Works (CSEL) 4 part 5/5

'The voice of the blood cries,' not 'the brother cries'; that is, even in death itself he preserves the innocence and grace of brotherhood. The brother does not accuse, lest he seem a parricide; his own voice does not accuse, nor his soul, but the voice of the blood accuses, which you yourself shed. It is therefore your own deed, not your brother, that accuses you.' At the same time the chance to complain is taken from the guilty one. He cannot complain of another's testimony who confesses the crime by his own deed. The word is less than the deed. Yet the earth too is a witness, which received the blood. And well does it say: 'The voice of your brother's blood cries from the earth'; it did not say, 'cries from the brother's body,' but 'cries from the earth.' Even if the brother spares, the earth does not spare; if the brother is silent, the earth condemns.

The earth itself is to you both witness and judge: a sharper witness, since it is still wet with the blood of your parricide; a harsher judge, since it has been so defiled by so great a crime, that it opened its mouth and received your brother's blood from your hand. And indeed it opened its mouth as though to receive words of love from brothers, fearing nothing, when it saw brothers—it which knew that the bond of kinship is an incitement to love, not to hatred. For how could it suspect parricide, which had not yet seen homicide? But you poured out the blood whose contagion grieves it; it says it will not increase its strength to give to you. How innocent its vengeance, that, having been so grievously violated, it counts it enough not to help! Let it not seek to harm!

No mean doctrine, too, is this which it says: 'The voice of your brother's blood cries to me,' for God hears his righteous ones even when they are dead, since to God they live. And rightly are they reckoned among the living, for even though they have tasted the death of the body, they yet enjoy an incorporeal life and are illumined by the splendor of their own merits, and enjoy also the eternal light. Therefore he hears the blood of the righteous, but turns himself away from the prayers of the wicked, since even though they may seem to live, they are nonetheless more wretched than all the dead, carrying about their flesh as a tomb, in which they have buried their unhappy soul.

For what else is it but buried, that soul which wallows within the ground and is shut up by the lusts of earthly avarice and by other vices, so that it cannot breathe the breeze of heavenly grace? A sinner of this kind is cursed by the earth, which is the lowest and last part of the world. Above, of course, is heaven and what is in heaven: the sun, the moon and the stars, the thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, the Cherubim and the Seraphim. There is therefore no doubt that the higher things also condemned him whom the lower things condemned. For how is he absolved by that pure and heavenly sentence whom not even the earth could absolve? And therefore he is bidden to be groaning and trembling upon the earth.

It is an evident and general principle that for every wicked person evils are both present and yet to come. Those present produce sadness, those to come fear; but present things trouble the wicked more than future ones. Hence Cain too said to the Lord: 'My case is too great. If you cast me out today, I will hide myself from your face.' For nothing is graver than for one who has gone astray to be abandoned by God, so that he cannot recall himself. The death of a sinner brings an end to sinning, but a life deprived of the divine governance is cast headlong and slips into graver things. As when, if a shepherd abandons the flock, wild beasts attack, so when God deserts a man, the devil rushes in. It is grievous, especially for the foolish, to have no guide. Malice creeps on, the wound grows, where the remedy has been wanting.

Now he hides himself who wishes to veil his fault and cover his sin. For he who does evil hates the light and seeks the darkness of his own deeds as hiding-places for his transgressions; but the righteous man is accustomed not to hide himself from the Lord his God, but rather to offer himself, saying: 'Behold, here am I'—he who has no guilty conscience that he should fear being caught out. Rightly, then, does the man of evil conscience hide himself and say: 'Everyone who finds me will kill me.' The man of narrow mind dreads present death, neglects the everlasting, does not dread the divine judgment, and deprecates only the destruction of the body. But from whom did he fear to be killed, who had only his parents on earth?

He could indeed have feared even the attacks of wild beasts, he who had violated the laws of the divine command and could not presume upon the other subject animals, since he had taught man to be slain; he could also have feared his parents as parricides, since he had taught that parricide could be committed; for the parents too could have learned from the son what later generations learned from a parent. Now let us consider for what reason God said: 'Everyone who kills Cain shall pay sevenfold vengeance,' and on what principle a sign is set upon him, lest the parricide be killed, when no provision had been made that the innocent should not be killed. Man is the eighth: he has the rational faculty, by which he excels the rest; he has also the five bodily senses; he has too a voice; he has also the grace of generation.

These seven, unless they are governed by that rational faculty, are subject to death. And therefore the fool has in them his every peril. He, then, who has lost that rational faculty will vainly flatter himself with the use of those seven carnal gifts. All these are dissolved, unless they are bound fast by certain reins of reason. And so the death of reason works the death of the irrational passions. But this is better, that the number seven is the number of rest and remission. Therefore he who has not spared another sinner and has begrudged him the gift of remission of sins shall himself snatch away from himself the hope of remission, and there shall be in him, in equal measure, vengeance instead of grace.

