Gray Hairs on Boys

… that the wars, the famine, and the plague with which the world was then afflicted must be charged to the Christians, because they did not worship the gods. Cyprian answers, fairly, that — all things being gradually worn down by the old age of the world — it was rather the pagans themselves who were the cause of such troubles, because they did not worship God, and because they were on top of that harassing the Christians with unjust persecutions.

For a long time, Demetrianus, I treated your abuse with contempt — the sacrilegious mouth and the godless words you kept shouting against the one true God. I thought it more restrained, and better, to pass over a mistaken man’s ignorance in silence than to provoke a senseless one’s fury by answering. And I did not do this without warrant from the divine teaching, since it is written, “Do not speak in the ears of a fool, or when he hears you he will despise the wisdom of your words”; and again, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will become like him yourself.” We are told, besides, to keep what is holy within our own knowledge and not put it out to be trampled by pigs and dogs, since the Lord says, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls in front of pigs, or they will trample them underfoot and turn and tear you to pieces.” [g]

For when you used to come to me — often, and with the wish to contradict rather than the wish to learn, preferring to press your own opinions shamelessly at the top of your voice rather than listen patiently to mine — it seemed to me foolish to argue with you. It would be easier and lighter work to quiet the angry waves of a rough sea by shouting at them than to check your madness by argument. It would certainly be a pointless and wasted labor to hold out light to a blind man, a lecture to a deaf one, or wisdom to a brute beast; for a beast cannot understand, a blind man cannot take in the light, and a deaf man cannot hear.

With that in mind I have often held my tongue and beaten an impatient man with patience, since I could neither teach a man who would not be taught, nor check a godless man with religion, nor restrain a raving man with gentleness. But now you say that a great many people are complaining that we are the reason wars break out more often, that plague rages, that famines rage, that long droughts are holding back the showers and the rain. It is no longer right for me to keep quiet, or my silence will begin to be put down to a lack of confidence rather than to restraint, and while I am treating false charges with contempt I may look as though I am admitting the crime.

So I answer you, Demetrianus, and the others as well whom you have perhaps stirred up — many of them made your partisans by your sowing hatred against us with spiteful words, budding out from your own root and origin. Still, I believe they will grant that what I say is reasonable; for a man who can be moved to evil by the deception of a lie will be moved to good far more easily by the force of the truth.

You have said that all of this is caused by us, and that the disasters now shaking and distressing the world ought to be laid at our door, because your gods are not worshipped by us. On that point — since you know nothing of God and are a stranger to the truth — you must first understand this: the world has grown old. It no longer stands in the strength it once stood in, and it has not the vigor and force it once had. Even if we said nothing, and brought forward no proof from the sacred Scriptures and the divine declarations, the world itself is announcing it now, and testifying to its own decline by the failing state it is in. [i]

In winter there is not the same abundance of showers to feed the seed. In summer the sun has not the same heat to ripen the harvest. In spring the grainfields are not so glad, and the autumn is not so fruitful in what the trees bear. Less marble is quarried out of the gutted, worn-out mountains; the smaller yields of gold and silver hint that the metals will soon be spent, and the impoverished veins are pinched and shrink day by day. The farmer is failing in the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier in camp, honesty in the marketplace, justice in the courts, harmony among friends, skill in the crafts, discipline in morals.

Do you think that a thing growing old keeps the same solid character it had when it flourished in its youth, new and vigorous? Whatever is sinking toward decay, with its end close at hand, must of necessity weaken. So the sun at his setting throws out his rays with less of his bright fire; so the moon, on her downward course, wanes with her horns worn away; so the tree that was green and fruitful before grows misshapen in a barren old age as its branches dry; so the spring that once poured out generously from its overflowing veins scarcely trickles now, as age makes it fail. This is the sentence passed on the world; this is God’s law: that everything which has had a beginning should perish, that what has grown should grow old, that what is strong should become weak and what is great become small, and that when they have been weakened and diminished they should come to an end.

You charge the Christians with everything decaying as the world grows old. What if old men charged the Christians with growing less strong in their old age — with no longer having, as they once did, the same quickness in their hearing, the same swiftness in their feet, the same sharpness in their eyes, the same vigor of strength, the same freshness in the working of their bodies, the same fullness in their limbs — and with the fact that a man’s life once lasted beyond eight and nine hundred years and can now barely reach a hundred? [j]

We see gray hairs on boys: the hair fails before it has begun to grow. Life does not end in old age; it begins with old age. So even at its very start, birth is hurrying to its close. So whatever is born now degenerates along with the old age of the world itself. No one, then, ought to be surprised that everything in the world is beginning to fail, when the whole world itself is already failing and at its end.

