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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
What befell two sacrilegious kings of Israel, just like those of ours, Jeroboam and …
What befell two sacrilegious kings1 of Israel, just like those of ours, Jeroboam and Baasha, hear. The judgment of the Lord against these men is conveyed through the prophet, saying: Forasmuch as I have magnified thee to be prince over Israel, because they have provoked me by their vanities, behold I stir up after Baasha and after his house, and I shall render his house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. Him that dieth of his in the city, shall the dogs eat, and his dead body in the field shall the fowls of heaven consume. What also against that wicked king of Israel (fellow of those) by whose collusion, and by the guile of his wife, innocent Naboth was put to death, for the sake of his vineyard, inherited from his fathers? What is threatened by the holy mouth of that Elijah, by the mouth taught in the fiery message of the Lord? Thus he says: Thou hast even killed and taken possession; and thou shalt add this, saith the Lord: in this place, in which the dogs have licked the blood of Naboth, they will also lick thy blood. That the event did come to pass in this way is known to us by certain proof. But lest, as in the case of the aforementioned Ahab, a lying spirit, speaking vain things in the mouth of your prophets, seduce you from hearkening to the words of the prophet Micah, behold God hath allowed a lying spirit to be in the mouth of all thy prophets that are here, and the Lord hath spoken evil against thee. For even now, it is certain, there are some teachers filled with an opposing spirit, declaring for depraved lust rather than for truth, whose words are made softer than oil and yet are very javelins, who say, “peace, peace,” and there shall not be peace for those who persist in sins, as the prophet elsewhere says: “there is no joy for the wicked, saith the Lord.”
Notes
- Sacrilegis. Sacrilegus is employed by several writers with the meaning of “idolater,” a “worshipper of idols.” Sacrilegium, in the sense of idololatria, appears in Firmic Matern, xxiv, 9, Optat. iii, 8, and Sulpitius Severus. Koffmanne, s. 66. The word would equally befit both Jeroboam and Baasha in this sense.