An Address to Demetrianus.

 

 1. I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamour with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and t

 2. In consideration of this, I have frequently held my tongue, and overcome an impatient man with patience since I could neither teach an unteachable

 3. You have said that all these things are caused by us, and that to us ought to be attributed the misfortunes wherewith the world is now shaken and d

 4. You impute it to the Christians that everything is decaying as the world grows old. What if old men should charge it on the Christians that they gr

 5. Moreover, that wars continue frequently to prevail, that death and famine accumulate anxiety, that health is shattered by raging diseases, that the

 6. In fine, listen to Himself speaking Himself with a divine voice at once instructing and warning us:  “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,” says H

 7. Behold, the Lord is angry and wrathful, and threatens, because you turn not unto Him. And you wonder or complain in this your obstinacy and contemp

 8. You complain that the fountains are now less plentiful to you, and the breezes less salubrious, and the frequent showers and the fertile earth affo

 9. And therefore with reason in these plagues that occur, there are not wanting God’s stripes and scourges and since they are of no avail in this mat

 10. You who judge others, be for once also a judge of yourself look into the hiding-places of your own conscience nay, since now there is not even a

 11. So great a terror of destruction cannot give the teaching of innocency and in the midst of a people dying with constant havoc, nobody considers t

 12. Look what that very matter is of which is chiefly our discourse—that you molest us, although innocent that, in contempt of God, you attack and op

 13. What is this insatiable madness for blood-shedding, what this interminable lust of cruelty? Rather make your election of one of two alternatives.

 14. Why do you turn your attention to the weakness of our body? why do you strive with the feebleness of this earthly flesh? Contend rather with the s

 15. Oh, would you but hear and see them when they are adjured by us, and tortured with spiritual scourges, and are ejected from the possessed bodies w

 16. What, then, is that sluggishness of mind yea, what blind and stupid madness of fools, to be unwilling to come out of darkness into light, and to

 17. For this reason it is that none of us, when he is apprehended, makes resistance, nor avenges himself against your unrighteous violence, although o

 18. Nor let anybody think that Christians are not avenged by those things that are happening, for the reason that they also themselves seem to be affe

 19. Do you think that we suffer adversity equally with yourselves, when you see that the same adverse things are not borne equally by us and by you? A

 20. There flourishes with us the strength of hope and the firmness of faith. Among these very ruins of a decaying world our soul is lifted up, and our

 21. Let no one, however, flatter himself, because there is for the present to us and to the profane, to God’s worshippers and to God’s opponents, by r

 22. And how great, too, are those things which in the meantime are happening in that respect on our behalf! Something is given for an example, that th

 23. Look, therefore, while there is time, to the true and eternal salvation and since now the end of the world is at hand, turn your minds to God, in

 24. What will then be the glory of faith? what the punishment of faithlessness? When the day of judgment shall come, what joy of believers, what sorro

 25. Provide, therefore, while you may, for your safety and your life. We offer you the wholesome help of our mind and advice. And because we may not h

4. You impute it to the Christians that everything is decaying as the world grows old. What if old men should charge it on the Christians that they grow less strong in their old age; that they no longer, as formerly, have the same facilities, in the hearing of their ears, in the swiftness of their feet, in the keenness of their eyes, in the vigour of their strength, in the freshness of their organic powers, in the fulness of their limbs, and that although once the life of men endured beyond the age of eight and nine hundred years, it can now scarcely attain to its hundredth year? We see grey hairs in boys—the hair fails before it begins to grow; and life does not cease in old age, but it begins with old age. Thus, even at its very commencement, birth hastens to its close;7    [Wisd. v. 13.] thus, whatever is now born degenerates with the old age of the world itself; so that no one ought to wonder that everything begins to fail in the world, when the whole world itself is already in process of failing, and in its end.

IV. Christianis imputas quod minuantur singula, mundo senescente. Quid si et senes imputent Christianis quod minus valeant in senectute, quod non perinde ut prius vigeant auditu aurium, cursu pedum, 0547B oculorum acie, virium robore, succo viscerum, mole membrorum; et cum olim ultra octingentos et nongentos annos vita hominum longaeva procederet, vix nunc possit ad centenarium numerum perveniri? Canos videmus in pueris, capilli deficiunt antequam crescant; nec aetas in senectute desinit, sed incipit a senectute. Sic in ortu adhuc suo ad finem nativitas properat; sic quodcumque nunc nascitur, mundi ipsius senectute degenerat: ut nemo mirari debeat singula in mundo coepisse deficere, quando totus ipse jam mundus in defectione sit et in fine.