The Ruin of Britain

PREFACE

1    In this letter I shall deplore rather than denounce; my style may be worthless, but    my intentions are kindly. What I have to deplore with mournful complaint is a general loss of good, a heaping up of bad. But no one should think that anything I say is said out of scorn for humanity or from a conviction that I am superior to all men. No, I sympathise with my country's difficulties and troubles, and rejoice in remedies to relieve them. 
    I had decided to speak of the dangers run not by brave soldiers in the stress of war but by the lazy. And it was, I confess, with unmeasured grief at heart that I kept silent (the Lord, scanner of consciences, is my witness) as the space of ten years or more passed by. Then, as now, my inexperience and my worthlessness restrained me from writing any warning, however modest.
    But I could not help reading how a revered law-giver was prevented by a single word's doubt from entering the land he longed for;  how the sons of a priest died  a swift death  because they brought strange fire to the alter; how a people that transgressed  the word of God, six hundred thousand of them, all but two truthful men, fell scattered about the Arabian deserts, a prey to beasts, the sword and fire (though they had been very dear to God: their smooth-spread way was the gravel in the depths of the Red Sea, their food bread from heaven, their drink a new traveler from within the rock, their unconquered battle-line the mere raising of hands). I read how, after they entered, as it were, the unknown gate of Jordan, and after the walls of the city that faced them were uprooted by the mere clangour of trumpets at God's order, a cloak and a little money stolen from a cursed offering were the undoing of many. I read how the breaking of the treaty with the Gibeonites (though it had been wrung from them by a trick) brought destruction to not a few. I read how, because of the sins of men, the voice of the holy prophets rose in complaint, especially Jeremiah's, as he bewailed the ruin of his city in four alphabetic songs.
    And I could see that in our time too, just as Jeremiah had lamented, 'the city' (that is, the church) 'sat solitary, bereaved; formerly it had been full of peoples, mistress of races, ruler of provinces: now it had become tributary'. I saw that 'gold' (that is, the lustre of the word of God) 'had been dimmed and the best colour changed'. I saw that 'the sons of Sion' (that is, of the holy mother church), 'once glorious and clad in fine     gold, had embraced dung'. And I saw how - in a manner as intolerable to him in his greatness as to me for all my humbleness - things in one way or another came to a pitch of suffering where he so grieved for the nobles, once so prosperous, that he said: 'Her Nazarites were whiter than snow, redder than antique ivory, more beautiful than the sapphire'.
    I gazed on these things and many others in the Old Testament as though on a mirror reflecting our own life; then I turned to the New Testament also, and read there more clearly what had previously, perhaps, been dark to me: the shadow passed away, and the truth shone forth more boldly. I read, I say, that the Lord said: 'I have not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'. And on the other hand: 'But the sons of this kingdom shall be cast forth into outer darkness, and there will be wailing there, and gnashing of teeth'. And again: 'It is not good to take one's son's bread and throw it to the dogs'. And also: 'Woe  on you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!' I heard: 'Many shall come from east and west, and lie with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven'. And on the other hand: 'And then I shall say to them: Depart from me, workers of iniquity'. I read: 'Blessed are the barren women and the breasts that give no milk'. And against that: 'Those who were ready came in with him to the wedding. Later the other girls arrived too, saying: Lord, Lord, open the door for us. The reply was: I do not know you'. I heard indeed: 'He who believes and is baptised shall be safe, but he who does not believe shall be condemned'. I read in the words of the apostle that a branch of wild olive was grafted on a good olive: but if it had high thoughts and did not fear, it was to be cut off from sharing the root of the fatness of the olive.
    I knew the Lord was merciful, but I feared his judgement too. I praised his graciousness, but I was afraid of the reward of every man according to his deeds. I saw that in the same fold there are different sheep, and I used to say that it was right that Peter was most blessed because he wholly confessed Christ, Judas most wretched because he loved greed: Stephen glorious because of his martyr's palm, Nicolas unhappy because of the stain of his foul heresy. True, I read: 'They held everything in common'; but I read too the saying: 'Why are you agreed on trying out the spirit of God?' I saw clearly how men of our day have increasingly put care aside, as though there were nothing to fear.
    This, and much more besides that I have decided to leave out in the interests of brevity, I frequently pondered, my mind bewildered, my heart remorseful, For (I said to myself) when they strayed from the right track the Lord did not spare a people that was peculiarly his own among all nations, a royal stock, a holy race, to whom he had said: 'Israel is my first-born son', or its priests, prophets and kings, over so many centuries the apostle, minister and members of that primitive church. What then will he do with this great black blot on our generation? It has heinous and appalling sins in common with all the wicked ones of the world; but over and above that, it has as though inborn in it a load of ignorance and folly that cannot be erased or avoided. 
    What, you wretch (I say to myself), have you, like some important and eminent teacher, been given the task of standing up against the blows of so violent a torrent, against the rope of congenital sins that has been stretched far and wide for so many years together? Look after what is committed to your trust, and keep silent. Otherwise it is like saying to the foot: Keep watch, and to the hand: Speak. Britain has her governors, she has her watchmen. Why should you stutter out your ineptitudes? Yes, she has them, I answer: if not more than she-needs, at least not fewer. But they are bowed under the pressure of their great burdens, and have no time to take breath.
    This was how my thoughts, like joint debtors, kept checkmating each other with opposed objections like this or even more stinging. They wrestled, as I said, for no short time when I read: 'There is a time for speech and a time for silence', as though they were in a narrow corridor of fear. Finally the victory went to the creditor. 'Perhaps', he said, 'you are not bold enough to be numbered among the truth-telling rational creatures of descent second only to the angels, and fear to be branded with the glorious mark of golden liberty. But at least you should not shun the attitude of the intelligent ass, hitherto tongueless, that was inspired with, the spirit of God. She refused to carry the crowned magician who proposed to curse the people of God, and in a narrow place between vineyard walls she lamed and crushed his foot: though she received unkind blows for it. He was ungrateful and angry, and struck at her innocent sides quite unjustly; yet she pointed out to him, as with a finger, an angel from heaven, drawn sword in hand, on the path, whom he, in his blind stupidity, had failed to see'.
     Therefore, in zeal for the sacred law of the house of the Lord, spurred on by my own thoughts and the devout prayers of my brethren, now pay the debt so long ago incurred: a poor payment, doubtless, but; as I think, true to the faith and well-intentioned towards every noble soldier of Christ, though burdensome and insupportable for foolish rebels. The former will receive it, if I am not mistaken, with the tears that flow from the charity of God, but the others with sadness - the sadness that is wrung from the indignation and faintheartedness attending a pricked conscience.