Cyprian of Carthage, An Address to Demetrianus

I frequently despised you, Demetriane, because you kept opening your sacrilegious mouth and shouting impious words against the one true God. I judged it more proper to scorn the ignorance of the erring in silence than to provoke the madness of a demented man by speaking, and I did not act without the authority of divine teaching. Scripture says: "Do not speak in the ears of a fool, lest he despise the wisdom of your words" (Prov. 23:9). It also says: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him yourself" (Prov. 26:4). We are also commanded to keep the holy within our conscience and not to cast pearls before swine and dogs, as the Lord says: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you" (Matt. 7:6). You often came to me more eager to contradict than to learn, and with loud voices you preferred to force your own opinions on me impudently rather than listen patiently to mine. It seemed foolish to engage you, since it would be easier and lighter to calm the turbulent waves of a stormy sea with shouts than to restrain your rage with discussion. To offer light to the blind, a sermon to the deaf, or wisdom to a brute is useless labor with no effect, for a brute cannot perceive, the blind cannot receive light, and the deaf cannot hear. Considering these things, I often kept silent and overcame the impatient with patience, since I could neither teach the unteachable nor restrain the impious with religion nor calm the furious with gentleness. But now you say that many complain that wars arise more frequently, that plague and famine rage, and that rains and showers are withheld after long serenity, and you impute all this to us because your gods are not worshipped by us. It is no longer fitting to remain silent, lest our silence begin to look not like modesty but like diffidence, and while we disdain to refute false accusations we seem to acknowledge the crime. I answer you, Demetriane, and the others you may have stirred up against us by sowing hatred with your slanderous voices; you have gathered many companions for yourself from the root and origin of your own multitude. Yet I believe these people will accept the reason of our words, for whoever is moved to evil by deceit will be much more moved to good by compelling truth. Since you are ignorant of divine knowledge and a stranger to truth, you should first know that the world has already grown old; it no longer stands with the strength it once had, nor does it prevail with its former vigor and power. The world itself testifies to this even when we are silent and produce no documents from the holy Scriptures and divine preaching; the world now speaks and proves its own decline by the evidence of its failing things. Winter no longer brings such abundance of rain to nourish seeds; summer no longer brings such burning heat to ripen crops; spring no longer makes the sown fields so fertile; autumn is no longer so fruitful with the yield of trees. Less marble is quarried from exhausted mountains; less silver and gold flow from depleted mines, and poor veins shrink and dwindle 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 judgment, concord in friendships, skill in arts, discipline in morals. Do you think a declining substance can possess the same greatness it had when it was still new and flourishing in youth? Whatever is nearing its end and turning toward the west must decrease. Thus the sun at its setting throws its rays with less clear and fiery splendor; thus the moon, as its course declines, is diminished with worn horns; thus the tree that was once green and fertile becomes sterile and deformed in old age as its branches wither; and the spring that once flowed abundantly with overflowing veins now, in its old age, barely trickles with a scant flow. This is the sentence passed upon the world; this is the law of God: that all things that arise must decline, and all that grow 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 impute to Christians the fact that individual things are diminishing while the world grows old. What if the old also imputed to Christians that they are less strong in old age, that they do not thrive as they once did in hearing, walking, sight, strength, bodily vigor, and limb mass? Once human life lasted eight or nine hundred years; now it can hardly reach a hundred. We see gray hair in children, and hair falls out before it even grows; nor does age end in old age, but rather begins with old age. Thus, in its very birth, humanity hastens to its end; thus whatever is now born degenerates because of the old age of the world itself, so that no one should wonder that individual things in the world have begun to fail when the whole world is already in decline and at its end.