City of God, Book 1

The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, suggested, and which is due to you by my promise. I have undertaken its defense 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 will dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now patiently awaits, expecting the day when “righteousness shall return to judgment,” Psalm 94:15 and it obtains, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace. This is a great and arduous work, but God is my helper. For I know what ability is needed to persuade the proud how great the virtue of humility is, which raises us, not by a merely human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. For the King and Founder of this city of which we speak has declared to His people in Scripture a decree of the divine law in these words: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5 But the inflated ambition of a proud spirit also lays claim to this, which is God's prerogative, and dearly loves to have this numbered among its attributes, to Show pity to the humbled soul, / And crush the sons of pride. / Virgil, Æneid, 6-854. [Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos] And therefore, as the plan of this work we have undertaken requires, and as occasion offers, we must also speak of the earthly city, which, though it is mistress of the nations, is itself ruled by its lust for rule.

For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed, having been 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 remarkable benefits, as to forget that they would now be unable to utter a single word against it if they had not found in its sacred places, as they fled from the enemy's steel, the life they now boast of. [Augustine refers to the sacking of the city of Rome in 410 by Alaric the Visigoth. He was the most humane of the barbarian invaders, and had embraced Arianism. He spared the Catholics.] Have 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. The bloodthirsty enemy raged up to their very threshold; there his murderous fury acknowledged a limit. There those of the enemy who had any pity brought those to whom they had given quarter, so that no one less mercifully disposed might attack them. And, indeed, when even those murderers who everywhere else showed themselves pitiless came to those spots where what the license of war permitted in every other place was forbidden, their furious rage for slaughter was bridled, and their eagerness to take prisoners was quenched. In this way multitudes escaped who now reproach the Christian religion, and impute to Christ the ills that have fallen on their city; but the preservation of their own lives — a favor they owe to the barbarians' respect for Christ — they attribute, not to our Christ, but to their own good luck. If they had any right perception, they ought rather to attribute the severities and hardships inflicted by their enemies, to that divine providence which customarily reforms the depraved morals 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 further 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 places of every kind, or in those places specially dedicated to Christ's name, and of which the very largest were selected as sanctuaries, so that full scope might thus be given to the expansive compassion which desired that a large multitude might find shelter there. Therefore they ought to give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to His name, so that they may escape the punishment of eternal fire— those who with lying lips took this name on themselves so 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 many who would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter if they had 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.

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 spared those who were found to have fled for sanctuary to the temples of their gods; [The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.] or one instance in which a barbarian general gave orders that no one found in this or that temple should be put to the sword. Did not Æneas see Dying Priam at the shrine, / Staining the hearth he made divine? / Virgil, Æneid, 2:201-2. The renderings of Virgil are from Conington. 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? / Virgil, Æneid, 2:266. Nor is what follows true, that Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed, / And Greece grew weak. / Virgil, Æneid, 2:266. For after this they conquered and destroyed Troy with fire and sword; after this they beheaded Priam as he fled to the altars. Nor 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 killed, 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?

And these are the gods to whose protecting care the Romans were delighted to entrust their city! What a pitiful, pitiful 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 pay money to learn what they say; and, indeed, the very teachers of these authors are considered worthy of a salary from the public purse, and of other honors. There is Virgil, who is read by boys, in order that this great poet, this most famous and approved of all poets, may impregnate their virgin minds, and may not easily be forgotten by them, according to that saying of Horace, The fresh cask long keeps its first tang. / Horace, Ep. I. 2:29. A race I hate now plows the sea, / Transporting Troy to Italy, / And home-gods conquered. / Æneid, 1:11. And should prudent men have entrusted the defense 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, does Æneas himself say —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? / Is it not clear that the gods (whom he does not hesitate to call “conquered”) were entrusted to Æneas rather than he to them, when it is said to him, / The gods of her domestic shrines / Your country to your care consigns? 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 it is 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? Would it not be wiser to believe, not that Rome would never have fallen into so great a calamity if they had not first perished, but rather that they would have perished long ago if Rome had not 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 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 of inventing 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 they do not even take the trouble to notice that for Christ's sake they are spared in spite of their wickedness; and in their mad and blasphemous insolence, they use against His name those very lips with which they falsely claimed that same name so 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 so 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.

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 worshiped the same gods. Not only that, but Phoenix and Ulysses fell / In the void courts by Juno's cell / Were set the spoils to keep; / Snatched from the burning shrines away, / There Ilium's mighty treasure lay, / Rich altars, bowls of massy gold, / And captive garments, rudely rolled / In one promiscuous heap; / While boys and matrons, wild with fear, / In long array were standing near. / Virgil, Æneid. 2:261. In other words, the place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, not so that no one might be led out of it a captive, but so that all the captives might be immured in it. 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. The spoils rescued from the blazing temples and snatched from the gods were collected into it, not to be restored to the vanquished, but to be divided among the victors; while everything that belonged to these churches, even if found elsewhere, was carried back into them with the most religious observance and respect. There liberty was lost; here it was preserved. There bondage was strict; here it was 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 enemies, so that they might be free. In short, the gentle 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, in that victory of theirs the Greeks did 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 there; 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.

