不列顛的毀滅 第 4 章 第 1/3 段

CHAPTER ONE. A rebuke against Constantine. — 1. Britain has kings, but tyrants; she has judges, but impious ones, often plundering and harassing—yet the innocent; vindicating and protecting—but the guilty and the robbers; having very many wives, but harlots and adulteresses; frequently swearing, but forswearing; vowing, and almost continually lying; making war, but waging civil and unjust wars; throughout the land indeed greatly pursuing thieves, and yet those who sit with them at table they not only love but reward as robbers; giving alms lavishly, but on the other side heaping up an immense mountain of crimes;

sitting in the seat of those who are to judge, but rarely seeking the rule of right judgment; despising the harmless and humble; the bloodthirsty, the proud, the parricides, their fellow-soldiers and the adulterers, the enemies of God—if chance (as it is said) shall bring it about—(who together with that very name ought to have been zealously destroyed) they exalt as far as they can to the stars; holding many in chains in prisons, whom they crush by their own deceit rather than by their desert, loading them with chains: lingering in oaths among the altars, and a little after despising these same things as if filthy spittle. Of which so abominable a guilt the tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Damnonia, Constantine, is not ignorant. 2.

In this same year, after the dreadful oath of a solemn covenant — by which he bound himself, swearing first to God and by a lawful oath, and then in the presence of the choirs of the saints and their attendant Mother, never to work deceit upon his countrymen — within the venerable bosoms of two mothers, the Church and his fleshly mother, beneath the holy abbot's cloak, he cruelly tore the most tender sides of two royal youths, and the hearts of their two foster-fathers as well (whose arms, by no means trained to weapons — though scarcely any man of that age handled them more mightily — but stretched out toward God and the altar, shall on the day of judgment hang up at the gates of Thy city, O Christ, the venerable banners of their patience and faith), in the very midst, as I said, of the most holy altars, with sword and spear instead of teeth; so that the cloaks of, as it were, clotted purple gore touched the seat of the heavenly sacrifice.

And this he did not even after deeds worthy of praise. For many years before, overcome by the frequent and alternating stenches of adulteries, he had cast off his lawful wife against the prohibition of Christ and of the Teacher of the nations, who said: 'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder' (Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:9); and: 'Husbands, love your wives' (Col. 3:19). For he had planted in the barren soil of his heart, in place of good seed, a most bitter shoot of unbelief and folly, like some scion of Sodom; which, watered as it were by certain poisoned showers of public and domestic impieties, and rising up ever more greedily to the offence of God, brought forth into the open the crime of parricide and sacrilege.

But, not yet freed from the snares of his former evils, he heaps new sins upon the old. Come now, I reprove you as though present, you whom I know to be still alive. Why do you stand stupefied, O butcher of your own soul? Why do you of your own will kindle for yourself the flames of hell that shall never fail? Why, in the place of enemies, do you of your own accord stab yourself with your own swords and spears? Have even the very venom-filled cups, as it were, of your crimes been unable to sate your breast? Look, I beg you, and come to Christ, since you labor and are bent down beneath an immense weight; and He Himself, as He said (Matt. 11:28), will give you rest. Come to Him who wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live (Ezek. 33:11). Loose, according to the prophet, the bonds of your neck, O daughter of Zion (Isa.

52:2). Return, I pray, even from the far recesses of your sins, to your most loving Father, who is wont to slay the fatted calf for the son who scorned the foul food of swine and dreaded death by dire famine and turned back to Him with joy, and to bring forth for the wandering one the first robe and the royal ring (Luke 15:13ff); and then, foretasting as it were the sweetness of heavenly hope, you will perceive how sweet is the Lord (Ps. 33:9). For if you despise these things, know that you are even now about to be whirled and burned in the inextricable and dark torrents of fire. CHAPTER II. A rebuke against Aurelius. — What of you also, as the prophet says (Ps. 16:12), you lion's whelp, Aurelius Conanus — what are you doing?

