened? Where is the man who lives
with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them? For often
we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing
them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we
shrink from the labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to
lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our
advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous
disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing. So
that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and
therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next
life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins
through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial,
they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity
they quite escape punishment. Justly, when God afflicts them in common with
the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness
they declined to be bitter to these sinners.

   If any one forbears to reprove and find fault with those who are doing
wrong, because he seeks a more seasonable opportunity, or because he fears
they may be made worse by his rebuke, or that other weak persons may be
disheartened from endeavoring to lead a good and pious life, and may be
driven from the faith; this man's omission seems to be occasioned not by
covetousness, but by a charitable consideration. But what is blame-worthy
is, that they who themselves revolt from the conduct of the wicked, and
live in quite another fashion, yet spare those faults in other men which
they ought to reprehend and wean them from; and spare them because they
fear to give offence, test they should injure their interests in those
things which good men may innocently and legitimately use,--though they use
them more greedily than becomes persons who are strangers in this world,
and profess the hope of a heavenly country. For not only the weaker
brethren who enjoy married life, and have children (or desire to have
them), and own houses and establishments, whom the apostle addresses in the
churches, warning and instructing them how they should live, both the wives
with their husbands, and the husbands with their wives, the children with
their parents, and parents with their children, and servants with their
masters, and masters with their servants,--not only do these weaker
brethren gladly obtain and grudgingly lose many earthly and temporal things
on account of which they dare not offend men whose polluted and wicked life
greatly displeases them; but those also who live at a higher level, who are
not entangled in the meshes of married life, but use meagre food and
raiment, do often take thought of their own safety and good name, and
abstain from finding fault with the wicked, because they fear their wiles
and violence. And although they do not fear them to such an extent as to be
drawn to the commission of like iniquities, nay, not by any threats or
violence soever; yet those very deeds which they refuse to share in the
commission of they often decline to find fault with, when possibly they
might by finding fault prevent their commission. They abstain from
interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own
safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that
their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to
influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly
relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the
people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-
intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.

   Accordingly this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good
are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with
temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community. They are
punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but
because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love
this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked,
being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life
eternal. And if they will not be the companions of the good in seeking life
everlasting, they should be loved as enemies, and be dealt with patiently.
For so long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come to
a better mind. These selfish persons have more cause to fear than those to
whom it was said through the prophet, "He is taken away in his iniquity,
but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand."(1) For watchmen or
overseers of the people are appointed in churches, that they may
unsparingly rebuke sin. Nor is that man guiltless of the sin we speak of,
who, though he be not a watchman, yet sees in the conduct of those with
whom the relationships of this life bring him into contact, many things
that should be blamed, and yet overlooks them, fearing to give offence, and
lose such worldly blessings as may legitimately be desired, but which he
too eagerly grasps. Then, lastly, there is another reason why the good are
afflicted with temporal calamities--the reason which Job's case
exemplifies: that the human spirit may be proved, and that it may be
manifested with what fortitude of pious trust, and with how unmercenary a
love, it cleaves to God.(2)

CHAP. 10.--THAT THE SAINTS LOSE NOTHING IN LOSING TEMPORAL GOODS.

   These are the considerations which one must keep in view, that he may
answer the question whether any evil happens to the faithful and godly
which cannot be turned to profit. Or shall we say that the question is
needless, and that the apostle is vaporing when he says, "We know that all
things work together for good to them that love God ?"(3)

   They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions
of the hidden man of the heart, which in the sight of God are of great
price?(4) Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of Christians, to
whom the wealthy apostle said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain.
For we brought nothing into this world, find it is certain we can carry
nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But
they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted
after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with
many sorrows."(5)

   They, then, who lost their worldly all in the sack of Rome, if they
owned their possessions as they had been taught by the apostle, who himself
was poor without, but rich within,--that is to say, if they used the world
as not using it,--could say in the words of Job, heavily tried, but not
overcome: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return
thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; as it pleased the
Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord."(6) Like a
good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by
obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose,
while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death. But
as to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer
earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat
immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these
things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of
their own making; in the words of the apostle quoted above, "they have
pierced themselves through with many sorrows." For it was well that they
who had so long despised these verbal admonitions should receive the
teaching of experience. For when the apostle says, "They that will be rich
fall into temptation," and so on, what he blames in riches is not the
possession of them, but the desire of them. For elsewhere he says, "Charge
them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust
in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things
to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to
distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a
good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal
life."(1) They who were making such a use of their property have been
consoled for light losses by great gains, and have had more pleasure in
those possessions which they have securely laid past, by freely giving them
away, than grief in those which they entirely lost by an anxious and
selfish hoarding of them. For nothing could perish on earth save what they
would be ashamed to carry away from earth. Our Lord's injunction runs, "Lay
not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth
corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for
yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also."(2) And they who have listened to this
injunction have proved in the time of tribulation how well they were
advised in not despising this most trustworthy teacher, and most faithful
and mighty guardian of their treasure. For if many were glad that their
treasure was stored in places which the enemy chanced not to light upon,
how much better founded was the joy of those who, by the counsel of their
God, had fled with their treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly
reach! Thus our Paulinus, bishop of Nola,(3) who voluntarily abandoned vast
wealth and became quite poor, though abundantly rich in holiness, when the
barbarians sacked Nola, and took him prisoner, used silently to pray, as he
afterwards told me, "O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver,
for where all my treasure is Thou knowest." For all his treasure was where
he had been taught to hide and store it by Him who had also foretold that
these calamities would happen in the world. Consequently those persons who
obeyed their Lord when He warned them where and how to lay up treasure, did
not lose even their, earthly possessions in the invasion of the barbarians;
while those who are now repenting that they did not obey Him have learnt
the right use of earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which would have
prevented their loss, at least by the experience which follows it.

   But some good and Christian men have been put to the torture, that they
might be forced to deliver up their goods to the enemy. They could indeed
neither deliver nor lose that good which made themselves good. If, however,
they preferred torture to the surrender of the mammon of iniquity, then I
say they were not good men. Rather they should have been reminded that, if
they suffered so severely for the sake of money, they should endure all
torment, if need be, for Christ's sake; that they might be taught to love
Him rather who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and
not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they
preserved it by telling a lie or lost it by telling the truth. For under
these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one preserved
wealth save by denying its existence. So that possibly the torture which
taught them that they should set their affections on a possession they
could not lose, was more useful than those possessions which, without any
useful fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners. But
then we are reminded that some were tortured who had no wealth to
surrender, but who were not believed when they said so. These too, however,
had perhaps some craving for wealth, and were not willingly poor with a
holy resignation; and to such it had to be made plain, that not the actual
possession alone, but also the desire of wealth, deserved such excruciating
pains. And even if they were destitute of any hidden stores of gold and
silver, because they were living in hopes of a better life,--I know not
indeed if any such person was tortured on the supposition that he had
wealth; but if so, then certainly in confessing, when put to the question,
a holy poverty, he confessed Christ. And though it was scarcely to be
expected that the barbarians should believe him, yet no confessor of a holy
poverty could be tortured without receiving a heavenly reward.

   Again, they say that the long famine laid many a Christian low. But
this, too, the faithful turned to good uses by a pious endurance of it. For
those whom famine killed outright it rescued from the ills of this life, as
a kindly disease would have done; and those who were only hunger-bitten
were taught to live more sparingly, and inured to longer fasts.

CHAP. 11.--OF THE END OF THIS LIFE, WHETHER IT IS MATERIAL THAT IT BE LONG
DELAYED.

   But, it is added, many Christians were slaughtered, and were put to
death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well, if this be hard to bear, it
is assuredly the common lot of all who are born into this life. Of this at
least I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die
some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the
shortest. For of two things which have alike ceased to be, the one is not
better, the other worse--the one greater, the other less.(1) And of what
consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has
died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? And as
in the daily casualties of life every man is, as it were, threatened with
numberless deaths, so long as it remains uncertain which of them is his
fate, I would ask whether it is not better to suffer one and die, than to
live in fear of all? I am not unaware of the poor-spirited fear which
prompts us to choose rather to live long in fear of so many deaths, than to
die once and so escape them all; but the weak and cowardly shrinking of the
flesh is one thing, and the well-considered and reasonable persuasion of
the soul quite another. That death is not to be judged an evil which is the
end of a good life; for death becomes evil only by the retribution which
follows it. They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to
inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher
them. And since Christians are well aware that the death of the godly
pauper whose sores the dogs licked was far better than of the wicked rich
man who lay in purple and fine linen, what harm could these terrific deaths
do to the dead who had lived well?

CHAP. 12.--OF THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD: THAT THE DENIAL OF IT TO CHRISTIANS
DOES THEM NO INJURY.(2)

   Further still, we are reminded that in such a carnage as then occurred,
the bodies could not even be buried. But godly confidence is not appalled
by so ill-omened a circumstance; for the faithful bear in mind that
assurance has been given that not a hair of their head shall perish, and
that, therefore, though they even be devoured by beasts, their blessed
resurrection will not hereby be hindered. The Truth would nowise have said,
"Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,"(3)
if anything whatever that an enemy could do to the body of the slain could
be detrimental to the future life. Or will some one perhaps take so absurd
a position as to contend that those who kill the body are not to be feared
before death, and lest they kill the body, but after death, lest they
deprive it of burial? If this be so, then that is false which Christ says,
"Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that
they can do;"(4) for it seems they can do great injury to the dead body.
Far be it from us to suppose that the Truth can be thus false. They who
kill the body are said "to do something," because the deathblow is felt,
the body still having sensation; but after that, they have no more that
they can do, for in the slain body there is no sensation. And so there are
indeed many bodies of Christians lying unburied; but no one has separated
them from heaven, nor froth that earth which is all filled with the
presence of Him who knows whence He will raise again what He created. It is
said, indeed, in the Psalm: "The dead bodies of Thy servants have they
given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto
the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about
Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them."(5) But this was said rather to
exhibit the cruelty of those who did these things, than the misery of those
who suffered them. To the eyes of men this appears a harsh and doleful lot,
yet "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."(6)
Wherefore all these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the
careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp
of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the
dead. If a costly burial does any good to a wicked man, a squalid burial,
or none at all, may harm the godly. His crowd of domestics furnished the
purple-clad Dives with a funeral gorgeous in the eye of man; but in the
sight of God that was a more sumptuous funeral which the ulcerous pauper
received at the hands of the angels, who did not carry him out to a marble
tomb, but bore him aloft to Abraham's bosom.

   The men against whom I have undertaken to defend the city of God laugh
at all this. But even their own philosophers(7) have despised a careful
burial; and often whole armies have fought and fallen for their earthly
country without caring to inquire whether they would be left exposed on the
field of battle, or become the food of wild beasts. Of this noble disregard
of sepulture poetry has well said: "He who has no tomb has the sky for his
vault."(1) How much less ought they to insult over the unburied bodies of
Christians, to whom it has been promised that the flesh itself shall be
restored, and the body formed anew, all the members of it being gathered
not only from the earth, but from the most secret recesses of any other of
the elements in which the dead bodies of men have lain hid !

CHAP. 13.--REASONS FOR BURYING THE BODIES OF THE SAINTS.

   Nevertheless the bodies of the dead are not on this account to be
despised and left unburied; least of all the bodies of the righteous and
faithful, which have been used by the Holy Spirit as His organs and
instruments for all good works. For if the dress of a father, or his ring,
or anything he wore, be precious to his children, in proportion to the love
they bore him, with how much more reason ought we to care for the bodies of
those we love, which they wore far more closely and intimately than any
clothing! For the body is not an extraneous ornament or aid, but a part of
man's very nature. And therefore to the righteous of ancient times the last
offices were piously rendered, and sepulchres provided for them, and
obsequies celebrated;(2) and they themselves, while yet alive, gave
commandment to their sons about the burial, and, on occasion, even about
the removal of their bodies to some favorite place.(3) And Tobit, according
to the angel's testimony, is commended, and is said to have pleased God by
burying the dead.(4) Our Lord Himself, too, though He was to rise again the
third day, applauds, and commends to our applause, the good work of the
religious woman who poured precious ointment over His limbs, and did it
against His burial.(5) And the Gospel speaks with commendation of those who
were careful to take down His body from the cross, and wrap it lovingly in
costly cerements, and see to its burial.(6) These instances certainly do
not prove that corpses have any feeling; but they show that God's
providence extends even to the bodies of the dead, and that such pious
offices are pleasing to Him, as cherishing faith in the resurrection. And
we may also draw from them this wholesome lesson, that if God does not
forget even any kind office which loving care pays to the unconscious dead,
much more does He reward the charity we exercise towards the living. Other
things, indeed, which the holy patriarchs said of the burial and removal of
their bodies, they meant to be taken in a prophetic sense; but of these we
need not here speak at large, what we have already said being sufficient.
But if the want of those things which are necessary for the support of the
living, as food and clothing, though painful and trying, does not break
down the fortitude and virtuous endurance of good men, nor eradicate piety
from their souls, but rather renders it more fruitful, how much less can
the absence of the funeral, and of the other customary attentions paid to
the dead, render those wretched who are already reposing in the hidden
abodes of the blessed! Consequently, though in the sack of Rome and of
other towns the dead bodies of the Christians were deprived of these last
offices, this is neither the fault of the living, for they could not render
them; nor an infliction to the dead, for they cannot feel the loss.

CHAP. 14.--OF THE CAPTIVITY OF THE SAINTS, AND THAT DIVINE CONSOLATION
NEVER FAILED THEM THEREIN.

   But, say they, many Christians were even led away captive. This indeed
were a most pitiable fate, if they could be led away to any place where
they could not find their God. But for this calamity also sacred Scripture
affords great consolation. The three youths(7) were captives; Daniel was a
captive; so were other prophets: and God, the comforter, did not fail them.
And in like manner He has not failed His own people in the power of a
nation which, though barbarous, is yet human,--He who did not abandon the
prophet(8) in the belly of a monster. These things, indeed, are turned to
ridicule rather than credited by those with whom we are debating; though
they believe what they read in their own books, that Arion of Methymna, the
famous lyrist,(9) when he was thrown overboard, was received on a dolphin's
back and carried to land. But that story of ours about the prophet Jonah is
far more incredible,--more incredible because more marvellous, and more
marvellous because a greater exhibition of power.

CHAP. 15.--OF REGULUS, IN WHOM WE HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF THE VOLUNTARY
ENDURANCE OF CAPTIVITY FOR THE SAKE OF RELIGION; WHICH YET DID NOT PROFIT
HIM, THOUGH HE WAS A WORSHIPPER OF THE GODS.

   But among their own famous men they have a very noble example of the
voluntary endurance of captivity in obedience to a religious scruple.
Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, was a prisoner in the hands of
the Carthaginians. But they, being more anxious to exchange their prisoners
with the Romans than to keep them, sent Regulus as a special envoy with
their own embassadors to negotiate this exchanges but bound him first with
an oath, that if he failed to accomplish their wish, he would return to
Carthage. He went and persuaded the senate to the opposite course, because
he believed it was not for the advantage of the Roman republic to make an
exchange of prisoners. After he had thus exerted his influence, the Romans
did not compel him to return to the enemy; but what he had sworn he
voluntarily performed. But the Carthaginians put him to death with refined,
elaborate, and horrible tortures. They shut him up in a narrow box, in
which he was compelled to stand, and in which finely sharpened nails were
fixed all round about him, so that he could not lean upon any part of it
without intense pain; and so they killed him by depriving him of sleep.(1)
With justice, indeed, do they applaud the virtue which rose superior to so
frightful a fate. However, the gods he swore by were those who are now
supposed to avenge the prohibition of their worship, by inflicting these
present calamities on the human race. But if these gods, who were
worshipped specially in this behalf, that they might confer happiness in
this life, either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on
one who kept his oath to them, what more cruel punishment could they in
their anger have inflicted on a perjured person? But why may I not draw
from my reasoning a double inference? Regulus certainly had such reverence
for the gods, that for his oath's sake he would neither remain in his own
land nor go elsewhere, but without hesitation returned to his bitterest
enemies. If he thought that this course would be advantageous with respect
to this present life, he was certainly much deceived, for it brought his
life to a frightful termination. By his own example, in fact, he taught
that the gods do not secure the temporal happiness of their worshippers;
since he himself, who was devoted to their worship, as both conquered in
battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he refused to act in violation
of the oath he had sworn by them, was tortured and put to death by a new,
and hitherto unheard of, and all too horrible kind of punishment. And on
the supposition that the worshippers of the gods are rewarded by felicity
in the life to come, why, then, do they calumniate the influence of
Christianity? why do they assert that this disaster has overtaken the city
because it has ceased to worship its gods, since, worship them as
assiduously as it may, it may yet be as unfortunate as Regulus was? Or will
some one carry so wonderful a blindness to the extent of wildly attempting,
in the face of the evident truth, to contend I that though one man might be
unfortunate, though a worshipper of the gods, yet a whole city could not be
so? That is to say, the power of their gods is better adapted to preserve
multitudes than individuals,--as if a multitude were not composed of
individuals.

