To Demetrian 1–22

You have often barked at me, Demetrian, and clamored against the God who is one and true with sacrilegious mouth and impious words, and I had despised you, thinking it more modest and better to scorn the ignorance of one in error by silence than to provoke the insanity of a madman by speaking. Nor did I do this without the authority of divine teaching, since it is written: “Say nothing in the ears of a fool, lest when he hears he mock your wise words”; and again: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him”; and we are also commanded to keep what is holy within our own conscience and not expose it to be trampled by swine and dogs, as the Lord speaks and says: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them with their feet.” For when you often came to me more from eagerness to contradict than from a wish to learn, and, resounding with loud cries, preferred to push your own views shamelessly rather than listen patiently to ours, it seemed foolish to engage with you, since it would be easier and lighter to beat back the stirred-up waves of a turbulent sea with shouts than to restrain your rage with arguments. Certainly it is labor in vain and without effect to offer light to the blind, speech to the deaf, wisdom to a brute, since the brute cannot perceive, nor the blind admit light, nor the deaf hear.

Considering this, I have often kept silent and overcome the impatient man with patience, since I could neither teach the unteachable, nor restrain the impious with religion, nor check the raging with gentleness. But since you say that many complain, and that it is blamed on us that wars arise more often, that plague and famine rage, and that long spells of clear weather hold back the showers and rains, it is not right to keep silent any longer, lest our silence begin to seem to come not from modesty but from lack of confidence, and lest, while we disdain to refute false charges, we seem to acknowledge the charge. I answer therefore both you, Demetrian, and likewise the others whom you have perhaps stirred up, and whom, by sowing hatred against us with your abusive words, you have made your many companions, sprouting from your root and origin. Yet I believe they will accept the reasoning of our discourse; for he who has been moved to evil by deceiving falsehood will be moved much more to good by the truth.

You have said that all these things by which the world is now shaken and oppressed come about through us and ought to be imputed to us, because your gods are not worshiped by us. On this point, you who are ignorant of the knowledge of God and a stranger to the truth ought to know, first, that the world has now grown old, that it does not stand in the strength in which it formerly stood, nor has the vigor and robustness in which it formerly prevailed. Even if we kept silent and brought forth no proofs from the holy Scriptures and the divine prophecies, the world itself now speaks and testifies to its decline by the evidence of things failing. There is not so great an abundance of rain in winter for nourishing the seeds; there is not the usual heat in summer for ripening the crops; nor are the spring seasons so joyful in their mildness, nor the autumns so fruitful in the produce of the trees. Fewer slabs of marble are dug out of the exhausted and worn-out mountains; the mines, now drained, supply less wealth of silver and gold, and the impoverished veins shrink day by day. And the farmer is diminishing and failing in the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the forum, justice in the court, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. Do you think that the substance of a thing growing old can remain as great as it could be when it was still new and vigorous in its youth? Whatever is sinking, with its end now near, toward its setting and its last must necessarily diminish. So the sun at its setting throws its rays with less bright and fiery splendor; so the moon, as her course declines, grows thin with worn-out horns; and the tree which had before been green and fruitful afterwards becomes barren as its branches dry up, misshapen with age; and the spring which before flowed abundantly from overflowing veins, failing with age, barely drips with a little moisture. This sentence has been passed on the world; this is the law of God: that all things that have risen should set, and things that have grown should grow old, and strong things be weakened, and great things diminished, and, when they have been weakened and diminished, come to an end. You blame the Christians that each thing diminishes as the world grows old.

What if old men too should blame the Christians that they are less strong in old age; that they do not flourish as before in hearing of the ears, speed of the feet, keenness of the eyes, robustness of strength, juice of the vitals, bulk of the limbs; and that, whereas once the long life of men went on beyond eight and nine hundred years, now it can scarcely reach the number of a hundred? We see gray hairs in boys; the hair fails before it grows; nor does life end in old age, but begins from old age. So birth hastens to its end while still at its rising; so whatever is born now degenerates by the old age of the world itself, so that no one should wonder that individual things in the world have begun to fail, when the whole world itself is now in its failing and at its end.

