City of God 1.23–2.1

Chapter 23. What kind of example Cato is, who killed himself because he could not bear Caesar's victory.

But besides Lucretia, about whom we have said above what seemed right, they do not easily find anyone on whose authority they can lay down a rule, except that Cato who killed himself at Utica; not because he alone did it, but because he was considered a learned and upright man, so that it may rightly be thought that what he did could have been, or could be, done rightly. What shall I say of his deed above all, except that his friends, some of them learned men, who more wisely tried to dissuade him from doing it, judged it the act of a weaker rather than a stronger soul, showing not honor guarding against disgrace but weakness unable to bear adversity? Cato himself judged the same in the case of his dearly loved son. For if it was disgraceful to live under Caesar's victory, why was he the author of this disgrace to his son, whom he told to hope for everything from Caesar's kindness? Why did he not force him to die with him? For if Torquatus laudably killed his son, who had fought the enemy against orders, even though he was victorious, why did Cato, conquered himself, spare his conquered son when he did not spare himself? Was it more disgraceful to be a victor against orders than to bear a victor against honor? In no way, then, did Cato judge it disgraceful to live under Caesar as victor; otherwise he would have freed his son from this disgrace with a father's sword. What then, except that as much as he loved his son, whom he both hoped and wished to be spared by Caesar, so much did he envy the glory of Caesar himself, lest he should be spared by him too, as Caesar himself is reported to have said, or, to put it more mildly, was ashamed of it?

Chapter 24. That in that virtue in which Regulus surpassed Cato, Christians excel far more.

The people we are arguing against do not want us to prefer to Cato the holy man Job, who chose to suffer such horrible evils in his own flesh rather than to be rid of all his torments by bringing death on himself, or other saints from our writings, which stand highest in authority and are most worthy of belief, who chose to bear captivity and the rule of enemies rather than put themselves to death. But from their own writings I will prefer that same Marcus Regulus to Marcus Cato. For Cato had never conquered Caesar; conquered by him, he scorned to submit to him, and so as not to submit, he chose to be killed by himself. But Regulus had already conquered the Carthaginians and, a Roman commander for the Roman empire, had won a victory not to be mourned, over citizens, but to be praised, over enemies; yet, conquered by them afterwards, he chose to bear them by serving rather than to remove himself from them by dying. So he kept both patience under the rule of the Carthaginians and constancy in his love for the Romans, neither removing his conquered body from the enemy nor his unconquered mind from his fellow citizens. Nor was it from love of this life that he would not kill himself. He proved this when, for the sake of his promise and oath, he returned without any hesitation to the same enemies whom he had offended more gravely by his words in the senate than by his arms in war. So, being such a despiser of this life, when he chose to end it through whatever tortures raging enemies might inflict rather than to kill himself, he undoubtedly judged it a great crime for a man to kill himself. Among all their praiseworthy men, illustrious for the distinctions of virtue, the Romans cannot produce a better one, whom neither good fortune corrupted, for he remained very poor after so great a victory, nor misfortune broke, for he returned undaunted to so great a death. Further, if the bravest and most famous men, defenders of an earthly homeland, worshippers of gods who, though false, they worshipped without falsehood, and even most truthful keepers of oaths, men who could strike down conquered enemies by the custom and law of war, being conquered by enemies would not strike themselves down, and, though they had no fear of death, still chose to bear victors as masters rather than inflict death on themselves, how much more will Christians, who worship the true God and long for the heavenly homeland, refrain from this crime, if the divine ordering subjects them for a time to enemies either to test or to correct them, enemies in whose power he does not desert them in that humiliation, he who, the Most High, came so humbly for their sake; especially since no laws of any military power or of such military service bind them to strike down even a defeated enemy? What evil error, then, creeps in, that a man should kill himself either because an enemy has sinned against him or so that an enemy may not sin against him, when he does not dare to kill the enemy himself, whether he has sinned or is about to sin?

