(Cypriani) Ad Quendam Senatorem

Cyprian to a Certain Senator Who Has Converted from the Christian Religion to the Service of Idols When I saw you again serving diverse and vain rites and being held by your ancient error, I was struck with amazement. Because you have always loved poems, I hastened to write verses in reply with a poem, so that I might rebuke you for preferring darkness to light. For who could endure that you believe the Great Mother can be called a goddess and again think she should be worshipped, whose worshippers a shameful infamy brands? For her priests, with women’s garments, confess an inner vice by their outward attire, and they think what is not permitted is permitted; hence they walk softly through the city, speaking with an effeminate voice, and hold their loins loosened with an extended thumb, and change their sex by a notorious crime. And when they celebrate their rites, they claim to be chaste on those days; if they are chaste only then, as they claim, what are they the rest of the time? But because they are compelled to be modest at least once, they rage in their minds, tear their bodies, and pour out blood. What kind of sacred rite is that which is called by the name of true blood? Now I have also learned that age has not made you so, but your religion: bald, with the military boot removed, your Gallic sandal bound with soft papyrus around your feet—a thing sufficiently astonishing, fallen from the highest pinnacle. If a consul should proceed into the world from the Isiac cult, the world will laugh; who would not laugh at you, who, having been a consul, are now a minister of Isis?

and what shames you first, it shames you not to be second, and to condemn your own talent through shameful hymns, with the common people answering you and the senate tearing you apart; and you, once painted in your own home with the fasces before you, now also carrying a dog-faced image with a sistrum. This is your humility and the image of humility! Those monuments will always remain in your house. The public rumor has reached our ears that you said: "Goddess, I have erred; forgive me, I have returned." Tell me, if you can: when you often made such requests and sought pardon, what words did she speak with you? Truly you lack a mind, you who follow those who lack a mind. You repeat these things again and do not perceive that you are doing wrong: see what you deserve. You would perhaps be less blameworthy if you only knew this and remained in this error; but since you have entered the doors of the truth-loving law and it has been granted to you to know God in a few years, why do you hold onto what should be abandoned, or abandon what should be retained? You worship nothing, while you worship everything, nor do you weigh in your heart how truth differs from falsehoods, how lights differ from shadows. You pretend to be a philosopher, while a change of opinion moves you: for if the anger of the people stirs your stomach, you will even become a Jew and be driven about entirely uncertain. Indulge my words: lofty wisdom does not please. Everything that is excessive falls against itself. Both heat and cold produce the same effect; thus this and that burn. Thus darkness takes away sight, and the sun likewise takes it away, and lukewarm and boiling baths harm equally. Food nourishes the body, food corrupts the body, and its power diminishes if anything is extended beyond measure.

Finally, if you sit, it is a great rest from labor; if you sit too long, it is labor. For the poet Maro placed as a punishment: "The unhappy Theseus sits and will sit forever." The useful, if prolonged, always harms: long dinners harm, long fasts weary. Thus excessive wisdom makes one foolish. "A wicked pursuit. The goddess taught me thus: 'Moderation is lovable,' she said." But you care neither for the pursuit nor for moderation. A stable mind, however, is overturned by no storm, and simplicity itself never thinks any evil. Hence sincere faith will enjoy an eternal abode, and deceit, on the contrary, will be tormented by long-lasting fire. Choose what you wish, so that you may avoid fitting penalties. Yet I say: let the creditor obtain this pardon in such a way that if you are unwilling to know the truth, it will be a light sin; if you abandon the truth once known, it will not be a light sin. But perhaps old age, once mature, will recall you corrected, sated with these errors; for time changes all. Time digests all evils. Then, when a wiser age leads you back, learn to keep faith with God, lest you incur a double fall by chance; for that saying is truly spoken: he who, having stumbled on a stone, does not know how to avoid it a second time and, incautious, has again injured his limbs, should blame himself and not impute it to any accidents. Correct your fault with trust, correct your mind; it is enough to have sinned once. Cease to fear: he who repents of having been at fault before will not be at fault.