But as for the sign which he set upon Cain, lest anyone kill him, he wished to turn back the one who had gone astray, and by his kindness to invite him to amendment; for we are accustomed to entrust ourselves more easily to those whose favor we have. Yet he does not grant great things, but in that very act he avenges the imprudence of the foolish man, who, though he was liable to everlasting torments, did not beg that his punishment be remitted, but thought he must beseech for the life of this body, in which there is more affliction than pleasure. For death is one thing, in the separation of soul and body and in the end of this life, which, as soon as it comes, is wont to take away all the body's pains, not to increase them.

But the fears which often assail those living this life, the sorrows, pains, groans and diverse torments, the wounds of hardships and sicknesses, inflict many deaths upon the human race, so that that death seems to be a remedy, not a punishment; for it is not destructive, since through it life is not taken away, but transferred to better things. For if the guilty die, who would not recall their step from sins, yet even against their will they obtain the end not of nature but of fault, lest they sin further, they to whom life is the usury of transgressions. But if they share in good hope, they are to be believed rather to migrate than to perish.

At this point is inserted a doctrine concerning the incorruption of the soul, that it is the true and blessed life itself, which everyone of good conscience lives far more purely and blessedly when our soul has laid aside the wrapping of this flesh and has been released from this bodily prison, flying back to that higher place whence, poured into our inmost parts, it groaned in compassion for this body, until it should fulfill the office of the governance committed to it, so as to rule and restrain the irrational motions of this flesh by rational guidance.

Hence it is that afterwards the prophets passed into captivity with the people of the Jews, lest the rest of the people, bereft of the protection of the saints and widowed of counsel, should undergo a heavier hardship, but rather, admonished by the frequent oracles of the prophets, should return with pious affection to the Lord their God, and not, worn down by the adversities of captivity, fall headlong into the sin of perfidy and despair of the remedy of everlasting salvation. And so they are refuted in this passage who think that this one life is the only one, which is in this age, in which all things are full of falling and full of grief; and they are refuted by the simple sequence of events.

For behold, the righteous, innocent, devout one, incurring his brother's hatred on account of the grace of his devotion, was carried off by parricide while still immature in age; while the unjust, wicked, impious one, defiled even by a brother's murder, lived to a long age, took a wife, left posterity behind, founded cities, and merited this by the divine permission. Does not the voice of God cry out plainly in these things? You err who think that here is all the grace of living. You do not understand, you do not notice, that this old age is the veteran of miseries, and the advance of years a payment of hardships, and that by a kind of Scylla-like usage we are sounded around by daily shipwrecks, beaten by the waves, dwelling in rocky abodes, and delighting in these things, like that creature which is not so much eternal as an immortal evil.

Therefore even to this Cain the longevity granted to him was a punishment, in that he lived in fear and ran a long span with much and fruitless labor—than which penalty nothing is graver than for one to be himself the cause of his own greater punishments. See, then, how perpetual is the life of the righteous and how non-existent that of the wicked. The blood of the righteous cries out even when dead, but the life of the sinner is hidden. The third point is that, since parricide had been committed—that is, the chief of crimes—where sin had crept in, at once the law of divine clemency too had to be extended, lest, if vengeance had been taken upon the guilty one immediately, men too in judging should keep no patience or moderation, but at once hand over the accused to punishment.

But the providence of the divine sentence is of this sort, that it might teach judges magnanimity and patience, lest anyone be hurried too hastily by zeal for vengeance and by the very rashness of deliberation punish the innocent, or embitter the penalty of the ungrateful; nor yet should it allow it to be granted utterly to him who had put on no repentance for his crime. For he drove him away from his face and, disowned by his parents, banished him into a kind of exile of separate dwelling, for the reason that he had passed over from human gentleness to the savagery of beasts. Yet he did not wish the homicide to be avenged by homicide, he who prefers the correction of the sinner to his death.

Hence in Lamech vengeance is taken seventy-seven times, because graver is the fault of him who has not corrected himself even after another's condemnation. Cain had sinned before, by a kind of unforeseen impulse; Lamech surely ought to have taken care to avoid what he had observed to be blamed in another. He was owed to be his own sentence's judge, lest anyone should think the guilty are to be struck down everywhere. And, that you may come to the mystery: he ought not to have slain him who, up to the natural term of his death, had a span for the doing of repentance. He might have excused himself, in that he had redeemed himself even by a late act of repentance, had not premature punishment carried him off.