Chapter 25. That sin must not be avoided by sin.

But, they say, one must fear and beware lest the body, subjected to lust, entice the mind by a most seductive pleasure to consent to the sin. Therefore, they say, a person ought to kill himself before committing it, no longer because of another's sin but because of his own. A mind that is subject to God and his wisdom rather than to the body and its desire will by no means do this, that is, consent to the lust of its own flesh when it is aroused by another's lust. But if it is a detestable deed and a damnable crime for a man to kill even himself, as the plain truth proclaims, who would be so foolish as to say: Let us commit homicide now, lest we perhaps fall into adultery later? If iniquity has so much dominion that not innocence but sins are to be chosen, is not an uncertain adultery in the future better than a certain homicide in the present? Is it not better to commit an outrage that may be healed by repentance than such a crime as leaves no room for saving repentance? I have said this for the sake of those men or women who think they must do themselves the violence of death in order to avoid, not another's sin, but their own, lest under another's lust they perhaps consent to their own when it has been aroused. But far be it from a Christian mind, which trusts in its God and, placing its hope in him, relies on his help, far be it, I say, that such a mind should yield to any pleasures of the flesh so as to consent to shameful acts. And if that disobedience of desire which still dwells in our dying members moves as if by its own law, apart from the law of our will, how much more is it without fault in the body of one who does not consent, if it is without fault in the body of one who is asleep!

Chapter 26. On things that are not lawful, when saints are known to have done them: for what reason they must be believed to have been done.

But, they say, certain holy women in time of persecution, to escape those who sought to violate their chastity, threw themselves into a river that would sweep them away and drown them, and died in that way, and their martyrdoms are celebrated in the catholic church with very well attended veneration. About these I dare not judge anything rashly. For I do not know whether divine authority has persuaded the church, by some trustworthy testimonies, to honor their memory in this way; and it may be so. For what if they did this not deceived as humans, but commanded by God, not erring but obeying? As we may not believe otherwise of Samson. When God commands, and makes known without any ambiguity that he commands, who will call obedience a crime? Who will accuse the compliance of godliness? But it does not follow that whoever resolves to sacrifice his son to God does it without crime because Abraham did this too, and laudably. For a soldier too, when he kills a man in obedience to the authority under which he is lawfully placed, is not guilty of homicide by any law of his city; on the contrary, if he does not do it he is guilty of deserting and despising command; whereas if he had done it on his own will and authority, he would have incurred the crime of shedding human blood. So he will be punished if he does not do when ordered the very thing for which he is punished if he does it unordered. And if this is so when a general commands, how much more when the Creator commands! Let him, then, who hears that it is not lawful to kill himself do it, if he has commanded it whose commands may not be despised; only let him see whether the divine command wavers with no uncertainty. We reach the conscience through the ear; we do not claim for ourselves the judgment of hidden things. “No one knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him.” This we say, this we affirm, this we approve in every way: that no one ought to inflict a voluntary death on himself as if fleeing temporal troubles, lest he fall into everlasting ones; no one because of another's sins, lest by this he begin to have a most grievous sin of his own, when another's did not pollute him; no one because of his own past sins, on account of which he needs this life all the more, so that they may be healed by repentance; no one as if from desire for the better life hoped for after death, because the better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death.

Chapter 27. Whether voluntary death should be sought in order to avoid sin.