As for wars continuing more frequently, barrenness and famine heaping up anxiety, health being broken by raging diseases, and the human race being laid waste by the ravages of plague, know that this too was foretold: that in the last times evils would be multiplied and adversities varied, and that, as the day of judgment drew near, the censure of an angry God would be more and more kindled for the chastisements of the human race. For these things do not happen, as your false complaint and your ignorance of the truth boast and clamor, because your gods are not worshiped by us, but because God is not worshiped by you. For since he himself is the Lord and ruler of the world, and all things are carried on by his will and nod, and nothing can happen except what he himself has done or permitted to happen, surely, when those things happen which show the anger of an indignant God, they do not happen on account of us, by whom God is worshiped, but are inflicted for your sins and deserts, by whom God is not sought at all nor feared, nor, abandoning vain superstitions, is the true religion recognized, so that the God who is one for all may be worshiped and entreated by all as one.

Hear him, then, speaking himself; hear him instructing and warning us with his divine voice: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve”; and again: “You shall have no other gods besides me”; and again: “Do not walk after strange gods to serve them, and do not worship them; and do not provoke me by the works of your hands to destroy you.” The prophet too, full of the Holy Spirit, bears witness and announces the anger of God, saying: “Thus says the Lord almighty: Because my house is deserted, while you each run to his own house, therefore the heaven will withhold its dew and the earth will withdraw its produce, and I will bring a sword upon the earth, and upon the grain and upon the wine and upon the oil and upon men and upon cattle and upon all the labors of their hands.” Likewise another prophet repeats and says: “And I will rain upon one city, and upon one I will not rain; one part will be rained upon, and the part on which I do not rain will wither. And two and three cities will gather into one city for the sake of drinking water, and even so they will not be satisfied; and you do not turn to me, says the Lord.”

See, the Lord is indignant and angry, and threatens because you do not turn to him; and do you wonder or complain, in this obstinacy and contempt of yours, if rain rarely comes down from above, if the earth is rough with the mold of dust, if the barren clod scarcely produces thin and pale grass, if the beating hail weakens the vine, if the overturning whirlwind cuts down the olive, if drought stops the spring, if a pestilent breeze corrupts the air, if a diseased state consumes man? All these things come because sins provoke them, and God is the more exasperated when such great things do no good. For that these things happen either for the discipline of the stubborn or for the punishment of the wicked, the same God declares in the holy Scriptures, saying: “In vain have I struck your sons; they have not received discipline.” And the prophet, devoted and dedicated to God, answers to these same things and says: “You have beaten them, and they did not grieve; you have scourged them, and they would not receive discipline.” See, blows are inflicted from heaven, and there is no fear of God; see, beatings and scourges from above are not lacking, and there is no trembling, no dread. What if not even this censure intervened in human affairs? How much greater still would be the boldness of crimes in men, secure in impunity?

You complain that the springs are now less abundant for you, the breezes less healthful, the rain less frequent, and the earth less fertile in serving you; that the elements do not so wait upon your advantages and pleasures. Do you, then, serve God, by whom all things serve you? Do you wait upon him by whose nod the universe waits upon you? You yourself demand service from your slave, and, a man, you compel a man to submit and obey you; and though you have the same lot in being born, one condition in dying, a like material of bodies, a common nature of souls, and by equal right and the same law you both come into this world and afterwards depart from it, yet unless you are served according to your pleasure, unless you are obeyed in compliance with your will, you, an imperious and excessive exacter of service, flog, beat, and frequently afflict and torture with hunger, thirst, nakedness, and the sword and prison. And do you not acknowledge the Lord your God, when you yourself exercise lordship in this way?