   But if they say that M. Regulus, even while a prisoner and enduring
these bodily torments, might yet enjoy the blessedness of a virtuous
soul,(2) then let them recognize that true virtue by which a city also may
be blessed. For the blessedness of a community and of an individual flow
from the same source; for a community is nothing else than a harmonious
collection of individuals. So that I am not concerned meantime to discuss
what kind of virtue Regulus possessed; enough, that by his very noble
example they are forced to own that the gods are to be worshipped not for
the sake of bodily comforts or external advantages; for he preferred to
lose all such things rather than offend the gods by whom he had sworn. But
what can we make of men who glory in having such a citizen, but dread
having a city like him? If they do not dread this, then let them
acknowledge that some such calamity as befell Regulus may also befall a
community, though they be worshipping their gods as diligently as he; and
let them no longer throw the blame of their misfortunes on Christianity.
But as our present concern is with those Christians who were taken
prisoners, let those who take occasion from this calamity to revile our
most wholesome religion in a fashion not less imprudent than impudent,
consider this and hold their peace; for if it was no reproach to their gods
that a most punctilious worshipper of theirs should, for the sake of
keeping his oath to them, be deprived of his native land without hope of
finding another, and fall into the hands of his enemies, and be put to
death by a long-drawn and exquisite torture, much less ought the Christian
name to be charged with the captivity of those who believe in its power,
since they, in confident expectation of a heavenly country, know that they
are pilgrims even in their own homes.

CHAP. 16.--OF THE VIOLATION OF THE CONSECRATED AND OTHER CHRISTIAN VIRGINS,
TO WHICH THEY WERE SUBJECTED IN CAPTIVITY AND TO WHICH THEIR OWN WILL GAVE
NO CONSENT; AND WHETHER THIS CONTAMINATED THEIR SOULS.

   But they fancy they bring a conclusive charge against Christianity,
when they aggravate the horror of captivity by adding that not only wives
and unmarried maidens, but even consecrated virgins, were violated. But
truly, with respect to this, it is not Christian faith, nor piety, nor even
the virtue of chastity, which is hemmed into any difficulty; the only
difficulty is so to treat the subject as to satisfy at once modesty and
reason. And in discussing it we shall not be so careful to reply to our
accusers as to comfort our friends. Letthis, therefore, in the first place,
be laid down as an unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the
life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the
body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that
while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does
with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it,
so long as he cannot escape it without sin. But as not only pain may be
inflicted, but lust gratified on the body of another, whenever anything of
this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit
from which modesty has not departed,--shame, lest that act which could not
be suffered without some sensual pleasure, should be believed to have been
committed also with some assent of the will.

CHAP. 17.--OF SUICIDE COMMITTED THROUGH FEAR OF PUNISHMENT OR DISHONOR.

   And consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves to
avoid such disgrace, who that has any human feeling would refuse to forgive
them.? And as for those who would not put an end to their lives, lest they
might seem to escape the crime of another by a sin of their own, he who
lays this to their charge as a great wickedness is himself not guiltless of
the fault of folly. For if it is not, lawful to take the law into our own
hands, and slay even a guilty person, whose death no public sentence has
warranted, then certainly he who kills himself is a homicide, and so much
the guiltier of his own death, as he was more innocent of that offence for
which he  doomed himself to die. Do we justly execrate the deed of Judas,
and does truth itself pronounce that by hanging himself he rather
aggravated than expiated the guilt of that most iniquitous betrayal, since,
by despairing of God's mercy in his sorrow that wrought death, he left to
himself no place for a healing penitence? How much more ought he to abstain
from laying violent hands on himself who has done nothing worthy of such a
punishment! For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked man; but he
passed from this life chargeable not only with the death of Christ, but
with his own: for though he killed himself on account of his crime, his
killing himself was another crime. Why, then, should a man who has done no
ill do ill to himself, and by killing himself kill the innocent to escape
another's guilty act, and perpetrate upon himself a sin of his own, that
the sin of another may not be perpetrated on him?

CHAP. 18.--OF THE VIOLENCE WHICH MAY BE DONE TO THE BODY BY ANOTHER'S LUST,
WHILE THE MIND REMAINS INVIOLATE.

   But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute the violated?
It will not pollute, if it be another's: if it pollute, it is not
another's, but is shared also by the polluted. But since purity is a virtue
of the soul, and has for its companion virtue, the fortitude which will
rather endure all ills than consent to evil; and since no one, however
magnanimous and pure, has always the disposal of his own body, but can
control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose
that, if his body be seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of
another, he thereby loses his purity? For if purity can be thus destroyed,
then assuredly purity is no virtue of the soul; nor can it be numbered
among those good things by which the life is made good, but among the good
things of the body, in the same category as strength, beauty, sound and
unbroken health, and, in short, all such good things as may be diminished
without at all diminishing the goodness and rectitude of our life. But if
purity be nothing better than these, why should the body be perilled that
it may be preserved? If, on the other hand, it belongs to the soul, then
not even when the body is violated is it lost. Nay more, the virtue of holy
continence, when it resists the uncleanness of carnal lust, sanctifies even
the body, and therefore when this continence remains unsubdued, even the
sanctity of the body is preserved, because the will to use it holily
remains, and, so far as lies in the body itself, the power also.

   For the sanctity of the body does not consist in the integrity of its
members, nor in their exemption from all touch; for they are exposed to
various accidents which do violence to and wound them, and the surgeons who
administer relief often perform operations that sicken the spectator. A
midwife, suppose, has (whether maliciously or accidentally, or through
unskillfulness) destroyed the virginity of some girl, while endeavoring to
ascertain it: I suppose no one is so foolish as to believe that, by this
destruction of the integrity of one organ, the virgin has lost anything
even of her bodily sanctity. And thus, so long as the soul keeps this
firmness of purpose which sanctifies even the body, the violence done by
another's lust makes no impression on this bodily sanctity, which is
preserved intact by one's own persistent continence. Suppose a virgin
violates the oath she has sworn to God, and goes to meet her seducer with
the intention of yielding to him, shall we say that as she goes she is
possessed even of bodily sanctity, when already she has lost and destroyed
that sanctity of soul which sanctifies the body? Far be it from us to so
misapply words. Let us rather draw this conclusion, that while the sanctity
of the soul remains even when the body is violated, the sanctity of the
body is not lost; and that, in like manner, the sanctity of the body is
lost when the sanctity of the soul is violated, though the body itself
remains intact. And therefore a woman who has been violated by the sin of
another, and without any consent of her own, has no cause to put herself to
death; much less has she cause to commit suicide in order to avoid such
violation, for in that case she commits certain homicide to prevent a crime
which is uncertain as yet, and not her own.

CHAP. 19.--OF LUCRETIA, WHO PUT AN END TO HER LIFE BECAUSE OF THE OUTRAGE
DONE HER.

   This, then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid. We
maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no consent to
the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is not hers, but his
who violates her. But do they against whom we have to defend not only the
souls, but the sacred bodies too of these outraged Christian captives,--do
they, perhaps, dare to dispute  our position? But all know how loudly they
extol the purity of Lucretia, that noble matron of ancient Rome. When King
Tarquin's son had violated her body, she made known the wickedness of this
young profligate to her husband Collatinus, and to Brutus her kinsman, men
of high rank and full of courage, and bound them by an oath to avenge it.
Then, heart-sick, and unable to bear the shame, she put an end to her life.
What shall we call her? An adulteress, or chaste? There is no question
which she was. Not more happily than truly did a declaimer say of this sad
occurrence: "Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed
adultery." Most forcibly and truly spoken. For this declaimer, seeing in
the union of the two bodies the foul lust of the one, and the chaste will
of the other, and giving heed not to the contact of the bodily members, but
to the wide diversity of their souls, says: "There were two, but the
adultery was committed only by one."

   But how is it, that she who was no partner to the crime bears the
heavier punishment of the two? For the adulterer was only banished along
with his father; she suffered the extreme penalty. If that was not impurity
by which she was unwillingly ravished, then this is not justice by which
she, being chaste, is punished. To you I appeal, ye laws and judges of
Rome. Even after the perpetration of great enormities, you do not suffer
the criminal to be slain untried. If, then, one were to bring to your bar
this case, and were to prove to you that a woman not only untried, but
chaste and innocent, had been killed, would you not visit the murderer with
punishment proportionably severe? This crime was committed by Lucretia;
that Lucretia so celebrated and landed slew the innocent, chaste, outraged
Lucretia. Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot, because there does not
appear any one whom you can punish, why do you extol with such unmeasured
laudation her who slew an innocent and chaste woman? Assuredly you will
find it impossible to defend her before the judges of the realms below, if
they be such as your poets are fond of representing them; for she is among
those.

  "Who guiltless sent themselves to doom, And all for loathing of the day,
   In madness threw their lives away."

And if she with the others wishes to return,

  'Fate bars the way: around their keep The slow unlovely waters creep,
   And bind with ninefold chain."(1)

Or perhaps she is not there, because she slew herself conscious of guilt,
not of innocence? She herself alone knows her reason; but what if she was
betrayed by the pleasure of the act, and gave some consent to Sextus,
though so violently abusing her, and then was so affected with remorse,
that she thought death alone could expiate her sin? Even though this were
the case, she ought still to have held her hand from suicide, if she could
with her false gods have accomplished a fruitful repentance. However, if
such were the state of the case, and if it were false that there were two,
but one only committed adultery; if the truth were that both were involved
in it, one by open assault, the other by secret consent, then she did not
kill an innocent woman; and therefore her erudite defenders may maintain
that she is not among that class of the dwellers below "who guiltless sent
themselves to doom." But this case of Lucretia is in such a dilemma, that
if you extenuate the homicide, you confirm the adultery: if you acquit her
of adultery, you make the charge of homicide heavier; and there is no way
out of the dilemma, when one asks, If she was adulterous, why praise her?
if chaste, why slay her?

   Nevertheless, for our purpose of refuting those who are unable to
comprehend what true sanctity is, and who therefore insult over our
outraged Christian women, it is enough that in the instance of this noble
Roman matron it was said in her praise, "There were two, but the adultery
was the crime of only one." For Lucretia was confidently believed to be
superior to the contamination of any consenting thought to the adultery.
And accordingly, since she killed herself for being subjected to an outrage
in which she had no guilty part, it is obvious that this act of hers was
prompted not by the love of purity, but by the overwhelming burden of her
shame. She was ashamed that so foul a crime had been perpetrated upon her,
though without her abetting; and this matron, with the Roman love of glory
in her veins, was seized with a proud dread that, if she continued to live,
it would be supposed she willingly did not resent the wrong that had been
done her. She could not exhibit to men her conscience but she judged that
her self-inflicted punishment would testify her state of mind; and she
burned with shame at the thought that her patient endurance of the foul
affront that another had done her, should be construed into complicity with
him. Not such was the decision of the Christian women who suffered as she
did, and yet survive. They declined to avenge upon themselves the guilt of
others, and so add crimes of their own to those crimes in which they had no
share. For this they would have done had their shame driven them to
homicide, as the lust of their enemies had driven them to adultery. Within
their own souls, in the witness of their own conscience, they enjoy the
glory of chastity. In the sight of God, too, they are esteemed pure, and
this contents them; they ask no more: it suffices them to have opportunity
of doing good, and they decline to evade the distress of human suspicion,
lest they thereby deviate from the divine law.

CHAP. 20.--THAT CHRISTIANS HAVE NO AUTHORITY FOR COMMITTING SUICIDE IN ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES WHATEVER.

   It is not without significance, that in no passage of the holy
canonical books there can be found either divine precept or permission to
take away our own life, whether for the sake of entering on the enjoyment
of immortality, or of shunning, or ridding ourselves of anything whatever.
Nay, the law, rightly interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says,
"Thou shalt not kill." This is proved especially by the omission of the
words "thy neighbor," which are inserted when false witness is forbidden:
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Nor yet should
any one on this account suppose he has not broken this commandment if he
has borne false witness only against himself. For the love of our neighbor
is regulated by the love of ourselves, as it is written, "Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." If, then, he who makes false statements about
himself is not less guilty of bearing false witness than if he had made
them to the injury of his neighbor; although in the commandment prohibiting
false witness only his neighbor is mentioned, and persons taking no pains
to understand it might suppose that a man was allowed to be a false witness
to his own hurt; how much greater reason have we to understand that a man
may not kill himself, since in the commandment," Thou shalt not kill,"
there is no limitation added nor any exception made in favor of any one,
and least of all in favor of him on whom the command is laid! And so some
attempt to extend this command even to beasts and cattle, as if it forbade
us to take life from any creature. But if so, why not extend it also to the
plants, and all that is rooted in and nourished by the earth? For though
this class of creatures have no sensation, yet they also are said to live,
and consequently they can die; and therefore, if violence be done them, can
be killed. So, too, the apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things
as these, says, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die;"
and in the Psalm it is said, "He killed their vines with hail." Must we
therefore reckon it a breaking of this commandment, "Thou shalt not kill,"
to pull a flower? Are we thus insanely to countenance the foolish error of
the Manichaeans? Putting aside, then, these ravings, if, when we say, Thou
shalt not kill, we do not understand this of the plants, since they have no
sensation, nor of the irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or creep,
since they are dissociated from us by their want of reason, and are
therefore by the just appointment of the Creator subjected to us to kill or
keep alive for our own uses; if so, then it remains that we understand that
commandment simply of man. The commandment is, "Thou shall not kill man;"
therefore neither another nor yourself, for he who kills himself still
kills nothing else than man.

CHAP. 21.--OF THE CASES IN WHICH WE MAY PUT MEN TO DEATH WITHOUT INCURRING
THE GUILT OF MURDER.

   However, there are some exceptions made by the divine authority to its
own law, that men may not be put to death. These exceptions are of two
kinds, being justified either by a general law, or by a special commission
granted for a time to some individual. And in this latter case, he to whom
authority is delegated, and who is but the sword in the hand of him who
uses it, is not himself responsible for the death he deals. And,
accordingly, they who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or
in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public
justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death
wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, "Thou
shalt not kill." Abraham indeed was not merely deemed guiltless of cruelty,
but was even applauded for his piety, because he was ready to slay his son
in obedience to God, not to his own passion. And it is reasonably enough
made a question, whether we are to esteem it to have been in compliance
with a command of God that Jephthah killed his daughter, because she met
him when he had vowed that he would sacrifice to God whatever first met him
as he returned victorious from battle. Samson, too, who drew down the house
on himself and his foes together, is justified only on this ground, that
the Spirit who wrought wonders by him had given him secret instructions to
do this. With the exception, then, of these two classes of cases, which are
justified either by a just law that applies generally, or by a special
intimation from God Himself, the fountain of all justice, whoever kills a
man, either himself or another, is implicated in the guilt of murder.

CHAP. 22. -- THAT SUICIDE CAN NEVER BE PROMPTED BY MAGNANIMITY.

   But they who have laid violent hands on themselves are perhaps to be
admired for their greatness of soul, though they cannot be applauded for
the soundness of their judgment. However, if you look at the matter more
closely, you will scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a man
to kill himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune, or
sins m which he is not implicated. Is it not rather proof of a feeble mind,
to be unable to bear either the pains of bodily servitude or the foolish
opinion of the vulgar? And is not that to be pronounced the greater mind,
which rather faces than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison of
the light and purity of conscience, holds in small esteem the judgment of
men, and specially of the vulgar, which is frequently involved in a mist of
error? And, therefore, if suicide is to be esteemed a magnanimous act, none
can take higher rank for magnanimity than that Cleombrotus, who (as the
story goes), when he had read Plato's book in which he treats of the
immortality of the soul, threw himself from a wall, and so passed from this
life to that which he believed to be better. For he was not hard pressed by
calamity, nor by any accusation, false or true, which he could not very
well have lived down; there was, in short, no motive but only magnanimity
urging him to seek death, and break away from the sweet detention of this
life. And yet that this was a magnanimous rather than a justifiable action,
Plato himself, whom he had read, would have told him; for he would
certainly have been forward to commit, or at least to recommend suicide,
had not the same bright intellect which saw that the soul was immortal,
discerned also that to seek immortality by suicide was to be prohibited
rather than encouraged.