There remains one reason, which I had begun to speak of, for which it is thought useful for a person to kill himself: namely, so as not to rush into sin, whether through flattering pleasure or raging pain. If we are willing to admit this reason, it will go so far that people must be urged to kill themselves rather at the moment when, washed in the font of holy regeneration, they have received the remission of all their sins. For that is the time to guard against all future sins, when all past ones have been blotted out. If this is done rightly by voluntary death, why is it not done then above all? Why does any baptized person spare himself? Why does he thrust his freed head back into so many dangers of this life, when he has it very easily in his power to avoid them all by inflicting death on himself, and it is written: “He who loves danger will fall into it”? Why then are so many and so great dangers loved, or at least, even if they are not loved, accepted, when a man remains in this life who is permitted to leave it? Or does so senseless a perversity overturn the heart and turn it from the consideration of truth, that, if a man must kill himself so as not to fall into sin under the dominion of one captor, he thinks he must live so as to bear the world itself, full of temptations at every hour, both such as are feared under one master and countless others without which this life is not lived? Why then should we spend our time on those exhortations with which, addressing the baptized, we try to kindle them either to virginal integrity, or to widowed continence, or to faithfulness in the marriage bed itself, when we have better short cuts, far from all dangers of sinning, so that we may send to the Lord in better health and purity all those whom we can persuade, after the most recent remission of sins, to seize death and inflict it on themselves? Further, if anyone who thinks this should be attempted and urged is, I do not say foolish, but mad, with what face does he say to a man: “Kill yourself, so as not to add a graver sin to your small sins while you live under a master of barbarous and shameless morals,” when he cannot say, except most wickedly: “Kill yourself, now that all your sins are absolved, so as not to commit such or even worse ones again while you live in a world so enticing with so many impure pleasures, so raging with so many unspeakable cruelties, so hostile with so many errors and terrors”? Since it is wicked to say this, it is certainly wicked to kill oneself. For if there could be any just reason for doing this voluntarily, there would undoubtedly be none more just than this one. Since not even this one is just, therefore there is none.

Chapter 28. By what judgment of God the lust of the enemy was permitted to sin against the bodies of the continent.

So, faithful of Christ, do not let your life be a weariness to you if your chastity was made sport of by the enemy. You have a great and true consolation if you keep a faithful conscience that you did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to sin against you. And if perhaps you ask why they were permitted, the providence of the Creator and Ruler of the world is deep indeed, and “his judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out.” Yet question your own souls faithfully, whether perhaps you were too puffed up by this good of integrity and continence or chastity, and, delighting in human praise, even envied some others in this. I do not accuse what I do not know, nor do I hear what your hearts answer you when questioned. Yet if they answer that it is so, do not wonder that you have lost that by which you desired to please men, and that there has remained to you that which cannot be shown to men. If you did not consent to those who sinned, divine help was added to divine grace so that it would not be lost; human reproach succeeded to human glory so that it would not be loved. Be consoled in both, you fainthearted: proved on the one side, chastened on the other; justified on the one side, corrected on the other. But as for those whose hearts, when questioned, answer that they never took pride in the good of virginity or widowhood or marital chastity, but, agreeing with the humble, rejoiced with trembling over the gift of God, and did not envy anyone the excellence of equal holiness and chastity, but, setting aside human praise, which is usually offered the more the rarer the good that calls for praise, wished rather that their number were larger than that they themselves should stand out more among a few: let not even these, being such, complain that this was permitted if barbarian lust has overpowered some of them too, nor let them believe that God neglects these things because he permits what no one commits with impunity. For certain burdens, as it were, of evil desires are both released by God's present hidden judgment and reserved for his last, open one. And perhaps these women, who are well aware that their hearts were not puffed up by this good of chastity, and yet suffered the enemy's violence in the flesh, had some hidden weakness which might have been lifted up into haughty pride if they had escaped this humiliation in that devastation. Just as some, then, were snatched away by death, “lest wickedness should change their understanding,” so something was snatched from these women by force, lest prosperity should change their modesty. So for both groups, those who were already proud of their flesh because it had suffered no one's shameful touch, and those who perhaps could have been proud if it had not been handled even by the violence of enemies, chastity was not taken away, but humility was taught: the swelling of the former was relieved when it was already present, that of the latter was met when it was threatening. Yet this too should not be passed over: that some who suffered these things may have thought that the good of continence should be counted among bodily goods and would remain only if the body were not handled by anyone's lust, and that it did not lie solely in the strength of the will, helped by God, so that both body and spirit may be holy, nor that it was a good which cannot be taken away against the mind's will. This error has perhaps been removed from them. For when they consider with what conscience they have served God, and with unshaken faith do not think of him that he could in any way desert those who served him so and called on him, and cannot doubt how much chastity pleases him, they see that it follows that he would never have permitted these things to happen to his saints if holiness could perish in that way, the holiness which he bestowed on them and loves in them.