Even Cæsar himself gives us positive testimony regarding this custom; for, in his speech in the senate about the conspirators, he says (as Sallust, a historian of distinguished veracity, writes ) “that virgins and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever the conquerors pleased, temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning rife; in short, everything 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 enemies, 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.

Why, then, does our argument need to 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;” and among so many great cities that 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? Can we believe that men who searched with the greatest eagerness for points they could praise would omit those which, in their own estimation, are the most striking proofs of piety? Marcus Marcellus, a distinguished Roman, who took Syracuse, a most splendidly adorned city, is reported to have lamented its coming ruin, and to have shed his own tears over it before he spilled its blood. He also took steps 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 read anywhere that even so chaste and gentle a commander gave orders that no one who had fled to this or that temple should be injured. And this would certainly not have been omitted, when neither his weeping nor his edict protecting chastity could be passed over in silence. Fabius, the conqueror of the city of Taranto, is praised for refraining from taking the images as plunder. For when his secretary asked him what he wanted done with the statues of the gods, which had been taken in large numbers, he veiled his moderation under a joke. For he asked what sort they were; and when they reported to him that there were not only many large images, but some of them armed, “Oh,” he said, “let us leave with the Tarentines their angry gods.” Since, then, the writers of Roman history could not pass over in silence either the weeping of the one general or the laughing of the other, either the chaste pity of the one or the facetious moderation of the other, on what occasion would it be omitted, if, for the honor of any of their enemy's gods, they had shown this particular form of leniency, that in any temple slaughter or captivity was prohibited?

All the despoiling, then, that 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 new was that savage barbarians showed themselves so gentle that the largest churches were chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people who were spared, and that in them no one was killed and from them no one was forcibly dragged; that many were led into them by their relenting enemies to be set free, and that no one was led from them into slavery by merciless enemies. 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 anyone from praising it is mad. No prudent man would attribute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvelously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, “I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless I will not utterly take my loving-kindness from them.”

Will someone say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why? Because it was the mercy of Him who daily “makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:45 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, store up wrath for themselves against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay every man according to his deeds:” Romans 2:4 nevertheless the patience of God still invites the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so, too, the mercy of God embraces the good in order to cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the wicked to punish them. Divine providence has seen fit to prepare good things in the world to come for the righteous, 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; so that we might not covet too eagerly the things that wicked men are seen to enjoy equally, nor shrink with an improper 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 lifted up by 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. Yet often, even in the present distribution of temporal things, God plainly shows His own intervention. 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 now received a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so with the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible generosity confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we would say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we would suppose that such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly but rather greedy and covetous. Therefore, 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 dregs are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction tests, purges, and clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, and exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. What makes so great a difference is not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred by the same movement, mud gives off a horrible stench, and ointment gives off a fragrant odor.

What, then, have the Christians suffered in that calamitous period, that would not profit everyone 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 are far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, they do not judge themselves so completely free from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills. For every man, however commendably he lives, still yields on some points to the lust of the flesh. Even if he does not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, he still slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account. But leaving this aside, where can we easily find a man who holds in proper and just regard those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now strikes the earth as His predictions threatened? Where is the man who lives with them in the way we ought 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 labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, for fear that this might 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, 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 out of fear, even though their own sins are slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they wholly escape punishment. When God afflicts them along with the wicked, they justly find this life bitter, since out of love for its sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners. If anyone refrains from reproving and finding fault with those who are doing wrong, because he seeks a more suitable opportunity, or because he fears they may be made worse by his rebuke, or that other weak persons may be discouraged from trying to lead a good and pious life, and may be driven from the faith; this man's omission seems to be prompted not by covetousness, but by loving consideration. But what is blameworthy is that those who themselves recoil from the conduct of the wicked, and live in quite another way, still spare those faults in other men which they ought to rebuke and wean them from; and spare them because they fear to give offense, for fear that they might injure their interests in those things which good men may innocently and legitimately use — though they use them more greedily than is fitting for persons who are strangers in this world, and profess the hope of a heavenly country. For not only the weaker brothers 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 brothers gladly obtain and grudgingly lose many earthly and temporal things on account of which they do not dare to offend men whose polluted and wicked life greatly displeases them; but also those who live at a higher level, who are not entangled in the meshes of married life, but use meager food and clothing, often think 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, indeed, not by any threats or violence whatever; yet they often decline to find fault with the very deeds they refuse to share in committing, when by finding fault they might possibly prevent them from being committed. They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fails to have a good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needed so 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 temporal punishments on the profligate morals of a community. They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, so that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of eternal life. And if they will not be the companions of the good in seeking everlasting life, they should be loved as enemies, and be dealt with patiently. For as long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may yet 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 I will require his blood at the watchman's hand.” Ezekiel 33:6 For watchmen or overseers of the people are appointed in churches so that they may unsparingly rebuke sin. Nor is a man guiltless of the sin we speak of if, though he is not a watchman, he 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 offense, 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: so that the human spirit may be tested, and that it may be manifested with what fortitude of pious trust, and with what unmercenary love it clings to God.

