Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 102/118

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. It is not, I think, to be doubted that, according to this saying, Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, there will not be there the corruption and mortality of flesh and blood; for according to these qualities he named flesh and blood in this place. Wherefore, that I may set down something by way of example that occurs to me for the moment—as it is written: Lest perhaps he who tempts should have tempted you, and our labour be in vain (and here the devil is understood), as though God did not tempt at all, of whom in another place Scripture says: But He Himself tempts no one; nor is this sentence contrary to that in which it is said:

The Lord your God tempts you; rather the question is resolved when the word 'temptation' bears different meanings, in that the temptation of deception is one thing and the temptation of testing another: according to the former, he who tempts is understood to be none but the devil; but according to the latter, God tempts. So too, when it is said 'flesh shall possess the kingdom of God' and 'flesh shall not possess the kingdom of God,' let the meaning of this word also be distinguished, and there will be no question. For flesh according to substance—according to which it was said: A spirit has not bones and flesh, as you see Me have—does possess the kingdom of God; but flesh understood according to corruption shall not possess it. For this was explained when it was said:

Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, in that which was immediately added: Neither shall corruption possess incorruption—as sufficiently, so far as I judge, we have discussed. But as to what you ask, whether the lineaments of bodies are formed one by one by God the Creator, it will not disturb you if, as far as the human mind can, you understand the power of the divine operation. For how shall we be able to deny that God even now works all things that are created, when the Lord says: My Father works until now? Whence that cessation of the seventh day must be understood to have been made from founding the natures themselves, not from the administration of those which are reported to have been founded.

When therefore the nature of things is administered by the Creator, and all things are born through their appointed orders in their fixed places and times, God works until now. For if God does not now form these things, how is it read: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you? How also can it be taken: If then God so clothes the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the oven? Unless perhaps it is to be believed that grass is clothed by God, but bodies are not formed by God. For when he said 'clothes,' he indicates plainly enough not a past ordering but a present operation. Whence there is also that saying of the Apostle about seeds, which I mentioned above: You do not sow, he says, the body that shall be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of some of the rest;

but God gives it a body as He has willed. He did not say 'gave' or 'disposed,' but 'gives,' that you may understand the Creator to apply the efficacy of His wisdom to founding the things which daily arise in their seasons. Of which Wisdom it is said: She reaches from end to end mightily, and—he did not say 'has disposed' but—disposes all things sweetly. Now it is much even faintly to be wise as to how mutable and temporal things are founded, not by mutable and temporal motions of the Creator, but by an eternal and stable power. But concerning that

which you thought should be inquired into—whether all who have been baptized, if they have gone forth from the body entangled in various crimes without repentance, shall obtain pardon at whatever time—I have already written a book of no small size, which, if you take care to have it copied, perhaps you will require nothing further on this matter. You wish also to know through me whether that breath of God in Adam is itself the soul. I answer briefly: either it is itself, or from it the soul was made. But even if it is itself, it was made. For God speaks concerning the soul through the prophet Isaiah, where He says: I made every breath—which the following words sufficiently indicate; for it follows: On account of a little sin I grieved him a while—that is, that same breath—and the rest, which cannot be understood except of the human soul.

For in this question one must above all beware lest the soul be believed to be, not a nature made by God, but the very substance of God—like the only-begotten Son, who is His Word, or some particle of Him—as though that nature and substance, by which God is whatever He is, could be mutable; which no one who is aware that he has a soul fails to perceive that the soul is. When I was dictating these things, the bearer, already awaiting a wind, was urging me vehemently to let him sail. And so, if you read anything here said crudely and without polish, or if you perceive the whole to be so, give heed to the doctrine, pardon to the diction. 206. To the deservedly illustrious and most excellent lord, and most dear son in Christ, Valerius, Augustine, greeting in the Lord.

