Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 4/87

when He harasses me with adversities, He either examines my merits or chastises my sins, and reserves for me an eternal reward for the temporal evils piously endured. But who are you, with whom it is worthwhile even to speak of your gods, much less of my God, who is terrible above all gods? For the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens. CHAPTER 30. With what shameful prosperity those wish to abound who complain of Christian times. If that Scipio Nasica of yours, once high priest, were now living — whom, when under the terror of the Punic war the best man was being sought to receive the Phrygian rites, the whole senate chose — whose countenance you would perhaps not dare to look upon, he himself would restrain you from this shamelessness.

For why, when afflicted by adversities, do you complain of Christian times, except because you desire to have your luxury secure, and to wallow in your utterly depraved morals with all harshness of trouble removed? For you do not desire to have peace and to abound in every kind of plenty in order to use these goods honourably — that is, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety — but in order that an endless variety of pleasures may be sought out in mad extravagances, and that, when things go well, those evils may spring up in your morals which are worse than raging enemies.

But that Scipio, your supreme pontiff — he whom by the judgment of the whole senate was deemed the best man — fearing this very calamity for you, did not wish Carthage, then the rival of the Roman empire, to be destroyed, and contradicted Cato, who decreed that it should be razed; he feared security for weak minds, seeing that terror was necessary as a fitting guardian for the citizens, as for wards. Nor did his judgment deceive him: the event itself proved how truly he spoke.

For when Carthage was destroyed, and that great terror of the Roman commonwealth was removed and extinguished, such great evils sprang from prosperity and immediately followed, that concord, first corrupted and shattered by savage and bloody seditions, then soon by a chain of evil causes giving rise even to civil wars, brought forth such slaughters, such shedding of blood, that the monstrous cruelty of proscriptions and plunders raged with such greed, that those Romans who, in a more upright life, feared evils from enemies, now, with the integrity of their life lost, suffered crueler things at the hands of their own fellow citizens;

and that very lust of domination, which among the other vices of the human race was present in a more unmixed form in the whole Roman people, after it had conquered in a few of the more powerful, crushed and wearied the rest and oppressed them also with the yoke of servitude. CHAPTER 31. By what degrees of vices the desire of ruling was increased in the Romans. For when would that lust ever rest in the proudest minds, until by continued honours it should reach the kingly power? But the means of continuing honours would not exist, unless ambition prevailed. And ambition would by no means prevail, except in a people corrupted by avarice and luxury.

But the people became avaricious and luxurious through prosperity, which that Nasica most providently judged ought to be guarded against, when he was unwilling that the greatest, strongest, and richest city of the enemy should be destroyed, so that lust might be restrained by fear, and lust thus restrained might not run riot, and luxury thus held in check, neither might avarice run rampant; so that, with these vices barred out, virtue useful to the city might flourish and grow, and a liberty befitting that virtue might endure.

It was from this, and out of this most provident love of his country, that the same supreme pontiff of yours — chosen by the senate of that time (a thing which must often be repeated) without any disagreement of votes as the best man — checked from this design and desire the senate, which was striving to construct an enclosure for a theatre, and persuaded it by a most weighty speech not to allow Greek luxury to creep in upon the manly customs of the fatherland, nor to consent to foreign wickedness so as to undermine and enervate Roman virtue; and he prevailed so greatly by his authority, that, the senatorial foresight being moved by his words, it thereafter forbade even the benches to be set up, which, hastily heaped together for the hour at the spectacle of the games, the city had already begun to use.

With what zeal would this man have removed the very scenic games from the city of Rome, if he had dared to resist the authority of those whom he thought gods — not understanding them to be noxious demons, or, if he did understand, judging that even he himself should rather appease than despise them! For not yet had the heavenly doctrine been made known to the nations, which by faith, cleansing the heart, would change the human affection with humble piety to lay hold of heavenly or super-heavenly things, and free it from the dominion of proud demons. CHAPTER 32. On the institution of the scenic games. But know nevertheless, you who are ignorant of these things, and take heed, you who pretend not to know them, you who murmur against the Deliverer from such lords:

the scenic games, the spectacles of foulness and the licence of vanities, were instituted at Rome not by the vices of men, but by the commands of your gods. It would have been more tolerable for you to confer divine honours upon that Scipio than to worship gods of this sort. For those gods were no better than their own pontiff. Lo, attend, if a mind so long drunk with the draughts of error permits you to think anything sound! The gods, in order to allay a pestilence of bodies, ordered scenic games to be exhibited to them; but the pontiff, in order to guard against a pestilence of souls, forbade the stage itself to be set up. If by any light of mind you set the soul before the body, choose whom you will worship!

