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| Chapter XL.
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Chapter XL.
On the contrary, they deserve the name of
faction who conspire to bring odium on good men and virtuous, who cry
out against innocent blood, offering as the justification of their
enmity the baseless plea, that they think the Christians the cause of
every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are
visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the
Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give
no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence,
straightway the cry137
| 137 [Christianos ad
leonem. From what class, chiefly, see cap. xxxv.
supra. Elucidation VIII.] | is, “Away with
the Christians to the lion!” What! shall you give such
multitudes to a single beast? Pray, tell me how many calamities befell
the world and particular cities before Tiberius reigned—before
the coming, that is, of Christ? We read of the islands of Hiera, and
Anaphe, and Delos, and Rhodes, and Cos, with many thousands of human
beings, having been swallowed up. Plato informs us that a region larger
than Asia or Africa was seized by the Atlantic Ocean. An earthquake,
too, drank up the Corinthian sea; and the force of the waves cut off a
part of Lucania, whence it obtained the name of Sicily. These things
surely could not have taken place without the inhabitants suffering by
them. But where—I do not say were Christians, those despisers of
your gods—but where were your gods themselves in those days, when
the flood poured its destroying waters over all the world, or, as Plato
thought, merely the level portion of it? For that they are of
later date than that
calamity, the very cities in which they were born and died, nay, which
they founded, bear ample testimony; for the cities could have no
existence at this day unless as belonging to postdiluvian times.
Palestine had not yet received from Egypt its Jewish swarm (of
emigrants), nor had the race from which Christians sprung yet settled
down there, when its neighbors Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by fire
from heaven. The country yet smells of that conflagration; and if there
are apples there upon the trees, it is only a promise to the eye they
give—you but touch them, and they turn to ashes. Nor had Tuscia
and Campania to complain of Christians in the days when fire from
heaven overwhelmed Vulsinii, and Pompeii was destroyed by fire from its
own mountain. No one yet worshipped the true God at Rome, when
Hannibal at Cannæ counted the Roman slain by the pecks of Roman
rings. Your gods were all objects of adoration, universally
acknowledged, when the Senones closely besieged the very Capitol. And
it is in keeping with all this, that if adversity has at any time
befallen cities, the temples and the walls have equally shared in the
disaster, so that it is clear to demonstration the thing was not the
doing of the gods, seeing it also overtook themselves. The truth is,
the human race has always deserved ill at God’s hand. First
of all, as undutiful to Him, because when it knew Him in part, it not
only did not seek after Him, but even invented other gods of its own to
worship; and further, because, as the result of their willing ignorance
of the Teacher of righteousness, the Judge and Avenger of sin, all
vices and crimes grew and flourished. But had men sought, they would
have come to know the glorious object of their seeking; and knowledge
would have produced obedience, and obedience would have found a
gracious instead of an angry God. They ought then to see that the very
same God is angry with them now as in ancient times, before Christians
were so much as spoken of. It was His blessings they
enjoyed—created before they made any of their deities: and why
can they not take it in, that their evils come from the Being whose
goodness they have failed to recognize? They suffer at the hands of Him
to whom they have been ungrateful. And, for all that is said, if we
compare the calamities of former times, they fall on us more lightly
now, since God gave Christians to the world; for from that time virtue
put some restraint on the world’s wickedness, and men began to
pray for the averting of God’s wrath. In a word, when the summer
clouds give no rain, and the season is matter of anxiety, you
indeed—full of feasting day by day, and ever eager for the
banquet, baths and taverns and brothels always busy—offer up to
Jupiter your rain-sacrifices; you enjoin on the people barefoot
processions; you seek heaven at the Capitol; you look up to the
temple-ceilings for the longed-for clouds—God and heaven not in
all your thoughts. We, dried up with fastings, and our passions bound
tightly up, holding back as long as possible from all the ordinary
enjoyments of life, rolling in sackcloth and ashes, assail heaven with
our importunities—touch God’s heart—and when we have
extorted divine compassion, why, Jupiter gets all the
honour!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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