Are you not — if not in worse degree than the aforesaid — being savagely devoured by the mire of parricides, fornications, and adulteries, as though by certain rushing waves of the sea? Do you not, hating the peace of your fatherland as a deadly serpent, and thirsting for civil wars and frequent unjust plunder, shut off from your own soul the heavenly gate of peace and refreshment? Left now alone, I pray, like a tree withering in the midst of a field, recall the vain phantom of your fathers and brothers, their untimely youthful death. Will you, on account of religious merits, be spared to a hundred years, or, like a contemporary of Methuselah, survive after well-nigh all your offspring? By no means. But unless, as the Psalmist says (Ps.

7:12), you turn quickly to the Lord, that King will soon brandish His sword against you, He who through the prophet says: 'I, I will slay, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal; and there is none that can deliver out of My hand' (Deut. 32:39). Wherefore shake yourself from your stinking dust (Isa. 52:2), and turn with your whole heart to Him who created you, that, when His wrath shall soon blaze forth, you may be blessed in hoping in Him (Ps. 2:12); but otherwise, eternal punishments await you, to be crushed forever cruelly and never to be consumed in the jaws of hell. CHAPTER III. A rebuke against Vortipor.

— What of you too, like the leopard in your ways and dappled with wickedness, your head already growing grey, seated on a throne full of deceits, and defiled from sole to crown with manifold parricides and adulteries — you, the worthless son of a good king, like Manasseh to Hezekiah, Vortipor, tyrant of the Demetae, why do you stand stupidly rigid? Why do not the violent whirlpools of sins, which you swallow like the choicest wine — nay, by which you are yourself devoured — fail to sate you, even as the boundary of your life draws gradually near? Why, as though it were the very pinnacle of all your evils, having put away your own wife by her honorable death, do you load your wretched soul with the rape of your shameless daughter, as with some inescapable weight? Do not consume, I beg, what remains of your days in the offence of God: for now is the acceptable time and the day of salvation (2 Cor.

6:2), shining upon the faces of the penitent, wherein you can work well, lest your flight be in winter or on the Sabbath (Matt. 24:20). Turn aside, according to the Psalmist, from evil and do good: seek good peace and follow after it (Ps. 34:14-18); for the eyes of the Lord are upon you while you do good, and His ears shall be open to your prayers, and He will not destroy your memory from the land of the living. You will cry out and He will hear you, and from all your tribulations He will deliver you. For indeed a contrite and humbled heart (Ps. 51:17), in the fear of Him, Christ never spurns. Otherwise, the worm of your gnawing shall not die, and the fire of your burning shall not be quenched (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44). CHAPTER VI. A rebuke against Cuneglasus.

— Why do you wallow in the old dregs of your wickedness, you too, from the years of your youth a bear, a rider of many and a charioteer of the chariot that is the bear's lair, despiser of God and His strong oppressor, Cuneglasus — in the Roman tongue, 'tawny butcher'? Why do you wage so great a strife both against men and against God: against men, that is your countrymen, with deadly arms; against God, with countless crimes? Why, besides your innumerable falls, having driven out your own wife, do you take to yourself her abominable sister, who had vowed to God perpetual chastity of widowhood, presenting herself (as the poet says) as the very summit of tenderness among the heavenly maidens, the nymphs (with all the veneration — or rather the dullness — of your mind), contrary to the prohibition of the Apostle (Gal. 5:21), who denies that adulterers can be citizens of the heavenly kingdom?

Why do you provoke the groans and sighs of the saints, who grieve bodily on your account, with frequent injuries, you who, in the manner of a monstrous lioness's teeth, will one day break your very bones? Cease, I pray, as the prophet says, from anger, and forsake the deadly fury that will waste you yourself — the fury which you breathe out against heaven and earth, that is, against God and His flock (Ps. 37:8): rather make those whom you wrong pray for you with your ways changed, those to whom belongs the power of binding above the world when they have bound the guilty in the world, and of loosing when they have loosed the penitent. Do not, as the Apostle says, be proud-minded, nor hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in God, who bestows on you many things abundantly (1 Tim.