These are the considerations one must keep in view in order to 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 pointless, and that the apostle is talking idly when he says, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God?” Romans 8:28 They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which are very precious in the sight of God? 1 Peter 3:4 Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle 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 clothing, let us be content with that. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; and in craving it some have strayed from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:6-10 Those, then, who lost all their worldly goods 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 I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21 Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; and it did not grieve him to lose, while still alive, the goods he would soon have to leave at his death. But as for those weaker spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, still cling to them with a somewhat excessive 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.” It was fitting that those who had so long despised these verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of experience. For when the apostle says, “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation,” and so on, what he blames in riches is not the possession of them, but the desire for them. For elsewhere he says, “Command those who are rich in this world not to be proud, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy; to do good, to be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share; storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” 1 Timothy 6:17-19 Those who were using their property in this way have been consoled for light losses by great gains, and have had more pleasure in those possessions which they have made secure by freely giving them away, than grief over those they lost entirely through anxious and selfish hoarding. For nothing could perish on earth except what they would be ashamed to carry away from earth. Our Lord's command is, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break through and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break through or steal: for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21 And those who heeded this command have learned in the time of trouble how wise they were not to despise 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 happened not to find, 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, who voluntarily abandoned vast wealth and became quite poor, though abundantly rich in holiness, when the barbarians sacked Nola, and took him prisoner, used to pray silently, as he later told me, “O Lord, do not let me be troubled over gold and silver, for You know where all my treasure is.” 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 who obeyed their Lord when He warned them where and how to store up treasure did not lose even their earthly possessions in the invasion of the barbarians; while those who are now repenting that they did not obey Him have learned 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 tortured to force them to hand over their goods to the enemy. Indeed, they could neither hand over nor lose the good that made them 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; so that they might be taught to love Him who enriches with eternal happiness all who suffer for Him, rather than 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 except by denying its existence. So perhaps the torture that taught them to set their affections on a possession they could not lose was more useful than those possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, troubled 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 such people had to be shown that not only the actual possession of wealth, but also the desire for it, 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 do not know, indeed, whether any such person was tortured on the supposition that he had wealth; but if so, then certainly in confessing a holy poverty under interrogation, he confessed Christ. And though the barbarians could hardly be expected to 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 enduring it piously. For famine rescued those it killed outright from the ills of this life, as a kindly disease would have done; and those who were only weakened by hunger were taught to live more sparingly and grew used to longer fasts.

But, it is added, many Christians were slaughtered, and were put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well, if this is hard to bear, it is certainly 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 sometime. The end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest. For of two things that have both ceased to exist, one is not better and the other worse — one greater and the other less. And what does it matter 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 countless deaths, as 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 that prompts us to choose to live long in fear of so many deaths rather 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. A death that is the end of a good life is not to be judged an evil; for death becomes evil only by the retribution which follows it. Those, then, who are destined to die need not be anxious to ask 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 the death of the wicked rich man who lay in purple and fine linen, what harm could these terrifying deaths do to the dead who had lived well?

Further still, we are reminded that in the great carnage that occurred then, the bodies could not even be buried. But godly confidence is not appalled by such an ill-omened circumstance; for the faithful bear in mind that assurance has been given that not a hair of their head shall perish, and that, therefore, even if they are devoured by beasts, their blessed resurrection will not be hindered by this. The Truth would by no means have said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” Matthew 10:28 if anything whatever that an enemy could do to the body of the slain could be detrimental to the future life. Or will someone perhaps take such an absurd position as to contend that those who kill the body are not to be feared before death, for fear they will kill the body, but after death, for fear they will deprive it of burial? If this is so, then what Christ says is false: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do;” Luke 12:4 for it seems they can do great injury to the dead body. Far be it from us to suppose that the Truth can be false in this way. Those who kill the body are said “to do something,” because the deathblow is felt, the body still having sensation; but after that, they have nothing more 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 from where He will raise again what He created. It is said, indeed, in the Psalm: “They have given the dead bodies of Your servants as food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of Your saints for the beasts of the earth. They have shed their blood like water all around Jerusalem; and there was no one to bury them.” But this was said to show the cruelty of those who did these things rather than the misery of those who suffered them. To the eyes of men this appears a harsh and dismal lot, yet “the death of His saints is precious in the sight of the Lord.” Therefore 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 a solace to the living rather than a comfort to 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 servants furnished the purple-clad Dives with a funeral splendid in human eyes; but in the sight of God the more sumptuous funeral was the one the ulcerous pauper received at the hands of the angels, who did not carry him out to a marble tomb, but carried him up 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 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 for burial a poet has aptly said: “He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault.” How much less should they jeer at 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 hidden!