Rightly, therefore, the scourges and blows of God are not lacking as the plagues rush in. And since these achieve nothing here and do not turn each person to God by such terror of disasters, there remains afterwards the eternal prison and the unceasing flame and everlasting punishment; nor will the groaning of those who plead be heard there, because here the terror of an indignant God was not heard, who cries through the prophet and says: “Hear the word of the Lord, children of Israel, for the Lord has a judgment against the inhabitants of the earth, because there is neither mercy nor truth nor knowledge of God upon the earth: cursing and lying and murder and theft and adultery are spread over the earth; they mix blood with blood. Therefore the earth will mourn with all its inhabitants, with the beasts of the field, with the serpents of the earth, with the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea will fail, so that no one judges, no one refutes.” God says he is indignant because there is no knowledge of God on earth; and God is neither acknowledged nor feared. God rebukes and accuses the sins of lying, lust, fraud, cruelty, impiety, and rage, and no one turns to innocence. See, the things foretold by the words of God are happening, and no one is warned by trust in present things to take thought for the future. Amid these very adversities, in which the soul, confined and shut in, can scarcely breathe, there is leisure to be wicked, and in such dangers to judge not oneself but another. You are indignant that God is indignant, as if you deserved some good by living badly, as if all these things that happen were not still less and lighter than your sins.

You who judge others, be for once the judge of yourself too; look into the hiding places of your conscience; indeed, since there is no longer any shame in sinning, and people sin as though they pleased more by the sins themselves, you who are seen by all, transparent and naked, look at yourself as well. For either you are puffed up with pride, or grasping with avarice, or savage with anger, or prodigal at dice, or drunk with wine, or envious with spite, or unchaste with lust, or violent with cruelty; and do you wonder that the anger of God grows for the punishment of the human race, when what is to be punished grows daily? You complain that the enemy rises up, as if, even if there were no enemy, there could be peace among the very togas; as if, even though foreign arms and dangers from barbarians are held down, the weapons of domestic assault did not rage more fiercely and more grievously within, from the false accusations and injuries of powerful citizens. You complain of barrenness and famine, as if drought made a greater famine than rapacity; as if the fire of want did not blaze up more fiercely from the snatching up of the grain supply and the heaping up of prices. You complain that the sky is closed to rain, when the granaries are thus closed on earth. You complain that less is produced, as if what is produced were given to the needy. You accuse plague and pestilence, when by that very plague and pestilence the crimes of individuals have been either uncovered or increased, while no mercy is shown to the sick, and avarice and plunder gape after the dead. The same people are timid in the service of duty and reckless for impious gain, fleeing the funerals of the dying and seeking the spoils of the dead, so that it appears that the wretched were perhaps abandoned in their sickness for this purpose, that they might not escape by being cared for; for he wished the sick man to perish who seizes the property of the one perishing.

Such great terror of disasters cannot give a lesson in innocence, and amid a people dying in frequent slaughter no one considers that he too is mortal. Everywhere people run about, seize, take possession; there is no concealment of plundering, no hesitation. As if it were permitted, as if it were required, as if one who does not seize suffered loss and damage of his own, so everyone hastens to seize. In robbers there is at least some shame for their crimes: they love pathless gorges and deserted wildernesses, and they sin there in such a way that the crime of the sinners is veiled by darkness and night. Avarice rages openly, and, safe in its very boldness, displays the weapons of its headlong greed in the daylight of the forum. From this come forgers, from this poisoners, from this assassins in the middle of the city, as quick to sin as they sin with impunity. The crime is committed by the guilty, and no innocent person is found to punish it. There is no fear of accuser or judge: the wicked obtain impunity while the modest are silent, accomplices are afraid, and those who are to judge are for sale. And therefore through the prophet, by the divine Spirit and inspiration, the truth of the matter is brought forth, and the sure and plain reason is shown: that the Lord can prevent adversities, but that the deserts of sinners keep him from helping. “Is the hand of God not strong enough to save,” he says, “or will he make his ear heavy so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and because of your offenses he turns his face from you, so as not to have mercy.” So let sins and offenses be reckoned up, let the wounds of conscience be considered, and let each person cease to complain about God or about us, if he understands that he deserves what he suffers.