Chapter 29. What the household of Christ should answer unbelievers when they reproach it that Christ did not free it from the fury of the enemy.

So the whole household of the supreme and true God has its own consolation, not deceptive nor founded on the hope of wavering or failing things; and it has no reason at all to regret even this temporal life, in which it is trained for eternal life; it uses earthly goods like a pilgrim, without being captured by them, and by evils it is either proved or corrected. As for those who insult its uprightness and say to it, when it happens to fall into some temporal evils, “Where is your God?”, let them say where their own gods are when they suffer the very things for the avoidance of which they either worship them or argue that they must be worshipped. For this household answers: My God is present everywhere, whole everywhere, enclosed nowhere; he can be present in secret and absent without moving. When he troubles me with adversity, he either tests my merits or chastises my sins, and keeps for me an eternal reward for temporal evils borne in godliness. But who are you, that it should be worth speaking with you even about your gods, much less about my God, who “is to be feared above all gods; for the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens”?

Chapter 30. In what shameful prosperity those who complain of the Christian times wish to wallow.

If that Scipio Nasica of yours were alive, once your pontiff, whom the whole senate chose, under the terror of the Punic war, when the best man was sought to receive the Phrygian sacred rites, a man whose face you would perhaps not dare to look at, he himself would restrain you from this impudence. For why, when afflicted by adversity, do you complain of the Christian times, unless because you desire to have your luxury secure and to dissolve in the most depraved morals, with every harshness of trouble removed? For you do not desire to have peace and to abound in every kind of wealth in order to use these goods honorably, that is, with moderation and sobriety, temperance and godliness, but so that an endless variety of pleasures may be sought out with mad extravagance, and in prosperity those evils may arise in your morals which are worse than raging enemies. But that Scipio, your pontifex maximus, judged the best man by the whole senate, fearing this calamity for you, did not want Carthage, then Rome's rival for empire, to be destroyed, and opposed Cato when he moved that it be destroyed, fearing security as the enemy of weak souls and seeing that fear was necessary as a fit guardian for citizens who were like wards. Nor was he mistaken in his judgment: the event itself proved how truly he spoke. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the great terror of the Roman state was thus driven off and extinguished, such evils arising from prosperity followed at once that, concord being corrupted and broken, first by savage and bloody seditions, then soon, by a chain of evil causes, by civil wars as well, such slaughter was done, so much blood was shed, and savagery burned with such greed for proscriptions and plunder, that those Romans who, when their life was purer, feared evils from their enemies, now that the purity of their life was lost, suffered crueler things from their fellow citizens; and that very lust for domination, which among the other vices of the human race was present in a purer strain in the whole Roman people, after it had prevailed in a few more powerful men, crushed the rest, worn down and exhausted, under the yoke of slavery as well.

Chapter 31. By what steps of vice the desire to rule grew among the Romans.