Nevertheless the bodies of the dead are not to be despised and left unburied on this account; least of all the bodies of the righteous and faithful, which have been used by the Holy Spirit as His organs and instruments for all good works. For if the dress of a father, or his ring, or anything he wore, is precious to his children, in proportion to the love they bore him, how much more reason we have to care for 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 the last offices were piously performed for the righteous of ancient times, and sepulchres provided for them, and funeral rites celebrated; and they themselves, while still alive, gave their sons instructions about their burial, and, on occasion, even about the removal of their bodies to some favorite place. And Tobit, according to the angel's testimony, is commended, and is said to have pleased God by burying the dead.⁠a Our Lord Himself, too, though He was to rise again on 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 in preparation for His burial. Matthew 26:10-13 And the Gospel speaks with praise of those who took care to take down His body from the cross, and wrap it lovingly in costly burial cloths, and see to its burial. John 19:38 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, because they nourish faith in the resurrection. And we may also draw from them this wholesome lesson, that if God does not forget even any kindness that loving care shows to the unconscious dead, much more will He reward the love we show toward the living. Other things, indeed, that the holy patriarchs said of the burial and removal of their bodies, they meant to be taken in a prophetic sense; but we need not speak of these at length here, since what we have already said is sufficient. But if the lack of the things that are necessary for the support of the living, such 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 makes it more fruitful, how much less can the absence of the funeral, and of the other customary attentions paid to the dead, make those wretched who are already resting in the hidden dwellings of the blessed! Consequently, though in the sack of Rome and of other towns the dead bodies of the Christians were deprived of these last offices, this is neither the fault of the living, for they could not perform them; nor a harm inflicted on the dead, for they cannot feel the loss.

But, they say, many Christians were even led away captive. This would indeed be a most pitiable fate if they could be led away to any place where they could not find their God. But for this calamity too, sacred Scripture offers great consolation. The three youths Daniel 3 were captives; Daniel was a captive; so were other prophets: and God, the comforter, did not fail them. And in the same way He has not failed His own people in the power of a nation which, though barbarous, is still human — He who did not abandon the prophet in the belly of a monster. Jonah 1 These things, indeed, are ridiculed rather than believed by those we are debating; though they believe what they read in their own books, that Arion of Methymna, the famous lyrist, 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 marvelous, and more marvelous because a greater exhibition of power.

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 first bound him with an oath, that if he failed to accomplish their wish, he would return to Carthage. He went and persuaded the senate to take the opposite course, because he believed it was not to 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 he voluntarily did what he had sworn. 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 around him, so that he could not lean on any part of it without intense pain; and so they killed him by depriving him of sleep. Indeed, they rightly applaud the virtue that rose above 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 specifically so 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 crueler punishment could they have inflicted in their anger on a perjured person? But why should I not draw a double inference from my reasoning? Regulus certainly had such reverence for the gods, that for the sake of his oath 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 for this present life, he was certainly much deceived, for it brought his life to a frightful end. 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 until then unheard-of, and all too horrible kind of punishment. And if the worshippers of the gods are rewarded with happiness in the life to come, why, then, do they slander the influence of Christianity? Why do they assert that this disaster has overtaken the city because it has ceased to worship its gods, since, however diligently it worships them, it may still be as unfortunate as Regulus was? Or will someone carry such astonishing blindness so far as to attempt wildly, in the face of the evident truth, to contend that though one man might be unfortunate, though a worshipper of the gods, a whole city could not be? 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 still enjoy the blessedness of a virtuous soul, then let them recognize that true virtue by which a city also may be blessed. For the blessedness of a community and of an individual flows from the same source; for a community is nothing else than a harmonious collection of individuals. So I am not concerned for the moment to discuss what kind of virtue Regulus possessed; it is enough that by his very noble example they are forced to admit 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 a calamity like the one that happened to Regulus may also happen to a community, even though they worship their gods as diligently as he did; 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 use this calamity as an occasion to revile our most wholesome religion in a way no 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-out and excruciating torture, much less should the Christian name 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.

