Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 81/87

But in order that they may suppose that their daily sins—whatever and however great they be—which they never cease to commit, can be remitted through almsgiving, they try to bring in as their advocate and witness the prayer which the Lord Himself taught. For just as there is no day, they say, on which this prayer is not said by Christians, so there is no daily sin of any kind which is not remitted through it, when we say: 'Forgive us our debts,' if we take care to do what follows: 'As we also forgive our debtors.' For the Lord did not say, they argue: 'If you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive you your small daily sins,' but He said: 'He will forgive you your sins.'

Of whatever kind or however great they be, then—even if they are committed daily and life does not depart from them changed for the better—they presume that these can be remitted to them through the alms of a pardon not denied. But it is well that these men remind us that worthy alms for sins must be performed; for if they said that any sort of alms whatever could obtain divine mercy for sins both daily and great, and for any habit of crimes whatsoever, so that daily remission would follow, they would see that they are saying something absurd and ridiculous. For thus they would be forced to admit that it could come to pass that a most wealthy man might, by spending ten little coins a day on alms, redeem murders and adulteries and every kind of wicked deed.

But if it is most absurd and most insane to say this, then surely, if it be asked what alms are worthy for sins—concerning which that forerunner of Christ also said: 'Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance'—without doubt those will not be found to perform them who riddle their life right up to death with the perpetration of daily crimes: first, because in carrying off the goods of others they plunder far more, and by bestowing some trifling portion of these on the poor they imagine they are thereby feeding Christ, believing that they have bought from Him license to do evil, or rather are daily buying it, and so commit their many damnable deeds secure.

For if for a single crime they were to distribute all their goods to the needy members of Christ, unless they desisted from such deeds by having charity, which does not deal perversely, it could profit them nothing. He, therefore, who performs worthy alms for his sins begins to perform them first upon himself. For it is unfitting that he should not do for himself what he does for his neighbour, when he hears God saying: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'; and again hears: 'Have mercy on your own soul, pleasing God.' This alms—that is, that he may please God—if he does not bestow upon his own soul, how can he be said to perform worthy alms for his sins? For to this purpose that too is written: 'He who is evil to himself, to whom will he be good?' Alms, indeed, assist prayers;

and certainly we must regard what we read: 'Son, you have sinned; do not add to it again, and pray concerning your past sins, that they may be forgiven you.' For this reason, therefore, alms are to be performed, so that when we pray concerning past sins, we may be heard; not that, persevering in them, we may believe ourselves to be procuring license to do evil through alms. And so the Lord foretold that He would impute to those on the right the alms done by them, and to those on the left the alms not done, in order thereby to show how much alms avail to blot out former sins, not to commit eternal ones with impunity. But such alms cannot be said to be performed by those who are unwilling to change their life for the better from its habit of crimes. For in this also which He said:

'Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it not to me'—He shows that they do not do it even when they think they are doing it. For if they gave bread to a hungry Christian as to a Christian, they would surely not deny to themselves the bread of righteousness, which is Christ Himself; since God regards not to whom it is given, but with what intention it is given. He, therefore, who loves Christ in the Christian, offers him alms with that intention by which he draws near to Christ, not by which he wishes to depart unpunished from Christ. For each one forsakes Christ all the more, the more he loves what Christ disapproves. For what does it profit anyone that he is baptized, if he is not justified? Did not He who said:

'Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God,' also Himself say: 'Unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven'? Why do many run to be baptized through fear of the former, while not many take care to be justified through not fearing the latter? Just as, then, he does not say 'Fool' to his brother who, when he says this, is incensed not against the brotherhood but against his sin (otherwise he shall be liable to the fire of hell): so, on the contrary, he who offers alms to a Christian does not offer them to a Christian if he does not love Christ in him; and he does not love Christ who refuses to be justified in Christ. And just as, if anyone has been overtaken by this fault, so as to say to his brother:

'Fool'—that is, unjustly reviling him out of unwillingness to take away his sin—it is too little for him, in order to redeem this, to perform alms, unless he also adds the remedy of reconciliation which follows there (for there follows: 'If therefore you offer your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave there your gift before the altar, and go first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift'): so it is too little to perform alms, however great, for any crime whatever, and to remain in the habit of crimes. But the daily prayer which Jesus Himself taught, whence it is also called the Lord's Prayer, indeed blots out daily sins, when it is said daily:

'Forgive us our debts'—and that which follows is not only said but also done: 'As we also forgive our debtors'; but because sins are committed, it is therefore said, not that they may be committed because it is said. For through this prayer the Saviour wished to show us that, however justly we live in the darkness and infirmity of this life, we are not without sins, for the forgiveness of which we ought to pray, and we ought to forgive those who sin against us, so that we too may be forgiven. Surely it was not for this reason that the Lord said:

'If you forgive men their sins, your Father also will forgive you your sins,' that, relying on this prayer, we might securely commit daily crimes—either by the power whereby we did not fear the laws of men, or by the cunning whereby we deceived those very men; but that through it we might learn not to think ourselves to be without sins, even if we were free from crimes; just as God admonished the priests of the old law concerning sacrifices about this very thing, commanding them to offer first for their own sins, then for the sins of the people. For even the very words of so great a Master and our Lord must be watchfully considered. For He did not say: 'If you forgive men their sins, your Father also will forgive you sins of whatever kind,' but He said: 'Your sins.'

For He was teaching a daily prayer and was certainly speaking to disciples already justified. What, then, is 'your sins,' but 'sins without which not even you will be, who are justified and sanctified'? Therefore, whereas those who through this prayer seek occasion for daily committing crimes say that the Lord signified even great sins, because He did not say 'He will forgive you small sins,' but 'your sins': there, considering to what sort of people He was speaking, and hearing 'your sins' said, we ought to think nothing other than small ones, since those of such people were no longer great. Yet not even those great sins, from which one must wholly withdraw with one's manners changed for the better, are forgiven to those who pray, unless that be done which is said there:

'As we also forgive our debtors.' For if the least sins, without which not even the life of the righteous exists, are not otherwise remitted, how much more do those entangled in many great crimes—even if they now cease to commit them—obtain no indulgence, if they are inexorable in remitting to others whatever each has sinned against them, since the Lord says: 'But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you.' For to this purpose avails also what the apostle James says, that judgment shall be without mercy to him who has not shown mercy. For there should come to mind that servant also, to whom his lord remitted ten thousand talents,

which afterward he commanded him to repay, because he himself did not have pity on his fellow-servant, who owed him a hundred denarii. In those, therefore, who are children of the promise and vessels of mercy, that avails which the same apostle says, consequently adding: 'But mercy exults over judgment'—since even those righteous ones, who lived in such great holiness that they also receive others into eternal dwellings, by whom they were made friends from the mammon of unrighteousness, that they might be such, were freed by mercy by Him who justifies the ungodly, imputing reward according to grace, not according to debt. For among their number is the apostle who says: 'I obtained mercy, that I might be faithful.'

But concerning those who are received by such persons into eternal dwellings, it must be confessed that they are not endowed with such manners that their own life could suffice for their being freed without the support of the saints, and on this account mercy exults much more abundantly over judgment in their case. Yet no one is therefore to be thought, however utterly wicked, in no way changed to a good or even a more tolerable life, to be received into eternal dwellings, merely because he has obliged the saints from the mammon of unrighteousness—that is, from money or riches which had been ill acquired, or even if well, yet not from true riches but from what unrighteousness reckons to be riches, since it does not know what the true riches are, in which those abound who also receive others into eternal dwellings.

There is, therefore, a certain manner of life neither so evil that the bounty of almsgiving—by which the want of the righteous is also sustained, and friends are made who may receive into eternal dwellings—profits those who live it nothing toward attaining the kingdom of heaven; nor so good that it suffices of itself for attaining so great a blessedness, unless they obtain mercy by the merits of those whom they have made their friends. (And I am wont to marvel that even in Virgil this saying of the Lord is found, where He says: 'Make to yourselves friends from the mammon of unrighteousness, that they also may receive you into eternal dwellings'; to which is also most similar this: 'He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward;'