   Again, it is said many have killed themselves to prevent an enemy doing
so. But we are not inquiring whether it has been done, but whether it ought
to have been done. Sound judgment is to be preferred even to examples, and
indeed examples harmonize with the voice of reason; but not all examples,
but those only which are distinguished by their piety, and are
proportionately worthy of imitation. For suicide we cannot cite the example
of patriarchs, prophets, or apostles; though our Lord Jesus Christ, when He
admonished them to flee from city to city if they were persecuted, might
very well have taken that occasion to advise them to lay violent hands on
themselves, and so escape their persecutors. But seeing He did not do this,
nor proposed this mode of departing this life, though He were addressing
His own friends for whom He had promised to prepare everlasting mansions,
it is obvious that such ex amples as are produced from the "nations that
forget God," give no warrant of imitation to the worshippers of the one
true God.

CHAP. 23.--WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE EXAMPLE OF CATO, WHO SLEW HIMSELF
BECAUSE UNABLE TO ENDURE CAESAR'S VICTORY.

   Besides Lucretia, of whom enough has already been said, our advocates
of suicide have some difficulty in finding any other prescriptive example,
unless it be that of Cato, who killed himself at Utica. His example is
appealed to, not because he was the only man who did so, but because he was
so esteemed as a learned and excellent man, that it could plausibly be
maintained that what he did was and is a good thing to do. But of this
action of his, what can I say but that his own friends, enlightened men as
he, prudently dissuaded him, and therefore judged his act to be that of a
feeble rather than a strong spirit, and dictated not by honorable feeling
forestalling shame, but by weakness shrinking from hardships? Indeed, Cato
condemns himself by the advice he gave to his dearly loved son. For if it
was a disgrace to live under Caesar's rule, why did the father urge the son
to this disgrace, by encouraging him to trust absolutely to Caesar's
generosity? Why did he not persuade him to die along with himself? If
Torquatus was applauded for putting his son to death, when contrary to
orders he had engaged, and engaged successfully, with the enemy, why did
conquered Cato spare his conquered son, though he did not spare himself?
Was it more disgraceful to be a victor contrary to orders, than to submit
to a victor contrary to the received ideas of honor? Cato, then, cannot
have deemed it to be shameful to live under Caesar's rule; for had he done
so, the father's sword would have delivered his son from this disgrace. The
truth is, that his son, whom he both hoped and desired would be spared by
Caesar, was not more loved by him than Caesar was envied the glory of
pardoning him (as indeed Caesar himself is reported to have said(1)); or if
envy is too strong a word, let us say he was ashamed that this glory should
be his.

CHAP. 24.--THAT IN THAT VIRTUE IN WHICH REGULUS EXCELS CATO, CHRISTIANS ARE
PRE-EMINENTLY DISTINGUISHED.

   Our opponents are offended at our preferring to Cato the saintly Job,
who endured dreadful evils in his body rather than deliver himself from all
torment by self-inflicted death; or other saints, of whom it is recorded in
our authoritative and trustworthy books that they bore captivity and the
oppression of their enemies rather than commit suicide. But their own books
authorize us to prefer to Marcus Cato, Marcus Regulus. For Cato had never
conquered Caesar; and when conquered by him, disdained to submit himself to
him, and that he might escape this submission put himself to death.
Regulus, on the contrary, had formerly conquered the Carthaginians, and in
command of the army of Rome had won for the Roman republic a victory which
no citizen could bewail, and which the enemy himself was constrained to
admire; yet afterwards, when he in his turn was defeated by them, he
preferred to be their captive rather than to put himself beyond their reach
by suicide. Patient under the domination of the Carthaginians, and constant
in his love of the Romans, he neither deprived the one of his conquered
body, nor the other of his unconquered spirit. Neither was it love of life
that prevented him from killing himself. This was plainly enough indicated
by his unhesitatingly returning, on account of his promise and oath, to the
same enemies whom he had more grievously provoked by his words in the
senate than even by his arms in battle. Having such a contempt of life, and
preferring to end it by whatever torments excited enemies might contrive,
rather than terminate it by his own hand, he could not more distinctly have
declared how great a crime he judged suicide to be. Among all their famous
and remarkable citizens, the Romans have no better man to boast of than
this, who was neither corrupted by prosperity, for he remained a very poor
man after winning such victories; nor broken by adversity, for he returned
intrepidly to the most miserable end. But if the bravest and most renowned
heroes, who had but an earthly country to defend, and who, though they had
but false gods, yet rendered them a true worship, and carefully kept their
oath to them; if these men, who by the custom and right of war put
conquered enemies to the sword, yet shrank from putting an end to their own
lives even when conquered by their enemies; if, though they had no fear at
all of death, they would yet rather suffer slavery than commit suicide, how
much rather must Christians, the worshippers of the true God, the aspirants
to a heavenly citizenship, shrink from this act, if in God's providence
they have been for a season delivered into the hands of their enemies to
prove or to correct them! And certainly, Christians subjected to this
humiliating condition will not be deserted by the Most High, who for their
sakes humbled Himself. Neither should they for get that they are bound by
no laws of war, nor military orders, to put even a conquered enemy to the
sword; and if a man may not put to death the enemy who has sinned, or may
yet sin against him, who is so infatuated as to maintain that he may kill
himself because an enemy has sinned, or is going to sin, against him?

CHAP.25. -- THAT WE SHOULD NOT ENDEAVOR BY SIN TO OBVIATE SIN.

   But, we are told, there is ground to fear that, when the body is
subjected to the enemy's lust, the insidious pleasure of sense may entice
the soul to consent to the sin, and steps must be taken to prevent so
disastrous a result. And is not suicide the proper mode of preventing not
only the enemy's sin, but the sin of the Christian so allured? Now, in the
first place, the soul which is led by God and His wisdom, rather than by
bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in
its own flesh by another's lust. And, at all events, if it be true, as the
truth plainly declares, that suicide is a detestable and damnable
wickedness, who is such a fool as to say, Let us sin now, that we may
obviate a possible future sin; let us now commit murder, lest we perhaps
afterwards should commit adultery? If we are so controlled by iniquity that
innocence is out of the question, and we can at best but make a choice of
sins, is not a future and uncertain adultery preferable to a present and
certain murder? Is it not better to commit a wickedness which penitence may
heal, than a crime which leaves no place for healing contrition? I say this
for the sake of those men or women who fear they may be enticed into
consenting to their violator's lust, and think they should lay violent
hands on themselves, and so prevent, not another's sin, but their own. But
far be it from the mind of a Christian confiding in God, and resting in the
hope of His aid; far be it, I say, from such a mind to yield a shameful
consent to pleasures of the flesh, howsoever presented. And if that lustful
disobedience, which still dwells in our mortal members, follows its own law
irrespective of our will, surely its motions in the body of one who rebels
against them are as blameless as its motions in the body of one who sleeps.

CHAP. 26.--THAT IN CERTAIN PECULIAR CASES THE EXAMPLES OF THE SAINTS ARE
NOT TO BE FOLLOWED.

   But, they say, in the time of persecution some holy women escaped those
who menaced them with outrage, by casting themselves into rivers which they
knew would drown them; and having died in this manner, they are venerated
in the church catholic as martyrs. Of such persons I do not presume to
speak rashly. I cannot tell whether there may not have been vouchsafed to
the church some divine authority, proved by trustworthy evidences, for so
honoring their memory: it may be that it is so. It may be they were not
deceived by human judgment, but prompted by divine wisdom, to their act of
self-destruction. We know that this was the case with Samson. And when God
enjoins any act, and intimates by plain evidence that He has enjoined it,
who will call obedience criminal? Who will accuse so religious a
submission? But then every man is not justified in sacrificing his son to
God, because Abraham was commendable in so doing. The soldier who has slain
a man in obedience to the authority under which he is lawfully
commissioned, is not accused of murder by any law of his state; nay, if he
has not slain him, it is then he is accused of treason to the state, and of
despising the law. But if he has been acting on his own authority, and at
his own impulse, he has in this case incurred the crime of shedding human
blood. And thus he is punished for doing without orders the very thing he
is punished for neglecting to do when he has been ordered. If the commands
of a general make so great a difference, shall the commands of God make
none? He, then, who knows it is unlawful to kill himself, may nevertheless
do so if he is ordered by Him whose commands we may not neglect. Only let
him be very sure that the divine command has been signified. As for us, we
can become privy to the secrets of conscience only in so far as these are
disclosed to us, and so far only do we judge: "No one knoweth the things of
a man, save the spirit of man which is in him. "(1) But this we affirm,
this we maintain, this we every way pronounce to be right, that no man
ought to inflict on himself voluntary death, for this is to escape the ills
of time by plunging into those of eternity; that no man ought to do so on
account of another man's sins, for this were to escape a guilt which could
not pollute him, by incurring great guilt of his own; that no man ought to
do so on account of his own past sins, for he has all the more need of this
life that these sins may be healed by repentance; that no man should put an
end to this life to obtain that better life we look for after death, for
those who die by their own hand have no better life after death.

CHAP. 27. -- WHETHER VOLUNTARY DEATH SHOULD BE SOUGHT IN ORDER TO AVOID
SIN.

   There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and
which is thought a sound one,--namely, to prevent one's falling into sin
either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain. If
this reason were a good one, then we should be impelled to exhort men at
once to destroy themselves, as soon as they have been washed in the laver
of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin. Then is the
time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out. And if
this escape be lawfully secured by suicide, why not then specially? Why
does any baptized person hold his hand from taking his own life? Why does
any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself
to them, when he has power so easily to rid himself of them all, and when
it is written, "He who loveth danger shall fall into it?"(1) Why does he
love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life
from which he may legitimately depart? But is any one so blinded and
twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth, as to think
that, though a man ought to make away with himself for fear of being led
into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought yet to live,
and so expose himself to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all
those evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to numberless
other miseries in which this life inevitably implicates us? What reason,
then, is there for our consuming time in those exhortations by which we
seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or vidual
continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple and
compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are
fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord
pure and well-conditioned? If any one thinks that such persuasion should be
attempted, I say not he is foolish, but mad. With what face, then, can he
say to any man, "Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add a heinous
sin, while you live under an unchaste master, whose conduct is that of a
barbarian?" How can he say this, if he cannot without wickedness say, "Kill
yourself, now that you are washed from all your sins, lest you fall again
into similar or even aggravated sins, while you live in a world which has
such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to torment by its horrible
cruelties, to overcome by its errors and terrors?" It is wicked to say
this; it is therefore wicked to kill oneself. For if there could be any
just cause of suicide, this were so. And since not even this is so, there
is none.

CHAP. 28.--BY WHAT JUDGMENT OF GOD THE ENEMY WAS PERMITTED TO INDULGE HIS
LUST ON THE BODIES OF CONTINENT CHRISTIANS.

   Let not your life, then, be a burden to you, ye faithful servants of
Christ, though your chastity was made the sport of your enemies. You have a
grand and true consolation, if you maintain a good conscience, and know
that you did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to commit
sinful outrage upon you. And if you should ask why this permission was
granted, indeed it is a deep providence of the Creator and Governor of the
world; and "unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out."
(2) Nevertheless, faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have
not been unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity;
and whether ye have not been so desirous of the human praise that is
accorded to these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed them. I,
for my part, do not know your hearts, and therefore I make no accusation; I
do not even hear what your hearts answer when you question them. And yet,
if they answer that it is as I have supposed it might be, do not marvel
that you have lost that by which you can win men's praise, and retain that
which cannot be exhibited to men. If you did not consent to sin, it was
because God added His aid to His grace that it might not be lost, and
because shame before men succeeded to human glory that it might not be
loved. But in both respects even the faint-hearted among you have a
consolation, approved by the one experience, chastened by the other;
justified by the one, corrected by the other. As to those whose hearts,
when interrogated, reply that they have never been proud of the virtue of
virginity, widowhood, or matrimonial chastity, but, condescending to those
of low estate, rejoiced with trembling in these gifts of God, and that they
have never envied any one the like excellences of sanctity and purity, but
rose superior to human applause, which is wont to be abundant in proportion
to the rarity of the virtue applauded, and rather desired that their own
number be increased, than that by the smallness of their numbers each of
them should be conspicuous;--even such faithful women, I say, must not
complain that permission was given to the barbarians so grossly to outrage
them; nor must they allow themselves to believe that God overlooked their
character when He permitted acts which no one with impunity commits. For
some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free play at present by
the secret judgment of God, and are reserved to the public and final
judgment. Moreover, it is possible that those Christian women, who are
unconscious of any undue pride on account of their virtuous chastity,
whereby they sinlessly suffered the violence of their captors, had yet some
lurking infirmity which might have betrayed them into a proud and
contemptuous bearing, had they not been subjected to the humiliation that
befell them in the taking of the city. As, therefore, some men were removed
by death, that no wickedness might change their disposition, so these women
were outraged lest prosperity should corrupt their modesty. Neither those
women then, who were already puffed up by the circumstance that they were
still virgins, nor those who might have been so puffed up had they not been
exposed to the violence of the enemy, lost their chastity, but rather
gained humility; the former were saved from pride already cherished, the
latter from pride that would shortly have grown upon them.

   We must further notice that some of those sufferers may have conceived
that continence is a bodily good, and abides so long as the body is
inviolate, and did not understand that the purity both of the body and the
soul rests on the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God's grace,
and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. From this error they
are probably now delivered. For when they reflect how conscientiously they
served God, and when they settle again to the firm persuasion that He can
in nowise desert those who so serve Him, and so invoke His aid and when
they consider, what they cannot doubt, how pleasing to Him is chastity,
they are shut up to the conclusion that He could never have permitted these
disasters to befall His saints, if by them that saintliness could be
destroyed which He Himself had bestowed upon them, and delights to see in
them.

CHAP. 29. --WHAT THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST SHOULD SAY IN REPLY TO THE
UNBELIEVERS WHO CAST IN THEIR TEETH THAT CHRIST DID NOT RESCUE THEM FROM
THE FURY OF THEIR ENEMIES.

   The whole family of God, most high and most true, has therefore a
consolation of its own,--a consolation which cannot deceive, and which has
in it a surer hope than the tottering and falling affairs of earth can
afford. They will not refuse the discipline of this temporal life, in which
they are schooled for life eternal; nor will they lament their experience
of it, for the good things of earth they use as pilgrims who are not
detained by them, and its ills either prove or improve them. As for those
who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, "Where
is thy God ?"(1) we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the
very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or
maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished
with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not
confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without
moving; when He exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our
perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient
endurance of the sufferings of time, He reserves for us an everlasting
reward. But who are you, that we should deign to speak with you even about
your own gods, much less about our God, who is "to be feared above all
gods? For all the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the
heavens."(2)

CHAP. 30.-- THAT THOSE WHO COMPLAIN OF CHRISTIANITY REALLY DESIRE TO LIVE
WITHOUT RESTRAINT IN SHAMEFUL LUXURY.

   If the famous Scipio Nasica were now alive, who was once your pontiff,
and was unanimously chosen by the senate, when, in the panic created by the
Punic war, they sought for the best citizen to entertain the Phrygian
goddess, he would curb this shamelessness of yours, though you would
perhaps scarcely dare to look upon the countenance of such a man. For why
in your calamities do you complain of Christianity, unless because you
desire to enjoy your luxurious license unrestrained, and to lead an
abandoned and profligate life without the interruption of any uneasiness or
disaster? For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty
is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is
to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose
rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus
to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a
thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a
calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the
judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the
destruction of Carthage, Rome's rival and opposed Cato, who advised its
destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived
that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And he was
not mistaken; the event proved how wisely he had spoken. For when Carthage
was destroyed, and the Korean republic delivered from its great cause of
anxiety, a crowd of disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous
condition of things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed by fierce
and bloody seditions; then followed, by a concatenation of baleful causes,
civil wars, which brought in their train such massacres, such bloodshed,
such lawless and cruel proscription and plunder, that those Romans who, in
the days of their virtue, had expected injury only at the hands of their
enemies, now that their virtue was lost, suffered greater cruelties at the
hands of their fellow-citizens. The lust of rule, which with other vices
existed among the Romans in more unmitigated intensity than among any other
people, after it had taken possession of the more powerful few, subdued
under its yoke the rest, worn and wearied.

