Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 19 part 1/4

You have sent me many things to read, Consentius, my dearest brother; many things you have sent me to read. While I prepare my replies to them, and am pulled this way and that by ever more pressing occupations, a whole year has slipped by and has thrust me into such straits that I must reply somehow or other, lest — now that the season for sailing is already smiling — I should detain any longer the bearer who longs to return.

And so, with all that Leonas the servant of God brought to me from you — both when I first received them, and afterward when I now wished to dictate this, having unrolled and read them through and weighed them with as much consideration as I could — I was greatly delighted by your eloquence, and by your remembrance of the holy Scriptures, and by the shrewdness of your wit, and by the grief with which you sting the negligent Catholics, and by the zeal with which you gnash your teeth against even the hidden heretics. But I am not persuaded that they ought to be dragged out of their hiding-places by our lies. For to what end do we strive to track and hunt them down with such care, unless that, once caught and brought into the open, we may either teach the truth to them themselves, or at least, having convicted them by the truth, may not permit them to harm others?

To this end, then — that their falsehood may be destroyed or guarded against, and God's truth increased. How, then, shall I rightly persecute lies by lying? Or are robberies to be persecuted by robbery, sacrileges by sacrilege, and adulteries by adultery? But if God's truth abounds through my lie, are we then to say, 'Let us do evil, that good may come'? — a thing which, you see, the Apostle detests. For what else is it to say, 'Let us lie, that we may lead lying heretics to the truth,' than 'Let us do evil, that good may come'? Or is a lie ever good, or is a lie ever not evil? Why then is it written: 'Thou hast hated, O Lord, all who work iniquity; thou wilt destroy all who speak a lie'?

For He did not except any, nor speak indefinitely — 'thou wilt destroy those who speak a lie' — so as to allow some, and not all, to be understood; but He pronounced a universal sentence, saying: 'Thou wilt destroy all who speak a lie.' Or, because it is not said, 'Thou wilt destroy all who speak every lie,' or 'who speak any lie whatsoever,' is it therefore to be supposed that some room has been left open for some lie? — so that, forsooth, there might be some lie such that those who speak it God will not destroy, but will destroy all those who speak an unjust lie, not just any lie, because there is found also a just lie, which surely ought to deserve praise, not blame?

Do you not see how greatly this argument aids the very men whom we contrive to catch with our lies, as though for some great hunt? For this is the opinion of the Priscillianists, as you yourself have shown: to prove which they bring forward testimonies from the Scriptures, exhorting their own to lying as though by the examples of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, angels — not hesitating to add even the Lord Christ Himself, and thinking they can in no other way show their falsehood truthful, unless they call the truth a liar. These things are to be refuted, not imitated; nor ought we to be partakers of the Priscillianists in that evil in which they are proved worse than the rest of the heretics.

For they alone, or at any rate they most of all, are found to dogmatize lying for the concealing of what they think is their truth, and to reckon this so great an evil to be just, because they say that what is true must be kept in the heart, but that to utter falsehood with the mouth to strangers is no sin, and that this is written: 'He that speaketh the truth in his heart' — as though this were enough for righteousness, even if one speak a lie with his mouth, when it is not a neighbor but a stranger that hears it. For this reason they even think that the Apostle Paul, when he had said, 'Putting away lying, speak the truth,' immediately added:

'each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another' — so that, namely, with those who are not our neighbors in the fellowship of the truth, and who are not, so to speak, fellow-members of ours, it is permitted and even fitting to speak a lie. This opinion dishonors the holy martyrs — nay rather, it takes away holy martyrdoms altogether. For according to these men they would act more justly and wisely if they did not confess to their persecutors that they were Christians, nor make them murderers by their confession, but rather, by lying and denying what they were, both kept safe the advantage of their flesh and the purpose of their heart, and did not permit those others to fulfill the crime conceived in their mind.

For their persecutors were not their neighbors in the Christian faith, such that with them they ought to speak the truth in their mouth which they spoke in their heart; but they were, over and above, enemies of the truth itself. For if Jehu — whom among others they prudently seem to regard as an example of lying — falsely professed himself to be a servant of Baal in order to slay his servants, how much more justly, according to these men's perversity, in a time of persecution would the servants of Christ have lied that they were servants of demons, that the servants of demons might not slay the servants of Christ; and would have sacrificed to idols, that men might not be killed — if that man sacrificed to Baal that he might kill men?