and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.' For when that poet was describing the Elysian fields, where they suppose the souls of the blessed to dwell, he not only placed there those who were able to attain those seats by their own merits, but added and said: 'And those who, mindful of others, made them so by deserving well'—that is, those who deserved well of others and made them mindful of themselves by their deserving; precisely as if they were saying to them what is frequently on a Christian's lips, when each humble person commends himself to some one of the saints and says: 'Be mindful of me,' and brings it about by deserving that he may be so.) But what that manner is, and what those sins are, which so hinder arrival at the kingdom of God

that nevertheless they obtain indulgence by the merits of saintly friends—this is most difficult to discover, most dangerous to define. I, at any rate, even up to this time, though I have busied myself about it, have not been able to arrive at investigating them. And perhaps they lie hidden for this reason, lest zeal for advancing toward guarding against all sins grow sluggish. For if it were known which and what kind of faults they are, for which—even when they persist and are not consumed by progress in a better life—the intercession of the righteous must be sought and hoped for, human laziness would securely wrap itself in such things, and would take no care to be extricated from such entanglements by the exertion of any virtue, but would seek only to be freed by the merits of others, whom it had made its friends from the mammon of unrighteousness by the bounty of almsgiving.

But now, while the manner of pardonable iniquity, even if it persists, remains unknown, surely both zeal for advancing toward better things is applied more watchfully by praying and importuning, and the care of making saintly friends from the mammon of unrighteousness is not despised. But this deliverance, which is wrought either by the prayers of each one or by the intercession of the saints, brings it about that one is not sent into eternal fire, not that, when one has been sent, he may after however long a time thence be ransomed.

For even those who think that what is written must be understood thus—that the good rich earth brings forth fruit, one thirtyfold, another sixtyfold, another a hundredfold—so that the saints, according to the diversity of their merits, free some thirty men, others sixty, others a hundred: they are wont to suppose that this will take place on the day of judgment, not after the judgment.

And when someone saw, by this opinion, men most perversely promising themselves impunity—on the ground that all could seem in this manner to belong to deliverance—he is reported to have answered most elegantly that it is rather necessary to live well, so that each one may be found among those who are to intercede for others to be freed; lest they be so few that, as each one of them quickly reaches his number of thirty or sixty or a hundred, many remain who can no longer be rescued from punishment by the intercession of those, and among them be found whoever with most vain rashness promises himself the hope of another's fruit.

Let it suffice that I have answered this to those who do not despise the authority of the sacred Scriptures, which we hold in common, but who by misunderstanding them think that what shall be is not what those Scriptures say, but rather what they themselves wish. Having rendered this response, then, we conclude the book, as we promised. As we promised in the immediately preceding book, this last book of this whole work shall contain the discussion concerning the eternal blessedness of the City of God; which received the name of eternity not on account of length of duration through many ages, yet to be ended at some time, but because, as it is written in the Gospel, 'of His kingdom there shall be no end;'

nor in such a way that, while some pass away by dying and others succeed by being born, an appearance of perpetuity may appear in it—as in a tree which is clothed with perennial foliage, the same greenness seems to remain, while, as the leaves fall and drop, others ever springing up preserve the look of shadiness; but all the citizens in it shall be immortal, men also attaining what the holy angels never lost. This shall the most omnipotent God, its Founder, accomplish. For He has promised, and cannot lie; and to make faith even from this also for them, He has already done many things both not promised and promised.

For He it is who in the beginning founded the world, full of all good things, both visible and intelligible; in which He instituted nothing better than the spirits, to whom He gave understanding, and rendered them fit for and capable of His contemplation, and bound them together in one fellowship, which we call the holy and supernal City—in which the thing whereby they are sustained and are blessed is God Himself, as it were their common life and sustenance: who bestowed upon that same intellectual nature free will of such a kind that, if it should wish to forsake God, that is, its own blessedness, misery would forthwith follow;

who, when He foreknew that certain angels, through that pride by which they wished to suffice for themselves unto the blessed life, would be deserters of so great a good, did not take from them this power, judging it more powerful and better even to make good use of evils than to permit no evils to exist. And these would be no evils at all, had not the mutable nature—though good, and instituted by the most high God and immutable Good, who founded all good things—by sinning made them for itself; whereby also by its own sin as witness it is convicted of having been created a good nature. For unless it, too, were a great good, though not equal to its Creator, surely the desertion of God as of its own light could not be its evil.

