§ 1. The harmonious and true judgment of all the saints is that there are two foundations of political society, justice and religion, and that as soon as a prince withdraws from God, he also experiences the greatest rebellion within himself. True piety alone is sufficient for princes unto safety; just as, on the contrary, without it armies, horses, attendants, the force of swords, innumerable forces of men, gold and silver, and whatever other equipment there is besides, profit nothing. These things are spiders’ webs unless they stand firm through piety.
It is indeed not right to number Tertullian among the saints, because although he began rightly, he nevertheless fell with great scandal to the Church. Yet he, before the rest, pressed this argument in the Apologeticum. This was the judgment of the nations: if the Tiber rose to the walls, the Nile did not rise into the fields, the heaven stood still, the earth moved, or famine or pestilence invaded the world, immediately the Christians, as guilty of the crimes, were sought for the lion. But he proves that the gentiles especially furnished the causes, and that those evils are now lighter because the Christians are intercessors before God. The common judgment of the world, therefore, was that punishments are inflicted for offenses.
St. Cyprian also, in the book On the Vanity of Idols, teaches that the disasters of the Jews were the punishment of impiety: “The Jews first possessed favor before God. Thus once they were just; thus their ancestors obeyed religious observances. Hence both the sublimity of their kingdom flourished and the greatness of their race advanced. But afterward they became neglectful, undisciplined, and proud, and, inflated by confidence in their fathers, while they despised the divine precepts, lost the grace given to them. But how profane their life was, and what offense was contracted from violated religion, they themselves also testify; although they are silent in voice, they confess by their outcome: scattered and wandering, they roam alone, exiles from their own sky, and are tossed among the dwellings of strangers.”
And St. Jerome, on Jeremiah 15: “I shall give them into heat, or commotion, and the straits of the whole earth.” This was fulfilled in part under the Babylonians and is now fulfilled in whole, when an impious people imitated the worst king, who had filled Jerusalem with the blood of the just from gate to gate. From this we learn that peoples are generally destroyed by the crime of kings, princes, and governors. The supreme destruction, therefore, is an impious prince.
§ 2. St. Ambrose, on Jonah 4, says that the sole means of preserving the fatherland is the uprightness of the citizens, just as their sins are the cause of its overthrow: “The Ninevites possessed so great a wisdom that they defended themselves not by external protections but were saved by their own devotion. For they did not immediately despair of their safety because they heard from the prophet that they would be overthrown together with the walls of the city; rather, when their destruction close at hand was announced, they armed themselves all the more with religious acts. Nor did they abandon their city to be overthrown, but instead remained in it—wise indeed, so that the city which was afflicted by the sins of its citizens might be saved by the prayers of its citizens, and that religious devotion might confer safety upon the city to which an evil manner of life had brought destruction. For it was just that the very persons whom it had endured as sinners should be its own defenders.
“For destruction is inflicted upon a city only because of the sins of its citizens. Cease therefore to sin, and the city will not perish. Why do you flee your fatherland? If you wish to be safe, flee rather from your sins. If you cease to sin, the enemy has been conquered. Divine Scripture says to Abraham that the fatherland can be saved by ten just persons. Therefore, if the just are those who make the fatherland safe, assuredly the unjust are those who abandon it. And if the former obtain favor because of their presence, it is necessary that the latter deserve offense because of their desertion. Plainly unjust and impious is the son who abandons his mother when she is in danger. For the fatherland is in a certain manner a sweet mother, who bore you, who nourished you, who made you rich so that you might be able to suck.”
And St. Augustine, on Psalm 118, especially impresses virtue upon princes: “It must be greatly attended to that, within the sanctuary of his mind, humility should sit presiding in its chair in the man who is set above others for governing human beings; and when others stand outside in attendance upon him as he judges, he should with vigilant eye look unceasingly upon the judge before whom he himself must one day stand to be judged concerning these things.” Deservedly, indeed: for an appeal to God remains open to all who have been condemned under any law; whoever has lost his case is restored in full before that great tribunal, and is sometimes raised up to the honor of his own judge.
The same Augustine is witness, in book 2 of The City of God, chapter 23, that the Roman commonwealth perished through evil morals: “While that commonwealth was therefore perishing through evil morals, their gods did nothing to direct or correct its morals so that it should not perish. Indeed, they contributed to the depraving and corrupting of its morals, so that it should perish.”
Finally, in book 19 of The City of God, chapter 21, he teaches that a commonwealth cannot exist without justice: “For he briefly defines a commonwealth as the thing of a people. If this definition is true, there never was a Roman commonwealth, because it never was the thing of a people, which he wished to be the definition of a commonwealth. For he defined a people as an assemblage of a multitude associated by agreement in law and community of advantage. What he means by agreement in law he explains in his disputation, showing by this that a commonwealth cannot be administered without justice. Where true justice is therefore absent, there can be no law. For what is done by law is assuredly done justly; but what is done unjustly cannot be done by law. For unjust enactments of human beings are neither to be called nor thought laws, since they themselves also say that law is that which has flowed from the fountain of justice; and what is accustomed to be said by certain persons who think incorrectly is false: that law is what is useful to him who possesses greater power.
“Accordingly, where true justice does not exist, there cannot be an assemblage of human beings associated by agreement in law, and therefore no people according to that definition of Scipio or Cicero. And if no people, then neither the thing of a people, but the thing of some sort of multitude which is not worthy of the name of a people. And by this reasoning, if a commonwealth is the thing of a people, and there is no people which is not associated by agreement in law, while there is no law where there is no justice, it is gathered beyond doubt that where there is no justice there is no commonwealth. Moreover, justice is that virtue which distributes to each his own. What justice of a human being is there, then, which takes that very human being away from the true God and subjects him to unclean demons?”