6:17), so that by amendment of your ways you may lay up for yourself a good foundation for the future, and may have true life — life truly everlasting, not perishing. Otherwise you shall perceive, and see also how evil and bitter a thing it is to have forsaken the Lord your God, and to have no fear of Him within you (Jer. 2:19); and in the time to come, to be burned in the fearful ball of eternal fires, yet by no means to die. For the souls of the wicked are forever immortal to the fire, even as the joys of the saints are immortal. CHAPTER VII. A rebuke against Maglocunus.

— What of you too, you island dragon, expeller of many tyrants both from kingdom and from life, last of the aforesaid in my account but first in evil, greater than many in power and likewise in malice, more lavish in giving, more profuse in sin, strong in arms but stronger in the ruin of your soul, Maglocunus — why do you wallow stupidly in so old a filth of crimes, as though drunken (Jer. 23:9) with wine pressed from the Sodomite vine? Why do you of your own accord, so to speak, weave about the royal neck such inescapable masses of sins, like lofty mountains? Why do you, whom the King of all kings has made higher in kingdom than almost all the leaders of Britain — and likewise higher in stature and bodily form — show yourself worse than the others in character, when you ought rather to be better, and by a reversal turn out worse?

— hear for a little while, with even mind, the undoubted corroboration of their reproaches, leaving aside the domestic and lighter matters (if indeed any are light), and attending only to those made public, admitted far and wide through the air and bearing witness. Did you not, in the very first years of your youth, most fiercely crush your uncle the king, together with his almost bravest soldiers, whose faces in battle looked not greatly unlike the whelps of lions, with sword, spear, and fire? — little heeding the prophetic saying: 'Men of blood and deceit shall not live out half their days' (Ps. 55:24). What recompense for this alone would you hope for from the just Judge, even if such things had not followed as did follow, likewise as He says through the prophet:

'Woe to you who plunder; shall you not yourself be plundered? and you who slay, shall you not yourself be slain? and when you have ceased plundering, then you shall fall' (Isa. 33:1). Was it not so, that after the phantom of violent rule had fallen to you according to your wish, and you, covered with greed, turned toward returning to the right way — and for days and nights at that time, your conscience perhaps gnawing at you for your sins, first ruminating much under your tooth concerning the godly fear and the decrees of monks, and then bringing it forth into the knowledge of public report, you vowed to become a monk, without any thought of unfaithfulness, as you said, before almighty God and angelic and human faces (having broken, as it was thought, those most capacious nets in which the fat bullocks of your size are wont to be headlong entangled:

having broken the bonds of all kingdom, of gold and silver, and — what is greater — of your own self-will), you vowed it forever; and like a deer cleaving the air mightily with, as it were, a whistling glide as the hounds slip by, and avoiding with winding twists the savage talons of the swift, snatching hawk, you carried yourself off, as a dove from a raven, to the caves of the saints, greatly faithful to you, and to their refreshments, for your salvation? O what great joy would it have been to Mother Church (had not the enemy of all mortals somehow lamentably drawn you from her bosom)!

O how abundantly the kindling of heavenly hope would have blazed in the hearts of the despairing, had you remained in good! O what manner and how great rewards of Christ's kingdom would await your soul on the day of judgment, had not that cunning wolf snatched you — a lamb made from a wolf — from the Lord's sheepfold, not at all unwilling, in order to make of you a wolf from a lamb, like himself! O what great exultation your salvation, kept safe, would have offered to the loving Father of all, God, and of the saints, had not the ill-fated father of all the lost ones, like a demon with great wings and talons of an eagle, snatched you against right and divine law into the unhappy throng of his sons!

