The City of God: Book 1

The glorious city of God is my subject in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, first proposed and to which I am bound by my promise. I have taken up its defense against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city, a city of surpassing glory whether we see it as it still lives by faith through this fleeting passage of time, dwelling as a stranger among the ungodly, or as it will one day rest in the settled permanence of its eternal home, which it now awaits with patience, looking forward to the day when "righteousness shall return unto judgment" and it receives, through the excellence of its nature, final victory and perfect peace. This is a great and demanding undertaking, but God is my helper. I am well aware of what it takes to persuade the proud of how great a virtue humility truly is: the kind that lifts us not through merely human arrogance, but through divine grace, above all the earthly dignities that wobble and shift on this unstable stage. The King and Founder of this city has spoken plainly to His people in Scripture, giving them this principle of divine law: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." Yet this, which is God's own prerogative, is precisely what the swollen ambition of a proud spirit also reaches for and loves to claim as its own attribute, to

"Show pity to the humbled soul,

And crush the sons of pride."

As the plan of this work requires, and as occasion demands, we must also speak of the earthly city, which, though it rules over nations, is itself ruled by its own lust for power.

This earthly city is home to the very enemies against whom I must defend the city of God. Many of them, it is true, have been rescued from their ungodly errors and have become respectable citizens of that heavenly city. But many others burn with such hatred toward it, and are so ungrateful to its Redeemer for His extraordinary kindness, that they have forgotten a simple fact: they would not be able to utter a single word against it had they not found refuge in its sacred places, sheltering from enemy swords, and thereby saved the very lives they now boast about. Are not these same Romans, spared by the barbarians out of respect for Christ, now enemies of Christ's name? The shrines of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles testify to this. During the sack of the city, those places stood open as sanctuaries for everyone who fled to them, Christian and pagan alike. The bloodthirsty enemy raged right up to their thresholds and no further; at those doorways, his murderous fury found its limit. Soldiers who had shown any trace of mercy brought their prisoners there, fearing that someone less compassionate might fall upon them. Even those killers who had shown no pity anywhere else found their rage for slaughter bridled and their appetite for captives extinguished the moment they entered those sacred spaces, where the freedoms of war were simply not permitted.

In this way, multitudes escaped who now mock the Christian faith and blame Christ for every misfortune that has befallen their city. Yet the preservation of their own lives, a gift they owe entirely to the barbarians' reverence for Christ, they credit not to Christ but to their own good fortune. If they had any honest perception of things, they would instead attribute the hardships and cruelties inflicted by their enemies to divine providence, which has always used suffering to correct the corrupt behavior of humanity, and which tests the righteous and the praiseworthy with similar trials, either bringing them through to a better world once the trial is complete, or keeping them here on earth for purposes not yet revealed. They should also credit the spirit of these Christian times for the fact that, contrary to every custom of war, those bloodthirsty barbarians spared them at all, and spared them specifically for Christ's sake, whether that mercy was shown in ordinary places or in those places set apart for Christ's name, the largest of which were deliberately chosen as sanctuaries so that the widest possible compassion could be extended and the greatest number of people could find shelter there.

They should therefore give thanks to God and, with genuine confession, take refuge in His name, so that they might escape the punishment of eternal fire. These are people who took Christ's name on their lying lips simply to escape destruction in the present moment. Among those you now see brazenly and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are many who would never have escaped that slaughter had they not pretended to be Christ's servants themselves. Yet now, in ungrateful arrogance and utterly reckless impiety, at the risk of punishment in everlasting darkness, they turn against the very name that gave them fraudulent cover when all they wanted was to go on enjoying this brief and passing life.

The histories of countless wars, both before Rome was built and after it rose to power and extended its dominion, are available for anyone to read. Let someone cite a single example in which, after a city was taken by foreign forces, the victors spared those who had fled to the temples of their gods for sanctuary. Let someone find one case in which a barbarian general ordered that no one found in a particular temple should be put to the sword. Did Aeneas not witness

"Dying Priam at the shrine,

Staining the hearth he made divine?"

Did Diomede and Ulysses not

"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?"

Nor is what follows actually true: that

"Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,

And Greece grew weak."

After this, the Greeks conquered Troy and burned it to the ground. After this, they cut off Priam's head as he fled to the altars. Troy did not fall because it lost Minerva. Consider what Minerva herself had already lost before she could perish. Her guards, perhaps? Yes, precisely her guards. The moment they were killed, she could be stolen. It was not the men who were protected by the image; it was the image that depended on the men for its protection. How, then, was she supposed to defend the city and its people when she could not even defend those who defended her?

These, then, were the gods to whose protection the Romans were so pleased to entrust their city. What a pitiful mistake. And they grow angry with us for saying so, even though they never grow angry with their own writers for saying the same things. In fact, they pay money to be taught what those writers say, and the teachers of such authors are considered worthy of public salaries and other honors. Take Virgil, who is read by schoolboys precisely so that this great poet, the most celebrated and admired of all poets, might shape their impressionable young minds and leave a lasting impression, as Horace put it: "The fresh cask long keeps its first tang."

Well, in Virgil, Juno is portrayed as hostile to the Trojans, stirring up Æolus, king of the winds, against them with these words:

"A race I hate now ploughs the sea,

Transporting Troy to Italy,

And home-gods conquered"...

Should wise men really have entrusted the defense of Rome to gods who had already been conquered? Someone might object that this was only Juno speaking, and that she, like an angry woman, didn't know what she was saying. Very well. But what does Æneas himself say, the same Æneas so often called "pious"? Does he not say:

"Lo! Panthus, escaped from death by flight,

Priest of Apollo on the height,

His conquered gods with trembling hands

He bears, and shelter swift demands?"

Isn't it obvious that these gods, whom Æneas doesn't hesitate to call "conquered," were entrusted to him rather than he to them, when he is told:

"The gods of her domestic shrines

Your country to your care consigns?"

If Virgil himself says that these gods were defeated, and that even after their defeat they could only escape under a man's protection, then what kind of madness leads anyone to believe that Rome was wisely entrusted to such guardians, or that the city could not have fallen while they still watched over it? To worship conquered gods as protectors and champions is not to honor good divinities; it is to embrace evil omens. Wouldn't it be far more reasonable to conclude, not that Rome would never have fallen if only these gods had survived, but rather that the gods themselves would have perished long ago had Rome not preserved them as long as she could? Anyone who thinks this through clearly will see the absurdity of the claim that Rome could not be conquered while defended by gods who were themselves already conquered, and that the city only fell because it had lost its divine protectors. The truth is precisely the opposite: Rome fell because it chose as its protectors gods who were already doomed. When the poets composed and sang these stories about defeated gods, they were not inventing fictions. They were honest men, and the truth forced their hand. This point will be examined carefully and at length in a more appropriate place later on. For now, let me explain as briefly and clearly as I can what I intended to say about these ungrateful men who blasphemously blame Christ for the calamities they have brought on themselves through their own wickedness, while taking no notice whatsoever of the mercy shown to them for Christ's sake despite that same wickedness. In their reckless and blasphemous arrogance, they turn against His name the very lips they used to falsely claim that name in order to save their lives. Inside the places consecrated to Christ, where no enemy would harm them for His sake, they held their tongues and accepted the safety and shelter He provided. But the moment they stepped outside those sanctuaries, they let those same tongues loose in bitter curses against Him.

Troy itself, the mother of the Roman people, could not protect its own citizens in the sacred places of their gods from the fire and sword of the Greeks, even though the Greeks worshipped those same gods. As I have already noted, this protection simply did not come. And beyond that failure, Virgil continues:

"Phoenix and Ulysses fell

In the void courts by Juno's cell

Were set the spoil to keep;

Snatched from the burning shrines away,

There Ilium's mighty treasure lay,

Rich altars, bowls of massy gold,

And captive raiment, rudely rolled

In one promiscuous heap;

While boys and matrons, wild with fear,

In long array were standing near."

For that matter, Caesar himself, when describing the sack of a city, wrote in terms that leave no room for doubt about what conquerors typically do. Compare, then, this so-called "asylum," which belonged not to some minor deity or obscure member of the divine hierarchy, but to Juno herself, the sister and wife of Jupiter and queen of all the gods, with the churches built in memory of the apostles. Into Juno's temple were gathered the spoils rescued from burning temples and seized from the gods, not to be returned to the defeated, but divided among the victors. Into the Christian churches, by contrast, everything belonging to them was carefully and reverently returned, even when found far from its original place. In Juno's temple, liberty was destroyed; in the churches, it was preserved. In Juno's temple, captivity was absolute; in the churches, it was absolutely forbidden. Men were driven into that pagan temple to become the property of their conquerors, who now lorded it over them. Men were led into these Christian churches by their relenting enemies, so that they might go free. To put it plainly: the civilized Greeks turned Juno's temple to their own greed and arrogance, while even the savage barbarians chose the churches of Christ as fitting places for humility and mercy. Perhaps one might object that the Greeks, in their victory, spared the temples of gods they shared with the Trojans, and did not dare to cut down or enslave the wretched, defeated Trojans who fled there for refuge. Perhaps Virgil, as poets do, depicted something that never actually happened. But there is no question that he was depicting the standard behavior of a conquering enemy in a captured city.