For when would that lust rest in the proudest minds until, by continuous offices, it arrived at royal power? And there would be no way of holding offices continuously unless ambition prevailed. But ambition would not prevail at all except in a people corrupted by avarice and luxury. And the people was made avaricious and luxurious by prosperity, which that Nasica judged, with great foresight, must be guarded against, when he did not want the greatest, strongest, and wealthiest city of the enemy to be removed, so that lust might be held in check by fear, lust held in check might not run riot in luxury, and luxury restrained might not let avarice rampage; so that, with these vices barred, virtue useful to the city might flourish and grow, and liberty suited to that virtue might endure. From this too, and from this most farsighted love of country, it came about that this same pontifex maximus of yours, chosen without a single dissenting vote by the senate of that time as the best man (which must often be repeated), stopped the senate from its plan and desire when it was undertaking to build a seated theater, and persuaded it by a most weighty speech not to allow Greek luxury to creep into the manly morals of the country, nor to consent to foreign vice for the weakening and enervation of Roman virtue; and he prevailed so much by his authority that the senate's foresight, moved by his words, forbade from then on even the setting out of the benches which the citizens had begun to use, piled up for the occasion, at the spectacle of the games. With what zeal he would have removed the stage plays themselves from the city of Rome if he had dared to resist the authority of those whom he thought gods, not understanding that they were harmful demons, or, if he did understand, thinking that even he must appease rather than despise them! For the heavenly teaching had not yet been made known to the nations, which, cleansing the heart by faith, would change human affection with humble godliness to seek heavenly or even supercelestial things, and free it from the domination of proud demons.

Chapter 32. On the institution of the stage plays.

But know, you who do not know it, and take note, you who pretend not to know, you who murmur against the one who freed you from such masters: the stage plays, spectacles of indecency and license of vanities, were instituted at Rome not by the vices of men but by the commands of your gods. It would be more tolerable for you to give divine honors to that Scipio than to worship gods of this kind. For those gods were not better than their pontiff. Look, pay attention, if a mind drunk for so long on the errors it has swallowed allows you to think anything sane! The gods ordered stage plays to be put on for them to allay a pestilence of bodies; but the pontiff forbade the stage itself to be built to guard against a pestilence of souls. If by any light of the mind you set the soul above the body, choose whom you should worship! For that pestilence of bodies did not subside because the delicate madness of stage plays crept into a warlike people accustomed before only to the games of the circus; but the cunning of the unspeakable spirits, foreseeing that that pestilence would soon end in due course, took this occasion to send another far more serious, in which they delight most, not on bodies but on morals; and it blinded the minds of the wretched with such darkness and defiled them with such deformity that even now (a thing that will perhaps be incredible if our descendants hear of it), after the city of Rome was laid waste, those whom this pestilence possessed, and who, fleeing from there, managed to reach Carthage, went mad every day in the theaters, competing in their enthusiasm for the actors.

Chapter 33. On the vices of the Romans, which the overthrow of their country did not correct.

O minds out of your minds! What is this, not error but madness, so great that, while the peoples of the East, as we have heard, were lamenting your destruction, and the greatest cities in the most distant lands were keeping public grief and mourning, you were seeking out the theaters, entering them, filling them, and behaving far more madly than before? This corruption and plague of souls, this overthrow of uprightness and decency, is what that Scipio feared for you when he forbade theaters to be built, when he saw that you could easily be corrupted and overthrown by prosperity, when he did not want you to be secure from the terror of the enemy. For he did not think a state happy with its walls standing and its morals falling. But with you the seductions of ungodly demons have prevailed more than the precautions of farsighted men. Hence it is that you do not want the evils you do to be charged to you, but you charge the evils you suffer to the Christian times. For in your security you seek not a peaceful state but unpunished luxury; depraved by prosperity, you could not be corrected by adversity. That Scipio wanted you to be terrified by the enemy so that you would not flow into luxury; you, crushed by the enemy, have not checked your luxury; you have lost the benefit of calamity; you have become most wretched and remained most wicked.

Chapter 34. On the mercy of God, which moderated the destruction of the City.

And yet that you are alive is God's doing, who, by sparing you, warns you to be corrected by repentance; who granted to you, ungrateful as you are, that you should escape the hands of the enemy either under the name of his servants or in the places of his martyrs. Romulus and Remus are said to have established a sanctuary where anyone who took refuge would be free of all guilt, seeking to increase the population of the city they were founding. A wonderful example came forth in honor of Christ. What the founders of the City had once established, its destroyers established. But what great thing is it if the founders did this to fill up the number of their citizens, when the destroyers did it to preserve a great number of their enemies?