For what harm, according to the excellent doctrine of these lie-mongers, would it have done them, if they feigned the worship of the devil in the body, while the worship of God was preserved in the heart? But the true martyrs, the holy martyrs, did not so understand the Apostle. For they saw and held fast what was said: 'With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,' and, 'In their mouth was found no lie'; and thus they departed blameless, where they will no longer need to beware of being tempted by liars, because they will no more have liars, whether strangers or neighbors, in their heavenly assemblies.

But that Jehu, who by impious lying and sacrilegious sacrifice sought out the impious and sacrilegious to be slain, they would not imitate, not even if that same Scripture had been silent as to what sort of man he was. But since it is written that he had not a heart right with God, what did it profit him that, for a certain measure of obedience which — out of desire for his own dominion — he displayed in the utter destruction of the house of Ahab, he received some passing reward of a temporal kingdom? To the defence rather of the truth-telling sentence of the martyrs I exhort you, brother, that you may be, against liars, not a teacher of lying, but an assertor of the truth. For diligently, I beseech you, attend to what I say, that you may find how much it is to be guarded against.

For it is thought that this may be taught — with a zeal indeed praiseworthy against the impious, that they may be seized and corrected or avoided — but nevertheless too incautiously. There are many kinds of lies, all of which indeed we ought universally to hate. For there is no lie that is not contrary to the truth. For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and iniquity, sin and right action, health and weakness, life and death, so truth and falsehood are contrary to each other. Wherefore, by how much we love the one, by so much we ought to hate the other. Yet there are certain lies which it does no harm to believe — although even by such a kind of lying, to have wished to deceive is hurtful to the liar, not to the believer.

For instance, if that brother, the servant of God, Fronto, had lied in some of the things he reported to you — which God forbid — he would surely have hurt himself, not you, even though you had believed everything, since you did so without any iniquity of your own in believing his narration; because, whether those things were done thus or not thus, they nevertheless contain nothing such that, if anyone should believe them to have been so done, even if they were not so done, he should be judged blameworthy by the rule of truth and the doctrine of eternal salvation. But if anyone should lie about such a matter that, if a man should believe it, he will be a heretic against the doctrine of Christ, then the liar is by so much the more harmful as the believer is the more wretched.

See, then, what sort of thing it is, if against the doctrine of Christ we have lied — the belief of which will destroy whoever believes it — in order to catch the enemies of that same doctrine, whom we would lead to the truth while we ourselves withdraw from it; nay rather, while by lying we catch liars, we teach worse lies. For it is one thing that they say when they lie, another when they are deceived. For when they teach their heresy, they say those things in which they are deceived; but when they say that they hold what they do not hold, or do not hold what they do hold, they say those things in which they lie. And whoever believes them in this, even if he does not find them out, does not himself perish. For he does not withdraw from the Catholic rule who believes to be Catholic a heretic who lyingly professes Catholic doctrines.

And on this account it is not perilous to him, because he is deceived concerning the mind of a man — about which, being hidden, he cannot judge — not concerning faith in God, which he ought to keep implanted in him. But further, when they teach their heresy, whoever believes them, thinking it the truth, will be a partaker as of their error, so also of their damnation. So it comes about that, when they fable forth their wicked dogmas, in which they are deceived with deadly error, then whoever believes perishes; but when we preach Catholic dogmas, in which we hold the right faith, then, if one believes, whoever had perished is found again.

But when, being Priscillianists, in order not to betray their poisons, they lie that they are ours, whoever of us believes them, even while they remain hidden, himself perseveres a Catholic; we, on the contrary, in order to arrive at hunting them out, if we lie that we are Priscillianists — because we are going to praise their dogmas as though they were ours — whoever believes this is either confirmed among them, or transferred to them at once for the meanwhile. But what the coming hour may bring forth — whether afterward those who were deceived while we deceived them may be delivered by our speaking the truth, and whether they will be willing to hear teaching from one whom they have thus experienced lying — who has known this for certain, seeing that he is ignorant that it is uncertain?