For just as the blindness of the eye is a defect, and this very thing indicates that the eye was created for seeing light, and through this even by its very defect the member capable of light is shown more excellent than the other members (for there would be no other cause of its defect to lack light): so the nature which enjoyed God teaches, even by the very defect by which it is wretched because it does not enjoy God, that it was instituted as the best of natures; who bound the voluntary fall of the angels with the most just penalty of everlasting unhappiness, and to the rest, remaining in that highest good, He gave, as it were, the reward of that very perseverance, that they might be certain of their own endless perseverance.

Who made man also himself upright, with the same free will—an earthly animal indeed, but worthy of heaven if he should cleave to his Author, with misery likewise to follow if he should forsake Him, such as would befit a nature of this kind. And foreknowing that he likewise, by the transgression of the law of God through the desertion of God, would sin, He did not take from him the power of free will, at the same time foreseeing what good He Himself would make out of his evil: who from the mortal offspring, deservedly and justly condemned, gathers by His grace so great a people that from it He may supply and restore the part which fell, of the angels; and so that beloved and supernal City may not be defrauded of the number of its citizens, but may even perhaps rejoice in a yet more abundant one. CHAPTER II.

Concerning the eternal and immutable will of God. For many things are indeed done by the wicked against the will of God; but He is of such great wisdom and of such great power that all things which seem adverse to His will tend toward those issues or ends which He Himself foreknew to be good and just. And on this account, when God is said to change His will—so that, for example, He is rendered angry to those to whom He was gentle—they rather than He Himself are changed, and they find Him in a certain manner changed in what they suffer; just as the sun is changed to injured eyes and becomes in a certain manner harsh from being mild, and troublesome from being delightful, while it remains in itself the same as it was.

That is also called the will of God which He works in the hearts of those who obey His commandments, concerning which the apostle says: 'For it is God who works in you both to will.' Just as the righteousness of God is said to be not only that by which He Himself is righteous, but also that which He works in the man who is justified by Him: so His law also is so called, which is rather of men, but given by Him; for surely they were men to whom Jesus said: 'In your law it is written,' though in another place we read: 'The law of his God is in his heart.' According to this will which God works in men, He is even said to will what He Himself does not will, but makes His own people to will it; just as He is said to have known what He brought about to be known by those by whom it was unknown. For not when the apostle says:

'But now, knowing God, or rather being known by God,' it is not lawful for us to believe that God then came to know them, foreknown before the foundation of the world; but He was then said to have known what He then brought about that He should be known. Concerning these modes of expression I have already mentioned, in the earlier books, that there was discussion. According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills what He makes others will, to whom future things are unknown, He wills many things and does not do them. For many things His saints will to be done, inspired by Him with a holy will, and they are not done; just as they pray for certain persons piously and holily, and what they pray for He does not do, although He Himself wrought in them this will of praying by His Holy Spirit.

And on this account, when the saints will and pray according to God that each one may be saved, we can in that manner of speech say: 'God wills and does not do it'; so that we may say that He Himself wills, who makes these to will. But according to that will of His own, which is eternal together with His foreknowledge, surely in heaven and on earth He has already done all things whatsoever He willed—not only past or present, but even future. But before the time comes at which He willed that what He foreknew and disposed before all ages should come to pass, we say: 'It shall be done when God shall will'; but if we are ignorant not only of the time at which it is to be, but even whether it is to be, we say: 'It shall be, if God shall will';

not because God will then have a new will which He did not have, but because that which from eternity was prepared in His immutable will shall then come to be. CHAPTER III. Concerning the promise of the eternal blessedness of the saints and the perpetual punishments of the wicked. Wherefore, to pass over so many other things—just as now we see fulfilled in Christ what He promised to Abraham, saying: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed'—so that which He promised to the same seed of his shall be fulfilled, where He says through the prophet: 'They that were in the tombs shall rise again,' and what He says: 'There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and they shall not remember the former things, nor shall it come up into their heart, but they shall find joy and exultation in it.'