But they imagine 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 in truth, on this point, it is not Christian faith, nor piety, nor even the virtue of chastity, that is caught in any difficulty; the only difficulty is to treat the subject in a way that satisfies both modesty and reason. And in discussing it we shall be less concerned to reply to our accusers than to comfort our friends. First, then, let this be laid down as an unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and from there rules the members of the body, which becomes holy by 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 to the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, as long as he cannot escape it without sin. But since not only can pain be inflicted on another's body, but lust can also be gratified on it, whenever anything of this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed — shame for fear that an act which could not be endured without some sensual pleasure should be believed to have been committed with some assent of the will as well.

And consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves to avoid such disgrace, who with any human feeling would refuse to forgive them? And as for those who would not put an end to their lives, for fear that they might seem to escape the crime of another by a sin of their own, whoever charges them with this as a great wickedness is not himself guiltless of the fault of folly. For if it is not lawful to take the law into our own hands, and kill even a guilty person, whose death no public sentence has warranted, then certainly he who kills himself is a homicide, and all the guiltier of his own death the more innocent he was of the offense for which he condemned himself to die. Do we rightly detest the deed of Judas, and does truth itself pronounce that by hanging himself he aggravated rather than expiated the guilt of that most iniquitous betrayal, since, by despairing of God's mercy in his sorrow that brought death, he left himself no room for healing penitence? How much more should someone who has done nothing deserving such a punishment refrain from laying violent hands on himself! 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 wrong do wrong to himself, and by killing himself kill the innocent to escape another's guilty act, and perpetrate on himself a sin of his own, so that the sin of another may not be perpetrated on him?

But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute the violated? It will not pollute if it is another's; if it pollutes, it is not another's, but is shared also by the polluted. But since purity is a virtue of the soul, and has as its companion virtue the fortitude that would rather endure any suffering than consent to evil; and since no one, however magnanimous and pure, always has his own body at his disposal, but can control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body is seized and forcibly used to satisfy the lust of another, he loses his purity as a result? For if purity can be thus destroyed, then surely purity is not a virtue of the soul; nor can it be numbered among those good things by which 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 good things of this kind that may be diminished without in any way diminishing the goodness and rectitude of our life. But if purity is nothing better than these, why should the body be endangered to preserve it? If, on the other hand, it belongs to the soul, then it is not lost even when the body is violated. More than that, 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 in holiness remains, and, as far as the body itself is concerned, the power as well. 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 that do violence to them and wound them, and the surgeons who administer relief often perform operations that sicken the spectator. Suppose a midwife has (whether maliciously or accidentally, or through unskillfulness) destroyed the virginity of some girl, while trying to confirm 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 any of her bodily sanctity at all. And thus, as 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 still possesses even 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 instead 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 the same way, the sanctity of the body is lost when the sanctity of the soul is violated, though the body itself remains 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 that is still uncertain, and not her own.

This, then, is our position, and it seems clear enough. We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul gives no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is not hers but belongs to the man who violates her. But do those against whom we have to defend not only the souls but also the sacred bodies of these outraged Christian captives — do they, perhaps, dare to dispute our position? But everyone knows 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. A declaimer spoke no less aptly than truly when he said of this sad event: “Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed adultery.” That was spoken most forcefully and truly. 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 paying attention 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 the act by which she was ravished against her will was not impurity, then the act by which she, being chaste, is punished is not justice. I appeal to you, you laws and judges of Rome. Even after great atrocities have been committed, you do not allow the criminal to be put to death without trial. If, then, someone were to bring this case before your court, and were to prove to you that a woman not only untried, but chaste and innocent, had been killed, would you not punish the murderer with proportionate severity? This crime was committed by Lucretia; the Lucretia so celebrated and praised killed the innocent, chaste, outraged Lucretia. Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot, because there is no one present whom you can punish, why do you praise so extravagantly the woman who killed an innocent and chaste woman? Surely you will find it impossible to defend her before the judges of the realms below, if they are as your poets like to represent 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. Or perhaps she is not there, because she killed herself conscious of guilt, not of innocence? She alone knows her reason; but what if she was betrayed by the pleasure of the act, and gave some consent to Sextus, though he abused her so violently, and then was so stricken with remorse, that she thought death alone could expiate her sin? Even if this were the case, she still ought to have kept her hand from suicide, if with her false gods she could have accomplished a fruitful repentance. However, if that were the case, and if it were false that there were two, but only one 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 those dwellers below “who guiltless sent themselves to doom.” But Lucretia's case presents 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 kill her? Nevertheless, for our purpose of refuting those who are unable to comprehend what true sanctity is, and who therefore mock our outraged Christian women, it is enough that in the case of this noble Roman matron it was said in her praise, “There were two, but the adultery was the crime of only one.” For Lucretia was confidently believed to be above the contamination of any thought of consenting 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 on her, though without her complicity; 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 had been willing and did not resent the wrong that had been done to her. She could not show her conscience to men, but she judged that her self-inflicted punishment would testify to her state of mind; and she burned with shame at the thought that her patient endurance of the foul affront that another had done to her would be construed as complicity with him. That was not the decision of the Christian women who suffered as she did, and yet survive. They refused to avenge on themselves the guilt of others, and so add crimes of their own to those crimes in which they had no share. For they would have done this if their shame had 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 held to be pure, and this contents them; they ask no more: it is enough for them to have the opportunity of doing good, and they decline to evade the distress of human suspicion, for fear that by doing so they would deviate from the divine law.