Why do I bring this up? Because even Caesar himself provides direct testimony about this practice. In his speech to the senate regarding the conspirators, he said (as Sallust, a historian of remarkable reliability, records) "that virgins and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever the conquerors desire, temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning everywhere; in short, all things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing." Had he not mentioned temples here, we might assume that enemies typically spared the dwellings of the gods. And the Roman temples faced these very dangers not from foreign enemies, but from Catiline and his associates, men who were among Rome's most distinguished senators and citizens. But these, someone might object, were depraved men, traitors to their own country.

Why, then, should our argument bother with the many nations that waged wars against one another and nowhere spared the conquered even in the temples of their gods? Let us look instead at the Romans themselves. Let us recall and examine the Romans, whose greatest boast was "to spare the vanquished and subdue the proud," and who prided themselves on forgiving injuries rather than avenging them. Among the many great cities they stormed, captured, and destroyed in the course of building their empire, can anyone tell us which temples they regularly exempted, so that whoever took refuge in them was safe? Or did they actually do this, and the historians simply left it out? Are we really to believe that men who searched with the greatest eagerness for anything worth praising would pass over what they themselves would have considered the most striking proof of Roman piety? Marcus Marcellus, a celebrated Roman general who captured the magnificently adorned city of Syracuse, is said to have wept over its coming destruction and shed his own tears before any blood was spilled. He even took steps to protect the dignity of his enemies. Before ordering the assault on the city, he issued an edict forbidding the violation of any free person. Yet the city was sacked in the usual manner of war, and nowhere do we read that even this restrained and humane commander gave orders that anyone who had fled to a particular temple should be left unharmed.

All of this would certainly never have been left out of the historical record, given that neither the general's weeping nor his edict protecting chastity was passed over in silence. Fabius, the conqueror of Tarentum, is praised for refusing to plunder the city's statues. When his secretary asked what should be done with the large number of captured divine images, Fabius cloaked his restraint in humor. He asked what kind of statues they were, and when told there were many large ones, some of them armed, he replied: "Let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods." So then, if Roman historians could not pass over in silence the weeping of one general or the laughter of another, the chaste compassion of one or the witty restraint of the other, on what occasion would they have failed to record it if any commander had shown this particular form of mercy toward an enemy's gods, by forbidding slaughter or captivity within any temple?

Everything Rome suffered in that recent catastrophe, all the killing, looting, burning, and misery, followed the normal patterns of war. What was unprecedented, however, was that savage barbarians conducted themselves with such unexpected restraint. The largest churches were deliberately chosen and set aside as sanctuaries, filled with people who had been granted mercy. Inside those walls, no one was killed; no one was dragged out by force. Many were actually led there by enemies who had relented, and released to freedom. None were hauled away into slavery by merciless captors. Anyone who fails to see that this should be credited to the name of Christ and to the influence of Christian faith is simply blind. Anyone who sees it and offers no praise is ungrateful. And anyone who tries to stop others from praising it is out of their mind. No reasonable person should attribute this mercy to the barbarians themselves. Their violent and bloodthirsty instincts were checked, restrained, and remarkably softened by Him who had spoken through His prophet long before: "I will punish their sins with a rod, and their wrongs with blows; yet I will not withdraw my loving-kindness from them entirely" (Ps 89:32-33).

Someone might ask: why did God's compassion extend even to the ungodly and ungrateful? The answer is simply that this is the nature of His mercy, since He daily "makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Some people, when they reflect on this, repent of their wickedness and change their ways. Others, however, as the apostle says, "despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom 2:4-6). Yet even so, God's patience continues to invite the wicked toward repentance, just as God's discipline trains the righteous in patience. In the same way, God's mercy embraces the good to nurture them, while God's severity overtakes the wicked to punish them. Divine providence has determined that in the world to come, good things will be prepared for the righteous that the wicked will never enjoy, and evil things will await the wicked that the good will never suffer. But the good and ill things of this present life God has willed to be shared by both, so that we would not chase too eagerly after the things that wicked people are seen to enjoy just as much as we do, nor recoil in unworthy fear from the hardships that even good people so often endure.

There is also a profound difference in the purpose served by what we call adversity and what we call prosperity. The good person is neither lifted up by life's blessings nor crushed by its hardships; but the wicked person, having been corrupted by worldly happiness, experiences its misfortunes as punishment. Yet even now, in the way temporal things are distributed, God makes His involvement plainly visible. If every sin were met with immediate, obvious punishment, nothing would appear to be held in reserve for the final judgment; but if no sin ever received a clearly divine consequence, people would conclude that divine providence doesn't exist at all. The same logic applies to life's good things: if God did not visibly bestow them on at least some of those who ask, we would say these blessings were not His to give; and if He gave them to everyone who sought them, we would assume they were the only rewards of serving Him, which would make us not devout, but merely greedy and self-interested. So while good and bad people often suffer alike, we shouldn't conclude that there's no difference between them simply because what they suffer looks the same. Even within that shared suffering, the people enduring it remain fundamentally unlike each other; and though they face the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. The same fire makes gold shine brilliantly while reducing chaff to smoke; the same threshing floor beats straw into dust while cleaning the grain; and the oil and the dregs are not the same, even though the same press squeezes them both. In the same way, the same affliction tests, purifies, and refines the good, while it condemns, destroys, and finishes the wicked. This is why, under identical suffering, the wicked curse God and blaspheme, while the good pray and give thanks. What matters enormously is not what hardships are endured, but what kind of person endures them. Stirred by the same motion, mud gives off a horrible stench, while perfume releases a sweet fragrance.

What, then, did Christians actually suffer during that catastrophic period that wouldn't benefit anyone who thought carefully and honestly about the following circumstances? First, they must humbly acknowledge the very sins that provoked God to fill the world with such terrible disasters. Even if they were far removed from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and godless people, they couldn't honestly claim to be so free of fault that they deserved to escape even these temporary sufferings. Every person, however admirably they live, still gives in to the desires of the flesh at some point. Even if someone never falls into gross wickedness, shameless depravity, or outright impiety, they still slip into smaller sins, either occasionally or, more often, precisely because those sins seem too minor to worry about. But setting that aside, where do we easily find someone who holds in proper, honest regard those people whose revolting pride, indulgence, greed, and cursed wickedness have moved God to strike the earth, just as He warned He would? Where is the person who lives among them the way we are actually called to live? Too often, we deliberately blind ourselves to opportunities for teaching, warning, or even rebuking them, either because we dread the effort, fear offending them, or worry about losing valuable friendships that might help our careers or protect our worldly interests, which our greed wants to gain or our weakness fears to lose. So while the good find the behavior of the wicked genuinely repugnant, and therefore won't share in the eternal damnation that awaits such people, they still spare those damnable sins out of fear, and for that reason, even their own minor and forgivable sins make them justly subject to punishment alongside the wicked in this life, even though they will escape punishment entirely in eternity. It is entirely just that when God afflicts them together with the wicked, they find this life bitter, since their love for its sweetness was precisely what kept them from being hard on those sinners when they should have been.

When someone refrains from rebuking those who are doing wrong because he's waiting for a better moment, or because he fears his criticism will only harden them, or because he worries that weaker believers might be discouraged from pursuing a godly life and driven away from the faith, that silence seems to come not from self-interest but from genuine care. What is blameworthy, however, is something different: when people who have themselves turned away from wicked behavior and live in an entirely different manner still overlook faults in others that they should be confronting and correcting. They stay silent because they fear giving offense, and because they don't want to jeopardize their standing with people whose company gives them access to things that good people may legitimately enjoy, though they cling to those things far more tightly than is fitting for those who consider themselves strangers in this world and claim to hope for a heavenly home. Consider the weaker believers: those who are married, who have children or want them, who own homes and households, the very people the apostle addresses in his letters to the churches, instructing wives and husbands in how to treat one another, children and parents in their mutual duties, servants and masters in theirs. These people gladly acquire earthly and temporal goods and bitterly resent losing them, which is precisely why they don't dare offend those whose corrupt and wicked lives deeply trouble them. But it's not only these weaker believers who fall into this pattern. Even those who live at a higher level, who are free from the entanglements of marriage and get by on simple food and clothing, often think carefully about their own safety and reputation, and hold back from criticizing the wicked out of fear of their schemes and violence. They may not fear them enough to actually join in their wrongdoing, and no threat or act of force could bring them to that point; yet the very sins they refuse to participate in, they often also refuse to condemn, even when speaking up might actually prevent those sins from happening. They stay silent because they're afraid that if their rebuke fails, their safety or reputation will suffer. Their concern isn't that their good standing is worth preserving so they can continue to help those who need their guidance; it's simply that they enjoy being liked and respected, that they fear public opinion, and that they dread physical pain or death. In other words, their silence comes from selfishness, not love.