For that pestilence of bodies did not subside because the delicate madness of scenic games entered in upon a warlike people, formerly accustomed only to the games of the circus; rather, the cunning of unspeakable spirits, foreseeing that that pestilence would now cease at its due end, took care from this occasion to send in another far graver one — in which it rejoices most — not upon bodies, but upon morals; a pestilence which blinded the souls of the wretched with such great darkness, and defiled them with such great deformity, that even now (a thing which will perhaps seem incredible if it be heard by our posterity), when the city of Rome had been laid waste, those whom this pestilence possessed, and who were able to flee thence and reach Carthage, raved daily in the theatres, vying with one another on behalf of the actors.

CHAPTER 33. On the vices of the Romans, whom the overthrow of their country did not correct. O senseless minds! What is this so great — not error, but frenzy — that, while (as we have heard) the eastern peoples bewailed your destruction, and the greatest cities in the most remote lands held public mourning and grief, you would seek out theatres, enter them, fill them, and do things far madder than they had been before? This stain and plague of souls, this overthrow of uprightness and honour, that Scipio feared for you when he forbade theatres to be built, when he discerned that by prosperity you could easily be corrupted and overthrown, when he did not wish you to be secure from the terror of the enemy.

For he did not judge a commonwealth happy while its walls stood and its morals fell. But in you there prevailed more what impious demons seduced than what provident men forewarned. Hence it is that you are unwilling that the evils which you do should be imputed to you, but the evils which you suffer you impute to Christian times. For in your security you seek not a peaceful commonwealth, but unpunished luxury — you who, depraved by prosperity, could not even be corrected by adversity. That Scipio wished you to be terrified by the enemy, lest you should melt away into luxury; yet, not crushed by the enemy, you did not repress your luxury, you lost the usefulness of calamity, and you became most wretched and remained most wicked. CHAPTER 34.

On the clemency of God, which tempered the destruction of the City. And yet, that you live is of God, who, by sparing you, admonishes you to be corrected by repentance; who, even to you who are ungrateful, granted that, whether under the name of His servants or in the places of His martyrs, you might escape the hands of the enemy. Romulus and Remus are said to have established an asylum, to which whoever fled should be free from all harm, seeking to increase the multitude of the city to be founded. A more wonderful example came to pass in honour of Christ. The destroyers of the City established what its founders had established before. But what is great if they did this so that the number of their citizens might be filled up, while these did it so that the multitude of their enemies might be preserved? CHAPTER 35.

On the sons of the Church hidden among the impious, and on false Christians within the Church. These things, and such things — and any more copiously and fittingly that it can — let the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, and the pilgrim city of King Christ, answer to its enemies. But let it remember well that among those very enemies there lie hidden future citizens, lest it think it fruitless, even among them, that, until it reaches those who confess, it bears with those who are hostile;

just as, from the number of those enemies, the city of God too has joined to itself, as long as it sojourns in the world, men united by the communion of the sacraments, yet not destined to be with it in the eternal lot of the saints — some in secret, some in the open — who do not hesitate, even together with those enemies, to murmur against God, whose sacrament they bear, now filling the theatres with them, now the churches with us. But concerning the correction of certain even of such, there is far less reason to despair, if among the most open adversaries there lie hidden predestined friends, as yet unknown even to themselves. For these two cities are intertwined and mutually mingled in this age, until they shall be separated at the last judgment;

concerning whose origin and progress and due ends, what I judge ought to be said, I shall set forth, as far as I shall be divinely aided, for the glory of the city of God, which, when compared with its opposite, will shine forth the more clearly. CHAPTER 36. On the matters to be discussed in the following discourse. But there are still certain things I must say against those who refer the disasters of the Roman commonwealth to our religion, by which they are forbidden to sacrifice to their gods. For there must be recalled what and how great evils — such as may seem sufficient — could befall that city, or the provinces belonging to its empire, before their sacrifices had been forbidden;

all of which, without doubt, they would attribute to us, if our religion had then already become known to them, or had in like manner forbidden them their sacrilegious rites. Then it must be shown what morals of theirs, and for what cause, the true God — in whose power are all kingdoms — deigned to aid for the increase of their empire, and how those whom they think gods aided them in nothing, but rather how much they harmed them by deceiving and deluding. Lastly, it shall be said against those who, refuted and convicted by the most manifest proofs, attempt to assert that the gods are to be worshipped not for the advantage of the present life, but for that which is to be after death.