It is not without significance that nowhere in the holy canonical books can there be found either divine precept or permission to take away our own life, whether for the sake of entering into the enjoyment of immortality, or of shunning, or ridding ourselves of anything whatever. Indeed, the law, rightly interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says, “You shall not kill.” This is proved especially by the omission of the words “your neighbor,” which are inserted when false witness is forbidden: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Nor should anyone suppose on this account he has not broken this commandment if he has borne false witness only against himself. For the love of our neighbor is regulated by the love of ourselves, as it is written, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, then, he who makes false statements about himself is no less guilty of bearing false witness than if he had made them to the injury of his neighbor; although in the commandment prohibiting false witness only his neighbor is mentioned, and people who take no pains to understand it might suppose that a man was allowed to be a false witness to his own hurt; how much more reason we have to understand that a man may not kill himself, since in the commandment, “You shall not kill,” there is no limitation added nor any exception made in favor of anyone, and least of all in favor of the person 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 has no sensation, yet they also are said to live, and consequently they can die; and therefore, if violence is done to them, they can be killed. So, too, the apostle, when speaking of the seeds of such things as these, says, “What you sow is not made alive unless it dies;” and in the Psalm it is said, “He killed their vines with hail.” Must we therefore count it a breach of this commandment, “You shall not kill,” to pull a flower? Are we to be so insane as to endorse the foolish error of the Manichæans? Putting aside, then, these ravings, if, when we say, You shall not kill, we do not take this to refer to 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 lack 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 take that commandment to refer simply to man. The commandment is, “You shall not kill man;” therefore neither another nor yourself, for he who kills himself still kills nothing other than man.

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, the one to whom authority is delegated, and who is only the sword in the hand of the one who uses it, is not himself responsible for the death he deals. And, accordingly, those 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, “You shall not kill.” Abraham indeed was not merely considered guiltless of cruelty, but was even applauded for his piety, because he was ready to kill his son in obedience to God, not to his own passion. And it is reasonable enough to ask whether we are to consider that Jephthah killed his daughter in compliance with a command of God, 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 enemies together, is justified only on this ground, that the Spirit who worked wonders through 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.

But those 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 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 crowd? And should we not call the greater mind the one that faces rather than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison with the light and purity of conscience, thinks little of the judgment of men, and especially of the crowd, which is frequently involved in a mist of error? And, therefore, if suicide is to be considered a magnanimous act, no one can rank higher for magnanimity than Cleombrotus, who (as the story goes), when he had read Plato's book in which he discusses the immortality of the soul, threw himself from a wall, and so passed from this life to the one 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 magnanimity alone urging him to seek death, and break away from the sweet detention of this life. And yet Plato himself, whom he had read, would have told him that this was a magnanimous rather than a justifiable action; for he would certainly have been the first to commit, or at least to recommend suicide, if the same bright intellect which saw that the soul was immortal had not also discerned 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 from 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; though not all examples, only those which are distinguished by their piety, and are proportionately worthy of imitation. In favor of 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 since He did not do this, nor proposed this way of departing this life, even though He was addressing His own friends for whom He had promised to prepare everlasting mansions, it is obvious that the examples drawn from the “nations that forget God,” give no warrant for imitation to the worshippers of the one true God.

Besides Lucretia, of whom enough has already been said, our advocates of suicide have some difficulty in finding any other prescriptive example, except 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 highly regarded 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 what can I say of this action of his, except that his own friends, enlightened men like him, prudently dissuaded him, and therefore judged his act to be the act of a feeble rather than a strong spirit, and dictated not by honorable 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 honor? Cato, then, cannot have thought it shameful to live under Cæsar's rule; for if he had, 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 loved by him more than he envied Cæsar the glory of pardoning him (as indeed Cæsar himself is reported to have said ); or if envy is too strong a word, let us say he was ashamed that this glory would be his.

Our opponents are offended that we prefer the saintly Job to Cato, 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 Marcus Regulus to Marcus Cato. For Cato had never conquered Cæsar; and, when conquered by him, disdained to submit to him, and put himself to death to escape this submission. 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 lament, and which the enemy himself was compelled to admire; yet afterward, 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 contempt for life, and preferring to end it by whatever torments excited enemies might contrive, rather than terminate it by his own hand, he could not have declared more clearly 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 only an earthly country to defend, and who, though they had only false gods, still gave them true worship, and carefully kept their oath to them; if these men, who by the custom 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 still rather endure slavery than commit suicide, how much more 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 time delivered into the hands of their enemies to test 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 foolish as to maintain that he may kill himself because an enemy has sinned, or is going to sin, against him?

