BOOK FIRST.

ARGUMENT.

AUGUSTINE 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 is my theme in this work, which
you, my dearest son Marcellinus,[25] 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,”[26] 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[Pg 2]
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.”[27] 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.”[28]

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.

1. 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. 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 bloodthirsty 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 these spots where that was forbidden which the licence 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[Pg 3]
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.

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[Pg 4]
spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the
temples of their gods;[29] 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 Æneas see

“Dying Priam at the shrine,

Staining the hearth he made divine?”[30]

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?”[31]

Neither is that true which follows, that

“Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,

And Greece grew weak.”[32]

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?

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 honours. There is Virgil, who is read by boys, in order
that this great poet, this most famous and approved of all[Pg 5]
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.”[33]

Well, in this Virgil, I say, Juno is introduced as hostile to
the Trojans, and stirring up Æolus, 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. “[34]…

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 Æneas himself,—Æneas
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?”[35]

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

“The gods of her domestic shrines

Your country to your care consigns?”[36]

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 madness
is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely entrusted 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?[37] 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[Pg 6]
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.

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

“Phœnix and Ulysses fell

In the void courts by Juno’s cell

Were set the spoil 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.”[38]

In other words, the place consecrated to so great a goddess[Pg 7]
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 and 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[39] 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.

5. Cæsar’s statement regarding the universal custom of an enemy when
sacking a city.

Even Cæsar 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[40]) “that virgins and boys are violated, children
torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to[Pg 8]
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.

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;”[41]
and among so many and 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 spilt 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.[Pg 9]
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 honour of any of their enemy’s gods, they had shown this
particular form of leniency, that in any temple slaughter or
captivity was prohibited?

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[Pg 10]
will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities
with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly
take from them.”[42]

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.”[43] 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:”[44] 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.[45] Yet often, even in the[Pg 11]
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 odour.

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[Pg 12]
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 labour 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 endeavouring 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 blameworthy 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[Pg 13]
they fear to give offence, lest 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[Pg 14]
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.”[46] 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.[47]

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 vapouring when he says, “We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God?”[48]

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?[49] Did they lose these? For
these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle[Pg 15]
said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought
nothing into this world, and 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.”[50]

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.”[51] 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[Pg 16]
a good foundation against the time to come, that they
may lay hold on eternal life.”[52] 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.”[53] 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,[54] 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[Pg 17]
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[Pg 18]
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.

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.[55] 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?

[Pg 19]

12. Of the burial of the dead: that the denial of it to Christians does them no
injury.[56]

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,”[57] 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;”[58] 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 death-blow 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 from 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.”[59]
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.”[Pg 20][60]
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[61]
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.”[62] 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!

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 Ghost 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[Pg 21]
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;[63] 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
favourite place.[64] And Tobit, according to the angel’s testimony,
is commended, and is said to have pleased God by
burying the dead.[65] 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.[66]
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.[67] 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[Pg 22]
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.

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[68] 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[69] 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,[70] 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.

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 ambassadors to negotiate this exchange,
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[Pg 23]
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.[71] 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, was 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[Pg 24]
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 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,[72] then let them recognise 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[Pg 25]
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.

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.
Let this, 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.

17. Of suicide committed through fear of punishment or dishonour.

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[Pg 26]
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?

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[Pg 27]
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
unskilfulness) destroyed the virginity of some girl, while
endeavouring 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 remain 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.

[Pg 28]

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
lauded slew the innocent, chaste, outraged Lucretia. Pronounce
sentence. But if you cannot, because there does not[Pg 29]
compear 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.”[73]

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[Pg 30]
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.

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 specially by the[Pg 31]
omission of the words “thy neighbour,” which are inserted
when false witness is forbidden: “Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour.” 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 neighbour is regulated by the love of ourselves, as it is
written, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour 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 neighbour; although in the commandment prohibiting
false witness only his neighbour 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 favour
of any one, and least of all in favour 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 Manichæans?
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 shalt not kill man;” therefore neither another nor[Pg 32]
yourself, for he who kills himself still kills nothing else than
man.

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.

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[Pg 33]
himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune,
or sins in 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[Pg 34]
friends for whom He had promised to prepare everlasting
mansions, it is obvious that such examples as are produced
from the “nations that forget God,” give no warrant of imitation
to the worshippers of the one true God.

23. What we are to think of the example of Cato, who slew himself because
unable to endure Cæsar’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 honourable
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 Cæsar’s rule, why did the father urge the son to this
disgrace, by encouraging him to trust absolutely to Cæsar’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 honour? Cato, then, cannot have deemed it to be
shameful to live under Cæsar’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 Cæsar, was not more loved by him than
Cæsar was envied the glory of pardoning him (as indeed
Cæsar himself is reported to have said[74]); or if envy is too
strong a word, let us say he was ashamed that this glory should
be his.

[Pg 35]

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 Cæsar; 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[Pg 36]
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
forget 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?

25. That we should not endeavour 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[Pg 37]
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.

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 honouring 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[Pg 38]
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.”[75] 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.

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?”[76] 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,[Pg 39]
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.

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.”[77] Nevertheless,[Pg 40]
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 fainthearted 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[Pg 41]
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 stedfastness
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.

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?”[78] we may ask them
where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for[Pg 42]
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.”[79]

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 licence
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 thousand-fold
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[Pg 43]
he was not mistaken: the event proved how wisely he had
spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman
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.

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, to 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[Pg 44]
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.[80] 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.

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 licence, 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 honours 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 honour 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 the games of the circus;
but these astute and wicked spirits, foreseeing that in due[Pg 45]
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 dishonoured 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.

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 honour 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.

[Pg 46]

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 honour 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 the
number of their citizens, did that which the former have done,
lest the number of their enemies should be diminished.

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 labour 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 recognised; 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 effect their separation. I now proceed
to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise, progress, and end[Pg 47]
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.

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, endeavour 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.

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[Pg 48]