As often as men ask me to commend them to your kindness and good faith, if I do not do so, I seem to myself not to judge rightly of your mercy toward those in need of help, nor of your goodwill toward us. And so I do it, and especially I do not hesitate to commend to your excellence the ministers of Christ who bear care of the Church—of which we rejoice that you are a co-heir and son—deservedly illustrious and most excellent lord, and most dear son in Christ. Therefore, since my holy brother and fellow-bishop Felix asked this of me, I certainly ought not to refuse. I commend to you, then, a bishop of Christ in need of the help of a man of high station; do therefore what you can, since the Lord has granted you great ability, whose gains we know you to be most eager for.

207. To his most blessed brother and fellow-bishop Claudius, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. Since, stirred by brotherly affection, you yourself sent me Julian's four books, which he wrote against one book of mine, before I asked for them, I thought nothing more fitting could be done than that you above all, reading what I answer, should judge whether I have answered rightly and fittingly. For someone—I know not who—had written to the illustrious and religious man, Count Valerius, certain excerpts culled from these four books against that same book of mine, which he had learned I had written to him. And when these came into my hands through the care of that same eminent man, I did not delay to add to that first book a second volume, in which I refuted all those things as best I could.

But now, when I inspected the same books more carefully, I found that he who had selected certain things from them had not set them all down as they are read in these books. Whence it might seem to Julian or to any of his party that I had rather lied, since assuredly those things which were excerpted from these and sent to the said Count could not become known just as these four books are. Whoever, then, reads that second book of mine to Count Valerius, likewise composed as the first, let him know that in certain places I did not answer Julian but rather him who selected those things from his books and did not set them down as he found them, but thought some part should be altered—perhaps so that in this way he might make his own, as it were, things which were plainly another's.

But now, believing the more truthful copies which your Holiness sent, I see that reply must be made to the author himself, who boasts that he has refuted one book of mine with his four, and does not cease everywhere to scatter the poisons of faithlessness. I have therefore undertaken this work, with the help of the Saviour of the little ones and the great; and I know that you have prayed for me, that I might accomplish it, and for those to whom we believe and desire our labours of this kind will be profitable. Attend, therefore, now to my response, the beginning of which will follow this letter. Fare you well in the Lord, mindful of us, most blessed brother. 208. To the deservedly to-be-received lady, and to be honoured in the members of Christ, daughter Felicia, Augustine, greeting in the Lord.

I do not doubt that your soul is troubled both for your own faith and for the weakness or wickedness of others, since the holy Apostle, full of the bowels of charity, confesses and says: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn? Whence I too, myself pricked and anxious for your salvation which is in Christ, thought that these letters, whether of consolation or of exhortation, should be sent to your Holiness—since in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is His Church and the unity of His members, you have become most truly a sister to us, who as an honourable member are loved in His fabric and with us are made white by His Holy Spirit.

Whence I admonish you not to be too gravely disturbed by these scandals, which were foretold as about to come for this very reason: that when they came, we might remember they had been foretold, and not be greatly troubled by them. For the Lord Himself thus foretold this in the Gospel: Woe to the world because of scandals! Scandals must needs come; but woe to that man through whom the scandal comes! Who are these very men, but those of whom the Apostle says: Seeking their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ? There are, then, some who therefore hold the pastoral chairs that they may care for Christ's flocks; but others who therefore sit in them that they may rejoice in their temporal honours and worldly advantages.

These two kinds of shepherds—some dying, others being born—must needs persist in the Catholic Church itself until the end of the age and until the Lord's judgment. For if in the times of the Apostles there were such men, among whom the Apostle groaned over false brethren and said: In perils among false brethren—and yet did not separate them through pride, but bore with them through forbearance—how much more in our times must there be such, since the Lord most plainly says concerning the time of this age, which draws near to its end: Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold! But what follows ought to console and exhort us: He who shall persevere, He says, unto the end, he shall be saved.