CHAP. 31.--BY WHAT STEPS THE PASSION FOR GOVERNING INCREASED AMONG THE
ROMANS.

   For at what stage would that passion rest when once it has lodged in a
proud spirit, until by a succession of advances it has reached even the
throne. And to obtain such advances nothing avails but unscrupulous
ambition. But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a
nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes
avaricious and luxurious by prosperity; and it was this which that very
prudent man Nasica was endeavouring to avoid when he opposed the
destruction of the greatest, strongest, wealthiest city of Rome's enemy. He
thought that thus fear would act as a curb on lust, and that lust being
curbed would not run riot in luxury, and that luxury being prevented
avarice would be at an end; and that these vices being banished, virtue
would flourish and increase the great profit of the state; and liberty, the
fit companion of virtue, would abide unfettered. For similar reasons, and
animated by the same considerate patriotism, that same chief pontiff of
yours--I still refer to him who was adjudged Rome's best man without one
dissentient voice--threw cold water on the proposal of the senate to build
a circle of seats round the theatre, and in a very weighty speech warned
them against allowing the luxurious manners of Greece to sap the Roman
manliness, and persuaded them not to yield to the enervating and
emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. So authoritative and
forcible were his words, that the senate was moved to prohibit the use even
of those benches which hitherto had been customarily brought to the theatre
for the temporary use of the citizens.(1) How eagerly would such a man as
this have banished from Rome the scenic exhibitions themselves, had he
dared to oppose the authority of those whom he supposed to be gods! For he
did not know that they were malicious devils; or if he did, he supposed
they should rather be propitiated than despised. For there had not yet been
revealed to the Gentiles the heavenly doctrine which should purify their
hearts by faith, and transform their natural disposition by humble
godliness, and turn them from the service of proud devils to seek the
things that are in heaven, or even above the heavens.

CHAP. 32.--OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SCENIC ENTERTAINMENTS.

   Know then, ye who are ignorant of this, and ye who feign ignorance be
reminded, while you murmur against Him who has freed you from such rulers,
that the scenic games, exhibitions of shameless folly and license, were
established at Rome, not by men's vicious cravings, but by the appointment
of your gods. Much more pardonably might you have rendered divine honors to
Scipio than to such gods as these. The gods were not so moral as their
pontiff. But give me now your attention, if your mind, inebriated by its
deep potations of error, can take in any sober truth. The gods enjoined
that games be exhibited in their honor to stay a physical pestilence; their
pontiff prohibited the theatre from being constructed, to prevent a moral
pestilence. If, then, there remains in you sufficient mental enlightenment
to prefer the soul to the body, choose whom you will worship. Besides,
though the pestilence was stayed, this was not because the voluptuous
madness of stage-plays had taken possession of a warlike people hitherto
accustomed only to tim games of the circus; but these astute and wicked
spirits, foreseeing that in due course the pestilence would shortly cease,
took occasion to infect, not the bodies, but the morals of their
worshippers, with a far more serious disease. And in this pestilence these
gods find great enjoyment, because it benighted the minds of men with so
gross a darkness and dishonored them with so foul a deformity, that even
quite recently (will posterity be able to credit it?) some of those who
fled from the sack of Rome and found refuge in Carthage, were so infected
with this disease, that day after day they seemed to contend with one
another who should most madly run after the actors in the theatres.

CHAP. 33.-- THAT THE OVERTHROW OF ROME HAS NOT CORRECTED THE VICES OF THE
ROMANS.

   Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, which
possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern nations
are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful states in the most remote parts
of the earth are mourning your fall as a public calamity, ye yourselves
should be crowding to the theatres, should be pouring into them and filling
them; and, in short, be playing a madder part now than ever before? This
was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck of virtue and honor that Scipio
sought to preserve you from when he prohibited the construction of
theatres; this was his reason for desiring that you might still have an
enemy to fear, seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and
destroy you. He did not consider that republic flourishing whose walls
stand, but whose morals are in ruins. But the seductions of evil-minded
devils had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men.
Hence the injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you: but
the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by good
fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the restoration
of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity of the
commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury. Scipio wished
you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves
to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even when crushed
by the enemy is your luxury repressed. You have missed the profit of your
calamity; you have been made most wretched, and have remained most
profligate.

CHAP. 34.--OF GOD'S CLEMENCY IN MODERATING THE RUIN OF THE CITY.

   And that you are yet alive is due to God, who spares you that you may
be admonished to repent and reform your lives. It is He who has permitted
you, ungrateful as you are, to escape the sword of the enemy, by calling
yourselves His servants, or by finding asylum in the sacred places of the
martyrs.

   It is said that Romulus and Remus, in order to increase the population
of the city they founded, opened a sanctuary in which every man might find
asylum and absolution of all crime,--a remarkable foreshadowing of what has
recently occurred in honor of Christ. The destroyers of Rome followed the
example of its founders. But it was not greatly to their credit that the
latter, for the sake of increasing tile number of their citizens, did that
which the former have done, lest the number of their enemies should be
diminished.

CHAP. 35.--OF THE SONS OF THE CHURCH WHO ARE HIDDEN AMONG THE WICKED, AND
OF FALSE CHRISTIANS WITHIN THE CHURCH.

   Let these and similar answers (if any fuller and fitter answers can be
found) be given to their enemies by the redeemed family of the Lord Christ,
and by the pilgrim city of King Christ. But let this city bear in mind,
that among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be fellow-
citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to bear what they
inflict as enemies until they become confessors of the faith. So, too, as
long as she is a stranger in the world, the city of God has in her
communion, and bound to her by the sacraments, some who shall not eternally
dwell in the lot of the saints. Of these, some are not now recognized;
others declare themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with
our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they wear.
These men you may to-day see thronging the churches with us, to-morrow
crowding the theatres with the godless. But we have the less reason to
despair of the reclamation even of such persons, if among our most declared
enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves, who are destined to
become our friends. In truth, these two cities are entangled together in
this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effects their
separation. I now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise,
progress, and end of these two cities; and what I write. I write for the
glory of the city of God, that, being placed in comparison with the other,
it may shine with a brighter lustre.

CHAP. 36.--WHAT SUBJECTS ARE TO BE HANDLED IN THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSE.

   But I have still some things to say in confutation of those who refer
the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, because it prohibits
the offering of sacrifices to the gods. For this end I must recount all, or
as many as may seem sufficient, of the disasters which befell that city and
its subject provinces, before these sacrifices were prohibited; for all
these disasters they would doubtless have attributed to us, if at that time
our religion had shed its light upon them, and had prohibited their
sacrifices. I must then go on to show what social well-being the true God,
in whose hand are all kingdoms, vouchsafed to grant to them that their
empire might increase. I must show why He did so, and how their false gods,
instead of at all aiding them, greatly injured them by guile and deceit.
And, lastly, I must meet those who, when on this point convinced and
confuted by irrefragable proofs, endeavor to maintain that they worship the
gods, not hoping for the present advantages of this life, but for those
which are to be enjoyed after death. And this, if I am not mistaken, will
be the most difficult part of my task, and will be worthy of the loftiest
argument; for we must then enter the lists with the philosophers, not the
mere common herd of philosophers, but the most renowned, who in many points
agree with ourselves, as regarding the immortality of the soul, and that
the true God created the world, and by His providence rules all He has
created. But as they differ from us on other points, we must not shrink
from the task of exposing their errors, that, having refuted the gainsaying
of the wicked with such ability as God may vouchsafe, we may assert the
city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, to which alone the
promise of true and everlasting felicity is attached. Here, then, let us
conclude, that we may enter on these subjects in a fresh book.


BOOK II.

ARGUMENT: IN THIS BOOK AUGUSTIN REVIEWS THOSE CALAMITIES WHICH THE ROMANS
SUFFERED BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST, AND WHILE THE WORSHIP OF THE FALSE GODS
WAS UNIVERSALLY PRACTISED; AND DEMONSTRATES THAT, FAR FROM BEING PRESERVED
FROM MISFORTUNE BY THE GODS, THE ROMANS HAVE BEEN BY THEM OVERWHELMED WITH
THE ONLY, OR AT LEAST THE GREATEST, OF ALL CALAMITIES--THE CORRUPTION OF
MANNERS, AND THE VICES OF THE SOUL.

CHAP. I.--OF THE LIMITS WHICH MUST BE PUT TO THE NECESSITY OF REPLYING TO
AN ADVERSARY.

   IF the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence
of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines, as to a health-
giving medicine, until it obtained from God, by its faith and piety, the
grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas, and express them in
suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors
of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and
hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even after the truth has been as
fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth
their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness,
which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on
account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents them from
acknowledging the force of what they do see. There therefore frequently
arises a necessity of speaking more fully on those points which are already
clear, that we may, as it were, present them not to the eye, but even to
the touch, so that they may be felt even by those who close their eyes
against them. And yet to what end shall we ever bring our discussions, or
what bounds can be set to our discourse, if we proceed on the principle
that we must always reply to those who reply to us? For those who are
either unable to understand our arguments, or are so hardened by the habit
of contradiction, that though they understand they cannot yield to them,
reply to us, and, as it is written, "speak hard things,''(1) and are
incorrigibly vain. Now, if we were to propose to confute their objections
as often as they with brazen face chose to disregard our arguments, and so
often as they could by any means contradict our statements, you see how
endless, and fruitless, and painful a task we should be undertaking. And
therefore I do not wish my writings to be judged even by you, my son
Marcellinus, nor by any of those others at whose service this work of mine
is freely and in all Christian charity put, if at least you intend always
to require a reply to every exception which you hear taken to what you read
in it; for so you would become like those silly women of whom the apostle
says that they are "always learning, and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth."(2)

CHAP. 2.--RECAPITULATION OF THE CONTENTS OF THE FIRST BOOK.

   In the foregoing book, having begun to speak of the city of God, to
which I have resolved, Heaven helping me, to consecrate the whole of this
work, it was my first endeavor to reply to those who attribute the wars by
which the world is being devastated, and especially the recent sack of Rome
by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ, which prohibits the offering
of abominable sacrifices to devils. I have shown that they ought rather to
attribute it to Christ, that for His name's sake the barbarians, in
contravention of all custom and law of war, threw open as sanctuaries the
largest churches, and in many instances showed such reverence to Christ,
that not only His genuine servants, but even those who in their terror
feigned themselves to be so, were exempted from all those hardships which
by the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted. Then out of this there
arose the question, why wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share
in these benefits; and why, too, the hardships and calamities of war were
inflicted on the godly as well as on the ungodly. And in giving a suitably
full answer to this large question, I occupied some considerable space,
partly that I might relieve the anxieties which disturb many when they
observe that the blessings of God, and the common and daily human
casualties, fall to the lot of bad men and good without distinction; but
mainly that I might minister some consolation to those holy and chaste
women who were outraged by the enemy. in such a way as to shock their
modesty, though not to sully their purity, and that I might preserve them
from being ashamed of life, though they have no guilt to be ashamed of. And
then I briefly spoke against those who with a most shameless wantonness
insult over those poor Christians who were subjected to those calamities,
and especially over those broken-hearted and humiliated, though chaste and
holy women; these fellows themselves being most depraved and unmanly
profligates, quite degenerate from the genuine Romans, whose famous deeds
are abundantly recorded in history, and everywhere celebrated, but who have
found in their descendants the greatest enemies of their glory. In truth,
Rome, which was founded and increased by the labors of these ancient
heroes, was more shamefully ruined by their descendants, while its walls
were still standing, than it is now by the razing of them. For in this ruin
there fell stones and timbers; but in the ruin those profligates effected,
there fell, not the mural, but the moral bulwarks and ornaments of the
city, and their hearts burned with passions more destructive than the
flames which consumed their houses. Thus I brought my first book to a
close. And now I go on to speak of those calamities which that city itself,
or its subject provinces, have suffered since its foundation; all of which
they would equally have attributed to the Christian religion, if at that
early period the doctrine of the gospel against their false and deceiving
gods had been as largely and freely proclaimed as now.

CHAP. 3.--THAT WE NEED ONLY TO READ HISTORY IN ORDER TO SEE WHAT CALAMITIES
THE ROMANS SUFFERED BEFORE THE RELIGION OF CHRIST BEGAN TO COMPETE WITH THE
WORSHIP OF THE GODS.

   But remember that, in recounting these things, I have still to address
myself to ignorant men; so ignorant, indeed, as to give birth to the common
saying, "Drought and Christianity go hand in hand."(1) There are indeed
some among them who are thoroughly well-educated men, and have a taste for
history, in which the things I speak of are open to their observation; but
in order to irritate the uneducated masses against us, they feign ignorance
of these events, and do what they can to make the vulgar believe that those
disasters, which in certain places and at certain times uniformly befall
mankind, are the result of Christianity, which is being everywhere
diffused, and is possessed of a renown and brilliancy which quite eclipse
their own gods,(2) Let them then, along with us, call to mind with what
various and repeated disasters the prosperity of Rome was blighted, before
ever Christ had come in the flesh, and before His name had been blazoned
among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge. Let them, if
they can, defend their gods in this article, since they maintain that they
worship them in order to be preserved from these disasters, which they now
impute to us if they suffer in the least degree. For why did these gods
permit the disasters I am to speak of to fall on their worshippers before
the preaching of Christ's name offended them, and put an end to their
sacrifices?

CHAP. 4.-- THAT THE WORSHIPPERS OF THE GODS NEVER RECEIVED FROM THEM ANY
HEALTHY MORAL PRECEPTS, AND THAT IN CELEBRATING THEIR WORSHIP ALL SORTS OF
IMPURITIES WERE PRACTICED.

   First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the
morals of their worshippers. That the true God should neglect those who did
not seek His help, that was but justice; but why did those gods, from whose
worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue
no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life? Surely
it was but just, that such care as men showed to the worship of the gods,
the gods on their part should have to the conduct of men. But, it is
replied, it is by his own will a man goes astray. Who denies it? But none
the less was it incumbent on these gods, who were men's guardians, to
publish in plain terms the laws of a good life, and not to conceal them
from their worshippers. It was their part to send prophets to reach and
convict such as broke these laws, and publicly to proclaim the punishments
which await evil-doers, and the rewards which may be looked for by those
that do well. Did ever the walls of any of their temples echo to any such
warning voice? I myself, when I was a young man, used sometimes to go to
the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles; I saw the priests raving in
religious excitement, and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the
shameful games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses, of the
virgin Coelestis,(1) and Berecynthia,(2) the mother of all the gods And on
the holy day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her
couch productions so obscene and filthy for the ear--I do not say of the
mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man--nay, so
impure, that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves
could have formed one of the audience. For natural reverence for parents is
a bond which the most abandoned cannot ignore. And, accordingly, the lewd
actions and filthy words with which these players honored the mother of the
gods, in presence of a vast assemblage and audience of both sexes, they
could not for very shame have rehearsed at home in presence of their own
mothers. And the crowds that were gathered from all quarters by curiosity,
offended modesty must, I should suppose, have scattered in the confusion of
shame. If these are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this is
purification, what is pollution? This festivity was called the Tables,(3)
as if a banquet were being given at which unclean devils might find
suitable refreshment. For it is not difficult to see what kind of spirits
they must be who are delighted with such obscenities, unless, indeed, a man
be blinded by these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of
gods, and either disbelieves in their existence, or leads such a life as
prompts him rather to propitiate and fear them than the true God.

CHAP. 5.--OF THE OBSCENITIES PRACTICED IN HONOR OF THE MOTHER OF THE GODS.