These considerations point to what I believe is one of the main reasons why the righteous suffer alongside the wicked when God chooses to visit a corrupt society with temporal punishment. They are punished together not because they have lived equally corrupt lives, but because the good, like the wicked (though not to the same degree), have grown too attached to this present life. They should hold it loosely instead, so that the wicked, warned and reformed by their example, might reach out for eternal life. And if the wicked refuse to join the good in pursuing everlasting life, they should still be loved as enemies and treated with patience, because as long as they live, there remains the possibility that they may yet change. Those who cling selfishly to this world have far more reason to fear than those addressed through the prophet: "He is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand." Watchmen and overseers are appointed in the churches precisely so that they will rebuke sin without hesitation. Nor is a person innocent of this same failure simply because he holds no official position, if he sees wrongdoing in the lives of those around him and says nothing, afraid of causing offense or losing the worldly comforts he desires legitimately but pursues too greedily. Finally, there is yet another reason why the good are afflicted with temporal suffering, and Job's story illustrates it clearly: the human spirit must be tested, so that it becomes evident with what steadfast, devoted trust, and with how selfless a love, it holds fast to God.

These are the considerations one must keep in mind when answering the question of whether anything truly harmful can happen to the faithful and godly, or whether every hardship can ultimately be turned to their benefit. Or should we say the question is unnecessary, and that the apostle is speaking empty words when he writes, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom 8:28)?

They lost everything they had. But did they lose their faith? Their godliness? The inner qualities of the hidden person of the heart, which in God's sight are of great worth? Did they lose those? Because these are the true wealth of Christians, and it was to people like them that the apostle, himself rich in what truly matters, wrote: "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 trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires, which pull people down into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil; and while some have chased after it, they have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim 6:6-10).

Those who lost everything in the sack of Rome, if they had held their possessions in the spirit the apostle taught, being outwardly poor but inwardly rich, that is, using the world without being consumed by it, could have spoken the words of Job, severely tested but never broken: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord." Like a faithful servant, Job regarded his Lord's will as his greatest possession, and his obedience to that will was what truly enriched his soul. It did not grieve him to lose in life what he would have had to surrender at death anyway. But consider those weaker souls who, while they cannot be said to have preferred earthly wealth to Christ, still clung to it with an excessive attachment. They discovered through the pain of losing it just how deeply they had sinned in loving it. Their grief was of their own making; as the apostle says, "they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." It was fitting that those who had ignored so many verbal warnings should finally learn through experience. When the apostle says, "They that will be rich fall into temptation," and so on, what he condemns is not the possession of wealth but the craving for it. Elsewhere he says, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to share; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." Those who used their wealth in this way were consoled for small losses by great gains, and found more genuine pleasure in the possessions they had safely stored away by giving them freely than sorrow over those they lost through anxious and selfish hoarding. Nothing could perish on earth except what they would have been ashamed to carry away from earth in the first place. Our Lord's instruction is clear: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Those who heeded this instruction proved, in the hour of tribulation, how wisely they had acted in not dismissing so trustworthy a teacher and so faithful and powerful a guardian of their treasure. If many were relieved to find their treasure stored in places the enemy happened not to discover, how much more secure was the joy of those who, following God's own counsel, had moved their treasure to a stronghold no enemy can ever reach. Consider our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who voluntarily gave up vast wealth and became entirely poor, though abundantly rich in holiness. When the barbarians sacked Nola and took him prisoner, he would pray silently, as he later told me: "O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver, for where all my treasure is, You know." All his treasure was exactly where he had been taught to hide and store it by the One who had also foretold that these very calamities would come upon the world. Those who obeyed their Lord's warning about where and how to store their treasure did not truly lose even their earthly possessions when the barbarians invaded. And those who now regret their disobedience have at least learned the right use of earthly goods, if not through the wisdom that would have prevented their loss, then through the hard experience that followed it.

But some good Christian men were subjected to torture so that the enemy could force them to hand over their possessions. What they could not surrender or lose, however, was the very goodness that made them good. If, on the other hand, they chose to endure torture rather than give up their ill-gotten wealth, then I would argue they were not truly good men at all. They needed to be reminded that if they could suffer so severely for the sake of money, they should be willing to endure any torment for Christ's sake. They needed to learn to love the One who rewards all who suffer for Him with eternal life, rather than clinging to silver and gold, for which it was simply pitiable to suffer, whether they protected it through lying or lost it by telling the truth. Under torture, no one lost Christ by confessing Him, and no one preserved wealth except by denying it existed. It is even possible that the torture itself was more beneficial than the possessions ever were, since it taught them to set their hearts on something that could never be taken away, while those possessions had done nothing but trouble and torment their anxious owners without any real benefit.

But then we are reminded that some were tortured who had no wealth to surrender and were not believed when they said so. Even these people, however, may have harbored a longing for wealth and were not genuinely at peace with a holy, willing poverty. For them, it had to be made clear that not only the actual possession of wealth, but even the desire for it, deserved such agonizing consequences. And even if they truly had no hidden stores of gold or silver because they were living in hope of a better life, I cannot say for certain whether anyone in that condition was tortured on the assumption that he had wealth. But if so, then in confessing under questioning that he lived in holy poverty, he was in effect confessing Christ. And though it was hardly reasonable to expect the barbarians to believe him, no confessor of holy poverty could be put to torture without receiving a heavenly reward.

Again, they point out that a prolonged famine brought many Christians to their knees. But even this, the faithful turned to good use through patient endurance. Those whom famine killed outright were rescued from the sufferings of this life, just as a merciful illness might have done; and those who merely went hungry were taught to live more frugally and were trained to endure longer periods without food.

But then they add that many Christians were slaughtered, put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. If this is hard to accept, it is assuredly the common lot of everyone born into this life. Of one thing, at least, I am certain: no one has ever died who was not destined to die at some point. The end of life places the longest life on equal footing with the shortest, because two things that have both ceased to exist cannot be ranked as better or worse, greater or lesser, simply based on how long they lasted. And what does it really matter what kind of death brings life to a close, since the person who has died once is not forced to endure the same ordeal a second time? As it is, the daily hazards of life threaten every person with countless possible deaths for as long as it remains uncertain which one will actually claim them. I ask, then, whether it is not better to suffer one death and be done with it, than to live in fear of all of them? I am not unaware of the timid, weak-spirited fear that leads people to prefer a long life shadowed by dread over dying once and escaping all those fears together. But that kind of cowardly shrinking of the flesh is one thing, and the calm, well-reasoned conviction of the soul is quite another. A death that ends a good life should not be judged an evil; death becomes evil only through the judgment that follows it. Those who are destined to die, then, need not trouble themselves asking what kind of death they will face, but rather what destination death will carry them to. And since Christians know full well that the death of the godly beggar whose sores the dogs licked was far better than the death of the wicked rich man who lay clothed in purple and fine linen, what real harm could even the most terrible deaths do to those who had lived well?

We are also reminded that in such a massive slaughter, many bodies could not even be buried. But genuine faith is not shaken by so grim a circumstance. The faithful remember the assurance that not a hair of their head will perish, and that therefore, even if their bodies are devoured by beasts, their blessed resurrection will not be prevented. The Truth would never have said, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul" (Matt 10:28), if anything an enemy could do to the body of the slain could actually harm the person's future life. Or will someone perhaps take so absurd a position as to argue that those who kill the body are not to be feared before death, lest they kill it, but are to be feared after death, lest they deprive it of burial? If that were true, then Christ's words would be false: "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do" (Luke 12:4). For it would seem they can still do great injury to the dead body. But we must never suppose that the Truth can be false. Those who kill the body are said "to do something" because the death blow is felt while the body still has sensation; but after that, they have nothing more they can do, since the slain body feels nothing. So while many bodies of Christians do lie unburied, no one has separated them from heaven, nor from that earth which is everywhere filled with the presence of Him who knows exactly where to find what He created when the time comes to raise it again. The Psalm does say: "The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them" (Ps 79:2-3). But these words were written to expose the cruelty of those who committed such acts, not to describe the misery of those who suffered them. To human eyes this appears a harsh and sorrowful fate, yet "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints" (Ps 116:15).