This question, unless I am mistaken, will be far more laborious and worthy of a subtler disputation, in such a way that in it there must be argued even against the philosophers — not any whatsoever, but those who among them are renowned with the most excellent glory, and who agree with us in many things, both concerning the immortality of the soul, and that the true God created the world, and concerning His providence, by which He governs the universe that He created. But since they too must be refuted in those things in which they hold opinions against us, we ought not to fail in this duty, that, having refuted impious contradictions with such strength as God shall impart, we may assert the city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, in which alone everlasting blessedness is truly promised.

Let this, then, be the limit of this volume, so that thereafter we may take up the matters thus arranged from a fresh beginning. CHAPTER 1. On the measure to be applied to the necessity of disputation. If the weak sense of human custom did not dare to resist the reason of manifest truth, but submitted its languor to wholesome doctrine as to medicine, until by divine aid, the faith of piety obtaining it, it should be healed, no great discourse would be needed to convince anyone of the error of his vain opinion, for those who think rightly and explain their thoughts in sufficient words.

But now, since there is that greater and more loathsome disease of foolish minds, whereby they defend their irrational impulses — even after reason has been fully rendered, as much as is owed by one man to another — whether through excessive blindness, by which not even open things are perceived, or through most obstinate stubbornness, by which even the things that are perceived are not endured, as though defending reason and truth themselves: there arises a necessity of speaking more copiously, very often offering clear matters as though to be gazed upon by those who do not look, but in a certain manner to be touched and handled by those who grope and close their eyes. And yet what end of debating, what measure of speaking, will there be, if we always reckon that we must answer those who answer back?

For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hardened by perversity of mind that, even if they have understood, they do not obey — they answer back, as it is written, and speak iniquity, and are untiringly vain. If we should wish to refute their contrary sayings as often as they should resolve, with stubborn brow, not to consider what they say, provided that in any way whatever they contradict our arguments — you see how endless and toilsome and fruitless this would be. Wherefore I would not have you yourself, my son Marcellinus, nor others to whom this our labour is usefully and freely devoted in the love of Christ, be such judges of my writings as always to desire a response,

whenever, in the things which they read, they hear something contradicted — lest they become like those little women whom the apostle mentions, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. CHAPTER 2. On the things which were dealt with in the first volume.

In the preceding book, therefore, when I had set out to speak of the city of God — from which this whole work, by His aid, was undertaken — it occurred to me that I must first resist those who attribute these wars, by which this world is worn down, and especially the recent devastation of the city of Rome by the barbarians, to the Christian religion, by which they are forbidden to serve demons with unspeakable sacrifices; whereas they ought rather to attribute this to Christ, that for the sake of His name, contrary to the established custom of wars, the barbarians offered them — to which they might flee — religious and most spacious places, free of harm; and that in many cases they so honoured a service devoted to Christ, not only true but even feigned out of fear, that they judged unlawful for themselves what by the law of war it would have been permitted to do against them.

Thence arose the question, why these divine benefits reached even to the impious and ungrateful, and why likewise those hardships, which were done in hostile fashion, afflicted the pious together with the impious alike. To resolve this question — diffused through many particulars (for in all daily matters, whether of God's gifts or of men's disasters, both of which often befall the good and the bad in mixed and indiscriminate fashion, it is wont to trouble many) — according to the necessity of the work undertaken, I lingered somewhat, chiefly to console the holy and piously chaste women, in whom something was perpetrated by the enemy that brought the pain of shame, even though it did not take away the firmness of their chastity, lest they should regret their life, who have no ground on which they could repent of wickedness.