   In this matter I would prefer to have as my assessors in judgment, not
those men who rather take pleasure in these infamous customs than take
pains to put an end to them, but that same Scipio Nasica who was chosen by
the senate as the citizen most worthy to receive in his hands the image of
that demon Cybele, and convey it into the city. He would tell us whether he
would be proud to see his own mother so highly esteemed by the state as to
have divine honors adjudged to her; as the Greeks and Romans and other
nations have decreed divine honors to men who had been of material service
to them, and have believed that their mortal benefactors were thus made
immortal, and enrolled among the gods.(4) Surely he would desire that his
mother should enjoy such felicity were it possible. But if we proceeded to
ask him whether, among the honors paid to her, he would wish such shameful
rites as these to be celebrated, would he not at once exclaim that he would
rather his mother lay stone-dead, than survive as a goddess to lend her ear
to these obscenities? Is it possible that he who was of so severe a
morality, that he used his influence as a Roman senator to prevent the
building of a theatre in that city dedicated to the manly virtues, would
wish his mother to be propitiated as a goddess with words which would have
brought the blush to her cheek when a Roman matron? Could he possibly
believe that the modesty of an estimable woman would be so transformed by
her promotion to divinity, that she would suffer herself to be invoked and
celebrated in terms so gross and immodest, that if she had heard the like
while alive upon earth, and had listened without stopping her ears and
hurrying from the spot, her relatives, her husband, and her children would
have blushed for her? Therefore, the mother of the gods being such a
character as the most profligate man would be ashamed to have for his
mother, and meaning to enthral the minds of the Romans, demanded for her
service their best citizen, not to ripen him still more in virtue by her
helpful counsel, but to entangle him by her deceit, like her of whom it is
written, "The adulteress will hunt for the precious soul."(5) Her intent
was to puff up this highsouled man by an apparently divine testimony to his
excellence, in order that he might rely upon his own eminence in virtue,
and make no further efforts after true piety and religion, without which
natural genius, however brilliant, vapors into pride and comes to nothing.
For what but a guileful purpose could that goddess demand the best man
seeing that in her own sacred festivals she requires such obscenities as
the best men would be covered with shame to hear at their own tables?

CHAP. 6.--THAT THE GODS OF THE PAGANS NEVER INCULCATED HOLINESS OF LIFE.

   This is the reason why those divinities quite neglected the lives and
morals of the cities and nations who worshipped them, and threw no dreadful
prohibition in their way to hinder them from becoming utterly corrupt, and
to preserve them from those terrible and detestable evils which visit not
harvests and vintages, not house and possessions, not the body which is
subject to the soul, but the soul itself, the spirit that rules the whole
man If there was any such prohibition, let it be produced, let it be
proved. They will tell us that purity and probity were inculcated upon
those who were initiated in the mysteries of religion, and that secret
incitements to virtue were whispered in the ear of the �lite; but this is
art idle boast. Let them shower name to us the places which were at any
time consecrated to assemblages in which, instead of the obscene songs and
licentious acting of players, instead of the celebration of those most
filthy and shameless Fugalia(1) (well called Fugalia, since they banish
modesty and right feeling), the people were commanded in the  name of the
gods to restrain avarice, bridle impurity, and conquer ambition; where, in
short, they might learn in that school which Persius vehemently lashes them
to, when he says: "Be taught, ye abandoned creatures, and ascertain the
causes of things; what we are, and for what end we are born; what is the
law of our success in life; and by what art we may turn the goal without
making shipwreck; what limit we should put to our wealth, what we may
lawfully desire, and what uses filthy lucre serves; how much we should
bestow upon our country and our family; learn, in short, what God meant
thee to be, and what place He has ordered you to fill."(2) Let them name to
us the places where such instructions were wont to be communicated from the
gods, and where the people who worshipped them were accustomed to resort to
hear them, as we can point to our churches built for this purpose in every
land where the Christian religion is received

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE SUGGESTIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS ARE PRECLUDED FROM HAVING
ANY MORAL EFFECT, BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT THE AUTHORITY WHICH BELONGS TO
DIVINE INSTRUCTION, AND BECAUSE MAN'S NATURAL BIAS TO EVIL INDUCES HIM
RATHER TO FOLLOW THE EXAMPLES OF THE GODS THAN TO OBEY THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.

   But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the philosophers, and
their disputations? In the first place, these belong not to Rome, but to
Greece; and even if we yield to them that they are now Roman, because
Greece itself has become a Roman province, still the teachings of the
philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries of
men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative ability, made efforts
to discover the hidden laws of nature, and the right and wrong in ethics,
and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic, and
what was inconsequent and erroneous. And some of them, by God's help, made
great discoveries; but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human
infirmity, and fell into mistakes. And this was ordered by divine
providence, that their pride might be restrained, and that by their example
it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to the highest
regions. But of this we shall have more to say, if the Lord God of truth
permit, in its own place.(3) However, if the philosophers have made any
discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness,
would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honors to them? Were
it not more accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's
writings in a "Temple of Plato," than to be present in the temples of
devils to witness the priests of Cybele(4) mutilating themselves, the
effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and
whatever other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful,
ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a
more suitable education, and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue, if
they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods, instead of the vain
laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors? Certainly all the
worshippers of the Roman gods, when once they are possessed by what Persius
calls "the burning poison of lust,"(1) prefer to witness the deeds of
Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the
young profligate in Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing
the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Dana� in the form of a golden
shower, accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness,
and boasts that he is an imitator of God. "And what God?" he says. "He who
with His thunder shakes the loftiest temples. And was I, a poor creature
compared to Him, to make bones of it? No; I did it, and with all my
heart."(2)

CHAP. 8.--THAT THE THEATRICAL EXHIBITIONS PUBLISHING THE SHAMEFUL ACTIONS
OF THE GODS, PROPITIATED RATHER THAN OFFENDED THEM.

   But, some one will interpose, these are the fables of poets, not the
deliverances of the gods themselves. Well, I have no mind to arbitrate
between the lewdness of theatrical entertainments and of mystic rites; only
this I say, and history bears me out in making the assertion, that those
same entertainments, in which the fictions of poets are the main
attraction, were not introduced in the festivals of the gods by the
ignorant devotion of the Romans, but that the gods themselves gave the most
urgent commands to this effect, and indeed extorted from the Romans these
solemnities and celebrations in their honor. I touched on this in the
preceding book, and mentioned that dramatic entertainments were first
inaugurated at Rome on occasion of a pestilence, and by authority of the
pontiff. And what man is there who is not more likely to adopt, for the
regulation of his own life, the examples that are represented in plays
which have a divine sanction, rather than the precepts written and
promulgated with no more than human authority? If the poets gave a false
representation of Jove in describing him as adulterous, then it were to be
expected that the chaste gods should in anger avenge so wicked a fiction,
in place of encouraging the games which circulated it. Of these plays, the
most inoffensive are comedies and tragedies, that is to say, the dramas
which poets write for the stage, and which, though they often handle impure
subjects, yet do so without the filthiness of language which characterizes
many other performances; and it is these dramas which boys are obliged by
their seniors to read and learn as a part of what is called a liberal and
gentlemanly education.(3)

CHAP. 9.--THAT THE POETICAL LICENSE WHICH THE GREEKS, IN OBEDIENCE TO THEIR
GODS, ALLOWED, WAS RESTRAINED BY THE ANCIENT ROMANS.

   The opinion of the ancient Romans on this matter is attested by Cicero
in his work De Republica, in which Scipio, one of the interlocutors, says,
"The lewdness of comedy could never have been suffered by audiences, unless
the customs of society had previously sanctioned the same lewdness." And in
the earlier days the Greeks preserved a certain reasonableness in their
license, and made it a law, that whatever comedy wished to say of any one,
it must say it of him by name. And so in the same work of Cicero's, Scipio
says, "Whom has it not aspersed? Nay, whom has it not worried? Whom has it
spared? Allow that it may assail demagogues and factions, men injurious to
the commonwealth--a Cleon, a Cleophon, a Hyperbolus. That is tolerable,
though it had been more seemly for the public censor to brand such men,
than for a poet to lampoon them; but to blacken the fame of Pericles with
scurrilous verse, after he had with the utmost dignity presided over their
state alike in war and in peace, was as unworthy of a poet, as if our own
Plautus or Naevius were to bring Publius and Cneius Scipio on the comic
stage, or as if Caecilius were to caricature Cato." And then a little after
he goes on: "Though our Twelve Tables attached the penalty of death only to
a very few offences, yet among these few this was one: if any man should
have sung a pasquinade, or have composed a satire calculated to bring
infamy or disgrace on another person. Wisely decreed. For it is by the
decisions of magistrates, and by a well-informed justice, that our lives
ought to be judged, and not by the flighty fancies of poets; neither ought
we to be exposed to hear calumnies, save where we have the liberty of
replying, and defending ourselves before an adequate tribunal." This much I
have judged it advisable to quote from the fourth book of Cicero's De
Republica; and I have made the quotation word for word, with the exception
of some words omitted, and some slightly transposed, for the sake of giving
the sense more readily. And certainly the extract is pertinent to the
matter I am endeavoring to explain. Cicero makes some further remarks, and
concludes the passage by showing that the ancient Romans did not permit any
living man to be either praised or blamed on the stage. But the Greeks, as
I said, though not so moral, were more logical in allowing this license
which the Romans forbade; for they saw that their gods approved and enjoyed
the scurrilous language of low comedy when directed not only against men,
but even against themselves; and this, whether the infamous actions imputed
to them were the fictions of poets, or were their actual iniquities
commemorated and acted in the theatres. And would that the spectators had
judged them worthy only of laughter, and not of imitation! Manifestly it
had been a stretch of pride to spare the good name of the leading men and
the common citizens, when the very deities did not grudge that their own
reputation should be blemished.

CHAP. 10.--THAT THE DEVILS, IN SUFFERING EITHER FALSE OR TRUE CRIMES TO BE
LAID
TO THEIRCHARGE, MEANT TO DO MEN A MISCHIEF.

   It is alleged, in excuse of this practice, that the stories told of the
gods are not true, but false, and mere inventions, but this only makes
matters worse, if we form our estimate by the morality our religion
teaches; and if we consider the malice of the devils, what more wily and
astute artifice could they practise upon men? When a slander is uttered
against a leading statesman of upright and useful life, is it not
reprehensible in proportion to its untruth and groundlessness? What
punishment, then, shall be sufficient when the gods are the objects of so
wicked and outrageous an injustice? But the devils, whom these men repute
gods, are content that even iniquities they are guiltless of should be
ascribed to them, so long as they may entangle men's minds in the meshes of
these opinions, and draw them on along with themselves to their
predestinated punishment: whether such things were actually committed by
the men whom these devils, delighting in human infatuation, cause to be
worshipped as gods, and in whose stead they, by a thousand malign and
deceitful artifices, substitute themselves, and so receive worship; or
whether, though they were really the crimes of men, these wicked spirits
gladly allowed them to be attributed to higher beings, that  there might
seem to be conveyed from heaven itself a sufficient sanction for the
perpetration of shameful wickedness. The Greeks, therefore, seeing the
character of the gods they  served, thought that the poets should certainly
not refrain from showing up human vices on the stage, either because they
desired to be like their gods in this, or because they were afraid that, if
they required for themselves a more unblemished reputation than they
asserted for the gods, they might provoke them to anger.

CHAP. 11.--THAT THE GREEKS ADMITTED PLAYERS TO OFFICES OF STATE, ON THE
GROUND THAT MEN WHO PLEASED THE GODS SHOULD NOT BE CONTEMPTUOUSLY TREATED
BY THEIR FELLOWS.

   It was a part of this same reasonableness of the Greeks which induced
them to bestow upon the actors of these same plays no inconsiderable civic
honors. In the above-mentioned book of the De Republica, it is mentioned
that Aeschines, a very eloquent Athenian, who had been a tragic actor in
his youth, became a statesman, and that the Athenians again and again sent
another tragedian, Aristodemus, as their plenipotentiary to Philip. For
they judged it unbecoming to condemn and treat as infamous persons those
who were the chief actors in the scenic entertainments which they saw to be
so pleasing to the gods. No doubt this was immoral of the Greeks, but there
can be as little doubt they acted in conformity with the character of their
gods; for how could they have presumed to protect the conduct of the
citizens from being cut to pieces by the tongues of poets and players, who
were allowed, and even enjoined by the gods, to tear their divine
reputation to tatters? And how could they hold in contempt the men who
acted in the theatres those dramas which, as they had ascertained, gave
pleasure to the gods whom they worshipped? Nay, how could they but grant to
them the highest civic honors? On what plea could they honor the priests
who offered for them acceptable sacrifices to the gods, if they branded
with infamy the actors who in behalf of the people gave to the gods that
pleasure or honour which they demanded, and which, according to the account
of the priests, they were angry at not receiving. Labeo,(1) whose learning
makes him an authority on such points, is of opinion that the distinction
between good and evil deities should find expression in a difference of
worship; that the evil should be propitiated by bloody sacrifices and
doleful rites, but the good with a joyful and pleasant observance, as, e.g.
(as he says himself), with plays, festivals, and banquets.(1) All this we
shall, with God's help, hereafter discuss. At present, and speaking to the
subject on hand, whether all kinds of offerings are made indiscriminately
to all the gods, as if all were good (and it is an unseemly thing to
conceive that there are evil gods; but these gods of the pagans are all
evil, because they are not gods, but evil spirits), or whether, as Labeo
thinks, a distinction is made between the offerings presented to the
different gods the Greeks are equally justified in honoring alike the
priests by whom the sacrifices are offered, and the players by whom the
dramas are acted, that they may not be open to the charge of doing an
injury to all their gods, if the plays are pleasing to all of them, or
(which were still worse) to their good gods, if the plays are relished only
by them.

CHAP. 12.--THAT THE ROMANS, BY REFUSING TO THE POETS THE SAME LICENSE IN
RESPECT OF MEN WHICH THEY ALLOWED THEM IN THE CASE OF THE GODS, SHOWED A
MORE DELICATE SENSITIVENESS REGARDING THEMSELVES  THAN REGARDING THE GODS.

   The Romans, however, as Scipio boasts in that same discussion, declined
having their conduct and good name subjected to the assaults and slanders
of the poets, and went so far as to make it a capital crime if any one
should dare to compose such verses. This  was a very honorable course to
pursue, so far as they themselves were concerned, but in respect of the
gods it was proud and irreligious: for they knew that the gods not only
tolerated, but relished, being lashed by the injurious expressions of the
poets, and yet they themselves would not suffer this same handling; and
what their ritual prescribed as acceptable to the gods, their law
prohibited as injurious to themselves. How then, Scipio, do you praise the
Romans for refusing this license to the poets, so that no citizen could be
calumniated, while you know that the gods were not included trader this
protection? Do you count your senate-house worthy of so much higher a
regard than the Capitol? Is the one city of Rome more valuable in your eyes
than the whole heaven of gods, that you prohibit your poets from uttering
any injurious words against a citizen, though they may with impunity cast
what imputations they please upon the gods, without the interference of
senator, censor, prince, or pontiff? It was, forsooth, intolerable that
Plautus or Naevus should attack Publius and Cneius Scipio, insufferable
that Caecilius should lampoon Cato; but quite proper that your Terence
should encourage youthful lust by the wicked example of supreme Jove.

CHAP. 13.--THAT THE ROMANS SHOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD THAT GODS WHO DESIRED TO
BE WORSHIPPED IN LICENTIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS WERE UNWORTHY OF DIVINE HONOR.

   But Scipio, were he alive, would possibly reply: "How could we attach a
penalty to that which the gods themselves have consecrated? For the
theatrical entertainments in which such things are said, and acted, and
performed, were introduced into Roman society by the gods, who ordered that
they should be dedicated and exhibited in their honor." But was not this,
then, the plainest proof that they were no true gods, nor in any respect
worthy of receiving divine honours from the republic? Suppose they had
required that in their honor the citizens of Rome should be held up to
ridicule, every Roman would have resented the hateful proposal. How then, I
would ask, can they be esteemed worthy of worship, when they propose that
their own crimes be used as material for celebrating their praises? Does
not this artifice expose them, and prove that they are detestable devils?
Thus the Romans, though they were superstitious enough to serve as gods
those who made no secret of their desire to be worshipped in licentious
plays, yet had sufficient regard to their hereditary dignity and virtue, to
prompt them to refuse to players any such rewards as the Greeks accorded
them. On this point we have this testimony of Scipio, recorded in Cicero:
"They [the Romans] considered comedy and all theatrical performances as
disgraceful, and therefore not only debarred players from offices and
honors open to ordinary citizens, but also decreed that their names should
be branded by the censor, and erased from the roll of their tribe." An
excellent decree, and another testimony to the sagacity of Rome; but I
could wish their prudence had been more thorough-going and consistent. For
when I hear that if any Roman citizen chose the stage as his profession, he
not only closed to himself every laudable career, but even became an
outcast from his own tribe, I cannot but exclaim: This is the true Roman
spirit, this is worthy of a state jealous of its reputation. But then some
one interrupts my rapture, by inquiring with what consistency players are
debarred from all honors, while plays are counted among the honors due to
the gods? For a long while the virtue of Rome was uncontaminated by
theatrical exhibitions;(1) and if they had been adopted for the sake of
gratifying the taste of the citizens, they would have been introduced hand
in hand with the relaxation of manners. But the fact is, that it was the
gods who demanded that they should be exhibited to gratify them. With what
justice, then, is the player excommunicated by whom God is worshipped? On
what pretext can you at once adore him who exacts, and brand him who acts
these plays? This, then, is the controversy in which the Greeks and Romans
are engaged. The Greeks think they justly honor players, because they
worship the gods who demand plays; the Romans, on the other hand, do not
suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far less
the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion may be summed up in
the following syllogism. The Greeks give us the major premise: If such gods
are to be worshipped, then certainly such men may be honored. The Romans
add the minor: But such men must by no means be honoured. The Christians
draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must by no means be worshipped.

