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God grant that in the dark hour of adversity, God may always raise up to them a prophet, like good old Salvian, to preach to them once again the everlasting judgments of God; and teach them that not faulty constitutions, faulty laws, faulty circumstances of any kind, but the faults of their own hearts and lives, are the causes of their misery.
How the plebs, comprising the small tradesmen and free artizans, were utterly unable to assert their own opinions or rights. How the slave population, though their condition was much improved, constituted a mere dead weight of helpless brutality. And then he says, that the Roman Empire was dying. Very true: but often as he quotes Salvian, he omits always to tell us what Roman society was dying of.
And do we wonder if we are surpassed in power, by an enemy who surpasses us in decency? It is not the natural strength of their bodies which makes them conquer us. We have been conquered only by the vices of our own morals. Yes. Salvian was right. Those last words were no mere outburst of national vanity, content to confess every sin, save that of being cowards. He was right.
'Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who do such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Now in contrast to all these abominations, old Salvian sets, boldly and honestly, the superior morality of the barbarians. That, he says, is the cause of their strength and our weakness. We, professing orthodoxy, are profligate hypocrites.
Morals were bad enough in old Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks: nevertheless as long as a race is strong; as long as there is prudence, energy, deep national feeling, outraged virtue does not avenge itself at once by general ruin. But it avenges itself at last, as Salvian shews as all experience shews.
Another has defiled the land with usury and interest, both gathering where he has not sowed and reaping where he has not strewn, farming not the land but the necessity of the needy.... Another has had no pity on the widow and orphans, and not imparted his bread and meagre nourishment to the needy; ... a man perhaps of much property unexpectedly gained, for this is the most unjust of all, who finds his very barns too narrow for him, fining some and emptying others to build greater ones for future crops. Similarly Clement of Rome advocates frugality in the enjoyment of wealth; and Salvian has a long passage on the dangers of the abuse of riches.
You may see the faith and patience of the saints men like Augustine, Salvian, Epiphanius, Severinus, Deogratias of Carthage, and a host more, no doubt, whose names the world will never hear the salt of the earth, which kept it all from rotting. You may see Babylon the great fallen, and all the kings and merchants of the earth bewailing her afar off, and watching the smoke of her torment.
Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzen in the East, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Fulgentius, Sulpicius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian, Martin of Tours, Salvian, Caesarius of Arles, were all monks, or as much of monks as their duties would allow them to be.
Let us now examine it as used by St. Luke. And here almost every consideration makes against it, as an established title. In the first place, the wisest commentators do not know who Theophilus was. It has been supposed by many learned fathers, such as Epephanius, Salvian, and others, that St.
Thus Sidonius himself, the very year after they sacked the city; Rome has endured as much before there was Porsenna, there was Brennus, there was Hannibal.... Only that time Rome did not get over it. Others tried to use the disasters to castigate the sins of society. Thus Salvian of Marseilles who would no doubt have been called the gloomy dean if he had not been a bishop.
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