Then I said a few things against those who, with most shameless effrontery, harass the Christians afflicted by those adversities, and especially the modesty of women humbled though chaste and holy — men who are most worthless and most irreverent, far degenerate from those very Romans whose many illustrious deeds are praised and celebrated in the memory of letters, nay rather vehemently opposed to the glory of those Romans. For Rome, brought forth and increased by the labours of the ancients, they had made fouler standing than falling; since in its fall stones and timbers fell, but in the life of these men there fell all the defences and ornaments not of walls, but of morals, while their hearts burned with more deadly lusts than the fires with which the roofs of that city blazed.

With these things said, I first ended the book. Thereafter, then, I set out to tell what evils that city endured from its origin, whether within itself or in the provinces already subject to it — all of which they would attribute to the Christian religion, if even then the evangelical doctrine had resounded with most free testimony against their false and deceitful gods. CHAPTER 3. On the history to be taken up, by which it may be shown what evils befell the Romans while they worshipped the gods, before the Christian religion grew up. But remember that in recalling these things I am still dealing against the unlearned, from whose ignorance there also sprang that vulgar proverb: 'The rain is lacking — the Christians are the cause.'

For those who, instructed in liberal studies, love history, know these things most easily; but in order to render the throngs of the unlearned most hostile to us, they pretend not to know them, and strive to confirm among the common people that the disasters, by which at fixed intervals of place and time the human race must be afflicted, befall by reason of the Christian name, which is spread abroad against their gods through all the world with mighty renown and most illustrious celebrity.

Let them therefore recall along with us, before Christ had come in the flesh, before His name had become known to the peoples with that glory which they vainly envy, by what calamities the Roman affairs were manifoldly and variously crushed; and in these let them defend their gods, if they can, if they are worshipped for this reason — that their worshippers should not suffer these evils; for if they have now suffered anything of the kind, they contend that it is to be imputed to us. For why did those gods permit the things which I am about to tell to befall their worshippers, before the manifested name of Christ offended them and forbade their sacrifices? CHAPTER 4. That the worshippers of the gods never received any precepts of uprightness from their gods, and celebrated all manner of foul things in their rites.

First, why were their gods unwilling to take care that they should not have the worst morals? For the true God justly neglected those by whom He was not worshipped; but why did those gods, from whose worship most ungrateful men complain that they are forbidden, by no laws help their worshippers to live well? Surely it was fitting that, just as these men took care of their rites, so those gods should take care of these men's deeds. But it is answered that each man is wicked by his own will. Who would deny this? Yet still it belonged to the gods, as counsellors, not to conceal the precepts of a good life from the peoples that worshipped them, but to set them forth in clear preaching, and through prophets to meet and rebuke sinners, and openly to threaten punishments to evil-doers,

and to promise rewards to those who live rightly. What such thing ever rang out with prompt and lofty voice in the temples of those gods? We too in our youth used to come at times to the spectacles and mockeries of their sacrileges; we used to watch the possessed, to hear the choristers, and were delighted by the most shameful games which were exhibited to the gods and goddesses — to the heavenly Virgin and to Berecynthia, mother of all, before whose litter, on the solemn day of her washing, such things were chanted through the public places by the most worthless players as were unfitting to be heard — I do not say by the mother of the gods, but by the mother of any senators whatever, or of any honourable men whatever; nay rather, such as it would not befit even the mother of the players themselves to hear.

For human modesty has something towards parents which not even wickedness itself can take away. Accordingly, that foulness of obscene words and deeds, the players themselves would be ashamed to rehearse at home in the presence of their own mothers by way of practice — yet they performed it in public, while the mother of the gods looked on and listened, before a most crowded multitude of both sexes. If she, drawn by alluring curiosity, could be present surrounded by the throng, at least, her chastity offended, she ought to have departed in confusion. What are sacrileges, if those are sacred rites? Or what is defilement, if that is a washing? And these were called 'courses,' as though a banquet were being celebrated, at which, as with their own feasts, the unclean demons might be fed.

For who would not perceive what kind of spirits delight in such obscenities — unless either one who is ignorant whether there are at all any unclean spirits deceiving under the name of gods, or one leading such a life that he both wishes these to be propitious to him, rather than the true God, and dreads them when angered? CHAPTER 5. On the obscenities by which the mother of the gods was honoured by her worshippers. By no means would I wish those who study to take delight in the vices of a most disgraceful custom rather than to strive against them, but that very Nasica Scipio himself, who was chosen by the senate as the best man, by whose hands the image of that same demon was received and conveyed into the City, to have as judge in this matter.

