Cyprian of Carthage, An Address to Demetrianus

I had long held you in contempt, Demetrius, because with sacrilegious mouth and impious words you frequently railed against the one true God. I thought it more reverent and better to pass over the ignorance of a wanderer in silence than to provoke a madman’s insanity by speaking. And I did not act without divine authority, since it is written: “Do not speak in the ears of a fool, lest he despise the wisdom of your words” (Prov. 9:7–8). And again: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself” (Prov. 9:7–8). We are also commanded to keep what is holy within our own conscience and not to throw pearls before swine and dogs, for the Lord said: “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” (Matt. 7:6). For you often came to me more intent on contradicting than on learning, and with loud clamor you chose to force your own views on me rather than listen patiently to mine. It seemed pointless to engage you, because it would be easier to calm the raging waves of a stormy sea with shouts than to restrain your fury with reason. To offer light to the blind, speech to the deaf, wisdom to a brute beast is labor in vain and without effect; a beast cannot perceive, a blind man cannot receive light, a deaf man cannot hear. Weighing this, I often kept silent and overcame your impatience with my patience, since I could neither teach the unteachable, nor restrain the impious by religion, nor calm the raging by gentleness.

But now you claim that many complain that wars break out more frequently, that plagues and famines rage, and that the long fair weather has given way to rains and showers — and that all this is to be laid at our door because your gods are not worshiped by us. If I stayed silent any longer it would look not like reverence but like fear, and by refusing to refute false accusations we would seem to admit the charge. So I answer you, Demetrius, and equally the others you may have stirred up, who with your slanderous voices have sown hatred against us and gathered many companions from the root and stock of your own kind. Yet I believe they will accept the reason of our words: whoever is driven to evil by the deceit of falsehood will be driven much more to good by the compulsion of truth.

You say these disasters happen through us and must be imputed to us because your gods are not worshiped by us. On this point, since you are ignorant of divine knowledge and a stranger to the truth, you must first understand that the world has grown old. It no longer stands with the powers it once had, nor does it prevail with the vigor and strength it formerly possessed. Even if we kept silent and produced no testimonies from the holy Scriptures or divine preaching, the world itself now speaks and testifies to its own decline by the evidence of failing things. The winter rains are no longer so abundant to nourish the seed; the summer sun no longer burns so fiercely to ripen the fruit; spring crops are no longer so joyful, autumn no longer so fruitful with the produce of the trees. Less and less marble is quarried from the excavated and exhausted mountains; less and less silver and gold is yielded by mines now drained; the poor veins shrink day by day and dwindle. The farmer fails in the fields, the sailor on the sea, the soldier in the camp; innocence fails in the forum, justice in the courts, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals.

Do you think a thing that is aging can still possess the substance it had when it was new and in vigorous youth? Whatever is already near its end and declining into its final stages must necessarily diminish. Thus the sun at its setting casts rays with less clear and fiery splendor; thus the moon, its course declining, wanes with worn-out horns; and a tree once green and fertile becomes sterile and deformed by withered branches in sterile old age. A spring that once flowed abundantly from overflowing veins, failing with age, barely drips a thin trickle. This sentence has been passed on the world; this is the law of God: that all things that arise will decline, all that grow will grow old, the strong will be weakened, the great diminished, and when weakened and diminished they will come to an end.

You blame Christians because individual things decrease while the world grows old. What if the elderly also blamed Christians because they are less strong in old age — because they do not thrive as before in hearing, in running, in sharpness of sight, in robustness of strength, in the moisture of their viscera, in the mass of their limbs? Human life once lasted eight or nine hundred years; now it can hardly reach a hundred. We see gray hair in children; hair falls out before it grows. Age does not end in old age; it begins with old age. Thus, in its very birth, nativity hastens toward its end; thus whatever is now born degenerates with the old age of the world itself. No one should wonder that individual things in the world have begun to fail, when the whole world itself is already in decline and at its end.