And see, what is the very thing about which our discourse chiefly is: that you harass us, the innocent, that to the insult of God you attack and oppress the servants of God? It is not enough that your life is stained by the variety of raging vices, by the iniquity of deadly crimes, by the sum of bloody plunderings; that the true religion is overthrown by false superstitions; that God is neither sought nor feared at all: you go further still and pursue the servants of God, dedicated to his majesty and divinity, with unjust persecutions. It is not enough that you yourself do not worship God: you go further and persecute with sacrilegious hostility those who do worship him. You neither worship God nor allow him to be worshiped at all; and while the others please you, who venerate not only these foolish idols and images made by the hand of man but even certain prodigies and monsters, the worshiper of God alone displeases you. Everywhere in your temples the pyres of victims and the burnt remains of cattle smoke, and the altars of God are either none or hidden. Crocodiles and dog-headed apes and stones and serpents are worshiped, and God alone on earth is either not worshiped or not worshiped with impunity. The innocent, the righteous, those dear to God, you deprive of home, strip of patrimony, load with chains, punish with beasts, the sword, and fire. Nor are you even content with a quick end to our pains and with the simple and swift brevity of punishments: you apply long tortures to tear bodies apart, you multiply numerous punishments to lacerate the vitals; nor can your savagery and brutality be content with the usual tortures: ingenious cruelty devises new punishments.

What is this insatiable madness for butchery, this unappeasable lust for cruelty? Rather, choose for yourself one of two things: to be a Christian is either a crime or it is not. If it is a crime, why do you not kill the one who confesses it? If it is not a crime, why do you persecute the innocent? For I ought to have been tortured if I denied it. If, fearing your punishment, I hid by a deceiving lie what I had been before and that I had not worshiped your gods, then I should have been tortured, then I should have been driven by the force of pain to confess the crime, as in other inquiries the accused are tortured who deny that they are guilty of the crime of which they are charged, so that the truth of the deed, which is not brought out by the informing voice, may be wrung out by bodily pain. But now, since I confess of my own accord, and cry out, and bear witness with frequent and repeated words again and again that I am a Christian, why do you apply tortures to one who confesses, and who destroys your gods not in hidden and secret places but openly, but publicly, but in the very forum in the hearing of magistrates and governors? So that, even if what you charged against me before had been too little, what you ought both to hate and to punish more has now grown. Why, when I proclaim myself a Christian in a crowded place with the people standing around, and confound both you and your gods by clear and public preaching, why do you turn to the weakness of the body, why do you contend with the frailty of earthly flesh? Engage with the vigor of the mind; break the strength of the spirit; destroy faith; conquer by argument if you can, conquer by reason.

Or, if your gods have any divinity and power, let them rise up to avenge themselves; let them defend themselves by their own majesty. But what can they provide for their worshipers who cannot avenge themselves on those who do not worship them? For if the avenger is of more worth than the one avenged, you are greater than your gods. If, then, you are greater than those you worship, you ought not to worship them, but to be worshiped by them. Your vengeance defends them when they are injured, just as your protection guards them, locked up, lest they perish. Be ashamed to worship those whom you yourself defend; be ashamed to hope for protection from those whom you protect.

O if you would be willing to hear and see them when they are adjured by us, tortured with spiritual scourges, and cast out of possessed bodies by the torments of words; when, howling and groaning with a human voice, and feeling the scourges and blows of a divine power, they confess the judgment to come! Come and learn that what we say is true; and since you say you worship the gods in this way, believe at least those whom you worship. Or, if you are willing to believe even yourself, he who now besieges your breast, who now has blinded your mind with the night of ignorance, will speak about yourself in your hearing. You will see us entreated by those whom you entreat, feared by those whom you adore; you will see standing bound under our hand, and trembling as captives, those whom you look up to and venerate as lords. Surely even so you could be confounded in these errors of yours, when you have seen and heard your gods, at our questioning, at once betray what they are, and unable, even with you present, to conceal those tricks and deceits of theirs.