He would tell us whether he would wish his own mother to deserve so well of the commonwealth that divine honours should be decreed to her — just as it is well known that the Greeks and Romans and other nations decreed such to certain mortals whose benefits towards them they had highly valued, and believed them made immortal and received into the number of the gods. Assuredly he would wish so great a felicity for his mother, if it could be done. But further, if we then asked him whether he would wish those foul things to be celebrated among her divine honours — would he not cry out that he would rather his mother lay dead without any feeling, than that she should live as a goddess to this end, that she might gladly hear such things?

Far be it that a senator of the Roman people, endowed with that mind by which he forbade a theatre to be built in the city of brave men, should wish his own mother to be so worshipped that she should be propitiated as a goddess with such rites as would offend a matron with their words. Nor would he in any way believe that the modesty of a praiseworthy woman could be so changed into its contrary by divinity, that her worshippers should invoke her with such honours as, were such reproaches hurled at anyone while she lived among men, unless she stopped her ears and withdrew herself, her kinsmen and husband and children would blush on her behalf.

Accordingly such a mother of the gods — such as it would shame even the worst of men to have for a mother — about to seize the minds of the Romans, sought the best man, not one whom she might make so by admonishing and aiding, but one whom she might cheat by deceiving; like to her of whom it is written: 'But the woman snatches the precious souls of men' — so that that mind of great natural gifts, exalted as it were by this divine testimony, and truly esteeming itself the best, should not seek true piety and religion, without which every disposition, however praiseworthy, vanishes and falls through pride. How then, except insidiously, did that goddess seek the best man, when she seeks in her own rites such things as the best men shrink from admitting to their banquets? CHAPTER 6.

That the gods of the pagans never ordained any doctrine of living well. Hence it is that those deities took no care for the life and morals of the cities and peoples by whom they were worshipped, so that they permitted them to be filled with such horrible and detestable evils, and to become utterly base — not in field and vines, not in house and money, nor finally in the body itself, which is subject to the mind, but in the mind itself, in the very ruler of the flesh, the soul — without any terrible prohibition of theirs. Or if they did prohibit, let this rather be shown, let this be proved. And let them not boast to us of certain whispers, breathed into the ears of a very few and handed down as by a secret religion, by which uprightness and chastity of life is supposedly taught;

but let there be pointed out or recalled places at some time consecrated to such assemblies — not where games were performed with the obscene voices and movements of actors, nor where the Fugalia were celebrated with all licence of foulnesses poured forth (and truly 'Fugalia,' but of modesty and honour put to flight); but where the peoples might hear what the gods commanded concerning the restraining of avarice, the breaking of ambition, the curbing of luxury — where the wretched might learn what Persius rebukes as needing to be learned, saying:

'Learn, O wretched ones, and know the causes of things: what we are, and to what end we are born to live; what order is appointed us, or by what gentle turning the goal must be rounded and from what point; what limit there should be to wealth; what it is right to wish for; what good the harsh-minted coin holds; how much it is fitting to bestow upon one's country and dear kinsfolk; what God has commanded you to be, and in what place you have been set within human affairs.' Let it be told in what places these precepts of the teaching gods used to be recited, and frequently heard by the peoples who worshipped them, just as we have shown that churches have been established for this purpose wherever the Christian religion is spread abroad. CHAPTER VII.

That philosophical discoveries are useless without divine authority, where each man, being already prone to vice, is moved more by what the gods did than by what men argued. Or will they perhaps remind us of the schools and disputations of the philosophers? In the first place, these are not Roman but Greek; or if they are now Roman because Greece too became a Roman province, they are not the precepts of gods but the inventions of men, who, endowed with the keenest of minds, strove as best they could by reasoning to trace out what might lie hidden in the nature of things, what in conduct was to be sought after and what to be shunned, what in the very rules of reasoning was drawn out by sure connection, or what did not follow or even contradicted.

And some of them, in so far as they were divinely assisted, discovered certain great truths; but in so far as they were hindered by their human condition, they erred—most of all because divine providence justly resisted their pride, that it might display, even by comparison with such men, the way of piety rising from humility into the heights. Of this we shall have a place hereafter to inquire and discourse, by the will of the true God and Lord. Yet for all that, if the philosophers discovered anything that might suffice for leading a good life and attaining a blessed one, how much more justly would divine honours be decreed to such men!