But just as there are good shepherds and bad, so also in the flocks themselves there are both good and bad. The good are signified by the name of sheep, but the bad are called goats. Yet, mingled together, they feed alike, until the Prince of shepherds come, who is called the one Shepherd, and, just as He Himself promised, separate, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. For to us He has enjoined gathering, but to Himself He has reserved separation—because He ought to separate who cannot err. For those proud servants who have dared readily to separate before the time which the Lord reserved to Himself, have rather been themselves separated from Catholic unity; for whence could they, unclean through schism, have a clean flock?

Therefore, that we may remain in unity and, not offended by the scandals of the chaff, may not desert the Lord's threshing-floor, but rather persevere as wheat until the end of the winnowing and tolerate the crushed stubble with the firm weight of charity, our very Shepherd in the Gospel admonishes us concerning good shepherds, that on account of their good works we should not place our hope even in them, but should glorify Him who made them such—the Father who is in heaven—and concerning bad shepherds, whom He willed to signify by the name of scribes and Pharisees, teaching good things and doing evil; for concerning good shepherds He speaks thus: You are the light of the world.

A city set upon a mountain cannot be hidden; nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but upon a lampstand, that it may give light to all who are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. But concerning bad shepherds He admonishes the sheep, saying: They sit upon the seat of Moses. What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not. Having heard these things, the sheep of Christ hear His voice even through bad teachers, and do not forsake His unity, because the good which they hear them speak is not theirs but His; and therefore the sheep feed securely, because even under bad shepherds they are nourished in the Lord's pastures.

But they do not do the deeds of the bad shepherds, because such works are not His but their own. Yet those whom they see to be good, they not only hear the good things they say, but also imitate the good things they do. Of such was the Apostle, who said: Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ. This one was a light kindled from the eternal Light, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; and he was set upon a lampstand, because he gloried in His cross. Whence he says: But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And because he sought not his own things, but the things of Jesus Christ, although unto imitation of himself

he exhorts those whom he had begotten through the Gospel; yet he gravely rebukes those who made schisms under the names of the apostles, and chides those who said: 'I am of Paul'; Was Paul, he says, crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Hence we understand both that good shepherds seek not their own things but the things of Jesus Christ, and that good sheep, although they imitate the deeds of good shepherds, yet place not their hope in them—by whose ministry they have been gathered—but rather in the Lord, by whose blood they have been redeemed, so that,

when perchance they fall in with bad shepherds who preach His doctrine and do their own evil works, they may do what they say, but not do what they do, and may not for the sake of the sons of iniquity desert the pastures of unity. For in the Catholic Church, which not in Africa alone, as the party of Donatus, but through all nations, as it was promised, is enlarged and spread throughout the whole world, as the Apostle says, bearing fruit and increasing, there are both good and bad. But those separated from her, so long as they think against her, cannot be good; because, even though a seemingly praiseworthy manner of life appears to show some of them good, the very division makes them bad, since the Lord says:

He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who gathers not with Me scatters. Whence I also exhort you, lady deservedly to be received and to be honoured in the members of Christ, daughter, that what the Lord has granted you, you hold faithfully, and love Him with your whole heart, and His Church—Him who did not permit you to lose or destroy the fruit of your virginity along with the lost. For if you were to depart from this world separated from the unity of the body of Christ, the preserved integrity of your body would profit you nothing. But God, who is rich in mercy, did toward you what is written in the Gospel; when those invited to the supper of the head of the household made excuses, among other things he said to his servants: Go out into the highways and hedges, and whomsoever you find, compel them to come in.

You therefore, although you owe most sincere love even to His good servants, through whose ministry you were compelled to enter, ought nevertheless to place your hope in Him who prepared the banquet, to which you too are anxiously bound for eternal and blessed life. For, commending to Him your heart and your purpose and your holy virginity and your faith and hope and charity, you will not be moved by the scandals which shall abound unto the end, but with the stable strength of piety you shall be safe and glorious in the Lord, by persevering in His unity unto the end. And in what manner you have received this my solicitude for you, which I have taken care to convey to you by such letters as I could, see that I may know it by your reply. May the mercy and grace of God ever protect you.

