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For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to
defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed, being reclaimed from
their ungodly error, have become sufficiently creditable citizens of
this city; but many are so inflamed with hatred against it, and are so
ungrateful to its Redeemer for His signal benefits, as to forget that
they would now be unable to utter a single word to its prejudice, had
they not found in its sacred places, as they fled from the enemy's
steel, that life in which they now boast themselves. Are not those
very Romans, who were spared by the barbarians through their respect
for Christ, become enemies to the name of Christ? The reliquaries
of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles bear witness to this;
for in the sack of the city they were open sanctuary for all who fled to
them, whether Christian or Pagan. To their very threshold the
blood-thirsty enemy raged; there his murderous fury owned a limit.
Thither did such of the enemy as had any pity convey those to whom they
had given quarter, lest any less mercifully disposed might fall upon
them. And, indeed, when even those murderers who everywhere else
showed themselves pitiless came to those spots where that was forbidden
which the license of war permitted in every other place, their furious
rage for slaughter was bridled, and their eagerness to take prisoners
was quenched. Thus escaped multitudes who now reproach the Christian
religion, and impute to Christ the ills that have befallen their
city; but the preservation of their own life, a boon which they owe to
the respect entertained for Christ by the barbarians, they attribute
not to our Christ, but to their own good luck. They ought rather,
had they any right perceptions, to attribute the severities and
hardships inflicted by their enemies, to that divine providence which
is wont to reform the depraved manners of men by chastisement, and
which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous and
praiseworthy, either translating them, when they have passed through
the trial, to a better world, or detaining them still on earth for
ulterior purposes. And they ought to attribute it to the spirit of
these Christian times, that, contrary to the custom of war, these
bloodthirsty barbarians spared them, and spared them for Christ's
sake, whether this mercy was actually shown in promiscuous places, or
in those places specially dedicated to Christ's name, and of which
the very largest were selected as sanctuaries, that full scope might
thus be given to the expansive compassion which desired that a large
multitude might find shelter there. Therefore ought they to give God
thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to His name, that
so they may escape the punishment of eternal fire, they who with lying
lips took upon them this name, that they might escape the punishment of
present destruction. For of those whom you see insolently and
shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are numbers who
would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they not
pretended that they themselves were Christ's servants. Yet now, in
ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the risk of being
punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely oppose that name
under which they fraudulently protected themselves for the sake of
enjoying the light of this brief life.
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