Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

6 And so that the indications of the divine gift may shine forth more illustriously once the truth is revealed, I will give you light for understanding; I will reveal the shadows of a world covered in the fog of evils, once it is wiped away. Believe yourself for a little while to be withdrawn to the summit of a high and lofty mountain, observe from there the faces of things lying below you, and with your eyes cast in different directions, yourself free from earthly contacts, look upon the whirlwinds of the fluctuating world. Now you yourself will pity the age, and reminded of yourself, and more grateful to God, you will rejoice with greater joy that you have escaped. Discern for yourself the roads closed by robbers, the seas beset by pirates, wars everywhere divided by the bloody horror of camps. The world is wet with mutual blood, and when individuals commit homicide, it is a crime; it is called virtue when it is done publicly. It is not the reasoning of innocence that acquires impunity for crimes, but the magnitude of the cruelty.

7 Now if you turn your eyes and your face toward the cities themselves, you will encounter a spectacle sadder than any solitude. The gladiatorial game is prepared, so that blood may delight the lust of cruel eyes. The body is filled with stronger foods to the point of succulence, and the mass of limbs grows robust with the layers of fat, so that, fattened for punishment, it may perish more dearly. Man is killed for the pleasure of man, and that one may be able to kill, there is skill, there is use, there is art: wickedness is not only practiced but taught. What can be said that is more inhuman, what more bitter? It is a discipline that one may be able to destroy, and it is a glory that he destroys. What is that, I ask you, of what kind is it, where men throw themselves to the beasts, whom no one has condemned, of integral age, honest enough in appearance, in precious clothing? Living, they are adorned for a voluntary funeral, they are wretched in their own evils and they boast. They fight against beasts not by crime but by madness. Fathers watch their own sons, a brother is present in the cage and a sister, and if the greater equipment of the spectacle increases the price of the show, so that the mother may be present for her own sorrows, this, by grief, the mother even pays for. And in such impious and such dire spectacles, they do not think themselves to be parricides in the eyes.