From which it is gathered that it is more perniciously — or, to speak more mildly, more perilously — for Catholics to lie in order to catch heretics, than heretics lie in order to lie hidden from Catholics; since whoever believes Catholics tempting him by lying is either made or confirmed a heretic, but whoever believes heretics hiding themselves by lying does not cease to be a Catholic. And that this may become plainer, let us set forth some things by way of example, and those especially from the writings which you sent me to read. Behold, let us set before our eyes a crafty spy approaching one whom he has perceived beforehand to be a Priscillianist, and lyingly praising the life of Bishop Dictinius, whether he knew him, or the reputation of one he did not know;

this is still more tolerable, because that man is thought to have been a Catholic and to have been corrected from that error. Next — for this follows in the art of lying — he is about to make venerable mention of Priscillian, an impious and detestable man, condemned for his abominable crimes and misdeeds. And if perchance, in that venerable mention of him, the one for whom snares of this kind are being laid had not been a firm Priscillianist, by this proclamation he will be made firm.

But when the spy's discourse proceeds to the rest, and he says that he pities those whom the author of darkness has so wrapped in such thick shadows of errors that they do not recognize the honor of their own soul and the splendor of its divine lineage; and then, when he extols with such great praises the book of Dictinius, whose name is 'Libra' — because it is set forth in twelve questions treated like ounces — so that he testifies such a 'Libra' (Scale), in which horrendous blasphemies are contained, to be more precious than many thousands of pounds of gold: surely this cunning of the liar slays the soul of the believer, or plunges and presses it, already slain, down into the same death. 'But,' you will say, 'he will afterward be delivered.' What if

it does not happen — whether because some hindrance intervenes, so that what was begun is not completed, or because of the obstinacy of a heretical mind again denying the same things, even if he had already begun to confess something? Especially since, if he shall have learned that he was tempted by a stranger, by that very fact he will the more boldly strive to conceal by lying the things he holds, when he shall have learned all the more surely, by the very example of his own tempter, that this can be done blamelessly. For with what face, pray, shall we blame in a man, and dare to condemn, this — that he thinks the truth must be hidden by lying — which we ourselves teach? It remains, therefore, that what the Priscillianists hold, according to the wicked falsehood of their heresy, concerning God, concerning the soul,

concerning the body, concerning other matters — what they hold, let us not hesitate to condemn with truthful piety; but that which they hold — namely, that one must lie in order that the truth may be concealed — let this not be, God forbid, a dogma common to us and to them. This is so great an evil that, even if this endeavor of ours, by which we desire through lying to catch and change them, should so prosper that we do catch and change them, by no gains would these losses be compensated, whereby we too, together with them, are corrupted for the sake of their correction.

For through this lie both we shall be perverse on that side, and they but half-corrected — since that very thing which they think ought to be lied for the sake of truth, we do not correct in them, because we ourselves have learned and teach the same, and prescribe that it must be done, in order that we may be able to reach the amending of them. Yet we do not amend them, from whom we do not take away the flaw by which they think the truth ought to be hidden, but rather we ourselves are flawed, when through such a flaw we seek them and do not find them. In what way shall we be able to be believed by them when converted, to whom, while perverse, we have lied — lest perchance what they suffered in order to be caught, they should do once caught, not only because they have been accustomed to do it, but because they find this also in us to whom they come?

And what is more pitiable, even they themselves, now as it were made ours, cannot find how they may believe us. For if they suspect that we speak even the Catholic dogmas themselves lyingly, in order to conceal I know not what else which we think true, surely to one suspecting such things you will say: 'I did that then in order to catch you.' But what will you answer to one who says: 'Whence, then, do I know whether even now you do this, lest you be caught by me?' Or can anyone indeed be persuaded that a man who lies in order to catch does not lie in order not to be caught? Do you see whither this evil tends? — namely, that not only we to them and they themselves to us, but every brother to every brother would, not without cause, seem to be suspect.

And thus, while through lying it is aimed that faith be taught, what is rather accomplished is that faith is to be placed in no one. For if we speak even against God when we lie, what so great evil could be found in any lie, that we ought by every means to shun it as most wicked? But now consider how much more tolerably the Priscillianists lie in comparison with us, when they know that they speak deceitfully to those whom we suppose must be delivered by our lie from those false things in which, erring, they are deceived. The Priscillianist says that the soul is a part of God and of the same nature and substance as He is. Great and detestable is this blasphemy.