CHAP. 14.--THAT PLATO, WHO EXCLUDED POETS FROM A WELL-ORDERED CITY, WAS
BETTER THAN THESE GODS WHO DESIRE TO BE HONOURED BY THEATRICAL PLAYS.

   We have still to inquire why the poets who write the plays, and who by
the law of the twelve tables are prohibited from injuring the good name of
the citizens, are reckoned more estimable than the actors, though they so
shamefully asperse the character of the gods? Is it right that the actors
of these poetical and God-dishonoring effusions be branded, while their
authors are honored? Must we not here award the palm to a Greek, Plato,
who, in framing his ideal republic,(2) conceived that poets should be
banished from the city as enemies of the state? He could not brook that the
gods be brought into disrepute, nor that the minds of the citizens be
depraved and besotted, by the fictions of the poets. Compare now human
nature as you see it in Plato, expelling poets from the city that the
citizens be uninjured, with the divine nature as you see it in these gods
exacting plays in their own honor. Plato strove, though unsuccessfully, to
persuade the light-minded and lascivious Greeks to abstain from so much as
writing such plays; the gods used their authority to extort the acting of
the same from the dignified and sober-minded Romans. And not content with
having them acted, they had them dedicated to themselves, consecrated to
themselves, solemnly celebrated in their own honor. To which, then, would
it be more becoming in a state to decree divine honors,--to Plato, who
prohibited these wicked and licentious plays, or to the demons who
delighted in blinding men to the truth of what Plato unsuccessfully sought
to inculcate?

   This philosopher, Plato, has been elevated by Labeo to the rank of a
demigod, and set thus upon a level with such as Hercules and Romulus. Labeo
ranks demigods higher than heroes, but both he counts among the deities.
But I have no doubt that he thinks this man whom he reckons a demigod
worthy of greater respect not only than the heroes, but also than the gods
themselves. The laws of the Romans and the speculations of Plato have this
resemblance, that the latter pronounce a wholesale condemnation of poetical
fictions, while the former restrain the license of satire, at least so far
as men are the objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets even to dwell in
his city: the laws of Rome prohibit actors from being enrolled as citizens;
and if they had not feared to offend the gods who had asked the services of
the players, they would in all likelihood have banished them altogether. It
is obvious, therefore, that the Romans could not receive, nor reasonably
expect to receive, laws for the regulation of their conduct from their
gods, since the laws they themselves enacted far surpassed and put to shame
the morality of the gods. The gods demand stageplays in their own honor;
the Romans exclude the players from all civic honors;(3) the former
commanded that they should be celebrated by the scenic representation of
their own disgrace; the latter commanded that no poet should dare to
blemish the reputation of any citizen. But that demigod Plato resisted the
lust of such gods as these, and showed the Romans what their genius had
left incomplete; for he absolutely excluded poets from his ideal state,
whether they composed fictions with no regard to truth, or set the worst
possible examples before wretched men under the guise of divine actions. We
for our part, indeed, reckon Plato neither a god nor a demigod; we would
not even compare him to any of God's holy angels; nor to the truth-speaking
prophets, nor to any of the apostles or martyrs of Christ, nay, not to any
faithful Christian man. The reason of this opinion of ours we will, God
prospering us, render in its own place. Nevertheless, since they wish him
to be considered a demigod, we think he certainly is more entitled to that
rank, and is every way superior, if not to Hercules and Romulus (though no
historian could ever narrate nor any poet sing of him that he had killed
his brother, or committed any crime), yet certainly to Priapus, or a
Cynocephalus,(1) or the Fever,(2)--divinities whom the Romans have partly
received from foreigners, and partly consecrated by home-grown rites. How,
then, could gods such as these be expected to promulgate good and wholesome
laws, either for the prevention of moral and social evils, or for their
eradication where they had already sprung up?--gods who used their
influence even to sow and cherish profligacy, by appointing that deeds
truly or falsely ascribed to them should be published to the people by
means of theatrical exhibitions, and by thus gratuitously fanning the flame
of human lust with the breath of a seemingly divine approbation. In vain
does Cicero, speaking of poets, exclaim against this state of things in
these words: "When the plaudits and acclamation of the people, who sit as
infallible judges, are won by the poets, what darkness benights the mind,
what fears invade, what passions inflame it!"(3)

CHAP. 15.--THAT IT WAS VANITY, NOT REASON, WHICH CREATED SOME OF THE ROMAN
GODS,

   But is it not manifest that vanity rather than reason regulated the
choice of some of their false gods? This Plato, whom they reckon a demigod,
and who used all his eloquence to preserve men from the most dangerous
spiritual calamities, has yet not been counted worthy even of a little
shrine; but Romulus, because they can call him their own, they have
esteemed more highly than many gods, though their secret doctrine can allow
him the rank only of a demigod. To him they allotted a flamen, that is to
say, a priest of a class so highly esteemed in their religion
(distinguished, too, by their conical mitres), that for only three of their
gods were flamens appointed,--the Flamen Dialis for Jupiter, Martialis for
Mars, and Quirinalis for Romulus (for when the ardor of his fellow-citizens
had given Romulus a seat among the gods, they gave him this new name
Quirinus). And thus by this honor Romulus has been preferred to Neptune and
Pluto, Jupiter's brothers, and to Saturn himself, their father. They have
assigned the same priesthood to serve him as to serve Jove; and in giving
Mars (the reputed father of Romulus) the same honor, is this not rather for
Romulus' sake than to honor Mars?

CHAP. 16.--THAT IF THE GODS HAD REALLY POSSESSED ANY REGARD FOR
RIGHTEOUSNESS, THE ROMANS SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED GOOD LAWS FROM THEM, INSTEAD
OF HAVING TO BORROW THEM FROM OTHER NATIONS.

   Moreover, if the Romans had been able to receive a rule of life from
their gods, they would not have borrowed Solon's laws from the Athenians,
as they did some years after Rome was rounded; and yet they did not keep
them as they received them, but endeavored to improve and amend them.(4)
Although Lycurgus pretended that he was authorized by Apollo to give laws
to the Lacedemonians, the sensible Romans did not choose to believe this,
and were not induced to borrow laws from Sparta. Numa Pompilius, who
succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, is said to have framed some laws, which,
however, were not sufficient for the regulation of civic affairs. Among
these regulations were many pertaining to religious observances, and yet he
is not reported to have received even these from the gods. With respect,
then, to moral evils, evils of life and conduct,--evils which are so
mighty, that, according to the wisest pagans,(5) by them states are ruined
while their cities stand uninjured,--their gods made not the smallest
provision for preserving their worshippers from these evils, but, on the
contrary, took special pains to increase them, as we have previously
endeavored to prove.

CHAP. 17. -- OF THE RAPE OF THE SABINE WOMEN, AND OTHER INIQUITIES
PERPETRATED IN ROME'S PALMIEST DAYS.

   But possibly we are to find the reason for this neglect of the Romans
by their gods, in the saying of Sallust, that "equity and virtue prevailed
among the Romans not more by force of laws than of nature."(1) I presume it
is to this inborn equity and goodness of disposition we are to ascribe the
rape of the Sabine women. What, indeed, could be more equitable and
virtuous, than to carry off by force, as each man was fit, and without
their parents' consent, girls who were strangers and guests, and who had
been decoyed and entrapped by the pretence of a spectacle! If the Sabines
were wrong to deny their daughters when the Romans asked for them, was it
not a greater wrong in the Romans to carry them off after that denial? The
Romans might more justly have waged war against the neighboring nation for
having refused their daughters in marriage when they first sought them,
than for having demanded them back when they had stolen them. War should
have been proclaimed at first; it was then that Mars should have helped his
warlike son, that he might by force of arms avenge the injury done him by
the refusal of marriage, and might also thus win the women he desired.
There might have been some appearance of "right of war" in a victor
carrying off, in virtue of this right, the virgins who had been without any
show of right denied him; whereas there was no "right of peace" entitling
him to carry off those who were not given to him, and to wage an unjust war
with their justly enraged parents. One happy circumstance was indeed
connected with this. act of violence, viz., that though it was commemorated
by the games of the circus, yet even this did not constitute it a precedent
in the city or realm of Rome. If one would find fault with the results of
this act, it must rather be on the ground that the Romans made Romulus a
god in spite of his perpetrating this iniquity; for one cannot reproach
them with making this deed any kind of precedent for the rape of women.

   Again, I presume it was due to this natural equity and virtue, that
after the expulsion of King Tarquin, whose son had violated Lucretia,
Junius Brutus the consul forced Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's
husband and his own colleague, a good and innocent man, to resign his
office and go into banishment, on the one sole charge that he was of the
name  and blood of the Tarquins. This injustice  was perpetrated with the
approval, or at least connivance, of the people, who had themselves raised
to the consular office both Collatinus and Brutus. Another instance of this
equity and virtue is found in their treatment of Marcus Camillus. This
eminent man, after he had rapidly conquered the Veians, at that time the
most formidable of Rome's enemies, and who had maintained a ten years' war,
in which the Roman army had suffered the usual calamities attendant on bad
generalship, after he had restored security to Rome, which had begun to
tremble for its safety, and after he had taken the wealthiest city of the
enemy, had charges brought against him by the malice of those that envied
his success, and by the insolence of the tribunes of the people; and seeing
that the city bore him no gratitude for preserving it, and that he would
certainly be condemned, he went into exile, and even in his absence was
fined 10,000 asses. Shortly after, however, his ungrateful country had
again to seek his protection from the Gauls. But I cannot now mention all
the shameful and iniquitous acts with which Rome was agitated, when the
aristocracy attempted to subject the people, and the people resented their
encroachments, and the advocates of either party were actuated rather by
the love of victory than by any equitable or virtuous consideration.

CHAP. 18.--WHAT THE HISTORY OF SALLUST REVEALS REGARDING THE LIFE OF THE
ROMANS, EITHER WHEN STRAITENED BY ANXIETY OR RELAXED IN SECURITY.

   I will therefore pause, and adduce the testimony of Sallust himself,
whose words in praise of the Romans (that "equity and virtue prevailed
among them not more by force of laws than of nature") have given occasion
to this discussion. He was referring to that period immediately after the
expulsion of the kings, in which the city became great in an incredibly
short space of time. And yet this same writer acknowledges in the first
book of his history, in the very exordium of his work, that even at that
time, when a very brief interval had elapsed after the government had
passed from kings to consuls, the more powerful men began to act unjustly,
and occasioned the defection of the people from the patricians, and other
disorders in the city. For after Sallust had stated that the Romans enjoyed
greater harmony and a purer state of society between the second and third
Punic wars than at any other time, and that the cause of this was not their
love of good order, but their fear lest the peace they had with Carthage
might be broken (this also, as we mentioned, Nasica contemplated when he
opposed the destruction of Carthage, for he supposed that fear would tend
to repress wickedness, and to preserve wholesome ways of living), he then
goes on to say: "Yet, after the destruction of Carthage, discord, avarice,
ambition, and the other vices which are commonly generated by prosperity,
more than ever increased." If they "increased," and that" more than ever,"
then already they had appeared, and had been increasing. And so Sallust
adds this reason for what he said "For," he says, "the oppressive measures
of the powerful, and the consequent secessions of the plebs from the
patricians, and other civil dissensions, had existed from the first, and
affairs were administered with equity and well-tempered justice for no
longer a period than the short time after the expulsion of the kings, while
the city was occupied with the serious Tuscan war and Tarquin's vengeance."
You see how, even in that brief period after the expulsion of the kings,
fear, he acknowledges, was the cause of the interval of equity and good
order. They were afraid, in fact, of the war which Tarquin waged against
them, after he had been driven from the throne and the city, and had allied
himself with the Tuscans. But observe what he adds: "After that, the
patricians treated the people as their slaves, ordering them to be scourged
or beheaded just as the kings had done, driving them from their holdings,
and harshly tyrannizing over those who had no property to lose. The people,
overwhelmed by these oppressive measures, and most of all by exorbitant
usury, and obliged to contribute both money and personal service to the
constant wars, at length took arms and seceded to Mount Aventine and Mount
Sacer, and thus obtained for themselves tribunes and protective laws. But
it was only the second Punic war that put an end on both sides to discord
and strife." You see what kind of men the Romans were, even so early as a
few years after the expulsion of the kings; and it is of these men he says,
that "equity and virtue prevailed among them not more by force of law than
of nature."

   Now, if these were the days in which the Roman republic shows fairest
and best, what are we to say or think of the succeeding age, when, to use
the words of the same historian, "changing little by little from the fair
and virtuous city it was, it became utterly wicked and dissolute?" This
was, as he mentions, after the destruction of Carthage. Sallust's brief sum
and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows
how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at
last even in civil wars. He says: "And from this time the primitive
manners, instead of undergoing an insensible alteration as hitherto they
had done, were swept away as by a torrent: the young men were so depraved
by luxury and avarice, that it may justly be said that no father had a son
who could either preserve his own patrimony, or keep his hands off other
men's." Sallust adds a number of particulars about the vices of Sylla, and
the debased condition of the republic in general; and other writers make
similar observations, though in much less striking language.

   However, I suppose you now see, or at least any one who gives his
attention has the means of seeing, in what a sink of iniquity that city was
plunged before the advent of our heavenly King. For these things happened
not only before Christ had begun to teach, but before He was even born of
the Virgin. If, then, they dare not impute to their gods the grievous evils
of those former times, more tolerable before the destruction of Carthage,
but intolerable and dreadful after it, although it was the gods who by
their malign craft instilled into the minds of men the conceptions from
which such dreadful vices branched out on all sides, why do they impute
these present calamities to Christ, who teaches life-giving truth, and
forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods, and who, abominating and
condemning with His divine authority those wicked and hurtful lusts of men,
gradually withdraws His own people from a world that is corrupted by these
vices, and is falling into ruins, to make of them an eternal city, whose
glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity, but on the judgment of
truth?

CHAP. 19.--OF THE CORRUPTION WHICH HAD GROWN UPON THE ROMAN REPUBLIC BEFORE
CHRIST ABOLISHED THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS.

   Here, then, is this Roman republic, "which has changed little by little
from the fair and virtuous city it was, and has become utterly wicked and
dissolute." It is not I who am the first to say this, but their own
authors, from whom we learned it for a fee, and who wrote it long before
the coming of Christ. You see how, before the coming of Christ, and after
the destruction of Carthage, "the primitive manners, instead of undergoing
insensible alteration, as hitherto they had done, were swept away as by a
torrent; and how depraved by luxury and avarice the youth were." Let them
now, on their part, read to us any laws given by their gods to the Roman
people, and directed against luxury and avarice. And would that they had
only been silent on the subjects of chastity and modesty, and had not
demanded from the people indecent and shameful practices, to which they
lent a pernicious patronage by their so-called divinity. Let them read our
commandments in the Prophets, Gospels, Acts of the Apostles or Epistles;
let them peruse the large number of precepts against avarice and luxury
which are everywhere read to the congregations that meet for this purpose,
and which strike the ear, not with the uncertain sound of a philosophical
discussion, but with the thunder of God's own oracle pealing from the
clouds. And yet they do not impute to their gods the luxury and avarice,
the cruel and dissolute manners, that had rendered the republic utterly
wicked and corrupt, even before the coming of Christ; but whatever
affliction their pride and effeminacy have exposed them to in these latter
days, they furiously impute to our religion. If the kings of the earth and
all their subjects, if all princes and judges of the earth, if young men
and maidens, old and young, every age, and both sexes; if they whom the
Baptist addressed, the publicans and the soldiers, were all together to
hearken to and observe the precepts of the Christian religion regarding a
just and virtuous life, then should the republic adorn the whole earth with
its own felicity, and attain in life everlasting to the pinnacle of kingly
glory. But because this man listens and that man scoffs, and most are
enamored of the blandishments of vice rather than the wholesome severity of
virtue, the people of Christ, whatever be their condition--whether they be
kings, princes, judges, soldiers, or provincials, rich or poor, bond or
free, male or female--are enjoined to endure this earthly republic, wicked
and dissolute as it is, that so they may by this endurance win for
themselves an eminent place in that most holy and august assembly of angels
and republic of heaven, in which the will of God is the law.