All these final rites and ceremonies for the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, the prepared tomb, the elaborate processions, these are comforts for the living, not the dead. A lavish burial does nothing to help a wicked man, just as a poor burial, or none at all, does nothing to harm the godly. The rich man dressed in purple had a magnificent funeral, impressive by human standards; but in God's sight, the far grander funeral was the one given to the ulcerous beggar at the hands of angels, who carried him not to a marble tomb but up to Abraham's bosom.

The men against whom I have undertaken to defend the city of God will laugh at all of this. But even their own philosophers have dismissed the importance of a proper burial, and whole armies have fought and died for their earthly country without giving a second thought to whether their bodies would be left exposed on the battlefield or devoured by wild beasts. Poetry has captured this noble indifference to burial well: "He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault." How much less, then, should these men mock the unburied bodies of Christians, to whom it has been promised that the flesh itself will be restored and the body formed anew, with every member gathered not only from the earth but from the most hidden depths of whatever element has received the remains of the dead.

Nevertheless, the bodies of the dead should not be treated with contempt or left unburied, least of all the bodies of the righteous and faithful, whose bodies the Holy Spirit used as His instruments for every good work. Consider how precious a father's clothing, his ring, or anything he wore can be to his children, simply because of the love they had for him. How much more, then, should we care for the bodies of those we love, bodies they inhabited far more closely and intimately than any garment ever could? The body is not some external accessory or tool; it is a genuine part of human nature itself. This is why the righteous people of ancient times were given proper burial rites, why tombs were prepared for them and funeral ceremonies observed. While still alive, they gave their sons instructions about their burial, and sometimes even about moving their remains to a place they had loved. Tobit, as the angel's testimony confirms, is praised and said to have pleased God precisely because he buried the dead. Our Lord Himself, though He was to rise again on the third day, praised the devout woman who poured precious ointment over His body and commended her act to our admiration, saying she had done it in preparation for His burial. The Gospel also speaks approvingly of those who took care to bring His body down from the cross, wrapped it tenderly in costly burial cloths, and saw to its proper interment. None of this proves that corpses have any feeling, but it does show that God's providence reaches even to the bodies of the dead, and that such acts of devotion please Him because they express and strengthen faith in the resurrection. We can also draw from these examples a practical lesson: if God does not overlook even the smallest kindness shown to the unconscious dead, how much more will He reward the charity we extend to the living. Some of what the holy patriarchs said about the burial and removal of their bodies was meant to be understood in a prophetic sense, but there is no need to explore that at length here, since what has already been said is enough. Now, if the lack of basic necessities for the living, such as food and clothing, however painful and difficult, does not destroy the courage and moral endurance of good people or root out their faith, but instead makes it more fruitful, then how much less can the absence of a funeral or the usual attentions paid to the dead bring any misery to those who are already resting in the hidden dwelling places of the blessed? Therefore, even though the bodies of Christians who died during the sack of Rome and other cities were denied these final rites, this is not the fault of the living, who were simply unable to provide them, nor is it any injury to the dead, who can no longer feel the loss.

But, they say, many Christians were even led away as captives. This would indeed be a most pitiable fate, if they could be taken to any place where they could not find their God. Yet sacred Scripture offers great consolation for this calamity as well. The three young men were captives; Daniel was a captive; so were other prophets. And God, the great comforter, did not abandon them. In the same way, He has not abandoned His own people under the power of a nation that, however barbarous, is still human. This is the same God who did not forsake the prophet in the belly of a sea creature. Our opponents, of course, prefer to mock these accounts rather than believe them, even while they accept what they read in their own literature: that Arion of Methymna, the celebrated lyrist, when thrown overboard, was caught on a dolphin's back and carried safely to shore. But our account of the prophet Jonah is far more extraordinary than that story, more extraordinary precisely because it is more remarkable, and more remarkable because it reveals a far greater display of divine power.

But among their own celebrated figures, the Romans have a striking example of someone who voluntarily endured captivity out of religious obligation. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians were more eager to arrange a prisoner exchange with Rome than to hold him indefinitely, so they sent Regulus as a special envoy alongside their own ambassadors to negotiate the exchange, first binding him with an oath that if he failed to secure their desired outcome, he would return to Carthage. He went, and persuaded the Roman senate to take the opposite course, because he believed a prisoner exchange was not in the best interest of the republic. Having made his case, the Romans did not force him to return to the enemy; but he voluntarily honored what he had sworn. The Carthaginians then put him to death through refined, elaborate, and horrifying torture. They confined him in a narrow box fitted all around with finely sharpened nails, so that he was forced to stand and could not lean in any direction without suffering intense pain; and in this way they killed him by denying him sleep. People rightly admire the virtue that rose above so terrible a fate. Yet the gods he swore by are the very ones now believed to be avenging the suppression of their worship by inflicting the present calamities on humanity. If these gods, worshipped specifically so that they might secure happiness in this life, either willed or permitted such punishments to fall on a man who kept his oath to them, what worse punishment could they possibly have inflicted in their anger on someone who broke his oath? But why should I not draw two conclusions from this reasoning at once? Regulus clearly held the gods in such reverence that for the sake of his oath he would neither stay in his homeland nor go elsewhere, but returned without hesitation to his most bitter enemies. If he believed this course would benefit him in his present life, he was gravely mistaken, for it brought his life to a horrifying end. By his own example, he demonstrated that the gods do not secure the earthly happiness of those who worship them, since he himself, devoted to their worship, was both defeated in battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he refused to violate the oath he had sworn by them, was tortured and killed by a form of punishment that was new, previously unheard of, and utterly appalling. Now, if the worshippers of the gods are rewarded with happiness in the life to come, why do these critics slander Christianity? Why do they insist that disaster has fallen on Rome because it abandoned its gods, when a city might worship those gods as faithfully as possible and still suffer as Regulus did? Or will someone carry such remarkable blindness so far as to argue, against all evident truth, that while one man might suffer misfortune despite worshipping the gods, an entire city could not? The implication would be that the gods are better at protecting crowds than individuals, as though a crowd were not simply made up of individuals.

But if they claim that Regulus, even as a prisoner enduring physical torment, could still enjoy the happiness of a virtuous soul, then let them recognize the kind of true virtue by which a city might also be blessed. The happiness of a community and of an individual flows from the same source, since a community is nothing more than a collection of individuals living in harmony. For now, I won't debate what kind of virtue Regulus actually possessed. It's enough that his remarkably noble example forces them to admit that the gods should not be worshipped for the sake of physical comfort or material advantage, since he chose to lose all such things rather than break an oath sworn in their names. But what are we to make of people who take pride in having such a citizen, yet would dread having a city that lived as he did? If they don't actually dread this, then let them acknowledge that a community might suffer the same kind of catastrophe that befell Regulus, even while worshipping its gods just as faithfully as he did, and let them stop blaming their misfortunes on Christianity. As for our present concern with those Christians who were taken prisoner, let those who seize on this calamity to attack our life-giving faith, with an arrogance no less reckless than shameless, consider the following and hold their tongues: if it was no disgrace to the gods that their most devoted worshipper was stripped of his homeland without any hope of finding another, handed over to his enemies, and put to death by a slow and exquisitely cruel torture, all for the sake of keeping an oath sworn to them, then the name of Christ should far less be blamed for the captivity of those who trust in Him, since they, living in confident expectation of a heavenly homeland, understand that they are pilgrims even in their own houses.

Critics think they have a devastating charge against Christianity when they intensify the horror of the captivity by pointing out that not only wives and unmarried young women, but even consecrated virgins, were violated. Yet in truth, none of this puts Christian faith, piety, or even the virtue of chastity in any real difficulty. The only genuine challenge is how to address the subject in a way that satisfies both modesty and reason. In doing so, our concern will be less to answer our accusers than to bring comfort to our friends. Let this, then, be established as an unshakeable foundation: the virtue that makes a life good is seated in the soul, and from there it governs the body's members, which become holy through the holiness of the will. So long as the will remains firm and unbroken, nothing that another person does to the body, or with the body, counts as any fault of the one who suffers it, provided that person cannot escape without sinning. However, since the body can be used not only to inflict pain but also to gratify another's lust, whenever something of this latter kind occurs, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed. That shame arises from the fear that an act which could not be endured without some degree of physical sensation might be taken as evidence that the will had, in some measure, consented to it.

