Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

is about to speak admits it, and that the innocent defendant may perish, the judge becomes guilty. Wickedness flares up everywhere, and a harmful virus works through wicked minds with a multiform manner of sinning here and there. One man forges a will, another writes a false one with capital fraud. Here, children are kept from their inheritances; there, the goods of others are given away. An enemy makes accusations, a slanderer attacks, a witness defames. Everywhere, the venal audacity of a prostituted voice rages in the lying of crimes, while meanwhile the guilty do not even perish along with the innocent. There is no fear of the laws, no dread of the investigator or the judge. What can be bought is not feared. It is now a crime to be innocent among the guilty: whoever does not imitate the wicked gives offense. Laws have consented to sins, and what is public has begun to be lawful. What sense of shame is there in such things? What integrity can exist where those who might condemn the wicked are missing, and only those to be condemned are found?

11 But let us perhaps seem to choose worse things and, by a zeal for destroying, lead your eyes through those things whose sad and repulsive appearance might offend the face and countenance of a better conscience. Now I will show you those things which secular ignorance considers good. There, too, you will see things to be avoided. What honors you think exist, what fasces symbols of magisterial power, what abundance in riches, what power in the camps, what appearance in the purple of magistrates, what license of power in leadership: the virus of flattering evils is hidden, and the face of smiling wickedness is indeed joyful, but it is a seductive fallacy of hidden calamity. It is like a kind of poison: where a cup is seen to be taken, with a medicinal taste sprinkled on lethal juices to deceive...