CHAP. 20.--OF THE KIND OF HAPPINESS AND LIFE TRULY DELIGHTED IN BY THOSE
WHO INVEIGH AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

   But the worshippers and admirers of these gods delight in imitating
their scandalous iniquities, and are nowise concerned that the republic be
less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only
let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its
victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us?
This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to
supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the
weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and
that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let
the rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride.
Let the people applaud not those who protect their interests, but those who
provide them with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no impurity
forbidden. Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the righteousness,
but by the servility of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to
the kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions and
purveyors of their pleasures; not with a hearty reverence, but a crooked
and servile fear. Let the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to
another man's property, than of that done to one's own person. If a man be
a nuisance to his neighbor, or injure his property, family, or person, let
him be actionable; but in his own affairs let everyone with impunity do
what he will in company with his own family, and with those who willingly
join him. Let there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for every
one who wishes to use them, but specially for those who are too poor to
keep one for their private use. Let there be erected houses of the largest
and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most
sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play,
drink, vomit,(1) dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of
dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of
the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual
excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as
a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be
silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who
procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once
possessed. Let them be worshipped as they wish; let them demand whatever
games they please, from or with their own worshippers; only let them secure
that such felicity be not imperilled by foe, plague, or disaster of any
kind. What sane man would compare a republic such as this, I will not say
to the Roman empire, but to the palace of Sardanapalus, the ancient king
who was so abandoned to pleasures, that he caused it to be inscribed on his
tomb, that now that he was dead, he possessed only those things which he
had swallowed and consumed by his appetites while alive? If these men had
such a king as this, who, while self-indulgent, should lay no severe
restraint on them, they would more enthusiastically consecrate to him a
temple and a flamen than the ancient Romans did to Romulus.

CHAP. 21--CICERO'S OPINION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.

   But if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully the
Roman republic be stained by corrupt practices, so long only as it holds
together and continues in being, and if they therefore pooh-pooh the
testimony of Sallust to its "utterly wicked and profligate" condition, what
will they make of Cicero's statement, that even in his time it had become
entirely extinct, and that there remained extant no Roman republic at all?
He introduces Scipio (the Scipio who had destroyed Carthage) discussing the
republic, at a time when already there were presentiments of its speedy
ruin by that corruption which Sallust describes. In fact, at the time when
the discussion took place, one of the Gracchi, who, according to Sallust,
was the first great instigator of seditions, had already been put to death.
His death, indeed, is mentioned in the same book. Now Scipio, at the end of
the second book, says: "As among the different sounds which proceed from
lyres, flutes, and the human voice, there must be maintained a certain
harmony which a cultivated ear cannot endure to hear disturbed or jarring,
but which may be elicited in full and absolute concord by the modulation
even of voices very unlike one another; so, where reason is allowed to
modulate the diverse elements of the state, there is obtained a perfect
concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes as from various sounds;
and what musicians call harmony in singing, is concord in matters of state,
which is the strictest bond and best security of any republic, and which by
no ingenuity can be retained where justice has become extinct." Then, when
he had expatiated somewhat more fully, and had more copiously illustrated
the benefits of its presence and the ruinous effects of its absence upon a
state, Pilus, one of the company present at the discussion, struck in and
demanded that the question should be more thoroughly sifted, and that the
subject of justice should be freely discussed for the sake of ascertaining
what truth there was in the maxim which was then becoming daily more
current, that "the republic cannot be governed without injustice." Scipio
expressed his willingness to have this maxim discussed and sifted, and gave
it as his opinion that it was baseless, and that no progress could be made
in discussing the republic unless it was established, not only that this
maxim, that "the republic cannot be governed without injustice," was false,
but also that the truth is, that it cannot be governed without the most
absolute justice. And the discussion of this question, being deferred till
the next day, is carried on in the third book with great animation. For
Pilus himself undertook to defend the position that the republic cannot be
governed. without injustice, at the same time being at special pains to
clear himself of any real participation in that opinion. He advocated with
great keenness the cause of injustice against justice, and endeavored by
plausible reasons and examples to demonstrate that the former is
beneficial, the latter useless, to the republic. Then, at the request of
the company, Laelius attempted to defend justice, and strained every nerve
to prove that nothing is so hurtful to a state as injustice; and that
without justice a republic can neither be governed, nor even continue to
exist.

   When this question has been handled to the satisfaction of the company,
Scipio reverts to the original thread of discourse, and repeats with
commendation his own brief definition of a republic, that it is the weal of
the people. "The people" he defines as being not every assemblage or mob,
but an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by a
community of interests. Then he shows the use of definition in debate; and
from these definitions of his own he gathers that a republic, or "weal of
the people," then exists only when it is well and justly governed, whether
by a monarch, or an aristocracy, or by the whole people. But when the
monarch is unjust, or, as the Greeks say, a tyrant; or the aristocrats are
unjust, and form a faction; or the people themselves are unjust, and
become, as Scipio for want of a better name calls them, themselves the
tyrant, then the republic is not only blemished (as had been proved the day
before), but by legitimate deduction from those definitions, it altogether
ceases to be. For it could not  be the people's weal when a tyrant
factiously lorded it over the state; neither would the people be any longer
a people if it were unjust, since it would no longer answer the definition
of a people--" an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law,
and by a community of interests."

   When, therefore, the Roman republic was such as Sallust described it,
it was not "utterly wicked and profligate," as he says, but had altogether
ceased to exist, if we are to admit the reasoning of that debate maintained
on the subject of the republic by its best representatives. Tully himself,
too, speaking not in the person of Scipio or any one else, but uttering his
own sentiments, uses the following language in the beginning of the fifth
book, after quoting a line from the poet Ennius, in which he said, "Rome's
severe morality and her citizens are her safeguard." "This verse," says
Cicero, "seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an oracle.
For neither would the citizens have availed without the morality of the
community, nor would the morality of the commons without outstanding men
have availed either to establish or so long to maintain in vigor so grand a
republic with so wide and just an empire. Accordingly, before our day, the
hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they on their part retained
the usages and institutions of their fathers. But our age, receiving the
republic as a chef-d'oeuvre of another age which has already begun to grow
old, has not merely neglected to restore the colors of the original, but
has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline
and most outstanding features. For what survives of that primitive morality
which the poet called Rome's safeguard? It is so obsolete and forgotten,
that, far from practising it, one does not even know it. And of the
citizens what shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great
men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the
guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime.
For it is through our vices, and not by any mishap, that we retain only the
name of a republic, and have long since lost the reality."

   This is the confession of Cicero, long indeed after the death of
Africanus, whom he introduced as an interlocutor in his work De Republica,
but still before the coming of Christ. Yet, if the disasters he bewails had
been lamented after the Christian religion had been diffused, and had begun
to prevail, is there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought
that they were to be imputed to the Christians? Why, then, did their gods
not take steps then to prevent the decay and extinction of that republic,
over the loss of which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh,
sings so lugubrious a dirge? Its admirers have need to inquire whether,
even in the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished in
it; or was it not perhaps even then, to use the casual expression of
Cicero, rather a colored painting than the living reality? But, if God
will, we shall consider this elsewhere. For I mean in its own place to show
that--according to the definitions in which Cicero himself, using Scipio as
his mouthpiece, briefly propounded what a republic is, and what a people
is, and according to many testimonies, both of his own lips and of those
who took part in that same debate--Rome never was a republic, because true
justice had never a place in it. But accepting the more feasible
definitions of a republic, I grant there was a republic of a certain kind,
and certainly much better administered by the more ancient Romans than by
their modern representatives. But the fact is, true justice has no
existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, if at
least any choose to call this a republic; and indeed we cannot deny that it
is the people's weal. But if perchance this name, which has become familiar
in other connections, be considered alien to our common parlance, we may at
all events say that in this city is true justice; the city of which Holy
Scripture says, "Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God."

CHAP. 22.--THAT THE ROMAN GODS NEVER TOOK ANY STEPS TO PREVENT THE REPUBLIC
FROM BEING RUINED BY IMMORALITY.

   But what is relevant to the present question is this, that however
admirable our adversaries say the republic was or is, it is certain that by
the testimony of their own most learned writers it had become, long before
the coming of Christ, utterly wicked and dissolute, and indeed had no
existence, but had been destroyed by profligacy. To prevent this, surely
these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals and a rule of
life to the people by whom they were worshipped in so many temples, with so
great a variety of priests and sacrifices, with such numberless and diverse
rites, so many festal solemnities, so many celebrations of magnificent
games. But in all this the demons only looked after their own interest, and
cared not at all how their worshippers lived, or rather were at pains to
induce them to lead an abandoned life, so long as they paid these tributes
to their honor, and regarded them with fear. If any one denies this, let
him produce, let him point to, let him read the laws which the gods had
given against sedition, and which the Gracchi transgressed when they threw
everything into confusion; or those Marius, and Cinna, and Carbo broke when
they involved their country in civil wars, most iniquitous and
unjustifiable in their causes, cruelly conducted, and yet more cruelly
terminated; or those which Sylla scorned, whose life, character, and deeds,
as described by Sallust and other historians, are the abhorrence of all
mankind. Who will deny that at that time the republic had become extinct?

   Possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defence of the gods,
that they abandoned the city on account of the profligacy of the citizens,
according to the lines of Virgil:

  "Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine,
   Are those who made this realm divine."(1)

But, firstly, if it be so, then they cannot complain against the Christian
religion, as if it were that which gave offence to the gods ant caused them
to abandon Rome, since the Roman immorality had long ago driven from the
altars of the city a cloud of little gods, like as many flies. And yet
where was this host of divinities, when, long before the corruption of the
primitive morality, Rome was taken and burnt by the Gauls? Perhaps they
were present, but asleep? For at that time the whole city fell into the
hands of the enemy, with the single exception of the Capitoline hill; and
this too would have been taken, had not--the watchful geese aroused the
sleeping gods! And this gave occasion to the festival of the goose, in
which Rome sank nearly to the superstition of the Egyptians, who worship
beasts and birds. But of these adventitious evils which are inflicted by
hostile armies or by some disaster, and which attach rather to the body
than the soul, I am not meanwhile disputing. At present I speak of the
decay of morality, which at first almost imperceptibly lost its brilliant
hue, but afterwards was wholly obliterated, was swept away as by a torrent,
and involved the republic in such disastrous ruin, that though the houses
and wails remained standing the leading writers do not scruple to say that
the republic was destroyed. Now, the departure of the gods "from each fane,
each sacred shrine," and their abandonment of the city to destruction, was
an act of justice, if their laws inculcating justice and a moral life had
been held in contempt by that city. But what kind of gods were these, pray,
who declined to live with a people who worshipped them, and whose corrupt
life they had done nothing to reform?

CHAP. 23.--THAT THE VICISSITUDES OF THIS LIFE ARE DEPENDENT NOT ON THE
FAVOR OR HOSTILITY OF DEMONS, BUT ON THE WILL OF THE TRUE GOD.

   But, further, is it not obvious that the gods have abetted the
fulfilment of men's desires, instead of authoritatively bridling them? For
Marius, a low-born and self-made man, who ruthlessly provoked and conducted
civil wars, was so effectually aided by them, that he was seven times
consul, and died full of years in his seventh consulship, escaping the
hands of Sylla, who immediately afterwards came into power. Why, then, did
they not also aid him, so as to restrain him from so many enormities? For
if it is said that the gods had no hand in his success, this is no trivial
admission that a man can attain the dearly coveted felicity of this life
even though his own gods be not propitious; that men can be loaded with the
gifts of fortune as Marius was, can enjoy health, power, wealth, honours,
dignity, length of days, though the gods be hostile to him; and that, on
the other hand, men can be tormented as Regulus was, with captivity,
bondage, destitution, watchings, pain, and cruel death, though the gods be
his friends. To concede this is to make a compendious confession that the
gods are useless, and their worship superfluous. If the gods have taught
the people rather what goes clean counter to the virtues of the soul, and
that integrity of life which meets a reward after death; if even in respect
of temporal and transitory blessings they neither hurt those whom they hate
nor profit whom they love, why are they worshipped, why are they invoked
with such eager homage? Why do men murmur in difficult and sad emergencies,
as if the gods had retired in anger? and why, on their account, is the
Christian religion injured by the most unworthy calumnies? If in temporal
matters they have power either for good or for evil, why did they stand by
Marius, the worst of Rome's citizens, and abandon Regulus, the best? Does
this not prove themselves to be most unjust and wicked? And even if it be
supposed that for this very reason they are the rather to be feared and
worshipped, this is a mistake; for we do not read that Regulus worshipped
them less assiduously than Marius. Neither is it apparent that a wicked
life is to be chosen, on the ground that the gods are supposed to have
favored Marius more than Regulus. For Metellus, the most highly esteemed of
all the Romans, who had five sons in the consulship, was prosperous even in
this life; and Catiline, the worst of men, reduced to poverty and defeated
in the war his own guilt had aroused, lived and perished miserably. Real
and secure felicity is the peculiar possession of those who worship that
God by whom alone it can be conferred.

   It is thus apparent, that when the republic was being destroyed by
profligate manners, its gods did nothing to hinder its destruction by the
direction or correction of its manners, but rather accelerated its
destruction by increasing the demoralization and corruption that already
existed. They need not pretend that their goodness was shocked by the
iniquity of the city, and that they withdrew in anger. For they were there,
sure enough; they are detected, convicted: they were equally unable to
break silence so as to guide others, and to keep silence so as to conceal
themselves. I do not dwell on the fact that the inhabitants of Minturnae
took pity on Marius, and commended him to the goddess Marica in her grove,
that she might give him success in all things, and that from the abyss of
despair in which he then lay he forthwith returned unhurt to Rome, and
entered the city the ruthless leader of a ruthless army; and they who wish
to know how bloody was his victory, how unlike a citizen, and how much more
relentlessly than any foreign foe he acted, let them read the histories.
But this, as I said, I do not dwell upon; nor do I attribute the bloody
bliss of Marius to, I know not what Minturnian goddess [Marica], but rather
to the secret providence of God, that the mouths of our adversaries might
be shut, and that they who are not led by passion, but by prudent
consideration of events, might be delivered from error. And even if the
demons have any power in these matters, they have only that power which the
secret decree of the Almighty allots to them, in order that we may not set
too great store by earthly prosperity, seeing it is oftentimes vouchsafed
even to wicked men like Marius; and that we may not, on the other hand,
regard it as an evil, since we see that many good and pious worshippers of
the one true God are, in spite of the demons pre-eminently successful; and,
finally, that we may not suppose that these unclean spirits are either to
be propitiated or feared for the sake of earthly blessings or calamities:
for as wicked men on earth cannot do all they would, so neither can these
demons, but only in so far as they are permitted by the decree of Him whose
judgments are fully comprehensible, justly reprehensible by none.

CHAP. 24.--OF THE DEEDS OF SYLLA, IN WHICH THE DEMONS BOASTED THAT HE HAD
THEIR HELP.

   It is certain that Sylla--whose rule was so cruel that, in comparison
with it, the preceding state of things which he came to avenge was
regretted--when first he advanced towards Rome to give battle to Marius,
found the auspices so favourable when he sacrificed, that, according to
Livy's account, the augur Postumius expressed his willingness to lose his
head if Sylla did not, with the help of the gods, accomplish what he
designed. The gods, you see, had not departed from "every fane and sacred
shrine," since they were still predicting the issue of these affairs, and
yet were taking no steps to correct Sylla himself. Their presages promised
him great prosperity but no threatenings of theirs subdued his evil
passions. And then, when he was in Asia conducting the war against
Mithridates, a message from Jupiter was delivered to him by Lucius Titius,
to the effect that he would conquer Mithridates; and so it came to pass.
And afterwards, when he was meditating a return to Rome for the purpose of
avenging in the blood of the citizens injuries done to himself and his
friends, a second message from Jupiter was delivered to him by a soldier of
the sixth legion, to the effect that it was he who had predicted the
victory over Mithridates, and that now he promised to give him power to
recover the republic from his enemies, though with great bloodshed. Sylla
at once inquired of the soldier what form had appeared to him; and, on his
reply, recognized that it was the same as Jupiter had formerly employed to
convey to him the assurance regarding the victory over Mithridates. How,
then, can the gods be justified in this matter for the care they took to
predict these shadowy successes, and for their negligence in correcting
Sylla, and restraining him from stirring up a civil war so lamentable and
atrocious, that it not merely disfigured, but extinguished, the republic?
The truth is, as I have often said, and as Scripture informs us, and as the
facts themselves sufficiently indicate, the demons are found to look after
their own ends only, that they may be regarded and worshipped as gods, and
that men may be induced to offer to them a worship which associates them
with their crimes, and involves them in one common wickedness and judgment
of God.

