And as he said of that oak of Marius, now cut down and dead, “no tree tended by a farmer’s hand lasts so long as one that can be sown in a poet’s verse.” No plant can grow so long as one “sown by genius,” planted and tended by those ever-living minds.

Allon-bacuth, that weeping oak under which Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried, may not outlast the memory of such everlasting monuments. Vainglory and rivalry, as with most people, were the motivating cause. To trumpet his own fame was Cosimo’s sole purpose in doing good, so that the whole world might notice it.

Such, for the most part, is the charity of our times; such are our benefactors, our Maecenases and patrons. Show me among so many thousands a truly devout person, just, honourable, upright, meek, humble, patient, harmless, innocent, merciful, loving and charitable! “What good man lives among us?” Show me a Caleb or a Joshua!

Tell me, Muse, of the man—

Show me a virtuous woman, a faithful wife, a good neighbour, a trustworthy servant, an obedient child, a true friend, and so on. Crows in Africa are not so scarce.

Anyone who examines this iron age in which we live, where love is cold “and now Astraea has left the earth,” Justice has fled with her attendants and virtue has been expelled—

Justice’s sister, Incorruptible Faith, and naked Truth—

All goodness gone, vice abounding, the devil loose—and sees one person vilify and exult over his brother as though he were a simpleton or a block of wood, oppress and tyrannize over him, prey on and torture him, vex, chafe, torment, crucify and starve him: where is charity?

Anyone who sees people swear oaths and break them, lie and bear false witness to benefit themselves and harm others, risk goods, lives, fortunes, reputation—everything—to revenge themselves on their enemies; people unspeakable in their desires, unnatural in their malice, with such murderous schemes, Italian blaspheming, Spanish renouncing and the like, may well ask: where is charity?

Anyone who observes so many lawsuits, such endless disputes, such plotting and undermining, so much money spent with such eagerness and fury—everyone for himself and his own ends, the devil for all—so many distressed souls, such pitiful complaints, so many factions, conspiracies, rebellions, oppressions, abuses and injuries, such grudging, resentment and discontent, so much rivalry and envy, so many brawls, quarrels and duels, may well ask what has become of charity.

When we see and read of such cruel wars, tumults, uproars and bloody battles, so many people killed and so many cities ruined—for what else fills almost all our histories but bills, bows and guns?—so many murders and massacres: where is charity?

Or see people wholly devoted to God—churchmen, professed theologians, holy men—“make the trumpet of the Gospel the trumpet of war”: a company of hell-born Jesuits and fiery-spirited friars “carrying the torch” before every rebellion, like so many firebrands setting the whole world quarrelling.

I say nothing of their contentious and abusive books, whole ages spent writing against one another with such venom and bitterness, “with Bion’s discourses and black salt.” And their bloody inquisitions, which in thirty years, Bale says, destroyed 39 princes, 148 earls, 235 barons and 14,755 common people—worse than those ten persecutions—may justly make us ask: where is charity?

“I ask you, what sort of Christians are these!” Are these Christians? Tell me, I beg you. Anyone who witnesses these things may say to them, as Cato said to Caesar, “I believe you think the things said about the underworld are false.” Surely, I think, you believe there is neither heaven nor hell.

Let them profess religion and zeal, make whatever displays they please, give alms, act as peacemakers and attend sermons: if we may judge the tree by its fruit, they are no better than hypocrites, Epicureans and atheists; with “the fool, they say in their hearts that there is no God.”

It is no wonder, then, if, being so uncharitable and hard-hearted, we suffer so many and such frequent discontents, such fits of melancholy, so many bitter pangs and mutual quarrels, everything in turmoil, constant complaints, widespread grievances and general calamities; “if there are such tragedies on earth, shaking and miserably tearing the human race apart”; if so many plagues, wars, uproars, losses, deluges, fires and floods, God’s vengeance and the plagues of Egypt, do not come upon us. We are so vicious towards one another, so heedless of God and our neighbours, and by our crying sins bring these miseries down on our own heads.

More than that, we have good reason to fear what Josephus once said of his Jewish countrymen: “If the Romans had not come when they did to sack their city, surely it would have been swallowed by an earthquake or flood, or burned by fire from heaven like Sodom and Gomorrah, such was their desperate malice, wickedness and perversity.”

We have reason to suspect that, if we persist in these wretched ways, we may expect equally severe visitations. If we had any awareness or feeling for these things, surely we would not go on as we do, following such wayward courses and practising every kind of impiety; our whole conduct would not be so opposed to God.