209. To the most blessed lord, and with due charity to be venerated, the holy Pope Celestine, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. First I render congratulation to your merits, that the Lord our God has established you in that see without any—as we have heard—division of His people. Next I make known to your Holiness what our circumstances are, that you may come to our aid not only by praying for us, but also by counselling and helping. For, placed in great tribulation, I have directed these writings to your Blessedness, because, unwillingly, while wishing to profit certain members of Christ in our neighbourhood, improvident and incautious, I have brought upon them a great calamity. Fussala is the name of a fortress adjoining the territory of Hippo.

Formerly there was never a bishop there, but together with the region adjoining it, it belonged to the parish of the Church of Hippo. That land had few Catholics; the other congregations there, established among a great multitude of men, the error of the Donatists miserably held, so that in that fortress there was no Catholic at all. It was brought about, in God's mercy, that all those very places should cleave to the unity of the Church; through how many labours and perils of ours, it would take long to explain—so that the presbyters who were at first appointed by us for gathering them were despoiled, beaten, maimed, blinded, killed.

Yet their sufferings were not useless and barren, unity there having been perfected in security. But because the said fortress is separated from Hippo by forty miles, when in ruling them and in gathering their remnants—though scanty—which strayed about in both sexes, no longer threatening but fleeing, I saw myself extended more widely than was fitting and insufficient to apply that diligence which by most certain reasoning I discerned ought to be applied, I took care to have a bishop ordained and established there. That this might be done, I sought a man suited and fitting to that place, one who should also be instructed in the Punic tongue.

And I had one whom I was considering, a presbyter ready at hand; for whose ordination I obtained by letters, entreating, that the holy old man, who then held the primacy of Numidia, should come from afar. He being now present, and the minds of all in so great a matter held in suspense, at the very hour that man who seemed to me ready, by resisting in every way, failed me. But I, who assuredly, as the outcome taught, ought rather to have deferred than to have precipitated a perilous business—while I was unwilling that the most grave and most holy old man, wearied all the way to us, should return home without effect, on whose account he had come so far—offered to those who were not asking a certain young man, Antoninus, who was then with me.

He had indeed been reared by us in the monastery from his earliest years, yet, apart from the office of reader, he was known for no grades or labors of the clerical order. But those poor people, not knowing what was to come, most obediently trusted me as I presented him to them. What more need I say? It was done; he began to be their bishop. What am I to do? I do not wish to burden your Reverence over one whom I took up to rear, nor do I wish to abandon those whom I brought forth with fears and pains to be gathered in. And how I am to do both, I cannot discover. For the matter has come to such a scandal that they were pleading cases here before us against the very man whom they had, as though he were counseling well for himself, obeyed us in accepting for their bishopric.

In these cases, since the capital charges of fornication—which were brought not by those very people over whom he was bishop, but by certain others—could by no means be proven, and he seemed to be cleared of the things that were being most invidiously bandied about, he became so pitiable both to us and to others that whatever was charged by the villagers and the men of that region concerning his intolerable domination, his plunderings, and his various oppressions and crushings, by no means appeared to us of such a kind that on this account—or on account of all these things heaped together—we should think he ought to be deprived of the bishopric; rather, that whatever was proven to have been taken away should be restored.

In the end we tempered our sentences in such a way that, while the bishopric was preserved intact, yet those things were not left wholly unpunished which ought not to be set before him to do again hereafter, nor before others to imitate. We therefore preserved his honor intact for the young man's correction, but in rebuking him we diminished his power—namely, that he should no longer preside over those with whom he had so dealt that, out of just grief, they could by no means bear that he should be set over them, and might, at his peril and their own, display an impatience of their grief that would perhaps burst forth into some crime. And their disposition of this kind was clearly apparent even then, when the bishops dealt with them concerning him.

