An Address to Demetrianus.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamour with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and true God, thinking it more modest and better, silently to scorn the ignorance of a mistaken man, than by speaking to provoke the fury of a senseless one. Neither did I do this without the authority of the divine teaching,2    Some add, “and name.” since it is written, “Speak not in the ears of a fool, lest when he hear thee he should despise the wisdom of thy words;”3    Prov. xxiii. 9. and again, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”4    Prov. xxvi. 4. And we are, moreover, bidden to keep what is holy within our own knowledge, and not expose it to be trodden down by swine and dogs, since the Lord speaks, saying, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”5    Matt. vii. 6. For when you used often to come to me with the desire of contradicting rather than with the wish to learn, and preferred impudently to insist on your own views, which you shouted with noisy words, to patiently listening to mine, it seemed to me foolish to contend with you; since it would be an easier and slighter thing to restrain the angry waves of a turbulent sea with shouts, than to check your madness by arguments.  Assuredly it would be both a vain and ineffectual labour to offer light to a blind man, discourse to a deaf one, or wisdom to a brute; since neither can a brute apprehend, nor can a blind man admit the light, nor can a deaf man hear.

0544B I. OBLATRANTEM te et adversus Deum, qui unus et verus est, ore sacrilego et verbis impiis obstrepentem frequenter, Demetriane, contempseram, verecundius ac melius existimans errantis imperitiam silentio spernere, quam loquendo dementis insaniam provocare. Nec hoc sine magisterii divini auctoritate faciebam, cum scriptum sit: In aures imprudentis noli quicquam dicere, ne, quando audierit, irrideat sensatos sermones tuos (Prov. XXIII, 9). Et iterum: Noli respondere imprudenti ad imprudentiam ejus, ne similis fias illi (Prov. XXVI, 4). Et sanctum quoque jubeamur intra conscientiam nostram tenere, nec inculcandum porcis et canibus exponere, loquente Domino et dicente: 0544CNe dederitis sanctum canibus, neque miseritis 0545Amargaritas vestras ante porcos, ne inculcent eas pedibus , et conversi elidant vos (Matth. VII, 6). Nam, cum ad me saepe, studio magis contradicendi quam voto discendi, venires, et, clamosis vocibus personans, malles tua impudenter ingerere quam nostra patienter audire, ineptum videbatur congredi tecum, quando facilius esset et levius turbulenti maris concitos fluctus clamoribus retundere quam tuam rabiem tractatibus coercere. Certe et labor irritus et nullus effectus, offerre lumen caeco, sermonem surdo, sapientiam bruto; cum nec sentire brutus possit, nec caecus lumen admittere, nec surdus audire.