But, we are told, there is reason 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 way 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 is 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, so that we may obviate a possible future sin; let us now commit murder, so that we do not perhaps commit adultery later? If we are so controlled by iniquity that innocence is out of the question, and we can at best only 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 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 trusting 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, however presented. And if that lustful disobedience, which still dwells in our mortal members, follows its own law irrespective of our will, surely its movements in the body of one who rebels against them are as blameless as its movements in the body of one who sleeps.

But, they say, in the time of persecution some holy women escaped those who threatened 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 Catholic Church as martyrs. Of such persons I do not presume to speak rashly. I cannot tell whether the church may not have been granted some divine authority, proved by trustworthy evidence, for so honoring 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 commands any act, and shows by plain evidence that He has commanded it, who will call obedience criminal? Who will accuse so religious a submission? But then not every man is justified in sacrificing his son to God, because Abraham was commendable in so doing. The soldier who has killed a man in obedience to the authority under which he is lawfully commissioned, is not accused of murder by any law of his state; indeed, if he has not killed him, it is then that 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, in this case he has 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? Then the man who knows it 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 made known. As for us, we can become privy to the secrets of conscience only insofar as these are disclosed to us, and so far only do we judge: “No one knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him.” 1 Corinthians 2:11 But this we affirm, this we maintain, this we declare to be right in every way, 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 would be 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 so 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.

There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and which is thought a sound one — namely, to avoid falling into sin either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain. If this reason were a good one, then we would be compelled to urge men to destroy themselves at once, as soon as they have been washed in the laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin. That is the time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out. And if this escape may lawfully be secured by suicide, why not then especially? Why does any baptized person hold back 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 the power to rid himself of them all so easily, and when it is written, “He who loves danger shall fall into it?”⁠a 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 anyone so blinded and twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth, as to think that, although a man ought to kill himself for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought nevertheless 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 entangles us? What reason, then, is there for us to spend time on those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or widowed continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have a much simpler and shorter 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 anyone thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I do not say he is foolish, but mad. With what face, then, can he say to any man, “Kill yourself, so that you do not add a heinous sin to your small sins 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, so that you do not fall again into similar or even graver 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 would be one. And since not even this is so, there is none.

Do not let your life, then, be a burden to you, you 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 on 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.” Romans 11:33 Nevertheless, faithfully question your own souls as to whether you have not been unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity; and whether you have not been so desirous of the human praise that is accorded to these virtues, that you 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 be surprised that you have lost what can win men's praise, and kept what cannot be displayed to men. If you did not consent to sin, it was because God added His aid to His grace so that it might not be lost, and because shame before men succeeded to human glory so that it might not be loved. But in both respects even the faint-hearted 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 questioned, 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 anyone similar excellences of sanctity and purity, but rose above human applause, which tends to be abundant in proportion to the rarity of the virtue applauded, and rather desired that their own number should increase, 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 to outrage them so grossly; nor must they allow themselves to believe that God overlooked their character when He permitted acts which no one commits with impunity. For some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free play at present by the secret judgment of God, and are reserved for 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, by which 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 came upon them in the taking of the city. As, therefore, some men were removed by death so that no wickedness might change their disposition, so these women were outraged so that prosperity would not 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 in them. We must further notice that some of those sufferers may have supposed that continence is a bodily good, and lasts as long as the body is inviolate, and did not understand that the purity both of the body and the soul rests on the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God's grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. They are probably now delivered from this error. For when they reflect how conscientiously they served God, and when they settle again into the firm conviction that He can in no way 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 forced to the conclusion that He could never have permitted these disasters to happen to His saints, if by them that saintliness could be destroyed which He Himself had bestowed on them, and delights to see in them.

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 they use the good things of earth as pilgrims who are not detained by them, and its ills either test or improve them. As for those who insult them in their trials, and when ills come upon them say, “Where is your God?” we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities which they worship their gods to avoid, or maintain they ought to be worshiped; 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 test 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.”

If the famous Scipio Nasica, who was once your pontiff and was unanimously chosen by the senate when, in the panic created by the Punic war, they sought the best citizen to receive the Phrygian goddess, were alive now, he would curb this shamelessness of yours, though you would perhaps scarcely dare to look at the face of such a man. Why do you complain of Christianity in your calamities, unless it is because you desire to enjoy your luxurious license 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 honorably, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of drunken pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold 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 he was not mistaken; the outcome 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 immediately resulted from the prosperous condition of things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed by fierce and bloody seditions; then, through a chain of baleful causes, civil wars followed, 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 for 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 the rest, worn and weary, under its yoke.

