The City of God

It would be more tolerable for you to offer divine honors to that Scipio than to worship gods of such a kind. For those gods were not better than their own pontiff. Look, pay attention, if your mind, intoxicated by such long-standing errors, allows you to consider something sound: the gods commanded that theatrical plays be exhibited for them to settle a pestilence of bodies, but your pontiff prohibited the construction of the very stage itself to prevent a pestilence of souls. If, with any light of the mind, you prefer the soul over the body, choose whom you will worship. Nor did that pestilence of the body cease because a delicate insanity of theatrical plays entered into a warlike people, who had previously been accustomed only to the games of the Circus. Rather, the cunning of wicked spirits, foreseeing that the pestilence would now end by its due course, took this occasion to sow a far more serious plague, in which it takes great delight, not for bodies but for morals. This plague blinded the souls of the miserable and fouled them with such deformity that even now—which will perhaps be incredible if heard by our descendants—with the city of Rome devastated, those whom that pestilence possessed, and who fled from it to Carthage, would daily contend in the theaters, acting like madmen for the sake of actors.

Concerning the vices of the Romans which the destruction of their homeland did not correct. Chapter XXXIII

O foolish minds, what is this great error, or rather, madness, that while the oriental peoples were lamenting as we have heard, and while the greatest cities in the most remote lands were mourning and bearing public grief, you would seek out the theaters, enter them, fill them, and perform even more insane acts than before? That Scipio whom I mentioned feared this corruption and plague of souls, this overthrow of integrity and honesty, when he prohibited the building of theaters. He saw that you could be easily corrupted and destroyed by prosperous affairs, and he did not want you to be secure from the terror of an enemy. He did not consider the republic happy while its walls were standing but its morals were collapsing. However, that which the impious demons seduced had more power over you than that which prudent men had provided against. Hence it is D that you do not wish to impute to yourselves the evils you commit, yet you impute the evils you suffer to Christian times. You do not seek a peaceful republic in your security, but rather impunity for your luxury, you who, depraved by prosperous events, could not be corrected even by adverse ones. That Scipio wanted you to be terrified by the enemy so that you would not sink into luxury. You, not even crushed by the enemy, have repressed your luxury; you have lost the benefit of calamity, and you have become most miserable while remaining most wicked. And yet, the fact that you live is due to God, who by sparing you warns you to be corrected by repenting: He who, even to you ungrateful people, has granted that you might escape hostile hands either under the name of His servants or in the places of His martyrs.

Concerning the mercy of God, which tempered the destruction of the city. Chapter XXXIV

Romulus and Remus are said to have established an asylum where whoever fled would be free from all harm, seeking to increase the number of citizens for the city they were creating. A wondrous example preceded this in honor of Christ, for the destroyers of the city established this same thing that the founders had established before. But what is great, if they did this so that the number of their citizens might be replenished, and these later men did it so that the multitude of their enemies might be saved? Let the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, and the pilgrim city of King Christ, answer these and other things to its enemies, if it can do so more abundantly and fittingly.

Concerning the sons of the Church hidden among the impious, and concerning false Christians within the Church. Chapter XXXV

Let the believer indeed remember that future citizens that is, the elect who are not yet aware of their calling lie hidden among the very enemies, lest he think it fruitless, even among them, that he bears with those who are hostile until he reaches those who have confessed. Just as the city of God, as long as it wanders in the world, has among its own number those connected by the communion of the sacraments, who will not be with Him in the eternal lot of the saints, some of whom are hidden and some of whom are manifest. These people do not hesitate to murmur with the very enemies against God, whose sacrament they bear; at one time filling the theaters with them, at another filling the churches with us. But concerning the correction of some of even such as these, one should be much less in despair, if the predestined friends of God lie hidden among most open adversaries, as yet unknown even to themselves.