What sluggishness of mind is this, then, or rather what blind and foolish madness of the senseless, not to come from darkness to light, and, bound by the snares of eternal death, to refuse to receive the hope of immortality; not to fear God when he threatens and says: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord alone”; and again: “They have worshiped what their fingers made, and man has been bent down and man humbled, and shall I not forgive them?” Why do you humble yourself and bow down to false gods? Why do you bend your captive body before foolish images and earthly fictions? God made you upright, and while the other animals are bent forward and pressed down in a posture sloping toward the ground, you have a lofty stature, and your face lifted up to heaven and to the Lord. Look there, direct your eyes there, seek God in the heights. So that you may escape the depths below, lift up your heart, raised aloft, to high and heavenly things. Why do you prostrate yourself in the fall of death with the serpent whom you worship? Why do you fall into the devil's ruin through him and with him? Keep the loftiness in which you were born. Persevere such as you were made by God. Set your soul upright with the posture of your face and body. So that you may know God, know yourself first. Abandon the idols which human error invented. Turn to God, who, if you implore him, comes to help. Believe in Christ, whom the Father sent to give us life and restore us. Cease to harm by your persecutions the servants of God and of Christ, whom, when harmed, divine vengeance defends.

That is why none of us resists when he is arrested, nor avenges himself against your unjust violence, although our people are very many and numerous. Security about the vengeance that will follow makes us patient. The innocent yield to the guilty; the blameless submit to punishments and tortures, certain and confident that whatever we suffer does not remain unavenged, and that the greater the injury of the persecution, the more just and heavy the vengeance for it becomes. Nor does anyone ever rise up against our name by the crime of the impious without divine vengeance following at once. To pass over ancient memories and not rehearse with any recital the vengeances often repeated on behalf of the worshipers of God, the proof of a recent event is enough: that so swiftly, and in such swiftness so greatly, the defense lately followed in the ruin of affairs, the loss of wealth, the waste of soldiers, the diminution of the camps. Nor let anyone think that this happened by chance or suppose it was fortuitous, since long ago divine Scripture laid it down and said: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord”; and again the Holy Spirit warns beforehand and says: “Do not say: I will avenge myself on my enemy, but wait for the Lord, that he may be your help.” From this it is clear and plain that all these things which come down from the anger of God happen not through us but for us.

Nor should anyone think that Christians are not avenged by what happens because they themselves seem to be touched by the onset of these events. He feels punishment from the adversities of the world whose joy and glory are all in the world. He mourns and weeps if things go badly for him in this age, for whom things cannot go well after this age; whose whole fruit of living is gathered here, whose every consolation ends here, whose perishable and brief life reckons some sweetness and pleasure here; and when he has departed from here, only punishment remains for his pain. But those who have confidence in future goods feel no pain from the onset of present evils. In short, we are neither dismayed by adversities, nor broken, nor grieved, nor do we murmur in any disaster to property or sickness of the body. Living by the spirit rather than the flesh, we overcome the weakness of the body by firmness of mind. By the very things that torture and weary you we know and trust that we are proved and strengthened.

Do you think that we suffer adversities equally with you, when you see that the same adversities are not borne equally by us and by you? Among you impatience is always clamorous and complaining; among us a brave and religious patience is always quiet and always thankful to God. It claims nothing joyful or prosperous for itself here, but, mild and gentle and steady against all the whirlwinds of the tossing world, awaits the time of the divine promise. For as long as this body remains, common with others, the bodily condition must also be common; nor is it given to the human race to be separated from one another, except by departing from this world. Meanwhile the good and the bad are held within one house. Whatever comes within the house we suffer with equal lot, until, the end of temporal time completed, we are divided to the lodgings either of eternal death or of immortality. So we are not your equals and peers because, being still placed in this world and in this flesh, we meet the disadvantages of the world and the flesh equally with you. For since everything that punishes lies in the feeling of pain, it is plain that one whom you see not grieving with you is not a partaker of your punishment.