In short, your conversion to good fruit ministered as much joy and sweetness then to heaven and earth, as now your unspeakable relapse — after the manner of a sick dog returning to its vomit (Prov. 26:11; 2 Pet. 2:22) — has ministered grief and mourning to a horrible end. This being accomplished, your members are presented as weapons of iniquity to sin (Rom. 6:13) and to the devil, which, had your sense been sound, ought eagerly to have been presented as weapons of righteousness to God. With ears pricked up, men listen not to the praises of God, with the melodious voice of Christ's young recruits sweetly modulating, nor to the breath of ecclesiastical melody, but to your own praises (which are nothing), praises of villains, full of lies and at the same time of foaming phlegm, ready to bespatter all who stand near with the savage mouth of heralds, blaring after the manner of revelers;

so that the vessel once prepared for the ministry of God is turned into an instrument of the devil, and what was thought worthy of heavenly honor is deservedly cast into the pit of hell. Nor yet, amid such great stumbling-blocks of evils, is your sense — dulled by the heap of your folly — held back as if by some barrier; but, fervid, like a colt deeming every pleasant thing not yet ranged over, you are dragged with irrevocable madness through the open fields of crimes, adding new sins to the old. For your first marriage is despised — after the void vow of a monk, though unlawful, yet to your own presumptive wife; and another woman is loved, the wife of a living man, not a stranger but the son of your own brother.

On account of which that stiff neck of yours, already laden with many bundles of sins, is bent down from the depths to lower depths by a twofold parricidal venture — slaying the aforesaid man and your own wife, whom you had kept for some time, as though it were the topmost pinnacle of your sacrilege. Thereafter, that woman, by whose collusion and prompting such sudden masses of sins arose, you took to yourself in public and (as the false tongues of your parasites proclaim, yet only with the tips of their lips, not from the depths of the heart) lawful wedlock, since she was widowed; but to our reckoning, in a most wicked union. Whose holy heart, pricked by such a history, would not at once burst into weeping and sobbing?

What priest whose heart lies open and upright before God, hearing these things, would not at once with a great wail say that prophetic word: 'Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may weep day and night for the slain of my people' (Jer. 9:1)? Alas! if indeed you have given but little ear to the prophetic rebuke that says thus: 'Woe to you, ungodly men: you have forsaken the law of the Most High God; and if you are born, your portion shall be unto cursing. All things that are of the earth shall return into the earth: so the ungodly shall pass from cursing into cursing' (Sir. 41:11-13) — understand, 'shall pass' — unless they return to the Lord, having heeded at least such an admonition: 'Son, you have sinned; add not again; but for your former sins also entreat forgiveness' (Sir. 21:1).

And again: 'Delay not to be converted to the Lord, nor put it off from day to day' (Sir. 5:8-9). For His wrath comes suddenly; because, as the Scripture says: 'When a king hears an unjust word, all who are under him are wicked' (Prov. 29:12). For surely a king, as the prophet said, who is just raises up his land (Prov. 29:4). But you, indeed, do not lack admonitions, since you have had an elegant master, teacher of the precepts of well-nigh all Britain. Beware therefore lest there happen to you what is noted by Solomon: 'As one who rouses a sleeper from heavy slumber, so is he who relates wisdom to a fool. For at the end of the narration he will say: What did you first say?' (Sir. 22:8-9). Remove your heart from malice (as it is said), O Jerusalem, that you may be saved (Jer. 4:14).

Do not despise, I pray, the ineffable mercy of God, who in this manner through the prophet calls back the ungodly from their sins: 'Suddenly will I speak against a nation and against a kingdom, to pluck up, and to scatter, and to destroy, and to ruin' (Jer. 18:7). This vehemently exhorts the sinner to repentance: 'And if that nation shall repent of its sin, I also will repent of the evil that I had spoken that I would do to it' (Jer. 18:8). And again: 'Who shall give them such a heart, that they may hear Me and keep My precepts, and that it may be well with them all the days of their life?' (Deut. 5:29). And likewise in the canticle of Deuteronomy: 'A people,' He says, 'without counsel and without prudence. Would that they were wise and understood, and would foresee their last end.'

'How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?' (Deut. 32:28, 30). And again in the Gospel the Lord says: 'Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart: and you shall find rest for your souls' (Matt. 11:28-29). What then, if you hear these things with deaf ears, despise the prophets, scorn Christ, and reckon us (though we be of the meanest sort) of no moment, who with sincere piety of soul keep that prophetic word — that, however it may be, if I do not fulfill it in strength, in the spirit and power of the Lord, to declare to the house of Jacob and the house of Israel their crimes (Isa.