But even granting all of this, who with any human feeling could fail to forgive those virgins who took their own lives to escape such a fate? And as for those who chose not to end their lives, not wanting to escape someone else's crime by committing one of their own, anyone who condemns them for this is guilty of foolishness. Here is why: if it is not lawful to take justice into our own hands and kill even a guilty person without a proper public sentence, then the person who kills himself is a murderer, and all the more guilty for his own death given how innocent he was of the offense for which he condemned himself to die. We rightly condemn what Judas did, and truth itself declares that by hanging himself he only deepened his guilt rather than atoning for that most treacherous betrayal. By despairing of God's mercy in a grief that led only to death, he left himself no room for the kind of repentance that could have healed him. How much more, then, should a person who has done nothing deserving of such a punishment refrain from turning violence on himself! When Judas killed himself, he killed a wicked man; yet he left this life guilty not only of Christ's death but of his own, because even though he killed himself on account of his crime, that act of self-destruction was itself another crime. Why, then, should someone who has done no wrong do wrong to himself? Why kill an innocent person to escape someone else's guilt, and commit a sin of his own simply to prevent another's sin from being committed against him?

But could we fear that another person's lust might contaminate the one who is violated against her will? It will not contaminate her if the lust truly belongs to another. If it does contaminate her, then it is no longer purely another's lust; it has become something she shares. But purity is a virtue of the soul, and its companion is fortitude, which will endure any suffering rather than consent to evil. No one, however courageous and morally upright, always controls what happens to their body; what a person controls is only the consent or refusal of the will. Given this, what reasonable person could conclude that if someone's body is seized and forcibly used to satisfy another's lust, that person thereby loses their purity? If purity could be destroyed in this way, then it would clearly not be a virtue of the soul at all. It could not be counted among those good things that make a life genuinely good, but would instead belong to the category of bodily goods, alongside strength, beauty, and sound health: things that can be diminished without diminishing the goodness or integrity of a person's life. But if purity is nothing more than a bodily good, why should anyone risk their life to preserve it? If, on the other hand, purity belongs to the soul, then it is not lost even when the body is violated. More than that, the virtue of holy continence, precisely because it resists the corruption of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body itself. When that continence remains unbroken, the body's sanctity is preserved as well, because the will to use the body rightly remains intact, and, insofar as the body itself is concerned, so does the capacity to do so.

This brings us to the question of bodily sanctity, which does not consist in the physical integrity of one's members or in their being untouched. Bodies are exposed to all kinds of accidents that do violence to them and leave wounds, and surgeons who treat these injuries often perform procedures that are difficult to watch. Consider a midwife who, whether through malice, accident, or incompetence, destroys a girl's virginity while examining her. Surely no one is foolish enough to believe that this physical damage causes the girl to lose any part of her bodily sanctity. As long as the soul maintains that firmness of purpose which sanctifies even the body, the violence inflicted by another person's lust leaves no mark on this bodily sanctity, which is preserved intact by one's own persistent self-control. Now consider the opposite case: suppose a virgin breaks the oath she has sworn to God and goes to meet her seducer with the full intention of giving herself to him. Can we say that, as she walks toward him, she still possesses bodily sanctity, when she has already destroyed the sanctity of the soul that gives the body its holiness? Certainly not. Let us draw the proper conclusion: when the soul's sanctity remains unbroken, the body's sanctity is not lost even if the body is violated; and equally, when the soul's sanctity is destroyed, the body's sanctity is lost even if the body itself remains physically untouched. Therefore, a woman who has been violated through another person's sin, without any consent of her own, has no reason to take her own life. She has even less reason to commit suicide in order to prevent such a violation before it occurs, because in that case she commits a certain act of killing in order to forestall a crime that is not yet certain and is not her own.

Here, 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 wrong, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin belongs not to her but to the man who violated her. But do those against whom we must defend not only the souls but the sacred bodies of these outraged Christian captives dare to dispute this? Everyone knows how loudly they praise the purity of Lucretia, that noble matron of ancient Rome. When King Tarquin's son violated her body, she revealed the young man's wickedness to her husband Collatinus and to her kinsman Brutus, both men of high rank and great courage, and bound them by an oath to avenge it. Then, heartsick and unable to bear the shame, she took her own life. What are we to call her? An adulteress, or a chaste woman? There is no question which she was. A certain orator captured the tragedy perfectly when he said: "Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed adultery." Forceful words, and true. For this orator, seeing in the union of two bodies the foul lust of the one and the chaste will of the other, and attending not to the contact of their physical persons but to the vast difference between their souls, declared: "There were two, but the adultery was committed by only one."

But why does the woman who played no part in the crime suffer the harsher punishment of the two? The adulterer was merely exiled alongside his father, while she paid with her life. If the act forced on her against her will was not impurity, then the punishment imposed on her despite her innocence is not justice. I appeal to you directly, you laws and judges of Rome. Even after the most heinous crimes, you do not allow a criminal to be executed without trial. If someone were to bring before your court a case proving that a woman, not only untried but chaste and innocent, had been killed, would you not punish the killer with proportionate severity? Yet this is precisely what Lucretia did. That celebrated and praised Lucretia killed an innocent, chaste, and violated woman. Deliver your verdict. But if you cannot, because no one stands before you to be punished, then why do you heap such extravagant praise on a woman who killed someone innocent and pure? You will certainly find it impossible to defend her before the judges of the underworld, if they are anything like the figures your poets love to describe, for she belongs among those

"Who guiltless sent themselves to doom,

And all for loathing of the day,

In madness threw their lives away."

And if she, along 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 isn't counted among the innocent dead because she took her own life out of guilt rather than a clear conscience. She alone knew her true reasons. But what if she was, in some hidden part of herself, drawn in by the act? What if she gave some measure of consent to Sextus, even as he violated her, and then was so overwhelmed by remorse that she believed only death could atone for what had happened? Even if that were true, she still should have stayed her hand from suicide. Had her false gods offered any real path to repentance, she could have pursued it. But if that is indeed what happened, if it wasn't simply a case of two people present but only one guilty, if both were in fact implicated (one through open violence, the other through hidden consent), then she did not kill an innocent woman. In that case, her learned defenders can hardly place her among those who, as the poets say, "guiltless sent themselves to doom." The case of Lucretia is caught in a dilemma with no clean exit: if you soften the charge of killing herself, you strengthen the charge of adultery; if you clear her of adultery, the charge of self-murder becomes all the heavier. There is simply no way through it. If she was guilty of adultery, why do we praise her? If she was truly chaste, why did she kill herself?

Nevertheless, for the purpose of refuting those who cannot grasp what true sanctity means, and who therefore mock our violated Christian women, it is enough to note what was said in praise of this noble Roman matron: "There were two, but the adultery was the crime of only one." Lucretia was widely believed to be incapable of any consenting thought toward the act committed against her. And yet, since she killed herself over an outrage in which she bore no guilt, it becomes clear that what drove her was not love of purity but the crushing weight of shame. She was ashamed that so vile a crime had been committed against her body, even without her participation; and this woman, with the Roman hunger for honor running deep in her, was seized by a proud terror that if she went on living, people would assume she had quietly accepted the wrong done to her. She could not open her conscience for others to inspect, so she judged that self-inflicted punishment would speak for her inner state. She burned with the thought that her calm endurance of another man's outrage might be read as silent consent to it. The Christian women who suffered as she did, and yet chose to live, reached a very different conclusion. They refused to punish themselves for the guilt of others, and so add crimes of their own to crimes in which they had no part. That is precisely what they would have done had shame driven them to take their own lives, just as their enemies' lust had driven them to violation. Within their own souls, before the witness of their own conscience, they hold the glory of chastity intact. In the sight of God they are counted pure, and that is enough for them. They ask nothing more. It is sufficient to have the opportunity to do good, and they will not escape the discomfort of human suspicion at the cost of departing from divine law.

It is worth noting that nowhere in the holy canonical scriptures can you find a divine command or permission to take one's own life, whether to hasten the enjoyment of immortality, to escape suffering, or to rid oneself of any burden whatsoever. On the contrary, the law, properly understood, actually prohibits suicide where it says, "You shall not kill." This is demonstrated by the notable absence of the words "your neighbor," which do appear when false witness is forbidden: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." No one should conclude from this, however, that bearing false witness only against oneself is somehow permissible. The love we owe our neighbor is modeled on the love we owe ourselves, as it is written, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18). If a person who makes false statements about himself is no less guilty of bearing false witness than if he had harmed his neighbor by those statements, then consider this: the commandment against false witness mentions only the neighbor, and a careless reader might assume that lying to one's own detriment was allowed. How much more reason do we have, then, to understand that a man may not kill himself, since the commandment "You shall not kill" adds no qualification and grants no exception to anyone, least of all to the very person the command addresses?

