19 8
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
ruit, et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur. . . , N ostris peccatis barbari fortes sunt. N ostris vitiis Romanus superatur exercitus. . N ec amputamus causas morbi, ut morbus pariter auferatur. . . . Orbis terrarum ruit, in nobis peccata non ruunt." 1 St. Ambrose announces the end still more confidently: "V erborum coelestium nulli magis quam nos testes sumus, quos mundi finis invenit. . . . Quia in occasu saeculi sumus, praece- dunt quaedam aegritudines mundi." 2 Two generations later Salvianus exclaims: "Quid est aliud paene omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum? " 3 And St. Leo declares, "Quod temporibus nostris auctore diabolo sic vitiata sunt omnia, ut paene nihil sit quod absque idolatria transigatur." 4 When, early in the fifth century, the dismemberment of the Western empire comlnenced, it was clear that Christianity had not succeeded in reforming the society and the polity of the ancient world. It had arrested for a time the decline of the empire, but after the Arian separation it could not prevent its fall. The Catholics could not dissociate the interests of the Church and those of the Roman State, and looked with patriotic as well as religious horror at the barbarians by whom the work of destruction was done. They could not see that they had come to build up as well as to destroy, and that they supplied a field for the exercise of all that influence which had failed among the Romans. It was very late before they understood that the world had run but half its course; that a new skin had been prepared to contain the new wine; and that the barbarous tribes were to
1 .. The cry of the whole world is · Christ,' The mind is horrified in reviewing the ruins of our age, The Roman world is falling, and yet our stiff neck is not bent, The barbarians' strength is in our sins; the defeat of the Roman armies in our vices. We will not cut off the occasions of the malady, that the malady may be healed. The world is falling, but in us there is no falling off from sin" (St. Jerome, ep. 35, ad Heliodorum ; ep, 98, ad Gaude'1tium), 2 .. None are better witnesses of the words of heaven than we, on whom the end of the world has come, We assist at the world's setting, and diseases precede its dissolution" (Expos, Ep, see, Lueam, x,), 3 .. What is well-nigh all Christendom but a sink of iniquity?" (De Cub, Dei, iii. 9). 4 ,. In our age the devil has so defiled everything that scarcely a thing is done without idolatry."