58:1) — let us not be dumb dogs unable to bark (Isa. 56:10). And that of Solomon, who says thus: 'He who says the wicked is just shall be accursed of the peoples, and odious to the nations: but those who reprove shall hope for better things' (Prov. 24:24-25). And again: 'Do not respect persons in their downfall, nor withhold a word in the time of salvation' (Sir. 4:27-28). And likewise: 'Deliver those who are led to death; and forbear not to redeem those who are slain' (Prov. 24:11); because riches, as the same prophet says, shall not profit in the day of wrath: justice delivers from death (Prov. 11:4). For if the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1 Pet. 4:18; Prov. 11:31).

That dark torrent of hell shall surely whirl you with its savage roll and waves, as it were the bitterest, forever tormenting and never consuming you; to whom there shall then be a late and useless seeing of the punishment and repentance of evil, by whom in this accepted time and day of salvation conversion to the right way of life is deferred (2 Cor. 6:2). Here indeed, or even before, this so lamentable and querulous history of the evils of this age ought to have been concluded (lest our mouth should any longer speak of the works of men). But lest they think us timid or weary — so that we may untiringly beware that saying of Isaiah, 'Woe,' he says, 'to him who calls good evil and evil good, putting darkness for light and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter' (Isa.

5:20); who seeing, see not, and hearing, hear not (Matt. 13:13); whose heart is covered over with a certain thick cloud of vices: it pleases us to set forth briefly what and how great are the threats which the prophetic oracles cry aloud against those aforesaid wanton satellites of Pharaoh (by whom his army, doomed to perish in the Red Sea, is vigorously provoked) and the like of them, those five horses; that by them, as by a fair covering, the structure of our little work may be most faithfully sheltered (so that it may not stand penetrable to the showers of the envious that are about to rush upon it in rivalry).

Let the holy seers therefore answer on our behalf — now as before, they who are in a manner the mouth of God and the instrument of the Holy Spirit, forbidding evils to mortals and favoring good things — against the contumacious and proud princes of this age, lest they say that we, by our own invention and only by loquacious rashness, hurl such threats and such great terrors at them. For to none of the wise is it doubtful by how much the sins of this age are graver than those of old, the Apostle saying: 'Anyone transgressing the law shall die by two or three witnesses: how much worse punishments, do you think, does he deserve who has trodden under foot the Son of God?' (Heb. 10:28-29).

First among these there meets us Samuel, by God's command the establisher of a lawful kingdom, dedicated to God before he was born, a truthful prophet known by signs undoubtedly wondrous to all the people of Israel from Dan even to Beersheba, from whose mouth the Holy Spirit thundered against all the powers of the world, denouncing to the first king among the Hebrews, namely Saul, because he had not fulfilled certain of the commands of the Lord, saying: 'You have done foolishly, and have not kept the commands of the Lord your God which He commanded you. For if you had not done so, even now God would have established your kingdom over Israel. But by no means shall your kingdom arise hereafter' (1 Sam. 13:13-14). What then resembling the crimes of this age did he commit — adultery or parricide? By no means.

But a partial alteration of the command; because, as one of us well says: 'It is not a question of the quality of the sin, but of the transgression of the commandment.' And likewise, when he was purging himself, as he thought, against the charges laid, and shrewdly weaving excuses (as is the custom of the human race) in this manner — 'Nay, I heard the voice of the Lord, and I walked in the way by which He sent me' (1 Sam. 15:20) — Samuel punished him with this reproof: 'Does the Lord,' he said, 'desire holocausts or victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord be obeyed? For obedience is better than victims, and to hearken than to offer the fat of rams. For it is like the sin of soothsaying to resist, and like the crime of idolatry to refuse to yield.'