For at what stage would that passion rest 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 on except 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 trying to avoid when he opposed the destruction of the greatest, strongest, wealthiest city of Rome's enemy. He thought that in this way fear would act as a curb on lust, and that lust, once curbed, would not run riot in luxury, and that, with luxury prevented, avarice would be at an end; and that, with these vices banished, virtue would flourish and increase the great profit of the state; and liberty, the fit companion of virtue, would remain 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 a single dissenting voice — threw cold water on the proposal of the senate to build a circle of seats around the theater, and in a very weighty speech warned them against allowing the luxurious manners of Greece to sap the Roman manliness, and persuaded them not to yield to the enervating and emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. His words were so authoritative and forceful that the senate was moved to prohibit the use even of those benches which until then had customarily been brought to the theater for the temporary use of the citizens. How eagerly would such a man as this have banished from Rome the stage shows 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 be propitiated rather than despised. For the Gentiles had not yet received the revelation of the heavenly doctrine which would 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.

Know then, you who are ignorant of this, and be reminded, you who feign ignorance, while you complain against Him who has freed you from such rulers, that the theatrical games, exhibitions of shameless folly and license, were established at Rome, not by men's vicious cravings, but by the appointment of your gods. You might much more pardonably have given divine honors to Scipio than to gods like these. The gods were not as moral as their pontiff. But give me your attention now, if your mind, intoxicated by its deep drinking of error, can take in any sober truth. The gods commanded that games be put on in their honor to stop a physical pestilence; their pontiff prohibited the construction of a theater, to prevent a moral pestilence. If, then, enough mental enlightenment remains in you to prefer the soul to the body, choose whom you will worship. Besides, though the pestilence stopped, this was not because the voluptuous madness of stage-plays had taken possession of a warlike people until then accustomed only to the games of the circus; but these astute and wicked spirits, foreseeing that in due course the pestilence would shortly cease, seized the opportunity to infect, not the bodies, but the morals of their worshipers, with a far more serious disease. And in this pestilence these gods find great enjoyment, because it darkened the minds of men with such gross darkness and disgraced them with such foul deformity, that even quite recently (will posterity be able to believe 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 compete with one another over who could run most madly after the actors in the theaters.

You deluded men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, that possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern nations are lamenting your ruin, and while powerful states in the most remote parts of the earth are mourning your fall as a public calamity, you yourselves are crowding to the theaters, pouring into them and filling them, and, in short, playing a madder part now than ever before? This was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck of virtue and honor that Scipio tried to protect you from when he prohibited the construction of theaters; this was why he wanted you still to have an enemy to fear, since he saw how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you. He did not consider a republic flourishing if its walls stand but its morals are in ruins. But the seductions of evil-minded devils had more influence on you than the precautions of prudent men. So you will not allow the injuries you do to be blamed on you, but you blame the injuries you suffer on 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 tranquility of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury. Scipio wanted you to be hard pressed by an enemy so that you would not abandon yourselves to luxurious habits; but you are so abandoned that your luxury is not restrained even when you are crushed by the enemy. You have missed the benefit of your calamity; you have been made utterly wretched and have remained utterly profligate.

And the fact that you are still alive is due to God, who spares you so that you may be warned 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 where every man could find asylum and absolution from all crime — a remarkable foreshadowing of what has recently occurred in honor 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 what the former have done so that the number of their enemies would not be diminished.

Let these and similar answers (if any fuller and more fitting 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 hidden among her enemies are those who are destined to be fellow citizens, so that she does not think it a fruitless labor 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 will not dwell eternally in the lot of the saints. Some of these are not recognized now; others declare themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they wear. Today you may see these men thronging the churches with us, and tomorrow crowding the theaters with the godless. But we have less reason to despair of reclaiming even such people if among our most declared enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves, who are destined to become our friends. In fact, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment separates them. Now, with God's help, I will speak of the rise, progress, and end of these two cities; and what I write, I write for the glory of the city of God, so that, being compared with the other, it may shine with a brighter luster.

But I have still some things to say in refutation of those who attribute the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, because it prohibits the offering of sacrifices to the gods. To this end I must recount all, or as many as may seem sufficient, of the disasters that happened to 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 on them, and had prohibited their sacrifices. I must then go on to show what social well-being the true God, in whose hand all kingdoms are, saw fit to grant them so that their empire might increase. I must show why He did so, and how their false gods, far from aiding them at all, greatly injured them by guile and deceit. And, lastly, I must meet those who, when convinced and refuted on this point by irrefutable proofs, try 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 into debate with the philosophers, not the mere common herd of philosophers, but the most renowned, who agree with us on many points, such as 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, so that, having refuted the objections of the wicked with whatever ability God may grant, we may defend the city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, to which alone the promise of true and everlasting happiness is attached. Here, then, let us conclude, so that we may take up these subjects in a new book.