Among us there flourishes the strength of hope and the firmness of faith; amid the very ruins of the falling age the mind is upright, courage unmoved, patience never without joy, and the soul always secure about its God, as the Holy Spirit speaks through the prophet and exhorts, strengthening the firmness of our hope and faith with a heavenly voice: “The fig tree,” he says, “will not bear fruit, and there will be no produce in the vines. The work of the olive will fail, and the fields will not yield food. The sheep will fail from the pasture, and there will be no oxen in the stalls. But I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice in God my Savior.” He denies that the man of God and worshiper of God, supported by the truth of hope and founded on the steadfastness of faith, is moved by the assaults of this world and age. Though the vine fail and the olive deceive and the field, parched as the grass dies from drought, wither, what is that to Christians, what to the servants of God, whom paradise invites, whom all the grace and abundance of the heavenly kingdom awaits? They always exult in the Lord and are glad and rejoice in their God, and bravely endure the evils and adversities of the world while they look forward to the good and prosperous things to come. For we who have put off earthly birth and have been re-created and reborn by the Spirit, and live no longer for the world but for God, shall not receive God's gifts and promises until we come to God. And yet we always ask and pour out prayers for warding off enemies and obtaining rains and either removing or moderating adversities; and for your peace and safety we pray continually and earnestly, day and night, propitiating and appeasing God.

So let no one flatter himself that, because the condition of worldly labors is meanwhile common to us and to the profane, to the worshipers of God and to God's adversaries, through the equality of flesh and body, he may conclude from this that all these things that happen are not inflicted for us. For it was foretold by the preaching of God himself and the testimony of the prophets that the anger of God would come upon the unrighteous, that persecutions which would hurt us humanly would not be lacking, but also that vengeances would follow which would defend the injured divinely.

And how much is done here for us meanwhile! Something is given as an example, so that the anger of God the avenger may be known. But the day of judgment is still ahead, which holy Scripture announces, saying: “Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction from God will be present. For see, the day of the Lord comes, of incurable indignation and anger, to make the whole earth a desert and to destroy the sinners out of it.” And again: “See, the day of the Lord comes, burning like an oven, and all the foreigners and all the wicked will be stubble, and the coming day will set them on fire, says the Lord.” The Lord foretells that the foreigners will be set on fire and burned, that is, those foreign to the divine race and profane, not spiritually reborn nor made children of God. For that only those can escape who have been reborn and sealed with the sign of Christ, God says in another place, when, sending his angels for the devastation of the world and the destruction of the human race, he threatens more severely at the last, saying: “Go and strike and do not spare with your eyes. Do not pity old men, and kill young men and virgins and women and little ones, that they may be utterly destroyed. But do not touch anyone on whom the sign is written.” What this sign is, and on what part of the body it is placed, God shows in another place, saying: “Pass through the midst of Jerusalem and mark a sign on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over the iniquities that are done in their midst.” And that this sign pertains to the passion and blood of Christ, and that whoever is found in this sign is kept safe and unharmed, is likewise proved by the testimony of God, saying: “And the blood shall be a sign for you upon the houses in which you are, and I will see the blood and protect you, and there shall be no plague of destruction on you when I strike the land of Egypt.” What went before in figure, in the lamb that was slain, is fulfilled in Christ, the truth following afterwards. As there, when Egypt was struck, the Jewish people could escape only by the blood and sign of the lamb, so also, when the world begins to be laid waste and struck, whoever is found in the blood and sign of Christ alone escapes.