Some have tried to extend this commandment even to animals and livestock, as though it forbade taking life from any creature at all. But if that were the case, why not extend it further to plants and everything rooted in and nourished by the earth? These things have no sensation, yet they are said to live, and therefore they can die; and if violence is done to them, they can be killed. The apostle himself, speaking of seeds, says, "What you sow is not made alive unless it dies" (1 Cor 15:36); and in the Psalms it is written, "He killed their vines with hail" (Ps 78:47). Are we then to say that pulling a flower breaks the commandment "You shall not kill"? Are we to give any credence to the absurd error of the Manicheans? Setting aside that kind of nonsense: when we say "You shall not kill," we clearly do not mean plants, which have no sensation, nor do we mean irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or crawl. These creatures are separated from us by their lack of reason, and by the just ordering of the Creator they are placed under our authority, to be killed or kept alive for our own purposes. What remains, then, is that we understand this commandment as referring simply to human beings. The commandment is "You shall not kill a human being," which means neither another person nor yourself, since whoever kills himself still kills nothing other than a human being.

That said, divine authority does carve out certain exceptions to its own prohibition against killing. These exceptions fall into two categories: those justified by a general law, and those authorized by a specific commission granted temporarily to a particular individual. In the latter case, the person acting on that authority is essentially the instrument in the hand of the one who wields it, and bears no personal guilt for the death that results. Accordingly, those who have waged war in obedience to a divine command, or who have, in keeping with His laws, embodied the public justice or the wisdom of government and put wicked men to death in that capacity, have in no way violated the commandment "You shall not kill." Abraham, for instance, was not merely cleared of any charge of cruelty; he was actually praised for his devotion, because he was prepared to slay his son out of obedience to God rather than any passion of his own. It is also a reasonable question whether Jephthah's killing of his daughter should be understood as carried out in response to a divine command, given that she was the first to meet him when he had vowed to sacrifice to God whatever greeted him first upon his victorious return from battle. Samson, too, who brought the house down on himself and his enemies alike, can only be justified on the grounds that the Spirit who had worked wonders through him had privately directed him to do this. Outside of these two categories, then, those justified either by a just and generally applicable law or by a specific word from God Himself, the source of all justice, anyone who kills a person, whether himself or another, is guilty of murder.

But those who have taken their own lives are perhaps admirable for their strength of spirit, even if we can't praise the soundness of their judgment. Look more closely at the matter, though, and you'll find it hard to call it true strength of spirit when a person kills himself rather than endure the hardships of fortune or sins he had no part in. Isn't it actually a sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear either the pain of physical suffering or the foolish opinions of the crowd? And isn't the greater mind the one that faces life's troubles rather than flees them, the one that holds the judgment of others, especially the easily misled crowd, in low regard compared to the clarity and purity of a good conscience? If we're going to call suicide a courageous act, then no one deserves that title more than Cleombrotus, who, according to the story, after reading Plato's work on the immortality of the soul, threw himself from a wall and passed from this life into the one he believed to be better. He wasn't driven by disaster or by any accusation, false or true, that he couldn't reasonably have outlasted. There was, in short, no motive pushing him toward death except what we might call courage, a desire to break free from the sweet pull of this life. And yet Plato himself, whose book had inspired the act, would have told him that this was courageous rather than justifiable. Plato would surely have encouraged suicide, or at least endorsed it, had not the same brilliant mind that recognized the soul's immortality also recognized that pursuing immortality through self-destruction was something to be discouraged, not praised.

Again, some argue that many people have killed themselves to prevent an enemy from doing so first. But the real question isn't whether this has happened; it's whether it *should* happen. Sound judgment matters more than precedent, and genuine examples should align with reason. Not just any examples, though: only those marked by genuine piety and worthy of imitation on that basis. When it comes to suicide, we can point to no patriarchs, prophets, or apostles who did it. Consider that our Lord Jesus Christ, when He urged His followers to flee from city to city under persecution, had every opportunity to advise them instead to take their own lives and escape their persecutors that way. But He never did this. He never proposed self-destruction as a way out of this life, even when speaking to His closest friends, for whom He had promised to prepare eternal dwellings. This makes it clear that examples drawn from nations who have forgotten God carry no authority for those who worship the one true God.

Besides Lucretia, about whom enough has already been said, those who advocate suicide have difficulty finding any other authoritative example, unless it is Cato, who killed himself at Utica. His example is cited not because he was the only man to do so, but because he was so widely respected as a learned and excellent man that it seemed plausible to argue that what he did was genuinely the right thing to do. But what can I say about this act of his, except that his own friends, men of equal learning and discernment, wisely tried to talk him out of it? They judged his act to be the product of a weak spirit rather than a strong one, driven not by honorable feeling that refused to endure shame, but by weakness that could not face hardship. In fact, Cato condemns himself through the very advice he gave to his beloved son. If it was a disgrace to live under Caesar's rule, why did the father urge his son toward that same disgrace by encouraging him to trust completely in Caesar's generosity? Why did he not persuade him to die alongside him? If Torquatus was celebrated for putting his own son to death when that son had engaged the enemy contrary to orders (and won), why did the defeated Cato spare his defeated son while refusing to spare himself? Was it more disgraceful to win a battle against orders than to submit to a conqueror against all received notions of honor? Cato, then, cannot truly have believed it was shameful to live under Caesar's rule, because if he had, a father's sword would have delivered his son from that disgrace. The truth is that his son, whom he both hoped and expected Caesar would spare, was not loved by Cato more than Cato resented Caesar receiving the glory of pardoning him (as Caesar himself is reported to have said). Or if "resented" is too strong a word, let us say he was *ashamed* that such glory should belong to Caesar at all.

Our opponents take offense at our preference for the saintly Job over Cato. Job endured terrible physical suffering rather than escape his torment through suicide, and other saints recorded in our authoritative scriptures likewise bore captivity and oppression at the hands of their enemies rather than take their own lives. Yet even by our opponents' own sources, we are justified in preferring Marcus Regulus to Marcus Cato. Cato had never defeated Caesar; and when Caesar defeated him, Cato refused to submit and killed himself to avoid that humiliation. Regulus, by contrast, had previously conquered the Carthaginians and led the Roman army to a victory so complete that no Roman citizen could mourn it and even the enemy was forced to admire it. Yet when the Carthaginians later defeated him in turn, he chose to remain their prisoner rather than place himself beyond their reach through suicide. He endured Carthaginian captivity with patience and held his love for Rome constant throughout. He denied neither his captors the possession of his defeated body, nor his countrymen the inspiration of his undefeated spirit. And it was not love of life that kept him from killing himself. This is made perfectly clear by the fact that he returned without hesitation to those same enemies, bound by his promise and oath, even though he had provoked them more deeply through his speech in the Roman senate than he ever had through his sword on the battlefield. A man who held life in such contempt, and who preferred to die under whatever tortures his enraged enemies could devise rather than die by his own hand, could not have declared more plainly how grave a crime he considered suicide to be. Among all of Rome's celebrated and remarkable citizens, none stands higher than this man: he was neither corrupted by success (he remained quite poor even after his great victories) nor broken by misfortune (he returned without flinching to the most wretched of ends). But consider this: if the bravest and most celebrated heroes, men who fought only for an earthly homeland and who, though they worshipped false gods, honored them sincerely and kept their oaths faithfully; if these men, who by the customs and rights of war put conquered enemies to the sword, still refused to take their own lives even when conquered by those same enemies; if men who had no fear of death whatsoever would still choose slavery over suicide, then how much more should Christians refuse to do so? Christians worship the true God and aspire to a heavenly citizenship. If God's providence has allowed them to fall for a time into the hands of their enemies, whether to test them or to correct them, they must not despair. Christians enduring this kind of humiliation will not be abandoned by the Most High, who humbled Himself for their sake. They should also remember that they are bound by no law of war, no military command, to kill even a conquered enemy. And if a person may not lawfully kill an enemy who has sinned against him or may yet do so, then who could be so confused as to argue that he may kill himself simply because an enemy has sinned, or intends to sin, against him?

We are told, however, that there is reason to fear that when the body is subjected to an enemy's lust, the seductive pleasure of the senses may draw the soul into consenting to the sin, and that steps must be taken to prevent such a catastrophic outcome. And is suicide not the proper way to prevent not only the enemy's sin, but the sin of the Christian who has been so tempted? To begin with, a soul guided by God and His wisdom rather than by bodily desire will never consent to the craving aroused in its own flesh by another person's lust. And in any case, if it is true, as it plainly is, that suicide is a detestable and damnable wickedness, who is foolish enough to argue: let us sin now to prevent a possible future sin; let us commit murder today, lest we perhaps commit adultery tomorrow? If we are so overtaken by wrongdoing that innocence is no longer an option and we can only choose between sins, is a future and uncertain adultery not preferable to a present and certain murder? Is it not better to commit a wrong that repentance can heal than a crime that leaves no room for healing contrition? I say this for the sake of those men or women who fear they may be drawn into consenting to their violator's lust and believe they should take their own lives to prevent, not another's sin, but their own. But let the mind of a Christian who trusts in God and rests in the hope of His help never yield a shameful consent to the pleasures of the flesh, however they are presented. And if that lustful disobedience which still dwells in our mortal bodies follows its own impulse regardless of our will, then surely its stirrings in the body of someone who resists them are just as blameless as its stirrings in the body of someone who is asleep.