For it follows that the nature of God is taken captive, deceived, beguiled, disturbed and defiled, condemned and crucified. But if he too says this, who desires to deliver a man from so great an evil through lying, let us see what difference there is between the two blasphemers. 'A very great one,' you say; for the Priscillianist says this while also so believing, but the Catholic while not so believing, although so speaking. The former, then, blasphemes unknowing, but the latter knowing; the former against knowledge, the latter against conscience; the former has the blindness of thinking false things, but in them he has at least the will of speaking true things; the latter, in hiding, sees true things and, willing, speaks false. 'But the former,' you will say, 'teaches this in order to make men partakers of his error and madness;

but the latter says this in order to free men from that error and madness.' I have indeed already shown above how much this too harms, which is believed to be about to profit; but meanwhile, if we weigh in these two the present evils — since the future goods which the Catholic seeks in the correcting of the heretic are uncertain — who sins more gravely: he who deceives a man unknowing, or he who blasphemes God knowing? Surely he understands which is worse who, with anxious piety, sets God before man. To this is added, that

if God must be blasphemed in order that we may lead men to praise Him, then without doubt we invite men, by our example and doctrine, not only to praise but also to blaspheme God; since those whom we labor to lead to the praises of God through blasphemies of God, if indeed we lead them, will learn not only to praise but also to blaspheme. These are the benefits we confer on those whom we deliver from the heretics by blaspheming — not ignorantly, but knowingly.

And whereas the Apostle handed men over even to Satan himself, that they might learn not to blaspheme, we strive to snatch men from Satan, that they may learn to blaspheme not through ignorance but through knowledge; and we bring upon our very selves, their teachers, this so great ruin, that in order to catch heretics we are first made — which is certain — blasphemers of God, so that we may, for the sake of those who are to be freed — which is uncertain — become teachers of His truth. Since, therefore, we teach our own to blaspheme God, in order that the Priscillianists may believe them to be their own, let us see what evil they themselves say, when they lie for this reason, that we may believe them to be our own. They anathematize Priscillian and detest him at our pleasure;

they say that the soul is a creature of God, not a part; they execrate the false martyrdoms of the Priscillianists; they extol with great praises the Catholic bishops by whom that heresy was stripped bare, assailed, and laid low, and other things of this kind. Behold, they themselves speak true things when they lie — not that the very thing which is a lie can at the same time be this truth, but in one respect they lie, in another they speak true things; for when they lie that they are ours, concerning the Catholic faith they speak true things. And on this account they themselves, lest they be found Priscillianists, lyingly speak true things; but we, in order to find them out, not only speak lyingly, that we may be believed to belong to them, but also speak false things which we have known to pertain to their error.

And so they, when they wish to be thought ours, what they say is partly false and partly true — for it is false that they are ours, but it is true that the soul is not a part of God — whereas we, when we wish to be thought to belong to them, both the things we say are false, that we are Priscillianists and that the soul is a part of God. And so they praise God, do not blaspheme, when they conceal themselves; and when they do not conceal themselves but bring forth their own doctrines, they know not that they blaspheme. Therefore, if they be converted to the Catholic faith, they console themselves, because they can say what the Apostle said, who, when he had said among other things, 'I was formerly a blasphemer,' added, 'I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly.'

We, on the contrary, if we bring forth this as it were just lie for the deceiving and catching of them, in order that they may open themselves to us, surely both say that we belong to the blaspheming Priscillianists, and, in order that they may believe us, blaspheme without the excuse of ignorance. For a Catholic who wishes to be believed a heretic by blaspheming cannot say: 'I did it ignorantly.' Always, brother, in such cases must this be recalled with fear: 'Whosoever shall deny me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.' Or does he not deny Christ before men who denies Him before the Priscillianists, in order to strip and catch them, hidden as they are, by a blasphemous lie?

