Cyprian of Carthage, An Address to Demetrianus

I have often despised you, Demetrianus, because with sacrilegious mouth and impious words you have repeatedly spoken against God, who is one and true. I judged it more proper and better to spurn the ignorance of the erring in silence than to provoke the madness of the demented by speaking. I did not do this without the authority of divine teaching, since it is written: "Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the good sense of your words" (Proverbs 23:9). And again: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself" (Proverbs 26:4). We are also commanded to keep what is holy within our conscience and not to cast pearls before swine and dogs, the Lord speaking and saying: "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you" (Matthew 7:6). For you often came to me more intent on contradicting than on learning, and with loud voices you preferred to thrust your opinions forward impudently rather than listen patiently to ours. It seemed pointless to engage with you, since it would be easier and less trouble to calm the raging waves of a storm-tossed sea with shouts than to restrain your fury with reasoned words. It is surely useless labor and without effect to offer light to the blind, a discourse to the deaf, or wisdom to the brute, for the brute cannot perceive, the blind cannot receive light, and the deaf cannot hear. Reflecting on this, I have often held my peace and overcome the impatient with patience, since I could neither teach the unteachable nor restrain the impious by religion nor calm the furious by gentleness.

But now, since you say that many complain that wars break out more frequently, that plague and famine rage, and that long spells of fair weather are broken by rains and showers, and that these are imputed to us, it is no longer right to remain silent, lest our silence begin to look not like modesty but like diffidence, and while we disdain to refute false charges, we seem to acknowledge the crime. I therefore answer you, Demetrianus, and equally those others whom you may have stirred up against us, sowing hatred against us with your slanderous words, and so making many companions for yourself from the root and stock of your own kind. Yet I believe they will accept the reasoning of our words, for whoever is moved to evil by deceit will be moved all the more to good by compelling truth. You said that these things happen through us, and that all the things by which the world is now shaken and hard-pressed should be blamed on us, because your gods are not worshiped by us. In this matter, because you are ignorant of divine knowledge and a stranger to the truth, you ought first to know that the world has already grown old; it does not stand with the strength it once had, nor does it prevail with the vigor and power it formerly possessed. The world itself testifies to this even if we keep silent and produce no evidence from the holy Scriptures and divine preaching. The world itself now speaks and proves its own decline by the evidence of its failing elements. There is not the same abundance of rain in winter to nourish the seeds, nor the same scorching heat of the sun in summer to ripen the crops; the sown fields are not as joyful in the spring, nor is autumn as fruitful with the yield of trees. Less marble is quarried from the excavated and exhausted mountains; less wealth of silver and gold is brought forth, since the mines are now exhausted, and the poor veins dwindle and shrink day by day. The farmer is lacking in the fields, the sailor on the sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the forum, justice in the court, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. Do you think the substance of a declining thing can remain as great as it was when it was still new and flourishing in youth? Whatever is already near its end and verging toward the west and the extreme must diminish. Thus the sun at its setting casts its rays with less clear and fiery splendor; thus the moon, as its course declines, is diminished with worn horns; and the tree that was once green and fertile becomes sterile and deformed by sterile old age as its branches wither. And the spring that once flowed abundantly with overflowing veins, failing with age, now barely trickles with a scant flow. This is the decree appointed for the world, this is the law of God: that all things that arise must decline, and all things that increase must grow old, the strong must become weak, the great must diminish, and when they have become weak and diminished, they must come to an end. You blame Christians because individual things diminish while the world grows old. What if the old also blamed Christians because they are less strong in old age, that they do not thrive as before in hearing, in stride, in keenness of sight, in strength of limbs, in vigor of organs, in bulk of members? And whereas human life once extended beyond eight or nine hundred years, now it can scarcely reach the number of a hundred. We see gray hair in children; hair falls out before it grows. Nor does life end in old age; rather it begins from old age. Thus even in its very birth, nature hastens to its end; thus whatever is now born degenerates because of the old age of the world itself, so that no one should marvel that individual things in the world have begun to fail, when the whole world itself is already in decline and at its end.