Chapter 35. On the church's sons hidden among the ungodly, and on false Christians within the church.

These answers and such as these, and any fuller and more fitting ones it can find, let the redeemed household of the Lord Christ and the pilgrim city of Christ the King give to its enemies. Let it remember indeed that among those very enemies future citizens lie hidden, so that it may not think it fruitless, even with regard to them, that it bears with them as hostile until it reaches them as confessors; just as the city of God, as long as it is a pilgrim in the world, has with it some from among their number, joined to it by communion in the sacraments, who will not be with it in the eternal lot of the saints. Some of these are hidden, some are open; they do not even hesitate to murmur, with our enemies themselves, against God, whose sacrament they bear, filling now the theaters with them, now the churches with us. But one must despair much less of the correction even of some such people, if predestined friends lie hidden among the most open adversaries, as yet unknown even to themselves. For these two cities are entangled and mixed with each other in this age until they are separated at the last judgment; and concerning their origin, progress, and due ends, I shall set out what I think must be said, so far as I am helped by God, for the glory of the city of God, which will shine out more clearly when compared with its opposite.

Chapter 36. On the subjects to be discussed in the following argument.

But some things still remain for me to say against those who blame the disasters of the Roman state on our religion, because it forbids them to sacrifice to their gods. For I must recall what and how great evils, as many as can come to mind or as will seem sufficient, that city or the provinces belonging to its empire suffered before their sacrifices were forbidden; all of which they would undoubtedly blame on us if our religion had already been shining on them then, or had forbidden them their sacrilegious rites in the same way. Then I must show what morals of theirs, and for what reason, the true God, in whose power are all kingdoms, deigned to help for the increase of their empire, and how those whom they think gods helped them not at all, and rather how much harm they did by deceiving and misleading them. Finally I shall speak against those who, refuted and convicted by the plainest proofs, try to maintain that the gods are to be worshipped not for the advantage of the present life but for the life that will come after death. This question, unless I am mistaken, will be much more laborious and worthy of subtler discussion, since in it I must argue against philosophers, not just any, but those who are most gloriously famous among them and agree with us in many things, both about the immortality of the soul, and that the true God made the world, and about his providence, by which he rules the whole of what he made. But since they too must be refuted in those points in which they hold views against us, we must not fail in this duty, so that, having refuted ungodly objections with the strength God will give, we may assert the city of God and true godliness and the worship of God, in which alone eternal blessedness is truly promised. Let this, then, be the limit of this book, so that we may take up what follows from another beginning.

Chapter 1. On the limit that must be set to the need for argument.

If the weak understanding of human habit did not dare to resist the reasoning of plain truth, but submitted its sickness to sound teaching as to medicine until it was healed by divine help obtained by the faith of godliness, there would be no need of long discourse to refute any error of empty opinion for those who think rightly and set out their thoughts in adequate words. But as things are, the greater and fouler disease of foolish minds is that by which they defend their irrational impulses as if they were reason and truth itself, even after as full a reason has been given as one man owes another, whether from excessive blindness, by which even what is open is not seen, or from most obstinate stubbornness, by which even what is seen is not accepted. So it becomes necessary to speak at greater length about things that are for the most part clear, as if we were offering them, not for people to look at, but in some way to be touched by people groping with their eyes shut. And yet what end will there be to debate, what limit to talk, if we think we must always answer those who answer back? For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hardened by the perversity of their mind that even if they have understood they do not obey, answer back, as it is written, and “speak iniquity,” and are tirelessly vain. If we wished to refute their contrary statements as often as they resolved, with shameless faces, not to think what they say so long as they contradict our arguments in any way at all, you see how endless, wearisome, and fruitless it would be. For this reason, Marcellinus my son, I would not want either you or others for whom this labor of mine is usefully and freely at service in the love of Christ to be the kind of judges of my writings who always want a reply when they hear something said against what they read, lest they become like those silly women whom the apostle mentions, “always learning and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth.”