As for wars going on and on, deaths and famines piling anxiety up, health shattered by raging diseases, the human race laid waste by the desolation of plague — know that all of this was foretold: that in the last times evils would multiply and troubles come in every kind, and that as the day of judgment now draws near the reproof of an offended God would be roused more and more for the scourging of the human race.

These things do not happen — as your lying complaint and your ignorant inexperience of the truth keeps asserting and repeating — because your gods are not worshipped by us, but because God is not worshipped by you. He is Lord and Ruler of the world; everything is carried on by his will and direction, and nothing can be done except what he has done himself or allowed to be done. So when things happen that show the anger of an offended God, they do not happen on account of us, by whom God is worshipped. They are called down by your own sins and by what you have deserved — you, who neither seek God in any way nor fear him, because your empty superstitions are not abandoned and the true religion is not known well enough for the one God over all to be worshipped and prayed to alone.

In short, listen to him speaking, teaching and warning us at once with a divine voice. “You shall worship the Lord your God,” he says, “and you shall serve him only.” And again, “You shall have no other gods but me.” And again, “Do not go after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, and do not provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, to destroy you.” [k]

Moreover, the prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, testifies to the anger of God and announces it, saying: “This is what the Lord Almighty says: Because of my house that lies waste, while you each run to your own house — therefore the heavens will be held back from their dew, and the earth will withhold her fruits. And I will bring a sword upon the land, and upon the grain, and upon the wine, and upon the oil, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labors of their hands.” And another prophet says the same again: “And I will make it rain on one city, and on another city I will make no rain fall. One piece of ground will be rained on, and the piece where I send no rain will wither. And two and three cities will be gathered into one city to drink water, and they will not be satisfied; and still you were not turned back to me, says the Lord.”

Look: the Lord is angry and full of wrath, and he threatens, because you do not turn to him. And in this stubbornness and contempt of yours you are astonished, or you complain, if the rain comes down more sparingly than usual; if the ground lies neglected and goes to dust; if the barren soil brings up hardly a few thin, pale blades; if the destroying hail cripples the vines; if a whirlwind tears the olive tree out by the roots; if drought dries up the spring; if a diseased wind poisons the air; if the weakness of sickness wastes a man away — although all of these come as the consequence of the sins that provoke them, and God is more deeply angry still when evils so many and so great achieve nothing. [l]

That these things happen either to discipline the stubborn or to punish the wicked, the same God declares in the Holy Scriptures, saying, “I struck your children for nothing; they did not take correction.” And the prophet, devoted and dedicated to God, answers those words in the same strain and says, “You struck them, and they did not grieve; you scourged them, and they refused to take correction.”

Look — blows are laid on by God, and there is no fear of God. Look — beatings and whippings from above are not lacking, and there is no trembling and no fear. And what if no such reproof as that ever entered human affairs at all? How much greater still would men’s boldness be, if it were safe in the certainty that their crimes went unpunished!

You complain that the springs are less plentiful for you now, that the breezes are less healthy, that the frequent showers and the fertile earth give you less ready help, that the elements no longer wait on your needs and your pleasures as they used to. But do you serve God, by whom all things are appointed to serve you? Do you wait on him, by whose good pleasure everything waits on you? [m]

You require service from your slave. You are a man, and you force your fellow man to submit and obey you. And yet you share the same lot in being born and the same condition in dying; you have the same bodily substance and a common order of souls; you come into this world of ours and leave it again after a time with equal right and under the same law. All the same, unless he serves you as you please, unless he obeys you to suit your will, you flog and whip him, an overbearing master demanding more than his due. You afflict and torture him with hunger, with thirst, with nakedness, and often enough with the sword and with prison as well. And you, wretched man, do not acknowledge the Lord your God, while you are yourself playing the lord like this?