But who doubts, I beseech you, that Christ is denied, when — being such as He truly is — He is said not to be so, and — as the Priscillianist believes Him to be — He is said to be so? 'But,' you will say, 'the hidden wolves, clothed in sheep's clothing and secretly and grievously ravaging the Lord's flock, we cannot find out otherwise.' Whence, then, did the Priscillianists become known, before this hunt of lying was ever devised? Whence was there arrived at the lair of their very author, surely craftier and therefore more hidden than they? Whence were so many and so great ones brought to light and condemned, and countless others, some corrected, some as it were corrected and gathered in by a pitying Church? For the Lord gives many ways, when He has mercy, by which men may arrive at hunting them out:

of which two are more felicitous than the rest, namely that they be pointed out either by those whom they wished to seduce, or by those whom they had already seduced, coming to their senses and being converted. Which happens more easily, if their wicked error is overthrown not by lying enticements but by truthful disputations. On the writing of which it behooves you to spend your labor, since the Lord has granted that you can. These wholesome writings, by which their insane perversity is destroyed, when they shall have become more and more widely known, and shall have been everywhere diffused by Catholics — whether by the bishops who speak among the peoples, or by any zealous men full of the zeal of God — these will be the holy nets by which they are caught truthfully, not hunted lyingly.

For thus caught, they will either of their own accord confess what they had been, and will point out others whom they have known in their evil fellowship, whether in harmony

they will correct them, or in mercy will betray them; or, if they are ashamed to confess what they have covered by long dissimulation, they will be healed by the hidden hand of God working the cure. 'But,' you will say, 'far more easily do we penetrate their hiding-places, if we lie that we are what they are.' If this were lawful or expedient, Christ could have commanded His sheep to come to the wolves clothed in wolves' skins, and to find them out by the deceits of this art.

This he did not say to them, nor when he foretold that he would send them into the midst of wolves. But you will say: they were not then to be sought out, since the wolves were most openly wolves, but their bites and savagery were to be endured. What then? When, foretelling later times, he said that ravening wolves would come in the clothing of sheep, was there not there a place where he might have given this warning and said: And you, in order to find them, take up the clothing of wolves, but within remain sheep? He did not say this. But when he had said: Many will come to you in the clothing of sheep, but within they are ravening wolves, he did not add: by your lies you shall know them, but: by their fruits you shall know them. By truth are lies to be guarded against, by truth captured, by truth slain.

Far be it that we should overcome the blasphemies of the ignorant by knowingly blaspheming; far be it that we should guard against the evils of deceivers by imitating them. For how shall we guard against them, if in order to guard we must possess them? For if, in order that one who blasphemes unknowingly may be caught, I shall blaspheme knowingly, worse is that which I do than that which I catch; if, in order that one who denies Christ unknowingly may be found out, I shall deny Christ knowingly, he whom I have thus found will follow me to perdition, since indeed, in order to find him, I first perish. Or perhaps he who thus strives to find out the Priscillianists does not deny Christ, because he utters with the mouth what he does not believe in the heart? As though indeed — a thing I have already said a little before — when it was said: with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, it was added in vain: with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Did not almost all who denied Christ before their persecutors hold in their heart what they believed about him, and yet by not confessing with the mouth unto salvation perished, except those who by repentance were restored to life? Who would be so vain as to suppose that the apostle Peter had in his heart what he had on his lips, when he denied Christ? Surely in that denial he inwardly held the truth and outwardly uttered a lie. Why then did he wash away with tears what he had denied with his mouth, if what he believed in his heart sufficed for salvation? Why, speaking truth in his heart, did he punish with so bitter a weeping the lie which he had uttered with his mouth, unless because he saw that it was a great ruin, that with the heart indeed he had believed unto righteousness, but with the mouth he had not confessed unto salvation?

Wherefore that which is written: he who speaks truth in his heart, is not to be so understood as though, while truth is retained in the heart, a lie is to be spoken with the mouth. Rather it was said thus, because it can happen that a man may speak truth with the mouth which profits him nothing, if he does not hold it in his heart, that is, if he himself does not believe what he speaks. So heretics do, and the Priscillianists most of all, when they do not indeed believe the catholic truth, yet speak it, that they may be thought to be ours. They speak, therefore, truth in their mouth, not in their heart. For that reason they were to be distinguished from him of whom it is said: he who speaks truth in his heart.

But this truth the catholic, just as he speaks it in his heart because he so believes, so also ought he to have it in his mouth, that he may so preach it; but against that truth let him hold no falsehood, neither in heart nor in mouth, so that both with the heart he may believe unto righteousness and with the mouth make confession unto salvation. For in that psalm also, when it had been said: he who speaks truth in his heart, presently this too was added: who has not wrought deceit with his tongue. And that which the apostle says: putting away lying, speak truth every one with his neighbour, for we are members one of another — far be it that we should so understand it, as though he permitted us to speak a lie with those who are not yet with us members of the body of Christ.