But there are those who point out that, during times of persecution, certain holy women threw themselves into rivers to avoid being violated by their attackers, and that these women drowned and are now venerated as martyrs in the Catholic Church. I will not speak carelessly about such cases. I cannot say whether the church may have received some divine authorization, confirmed by reliable evidence, for honoring their memory in this way. It is possible. It may be that these women were not acting on flawed human judgment, but were moved by divine wisdom when they took their own lives. We know that something like this happened with Samson. And when God commands an act and makes it clear through unmistakable evidence that He has commanded it, who would call obedience a crime? Who would condemn such a devout act of submission? But that does not mean every man is justified in sacrificing his son to God simply because Abraham was praised for doing so. A soldier who kills a man while acting under lawful orders is not charged with murder by any law of his state; in fact, if he refuses to carry out those orders, he can be charged with treason and insubordination. But if he kills on his own initiative, without orders, he has committed the crime of shedding innocent blood. In that case, he is punished for doing on his own authority the very thing he would be punished for refusing to do under orders. If a general's command makes such a profound difference, should God's command make none at all? A person who knows it is wrong to take his own life may still do so if God commands it, since God's commands are not to be ignored. But he must be absolutely certain that the divine command has actually been given. As for us, we can only know what is in a person's conscience to the extent that it is revealed to us, and we judge only on that basis: "No one knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him." But this we affirm, this we maintain, and this we declare without reservation to be right: no one should take his own life voluntarily, because doing so is to flee the troubles of this life only to fall into the torments of eternity; no one should do so because of another person's sins, because that would mean incurring serious guilt of one's own in order to escape a guilt that could never have touched him; no one should do so on account of his own past sins, since he needs this life all the more so that those sins can be healed through repentance; and no one should end this life in order to reach the better life we hope for after death, because those who die by their own hand have no better life waiting for them.

One remaining argument for suicide deserves attention, one I mentioned earlier that some consider compelling: that a person should end their life to prevent falling into sin, whether through the seductions of pleasure or the force of pain. If this argument were sound, it would logically push us to urge people to destroy themselves immediately after baptism, the moment all their past sins have been washed away. That would be the ideal time to escape all future sin, while the slate is perfectly clean. And if suicide is a legitimate way to secure that escape, why not do it then, at that very moment? Why would any baptized person hold back from taking their own life? Why would someone newly freed from life's dangers turn around and expose themselves to those dangers again, when they could so easily be rid of them all, especially given the warning that "he who loves danger will fall into it" (Sir 3:27)? Why would such a person willingly embrace, or at least accept, the countless serious dangers that come with remaining in this life, if departing from it is supposedly lawful? But surely no one could be so morally confused, so thoroughly lost from the truth, as to believe this: that a man should kill himself to avoid being led into sin by the oppression of one master, yet should go on living and expose himself to the hourly temptations of the world, including every evil that one master's oppression involves, plus the countless other miseries this life inevitably brings. What purpose, then, is there in all our efforts to encourage the baptized toward virginal chastity, widowed continence, or faithful marriage, when we supposedly have a far simpler and more direct path to freedom from sin? We could just persuade the newly baptized to end their lives and go to their Lord in a state of purity. Anyone who thinks such persuasion should be attempted is not merely foolish; they are out of their mind. How could anyone look another person in the face and say, "Kill yourself, before you add a serious sin to your smaller ones by living under an unchaste and barbaric master"? How could they say that, if they cannot say without wickedness: "Kill yourself now, while you are washed clean of all sin, before you fall again into similar or even worse sins by living in a world that seduces with its corrupt pleasures, torments with its horrifying cruelties, and overwhelms with its errors and fears"? To say that would be wicked, and therefore suicide itself is wicked. If any cause could ever justify it, this one would be the strongest candidate. Since even this cause fails, no such cause exists at all.

Do not let your life become a burden to you, faithful servants of Christ, even though your chastity was made sport of by your enemies. You have a profound and genuine consolation available to you, if you hold to a clear conscience and know that you never consented to the sins that were committed against you by force. If you ask why God permitted this at all, the answer lies in a deep and inscrutable providence, for "unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out" (Rom 11:33). Even so, search your own hearts honestly: have you been unduly proud of your integrity, your self-discipline, your chastity? Have you craved the human praise that attaches to these virtues so eagerly that you looked with envy on others who possessed them? I cannot see into your hearts, and so I make no accusation; I cannot even hear what your hearts say when you put the question to them. Yet if they answer as I have suggested they might, do not be surprised that you lost the thing by which you could win human praise, while retaining the thing that cannot be put on display before others. If you did not consent to sin, it was because God added His aid to His grace so that it would not be lost, and because shame before others followed in the wake of human glory so that glory would not be loved too dearly. In both respects, even the most faint-hearted among you have a consolation: confirmed by one experience, humbled by the other; justified by the one, corrected by the other. But what of those whose hearts, when honestly questioned, reply that they were never proud of their virginity, their widowhood, or their marital chastity? What of those who humbled themselves to walk alongside the lowly, who rejoiced with trembling in these gifts of God, who never envied anyone else's holiness or purity, who rose above the applause of others (which tends to grow louder the rarer the virtue being praised), and who desired rather to see their number increased than to stand out conspicuously because their number was small? Even these faithful women, I say, must not complain that the barbarians were permitted to violate them so brutally, nor should they allow themselves to believe that God overlooked their character when He permitted acts that no one commits without consequence. For some of the most vile and wicked desires are allowed to run their course in this present age by the secret judgment of God, held in reserve for the final and public judgment to come. Beyond this, it is possible that even those Christian women who were unaware of any improper pride in their chaste virtue, and who suffered their captors' violence without any sin of their own, still harbored some hidden weakness that might have led them into proud and contemptuous behavior had they not been subjected to the humiliation that came with the city's fall. Just as some people were taken by death so that wickedness could not corrupt their character, so these women were violated so that prosperity would not corrupt their modesty. Neither those women who were already swelling with pride over their virginity, nor those who might have grown proud had they not been exposed to the enemy's violence, lost their chastity in the end; rather, they gained humility. The former were rescued from a pride already taking root; the latter, from a pride that would soon have grown in them.

We should also note that some of these victims may have believed that chastity was a physical quality, something that existed only as long as the body remained untouched. They didn't understand that the purity of both body and soul rests on the steadfastness of the will, strengthened by God's grace, and cannot be forcibly stripped from someone who refuses to surrender it. They have probably been freed from this misunderstanding by now. When they reflect on how faithfully they served God, and when they return to the firm conviction that He cannot possibly abandon those who serve Him so sincerely and call on His help, and when they consider (as they cannot doubt) how precious chastity is to Him, they are driven to one unavoidable conclusion: He would never have allowed these disasters to fall on His saints if those disasters could have destroyed the very holiness He Himself had given them and takes delight in seeing within them.

The entire family of the most high and most true God has a consolation uniquely its own, one that cannot deceive and that rests on a far more certain hope than the unstable and crumbling affairs of this world can ever offer. They will not refuse the discipline of this temporal life, in which they are being trained for eternal life; nor will they resent the experience of it. They use the good things of this earth as pilgrims who pass through without being held back by them, and its hardships either test their virtues or strengthen them. As for those who mock them in their trials and ask, when misfortune strikes, "Where is your God?" we might reasonably ask where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities they worship their gods to avoid, or claim their gods ought to be worshipped to prevent. The family of Christ has a ready answer: our God is everywhere present, wholly and completely everywhere, confined to no particular place. He can be present without being perceived, and absent without moving. When He exposes us to adversity, it is either to test our strengths or to correct our weaknesses; and in return for our patient endurance of temporal suffering, He reserves for us an everlasting reward. But who are you, that we should even condescend to speak with you about your own gods, let alone 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" (Ps 96:4-5).