§ 3. Orosius too attributes to the religion and piety of Christians the fact that the world is shaken by lighter evils; Arnobius indeed expressly strives to prove it. So much did they attribute to piety and virtue. Hippolytus the martyr predicted that the gravest calamities would invade the world in a great column at the time when, morals having been loosed, Antichrist would reign most widely, when the laws of all kingdoms would fall; and, alas, preparations and preludes to those evils now already exist.
In this manner the bishops [name illegible in the print] exhort Emperor Leo to virtue: “When these things have been well arranged, the hand of the enemies is turned to fear, and those who formerly had learned rashly to resist will, confounded because of the greatness of your faith, come to ruin. For, being established as imitators of those princes who were illustrious for justice and equity, you will most readily prevail over present affairs.” And the bishops of Mesopotamia: “When your piety, together with the priests of Christ, holds and confirms these things, it will govern the rudders of the empire in peace.”
And Julian, bishop of Cos: “Marcian is crowned with the diadem of divine love; receiving spiritual truth also, and kindled by desire for the orthodox faith, he hastened that the dogmas of the Apostles should be confirmed by the prelates of the Church. When your piety imitates this, it both obtains victory against the barbarians and destroys the enemies of truth as well.” The sixth synod promises Constantine IV that because of his piety God will make all his acts happy and prosperous, he who promises in his holy Gospels, saying: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.”
The seventh synod to Constantine and John: “May God the Savior of all, who reigns with us, grant his peace to the Church as his reward; and may he preserve your empire, together with the senate, commanders, and most faithful army of soldiers, for many years, and grant us victory. For he himself said: ‘As I live, says the Lord, those who glorify me I glorify.’ He it is who, girding you with power, will remove from you every hostile assault and procure obedience among you.” The Synod of Toledo to Sisenand: “The wrath of heaven has so changed many kingdoms of the earth that, because of their impiety toward the faith and morals, one was dissolved by another. Hence we too ought to guard against the fall of nations of this kind, lest we be similarly struck by a headlong plague and punished with a cruel penalty.”
Most truly Ambrose, Epistle 31 to Valentinian: “This is the love to be expected; this is the love greater than empire: if the faith is kept safe, which preserves the empire.”
§ 4. We too experience in Greece and Hungary what Jerome complained of concerning his own times in the epitaph for Nepotian: “By our sins the barbarians are strong; by our vices the Roman army is overcome. Wretched are we who so greatly displease God that through the hands of the barbarians his anger rages against us. Hezekiah did penance, and one hundred eighty-five thousand Assyrians were destroyed by one angel in a single night. Jehoshaphat sang together the praises of the Lord, and the Lord conquered on behalf of him who praised. Moses fought against Amalek not with the sword but with prayer. If we wish to be raised up, let us prostrate ourselves.
“For shame! A mind foolish even to cruelty! The Roman army, victor and lord of the world, is conquered by these men, fears these men, is terrified at the sight of those who are unable to walk, who think themselves dead if they touch the earth. And we do not understand the voices of the prophets: ‘A thousand flee when one pursues.’ Let us cut away the causes of the disease, so that the disease may likewise be taken away.”
Would that these things were impressed upon the hearts of all amid today’s calamities. Although many endeavor to resist the calamities, nevertheless few abandon the vices because of which we suffer them.
St. Augustine, book 5 of The City of God, chapter 25: “The good God, lest human beings who believed that he must be worshiped for the sake of eternal life should think that no one could obtain these high stations and earthly kingdoms unless he supplicated demons, on the ground that those spirits possessed great power in such things, filled Emperor Constantine—who did not supplicate demons but worshiped the true God himself—with earthly gifts so great as no one would dare desire. He also granted him to establish a city as an associate of the Roman Empire, as though a daughter of Rome itself, but without any temple or image of demons. He ruled for a long time; as sole Augustus he held and defended the whole Roman world. He was most victorious in administering and waging wars; he was prosperous in all things in suppressing tyrants; he died at a great age from disease and old age; he left sons ruling.”
St. Gregory Nazianzen teaches in his oration against Julian that an empire is overthrown by impiety: “With the saving doctrine of Christ poured out far and wide and flourishing especially around us, to attempt to overturn and undermine the Christian religion would have been nothing other than to tear down the Roman Empire and endanger all parts of the commonwealth, and to receive from our own selves those things than which not even enemies could imprecate anything more grievous against us.”
St. Chrysostom on Isaiah: “‘The affairs of princes do not stand rightly’; of these things we speak very often. It is an immense danger. But what is its cause? ‘The thoughtlessness,’ they say, ‘of those who exercise the principate.’ It is not the thoughtlessness of princes; rather, our injustice is a punishment exacted for our crimes. Our crimes have mixed all things above and below, have contrived whatever calamities exist, have armed the enemies, and have brought it about that we descended as conquered. A swarm of evils has flooded in from no other source than this cause.”
Today also, how many persons amid lawsuits, usury, hatreds, drunkenness, and adulteries accuse the idleness of princes, although by their own sins they draw punishment upon themselves, and desire peace for no other reason than that they may indulge their vices and pleasures securely.
But lest I pursue more, the following may be read: St. Cyril, On the Right Faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, to Theodosius; Hilary on Psalm 137; Gregory to Theodoric the Frank; St. Leo to Theodosius and the Augusta Pulcheria; Athanasius to Constantine and Jovinian; John to Justinian; the Council of Meaux to Charles the Younger, king of the Franks; Symmachus to Anastasius; the Council of Paris to Louis and Lothair; St. Bernard to Louis; Hormisdas to Justin; Nicholas to Michael; and the bishops of the Spains at the coronation of the king.