'Therefore, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you, that you should not be king' (1 Sam. 15:22-23). And a little after: 'The Lord,' he said, 'has rent the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to your neighbor better than you. Moreover, the Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be bent by repentance: for He is not a man, that He should do penance' (1 Sam. 15:28-29) — understand, over the hard hearts of evil men. It is to be noted, therefore, that he said it was the crime of idolatry to refuse to yield to God. Let not these wicked men, then, flatter themselves because they do not openly sacrifice to the gods of the nations: since, trampling like swine upon the most precious pearls of Christ, they are idolaters.

But although this one example, as an unconquerable witness, would abundantly suffice for the correction of the wicked, yet, that in the mouth of many witnesses every evil of Britain may be proved, let us pass on to the rest. What befell David for numbering the people, when Gad the prophet said: 'Thus says the Lord: A choice of three things is given you. Choose one of these that you will, that I may do it to you. Either seven years of famine shall come upon you; or for three months you shall flee from your adversaries, and they shall pursue you; or else for three days there shall be pestilence in your land' (2 Sam. 24:12-13).

For, hemmed in by such a condition, and willing rather to fall into the hands of the merciful God than of men, he is humbled by the slaughter of seventy thousand of his people; and unless, out of the affection of apostolic charity for his fellow countrymen, he had chosen to die, that the plague might not touch them — saying, 'I am he that has sinned, I the shepherd have done wickedly: these who are the sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand, I beseech, be turned against me' (2 Sam. 24:17) — he would have atoned by his own death for the inconsiderate pride of his heart. For what does the Scripture relate in what follows concerning his son? 'Solomon,' it says, 'did that which was not pleasing before the Lord, and did not fulfill it that he should follow the Lord as his father did. The Lord said to him:'

Because you have had this with you, and have not kept My covenant and My precepts which I commanded you, in rending I will rend your kingdom, and will give it to your servant' (1 Kings 11:6, 11). Hear what befell two sacrilegious kings of Israel (just as these are), Jeroboam and Baasha, to whom the sentence of the Lord is directed through the prophet, saying thus: 'Forasmuch as I exalted you prince over Israel, because they have provoked Me in their vanities' (1 Kings 14:7). 'Behold, I will raise up evil after Baasha and after his house, and I will deliver up his house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat. He of his that shall die in the city, the dogs shall eat; and his dead body in the field shall the birds of heaven eat' (1 Kings 16:3-4).

What is threatened, by the holy mouth of Elijah and the fiery address of the Lord, to that other wicked king of Israel, a fellow-soldier of these men (by whose collusion and his wife's deceit the innocent Naboth was oppressed on account of his ancestral vineyard), saying thus? 'You have killed, and moreover you have taken possession. And after this you shall add: Thus says the Lord: In this place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, they shall lick your blood also' (1 Kings 21:19). That this came to pass thus is established by most certain reasoning. But lest perchance, according to the aforesaid Ahab, a lying spirit speaking vain things in the mouth of your prophets (1 Kings

22:22) should seduce you, so that you do not hear the words of the prophet Micaiah: 'Behold, the Lord has permitted a lying spirit in the mouth of all your prophets who are here; and the Lord has spoken evil against you' (1 Kings 22:23). For even now it is certain that there are some teachers filled with a contrary spirit, asserting depraved pleasure rather than truth, whose words are softer than oil, and yet they are darts (Ps. 55:22); who say, 'Peace, peace,' and there shall be no peace for those who remain in sins (Jer. 6:14; 8:11), as elsewhere the prophet says: 'There is no rejoicing for the ungodly, says the Lord' (Isa. 48:22; 57:21). Azariah also, the son of Oded, spoke to the army returning to him from the slaughter of a thousand thousand Ethiopians, saying:

'The Lord is with you, while you are with Him; and if you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you' (2 Chron. 15:2). For if Jehoshaphat, bringing aid to a wicked king, is thus rebuked by the prophet Jehu, son of Hanani, who says: 'Do you help a sinner, or love him whom the Lord hates? therefore the wrath of the Lord is upon you' (2 Chron. 19:2) — what shall become of those who are fettered by the very cords of their own crimes? Whose sins it is necessary for us to hate, not their souls (if we wish to fight in the Lord's battle-line), as the Psalmist says: 'You who love the Lord, hate evil' (Ps. 97:10).