And so, with good reason, God’s blows and whippings are not missing from the plagues that come. And since they do no good in this matter, and do not turn individuals to God by such terrifying destructions, what is left after everything is the everlasting prison, the fire that never stops, the punishment without end. The groaning of those who beg there will not be heard, because here the terror of an angry God went unheard as he cried out through his prophet, saying: “Hear the word of the Lord, children of Israel: the judgment of the Lord is against the inhabitants of the earth, because there is no mercy, no truth, no knowledge of God on the earth. But cursing and lying and killing and stealing and adultery have broken out over the land, and they mingle blood with blood. Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who lives in it, with the beasts of the field, and the things that creep on the earth, and the birds of the sky; and the fish of the sea will waste away, so that no one may judge and no one rebuke.” [p]

God says he is full of wrath and anger, because there is no acknowledgment of God on the earth, and God is neither known nor feared. God rebukes the sins of lying, of lust, of fraud, of cruelty, of godlessness, of rage, and finds fault with them, and no one turns to innocence. Look: the very things are happening that were foretold long ago by the words of God, and nobody is warned by believing what is in front of him to take thought for what is coming. In the middle of the very disasters in which the soul, hemmed in and shut up, can scarcely breathe, men still find room to be evil, and in such great danger they judge everyone but themselves. You are indignant that God is angry — as though by living badly you were deserving anything good, as though everything of that kind that happens were not endlessly less and slighter than your sins.

You who judge others, be a judge of yourself for once. Look into the hiding places of your own conscience. Indeed, since by now there is not even any shame in your sin, and you are wicked as though it were the wickedness itself that pleased you — you, who are seen plainly and nakedly by everyone else, look at yourself for once as well. For you are either swollen with pride, or greedy with money-hunger, or cruel with anger, or wasteful at the dice table, or flushed with drink, or bitter with envy, or filthy with lust, or violent with cruelty; and then you wonder that God’s anger grows in punishing the human race, when the sin that is punished grows greater every day. [q]

You complain that the enemy rises up, as though, even if there were no enemy, you could have peace among the very togas of peacetime. You complain that the enemy rises up, as though, even if foreign armies and the danger from the barbarians were beaten back, the weapons of attack at home — the slanders and injuries of powerful citizens — would not be fiercer and more brutally wielded inside the walls.

You complain of failed crops and famine, as though drought made a worse famine than greed; as though the fierceness of want did not rise more terribly from men grabbing at the increase of the year’s produce and piling up its price. You complain that heaven is shut against rain, when in the same way the barns are shut on earth. You complain that less is produced now, as though what has already been produced were being given to the poor.

You throw plague and disease in our faces, when by that same plague and disease the crimes of individuals are either exposed or made worse: no mercy is shown to the weak, and greed and robbery stand waiting open-mouthed for the dead. The same men are timid about the duties of affection and reckless in chasing an unholy profit; they run from the deaths of the dying and hunger for the spoils of the dead — so that it looks as if the wretched are perhaps abandoned in their sickness for this very reason, that they may not be cured and get away. For a man who moves in so eagerly on a dying man’s estate probably wanted the sick man to die.

So great a terror of destruction cannot teach innocence. In the middle of a people dying in constant slaughter, nobody considers that he himself is mortal. Everywhere there is scattering, and seizing, and taking possession; there is no pretending about the plunder, and no waiting. It is as if all of it were lawful, as if all of it were decent, as if the man who does not rob were the one losing out and wasting his own property; and so everyone rushes to the robbery. [r]

Thieves at least have some modesty in their crimes. They love trackless ravines and empty wastes, and they do their wrong in such a way that the wrongdoers’ crime is still veiled by darkness and by night. Greed, though, rages in the open, and, made safe by its own boldness, displays the weapons of its headlong craving in the light of the marketplace. From there come swindlers, from there poisoners, from there assassins in the middle of the city — as eager for wickedness as they are wicked without punishment. The crime is committed by the guilty, and no guiltless man is found who can avenge it. There is nothing to fear from an accuser or a judge: the wicked go unpunished while decent men keep quiet; accomplices are afraid, and the men who are supposed to judge are for sale.

And so, through the mouth of the prophet, the truth of the matter is set out by the divine spirit and prompting; it is shown in a certain and obvious way that God is able to keep adverse things off, but that what sinners have earned by their wickedness keeps him from bringing help. “Is the Lord’s hand not strong to save you? Or has he made his ear heavy, so that he cannot hear you? But your sins separate you from God, and because of your sins he has hidden his face from you, so as not to have mercy.”

So let your sins and offenses be reckoned up; let the wounds of your conscience be looked at; and let each man stop complaining about God, or about us, if he sees that he deserves what he suffers.