   Afterwards, when Sylla had come to Tarentum, and had sacrificed there,
he saw on the head of the victim's liver the likeness of a golden crown.
Thereupon the same soothsayer Postumius interpreted this to signify a
signal victory, and ordered that he only should eat of the entrails. A
little afterwards, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out, "I am
Bellona's messenger; the victory is yours, Sylla!" Then he added that the
Capitol should be burned. As soon as he had uttered this prediction he left
the camp, but returned the following day more excited than ever, and
shouted, "The Capitol is fired!" And fired indeed it was. This it was easy
for a demon both to foresee and quickly to announce. But observe, as
relevant to our subject, what kind of gods they are under whom these men
desire to live, who blaspheme the Saviour that delivers the wills of the
faithful from the dominion of devils. The man cried out in prophetic
rapture, "The victory is yours, Sylla!" And to certify that he spoke by a
divine spirit, he predicted also an event which was shortly to happen, and
which indeed did fall out, in a place from which he in whom this spirit was
speaking was far distant. But he never cried, "Forbear thy villanies,
Sylla!"--the villanies which were committed at Rome by that victor to whom
a golden crown on the calf's liver had been shown as the divine evidence of
his victory. If such signs as this were customarily sent by just gods, and
not by wicked demons, then certainly the entrails he consulted should
rather have given Sylla intimation of the cruel disasters that were to
befall the city and himself. For that victory was not so conducive to his
exaltation to power, as it was fatal to his ambition; for by it he became
so insatiable in his desires, and was rendered so arrogant and reckless by
prosperity, that he may be said rather to have inflicted a moral
destruction on himself than corporal destruction on his enemies. But these
truely woeful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint
of, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. For they feared his
amendment more than his defeat. Yea, they took good care that this glorious
conqueror of his own fellow-citizens should be conquered and led captive by
his own infamous vices, and should thus be the more submissive slave of the
demons themselves.

CHAP. 25.--HOW POWERFULLY THE EVIL SPIRITS INCITE MEN TO WICKED ACTIONS, BY
GIVING THEM THE QUASI-DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THEIR EXAMPLE.

   Now, who does not hereby comprehend,--unless he has preferred to
imitate such gods rather than by divine grace to withdraw himself from
their fellowship,--who does not see how eagerly these evil spirits strive
by their example to lend, as it were, divine authority to crime? Is not
this proved by the fact that they were seen in a wide plain in Campania
rehearsing among themselves the battle which shortly after took place there
with great bloodshed between the armies of Rome? For at first there were
heard loud crashing noises, and afterwards many reported that they had seen
for some days together two armies engaged. And when this battle ceased,
they found the ground all indented with just such footprints of men and
horses as a great conflict would leave. If, then, the deities were
veritably fighting with one another, the civil wars of men are sufficiently
justified; yet, by the way, let it be observed that such pugnacious gods
must be very wicked or very wretched. If, however, it was but a sham-fight,
what did they intend by this, but that the civil wars of the Romans should
seem no wickedness, but an imitation of the gods? For already the civil
wars had begun; and before this, some lamentable battles and execrable
massacres had occurred. Already many had been moved by the story of the
soldier, who, on stripping the spoils of his slain foe, recognized in the
stripped corpse his own brother, and, with deep curses on civil wars, slew
himself there and then on his brother's body. To disguise the bitterness of
such tragedies, and kindle increasing ardor in this monstrous warfare,
these malign demons, who were reputed and worshipped as gods, fell upon
this plan of revealing themselves in a state of civil war, that no
compunction for fellow-citizens might cause the Romans to shrink from such
battles, but that the human criminality might be justified by the divine
example. By a like craft, too, did these evil spirits command that scenic
entertainments, of which I have already spoken, should be instituted and
dedicated to them. And in these entertainments the poetical compositions
and actions of the drama ascribed such iniquities to the gods, that every
one might safely imitate them, whether he believed the gods had actually
done such things, or, not believing this, yet perceived that they most
eagerly desired to be represented as having done them. And that no one
might suppose, that in representing the gods as fighting with one another,
the poets had slandered them, and imputed to them unworthy actions, the
gods themselves, to complete the deception, confirmed the compositions of
the poets by exhibiting their own battles to the eyes of men, not only
through actions in the theatres, but in their own persons on the actual
field.

   We have been forced to bring forward these facts, because their authors
have not scrupled to say and to write that the Roman republic had already
been ruined by the depraved moral habits of the citizens, and had ceased to
exist before the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now this ruin they do not
impute to their own gods, though they impute to our Christ the evils of
this life, which cannot ruin good men, be they alive or dead. And this they
do, though our Christ has issued so many precepts inculcating virtue and
restraining vice; while their own gods have done nothing whatever to
preserve that republic that served them, and to restrain it from ruin by
such precepts, but have rather hastened its destruction, by corrupting its
morality through their pestilent example. No one, I fancy, will now be bold
enough to say that the republic was then ruined because of the departure of
the gods "from each fane, each sacred shrine," as if they were the friends
of virtue, and were offended by the vices of men. No, there are too many
presages from entrails, auguries, soothsayings, whereby they boastingly
proclaimed themselves prescient of future events and controllers of the
fortune of war,--all which prove them to have been present. And had they
been indeed absent the Romans would never in these civil wars have been so
far transported by their own passions as they were by the instigations of
these gods.

CHAP, 26.--THAT THE DEMONS GAVE IN SECRET CERTAIN OBSCURE INSTRUCTIONS IN
MORALS, WHILE IN PUBLIC THEIR OWN SOLEMNITIES INCULCATED ALL WICKEDNESS.

   Seeing that this is so,--seeing that the filthy and cruel deeds, the
disgraceful and criminal actions of the gods, whether real or reigned, were
at their own request published, and were consecrated, and dedicated in
their honor as sacred and stated solemnities; seeing they vowed vengeance
on those who refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all, that they might be
proposed as deeds worthy of imitation, why is it that these same demons,
who by taking pleasure in such obscenities, acknowledge themselves to be
unclean spirits, and by delighting in their own villanies and iniquities,
real or imaginary, and by requesting from the immodest, and extorting from
the modest, the celebration of these licentious acts, proclaim themselves
instigators to a criminal and lewd life;--why, I ask, are they represented
as giving some good moral precepts to a few of their own elect, initiated
in the secrecy of their shrines? If it be so, this very thing only serves
further to demonstrate the malicious craft of these pestilent spirits. For
so great is the influence of probity and chastity, that all men, or almost
all men, are moved by the praise of these virtues; nor is any man so
depraved by vice, but he hath some feeling of honor left in him. So that,
unless the devil sometimes transformed himself, as Scripture says, into an
angel of light, (1) he could not compass his deceitful purpose.
Accordingly, in public, a bold impurity fills the ear of the people with
noisy clamor; in  private, a reigned chastity speaks in scarce audible
whispers to a few: an open stage is provided for shameful things, but on
the praiseworthy the curtain fails: grace hides, disgrace flaunts: a wicked
deed draws an overflowing house, a virtuous speech finds scarce a hearer,
as though purity were to be blushed at, impurity boasted of. Where else can
such confusion reign, but in devils' temples? Where, but in the haunts of
deceit? For the secret precepts are given as a sop to the virtuous, who are
few in number; the wicked exam-pies are exhibited to encourage the vicious,
who are countless.

   Where and when those initiated in the mysteries of Coelestis received
any good instructions, we know not. What we do know is, that before her
shrine, in which her image is set, and amidst a vast crowd gathering from
all quarters, and standing closely packed together, we were intensely
interested spectators of the games which were going on, and saw, as we
pleased to turn the eye, on this side a grand display of harlots, on the
other the virgin goddess; we saw this virgin worshipped with prayer and
with obscene rites. There we saw no shame-faced mimes, no actress over-
burdened with modesty; all that the obscene rites demanded was fully
complied with. We were plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity,
and the matron who witnessed the spectacle returned home from the temple a
wiser woman. Some, indeed, of the more prudent women turned their faces
from the immodest movements of the players, and learned the art of
wickedness by a furtive regard. For they were restrained, by the modest
demeanor due to men, from looking boldly at the immodest gestures; but much
more were they restrained from condemning with chaste heart the sacred
rites of her whom they adored. And yet this licentiousness--which, if
practised in one's home, could only be done there in secret--was practised
as a public lesson in the temple; and if any modesty remained in men, it
was occupied in marvelling that wickedness which men could not
unrestrainedly commit should be part of the religious teaching of the gods,
and that to omit its exhibition should incur the anger of the gods. What
spirit can that be, which by a hidden inspiration stirs men's corruption,
and goads them to adultery, and feeds on the full-fledged iniquity, unless
it be the same that finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies, sets in
the temples images of devils, and loves to see in play the images of vices;
that whispers in secret some righteous sayings to deceive the few who are
good, and scatters in public invitations to profligacy, to gain possession
of the millions who are wicked?

CHAP. 27.--THAT THE OBSCENITIES OF THOSE PLAYS WHICH THE ROMANS CONSECRATED
IN ORDER TO PROPITIATE THEIR GODS, CONTRIBUTED LARGELY TO THE OVERTHROW OF
PUBLIC ORDER.

   Cicero, a weighty man, and a philosopher in his way, when about to be
made edile, wished the citizens to understand(1) that, among the other
duties of his magistracy, he must propitiate Flora by the celebration of
games. And these games are reckoned devout in proportion to their lewdness.
In another place,(2) and when he was now consul, and the state in great
peril, he says that games had been celebrated for ten days together, and
that nothing had been omitted which could pacify the gods: as if it had not
been more satisfactory to irritate the gods by temperance, than to pacify
them by debauchery; and to provoke their hate by honest living, than soothe
it by such unseemly grossness. For no matter how cruel was the ferocity of
those men who were threatening the state, and on whose account the gods
were being propitiated, it could not have been more hurtful than the
alliance of gods who were won with the foulest vices. To avert the danger
which threatened men's bodies, the gods were conciliated in a fashion that
drove virtue from their spirits; and the gods did not enrol themselves as
defenders of the battlements against the besiegers, until they had first
stormed and sacked the morality of the citizens. This propitiation of such
divinities,--a propitiation so wanton, so impure, so immodest, so wicked,
so filthy, whose actors the innate and praiseworthy virtue of the Romans
disabled from civic honors, erased from their tribe, recognized as polluted
and made infamous;--this propitiation, I say, so foul, so detestable, and
alien from every religious feeling, these fabulous and ensnaring accounts
of the criminal actions of the gods, these scandalous actions which they
either shamefully and wickedly committed, or more shamefully and wickedly
reigned, all this the whole city learned in public both by the words and
gestures of the actors. They saw that the gods delighted in the commission
of these things, and therefore believed that they wished them not only to
be exhibited to them, but to be imitated by themselves. But as for that
good and honest instruction which they speak of, it was given in such
secrecy, and to so few (if indeed given at all), that they seemed rather to
fear it might be divulged, than that it might not be practised.

CHAP. 28. THAT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IS HEALTH-GIVING.

   They, then, are but abandoned and ungrateful wretches, in deep and fast
bondage to that malign spirit, who complain and murmur that men are rescued
by the name of Christ from the hellish thraldom of these unclean spirits,
and from a participation in their punishment, and are brought out of the
night of pestilential ungodliness into the light of  most healthful piety.
Only such men could murmur that the masses flock to the churches and their
chaste acts of worship, where a seemly separation of the sexes is observed;
where they learn how they may so spend this earthly life, as to merit a
blessed eternity hereafter; where Holy Scripture and instruction in
righteousness are proclaimed from a raised platform in presence of all,
that both they who do the word may hear to their salvation, and they who do
it not may hear to judgment. And though some enter who scoff at such
precepts, all their petulance is either quenched by a sudden change, or is
restrained through fear or shame. For no filthy and wicked action is there
set forth to be gazed at or to be imitated; but either the precepts of the
true God are recommended, His miracles narrated, His gifts praised, or His
benefits implored.

CHAP. 29.--AN EXHORTATION TO THE ROMANS TO RENOUNCE PAGANISM.

   This, rather, is the religion worthy of your desires, O admirable Roman
race,--the progeny of your Scaevolas and Scipios, of Regulus, and of
Fabricius. This rather covet, this distinguish from that foul vanity and
crafty malice of the devils. If there is in your nature any eminent virtue,
only by true piety is it purged and perfected, while by impiety it is
wrecked and punished. Choose now what you will pursue, that your praise may
be not in yourself, but in the true God, in whom is no error. For of
popular glory you have had your share; but by the secret providence of God,
the true religion was not offered to your choice. Awake, it is now day; as
you have already awaked in the persons of some in whose perfect virtue and
sufferings for the true faith we glory: for they, contending on all sides
with hostile powers, and conquering them all by bravely dying, have
purchased for us this country of ours with their blood; to which country we
invite you, and exhort you to add yourselves to the number of the citizens
of this city, which also has a sanctuary(3) of its own in the true
remission of sins. Do not listen to those degenerate sons of thine who
slander Christ and Christians, and impute to them these disastrous times,
though they desire times in which they may enjoy rather impunity for their
wickedness than a peaceful life. Such has never been Rome's ambition even
in regard to her earthly country. Lay hold now on the celestial country,
which is easily won, and in which you will reign truly and for ever. For
there shall thou find no vestal fire, no Capitoline stone, but the one true
God.

  "No date, no goal will here ordain:
   But grant an endless, boundless reign."(1)

   No longer, then, follow after false and deceitful gods; abjure them
rather, and despise them, bursting forth into true liberty. Gods they are
not, but malignant spirits, to whom your eternal happiness will be a sore
punishment. Juno, from whom you deduce your origin according to the flesh,
did not so bitterly grudge Rome's citadels to the Trojans, as these devils
whom yet ye repute gods, grudge an everlasting seat to the race of mankind.
And thou thyself hast in no wavering voice passed judgment on them, when
thou didst pacify them with games, and yet didst account as infamous the
men by whom the plays were acted. Suffer us, then, to assert thy freedom
against the unclean spirits who had imposed on thy neck the yoke of
celebrating their own shame and filthiness. The actors of these divine
crimes thou hast removed from offices of honor; supplicate the true God,
that He may remove from thee those gods who delight in their crimes,--a
most disgraceful thing if the crimes are really theirs, and a most
malicious invention if the. crimes are feigned. Well done, in that thou
hast spontaneously banished from the number of your citizens all actors and
players. Awake more fully: the majesty of God cannot be propitiated by that
which defiles the dignity of man How, then, can you believe that gods who
take pleasure in such lewd plays, belong to the number of the holy powers
of heaven, when the men by whom these plays are acted are by yourselves
refused admission into the number of Roman citizens even of the lowest
grade? Incomparably more glorious than Rome, is that heavenly city in which
for victory you have truth; for dignity, holiness; for peace, felicity; for
life, eternity. Much less does it admit into its society such gods, if thou
dost blush to admit into thine such men. Wherefore, if thou wouldst attain
to the blessed city, shun the society of devils. They who are propitiated
by deeds of shame, are unworthy of the worship of right-hearted men. Let
these, then, be obliterated from your worship by the cleansing of the
Christian religion, as those men were blotted from your citizenship by the
censor's mark.

   But, so far as regards carnal benefits, which are the only blessings
the wicked desire to enjoy, and carnal miseries, which alone they shrink
from enduring, we will show in the following book that the demons have not
the power they are supposed to have; and although they had it, we ought
rather on that account to despise these blessings, than for the sake of
them to worship those gods, and by worshipping them to miss the attainment
of these blessings they grudge us. But that they have not even this power
which is ascribed to them by those who worship them for the sake of
temporal advantages, this, I say, I will prove in the following book; so
let us here close the present argument.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF I/II, Schaff). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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