If the famous Scipio Nasica were alive today, he would silence your shamelessness without hesitation. He was once your pontiff, unanimously chosen by the senate when the terror of the Punic War drove them to seek the finest citizen in Rome to receive the Phrygian goddess. You would scarcely dare meet the gaze of such a man. So why do you blame Christianity for your calamities? The answer is plain: you want to indulge your appetites without restraint, to live a dissolute and reckless life free from any discomfort or consequence. Your longing for peace, prosperity, and abundance is not driven by any intention to use those gifts wisely, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, self-control, and piety. Your real aim is to drown yourself in an endless variety of mindless pleasures, and in doing so, to breed from your own prosperity a moral rot far more destructive than any foreign enemy. This is the disaster that Scipio, your chief pontiff, the man the entire senate judged to be Rome's finest citizen, feared when he refused to support the destruction of Carthage, Rome's great rival. He stood against Cato, who argued for its demolition. What Scipio feared was security itself, that quiet enemy of weak minds. He understood that a healthy measure of fear would serve as a fitting guardian for the citizens of Rome. And he was not wrong. The outcome proved how clearly he had seen the truth. Once Carthage was destroyed and the Roman republic freed from its greatest source of anxiety, a flood of disasters poured in from the very prosperity that followed. First, civic unity crumbled and was torn apart by fierce and bloody uprisings. Then, through a chain of ruinous causes, civil wars erupted, bringing with them massacres, rivers of bloodshed, and lawless campaigns of brutal persecution and plunder. The Romans who, in their days of virtue, had expected harm only from foreign enemies now suffered far worse cruelties at the hands of their own countrymen, because that virtue was gone. The hunger for power, which burned among the Romans more intensely and without restraint than among any other people, seized hold of the most powerful few and bent the rest, worn down and exhausted, under its yoke.

Once that hunger for power takes root in a proud spirit, where can it possibly stop? It climbs, step by step, until it reaches the throne itself. And nothing fuels that climb like unscrupulous ambition. But unscrupulous ambition can only thrive in a nation already rotted by greed and luxury. A people becomes greedy and self-indulgent through prosperity, and this is precisely what the shrewd statesman Nasica was trying to prevent when he opposed the destruction of Rome's greatest, strongest, and wealthiest enemy city. His reasoning was straightforward: fear would restrain desire, restrained desire would not spill over into luxury, and without luxury, greed would wither. With those vices gone, virtue would flourish to the great benefit of the state, and liberty, virtue's natural companion, would remain unshackled. Driven by the same thoughtful patriotism, that same chief pontiff of yours (I still mean the man unanimously declared Rome's finest citizen) threw cold water on the senate's proposal to build permanent seating around the theatre. In a forceful speech, he warned them against letting Greek decadence erode Roman strength, and he persuaded them to resist the softening influence of foreign self-indulgence. His words carried such weight that the senate went further still, banning even the temporary benches that citizens had long been permitted to bring to the theatre. How eagerly a man like that would have driven the theatrical performances themselves out of Rome, had he dared to challenge the authority of those he believed to be gods! He either didn't know they were malicious demons, or if he did suspect it, he thought it wiser to appease them than to defy them. The heavenly teaching that would one day purify the hearts of the Gentiles through faith, reshape their character through humble devotion, and turn them away from serving proud demons toward seeking what is above the heavens, had not yet been revealed to them.

Know this, then, you who are ignorant of it, and take note, you who pretend not to know, while you grumble against the One who freed you from such rulers: the theatrical games, those exhibitions of shameless folly and moral license, were established at Rome not by the corrupt desires of ordinary people, but by the direct command of your gods. You would have been far more justified in offering divine honors to Scipio than to gods like these. The gods were not as morally upright as their own high priest. But give me your attention now, if your mind, so thoroughly drunk on error, can still absorb a sober truth. The gods demanded that games be staged in their honor in order to stop a physical plague; their high priest forbade the construction of a theater in order to prevent a moral one. If, then, you still have enough clarity of mind to value the soul above the body, choose carefully whom you worship. And besides, the plague did not actually stop because the intoxicating madness of stage performances had taken hold of a warlike people previously accustomed only to the games of the circus. Rather, these cunning and malicious spirits, knowing full well that the plague would soon run its course on its own, seized the opportunity to infect their worshippers with a far more serious disease: not of the body, but of the character. In this moral plague, these gods took great delight, because it plunged the minds of men into such thick darkness and degraded them with such deep corruption that even quite recently (will future generations even believe it?) some of those who had fled the sack of Rome and found refuge in Carthage were so consumed by this disease that day after day they seemed to compete with one another over who could most frantically chase after the theater actors.

What blindness is this, or rather what madness, that has taken hold of you? We hear that even the nations of the East are weeping over your ruin, that powerful kingdoms in the farthest corners of the earth are mourning your fall as a disaster for all humanity, and yet you yourselves are crowding into the theatres, pouring through their doors and filling every seat, playing the fool more recklessly now than you ever did before. This was the very corruption, the rot at the heart of virtue and honor, that Scipio was trying to protect you from when he blocked the construction of theatres. This is why he wanted you to still have an enemy to fear: he could see clearly how easily prosperity would soften and destroy you. In his view, a republic was not flourishing simply because its walls were standing while its morals were crumbling. But the temptations offered by malicious spirits carried more weight with you than the warnings of wise men. So now you refuse to accept responsibility for the wrongs you commit, yet you are quick to blame Christianity for every wrong you suffer. Prosperity corrupted you, and adversity has not corrected you. What you really want from the restoration of peace and security is not the health of the commonwealth, but the freedom to indulge your vices without consequence. Scipio wanted you pressed hard by an enemy so that you would not sink into decadence, but you have sunk so deep that not even being crushed by that enemy has been enough to check your indulgence. You have learned nothing from your suffering. You have been made utterly wretched, and you have remained utterly depraved.

That you are still alive at all is a gift from God, who spares you so that you might be moved to repent and change your ways. It is He who allowed you, ungrateful as you are, to escape the enemy's sword, whether by calling yourselves His servants or by taking refuge in the sacred shrines of the martyrs.

There is a tradition that Romulus and Remus, seeking to grow the population of their newly founded city, opened a sanctuary where any man could find refuge and be absolved of all past crimes. This was a remarkable foreshadowing of what has recently taken place in honor of Christ. Rome's destroyers followed the example of its founders. Yet it reflects little credit on those founders that they acted out of a desire to swell their ranks with new citizens, while the invaders acted to avoid reducing the number of their enemies.

Let these answers, and any better ones that can be found, be offered to their enemies by the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, the pilgrim city of King Christ. But this city must remember that among her enemies are those who are destined to become her fellow-citizens, so that she will not see it as wasted effort to endure what they inflict while they are still enemies, until they become confessors of the faith. Likewise, as long as she remains a stranger in this world, the city of God has in her communion, bound to her by the sacraments, some who will never permanently dwell among the saints. Some of these are not yet recognizable; others make themselves known openly, not hesitating to join our enemies in complaining against God, even while wearing the sacramental mark of His people. You can see these people filling the churches with us today and crowding the theaters with the godless tomorrow. Yet we have less reason to despair of winning back even such people when we consider that among our most open enemies there are some who, without knowing it themselves, are destined to become our friends. The truth is that these two cities are tangled together in this world, thoroughly mixed until the last judgment finally separates them. I will now proceed to speak, as God gives me help, of the rise, progress, and end of these two cities. What I write, I write for the glory of the city of God, so that when placed alongside the other, it may shine all the more brightly by comparison.

Before I close this first book, I still have something to say in response to those who blame the disasters of the Roman republic on our religion, specifically because it forbids the offering of sacrifices to the gods. To address this properly, I need to recount all the disasters, or at least enough of them, that fell on that city and its subject provinces before these sacrifices were ever prohibited. Those critics would certainly have blamed us for all of those calamities if our religion had already been present and had already forbidden their rituals. From there, I need to show what genuine social well-being the true God, in whose hands all kingdoms rest, was pleased to grant them, so that their empire could grow. I need to explain why He did this, and how their false gods, far from helping them in any way, actually caused them serious harm through deception and trickery. Finally, I need to address those who, once they have been convinced and refuted on that point by solid evidence, fall back on the argument that they worship the gods not for the benefits of this present life, but for those to be enjoyed after death. This last task, if I'm not mistaken, will be the most demanding of all, and it deserves the most careful and elevated treatment. At that point we will have to enter the arena against the philosophers, and not just any philosophers, but the most distinguished among them, those who agree with us on many points: the immortality of the soul, the fact that the true God created the world, and that He governs by His providence everything He has made. But because they differ from us on other points, we cannot avoid the work of exposing their errors. Having refuted the objections of the wicked with whatever ability God grants us, we can then make the case for the city of God, for true piety, and for the worship of God, to which alone the promise of genuine and everlasting happiness belongs. Let us conclude here, then, and take up these subjects in a fresh book.