'Behold, I will make Jerusalem an exultation and my people a joy; and I will exult in Jerusalem and rejoice in my people, and there shall no more be heard in her the voice of weeping'; and that which through another prophet He foretold, saying to that same prophet: 'In that time your people shall be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book; and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth (or, as some have interpreted, in the mound) shall arise, these unto eternal life and these unto reproach and unto eternal confusion'; and in another place through the same prophet: 'The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and shall possess it unto the age and unto the age of ages'; and a little after: 'His kingdom,' he says, 'is an everlasting kingdom':

and other things pertaining to this which I have set down in the twentieth book, or those which I have not set down and yet are written in the same Scriptures—these too shall come, just as those have come which the unbelieving did not think would come. For the same God promised both, foretold that both should come; whom the deities of the pagans dread, even by the testimony of Porphyry, the most noble philosopher of the pagans. CHAPTER IV. Against the wise men of the world, who think that the earthly bodies of men cannot be transferred to a heavenly habitation. But, of course, learned and wise men, against the force of so great an authority, which—as it foretold so long beforehand—has converted all kinds of men to believing and hoping in this.

They think they are arguing shrewdly against the resurrection of bodies when they say what was recorded by Cicero in the third book of his work On the Republic. For when he was asserting that Hercules and Romulus had been made gods out of men, he says: 'Yet their bodies were not raised up into heaven; for nature would not permit that what came from the earth should remain anywhere but in the earth.' This is the great reasoning of the wise, whose thoughts the Lord knows to be vain. For if we were souls only, that is, spirits without any body, and dwelling in heaven knew nothing of earthly animals, and it were foretold to us that one day we should be bound by a marvelous bond to be joined to earthly bodies for the purpose of giving them life:

would we not argue all the more forcefully, refusing to believe it, and say that nature does not permit an incorporeal thing to be bound by a bodily fetter? And yet the earth is full of living souls quickening these earthly members, joined and interwoven with them in a marvelous manner. Why then, if the same God who made this living creature so wills, could not an earthly body be raised up into a heavenly body, if a soul, which is more excellent than any body—and therefore than even a heavenly body—has been able to be bound to an earthly body?

Could so tiny a particle of earth hold within itself something better than a heavenly body, so as to have sensation and life, and yet heaven disdain to receive this sentient and living earthly substance, or, having received it, be unable to sustain it—as if it would feel and live by something better than every heavenly body is? But the reason this does not happen now is that the time has not yet come in which He willed it to happen, who made this thing—which by familiarity has now grown cheap to us—far more wonderfully than that thing which is not believed by these men. For why do we not marvel more vehemently that incorporeal souls, superior to a heavenly body, are bound to earthly bodies, than that bodies, though earthly,

can nevertheless be exalted to heavenly seats—why do we not marvel more at incorporeal souls, mightier than a heavenly body, being bound to earthly bodies, except that we have grown accustomed to seeing the latter and we ourselves are this, whereas the former we are not yet, nor have we ever yet seen it? For surely, when consulted by sober reason, it is found to be the work of a more wonderful divine operation to attach in a certain manner corporeal things to incorporeal ones, than to couple together bodies and bodies—however diverse, since the one are heavenly, the other earthly—yet still bodies and bodies. CHAPTER V. On the resurrection of the flesh, which some who believe the world refuse to believe. But this might once have been incredible: behold, now the world has already believed that the earthly body of Christ was taken up into heaven; the resurrection of the flesh and the ascension into the heights, with very few remaining astonished, whether learned or unlearned. Now both the learned and the unlearned have believed.

If they believed a credible thing, let them see how foolish are those who do not believe; but if an incredible thing was believed, then surely this too is incredible: that what is incredible was so believed. These two incredible things, then—namely the resurrection of our body unto eternity, and that the world would believe a thing so incredible—the same God, before either of them came to pass, foretold that both would come to be. One of the two incredible things we now see already accomplished: that what was incredible the world should believe.

Why is the remaining one despaired of, that it too should come to pass—the thing which the world incredibly believed—just as that has already come which was likewise incredible, namely that the world should believe a thing so incredible? Seeing that both these incredible things, one of which we see and the other we believe, were foretold in the very same Scriptures through which the world came to believe? And the very manner in which the world believed, if it be considered, is found to be still more incredible.