—Now that the illustrious Celer, of whose overbearing administration against himself he complained, holds no power either in Africa or anywhere else. But why should I delay with many words? Labor together with us, I beseech you, venerable lord of dutiful piety, most blessed and to be revered with due charity, holy pope, and command that all the things that have been sent to you be read out. See how he conducted his bishopric, and how far he consented to our judgment, being deprived of communion unless first everything were restored to the Fussalenses; then afterwards, when the property had been appraised, he set aside the solidi contrary to the acts, that communion might be restored to him—by what cunning persuasion he induced our holy old primate, a man of the utmost gravity.

—so that he entrusted everything to him, and commended him, as though wholly blameless, to the venerable pope Boniface, and the rest. What need is there for these things to be recalled by me, since that aforesaid venerable old man has referred the whole matter to your Holiness? But in those manifold acts in which our judgment concerning him is contained, I should rather have to fear that we might seem to you to have judged less severely than we ought, did I not know that you are so inclined to mercy that you would think not only us, because we spared him, but even himself to be spared. But that which was done by us either kindly or leniently, he attempts to turn into a precedent and to seize as his own right; he cries out:

'Either I ought to sit in my own see, or I ought not to be a bishop'—as if he now sits anywhere but in his own. For this reason those places were left and permitted to him in which he had been bishop before, lest he be said to have been unlawfully translated to another's see contrary to the statutes of the Fathers. Or is anyone to be so exacting whether of severity or of leniency that those who are not seen to be deprived of the honor of the episcopate should in no way have anything punished in them; or those in whom something is seen fit to be punished should be deprived of the honor of the episcopate? There exist examples, the Apostolic See itself judging, or confirming the judgments of others, of certain men who for certain faults were neither stripped of episcopal honor nor left altogether unpunished.

And so as not to seek out things very remote from our own times, I shall recall recent ones. Let Priscus, bishop of the province of Caesarea, cry out: 'Either the place for the primacy ought to have lain open to me as to the rest, or the episcopate ought not to have remained to me.' Let another bishop of the same province, Victor, cry out—he to whom, left under the same penalty in which Priscus also lay, communion is granted by no bishop anywhere except within his own diocese—let him, I say, cry out: 'Either I ought to have communicated everywhere, or I ought not to have communicated even in my own places.' Let a third bishop of the same province, Laurentius, cry out, and cry out with exactly these words: 'Either I ought to have sat in the see to which I was ordained, or I ought not to be a bishop.'

But who would find fault with these things, save one who pays too little heed both that not all things are to be left unavenged, and that not all things are to be punished in one and the same way? Since therefore, with pastoral and watchful caution, the most blessed pope Boniface set down in his letter, speaking of the bishop Antoninus, and said: 'If he has faithfully set forth to us the order of things'—receive now the order of things which that man passed over in silence in his little book; and then receive what was done in Africa after the letters of that man of holy memory were read; and come to the aid of these men, bringing your help in the mercy of Christ far more eagerly than he who asks for it, from whose disquiet they long to be freed.

For either he himself, or most frequent rumors, threaten them with judicial actions and public powers and military assaults, as though about to execute the sentence of the Apostolic See, so that these wretched Catholic Christian men dread graver things from a Catholic bishop than, when they were heretics, they dreaded from the laws of Catholic emperors. Do not allow these things to happen. I beseech you by the blood of Christ, by the memory of the apostle Peter, who warned those set over Christian peoples not to lord it violently over their brethren. I commend the Catholic Fussalenses, my sons in Christ, and Antoninus the bishop, my son in Christ, to the kindness of your holiness's charity—because I love both, I commend both.

Nor am I angry with the Fussalenses because they bring a just complaint about me to your ears—that I inflicted upon them a man not yet proven to me, not yet even strengthened by age, by whom they were so afflicted; nor do I wish this man to be harmed, toward whom the more sincere the charity I have, the more do I resist his depraved cupidity. Let both deserve your mercy: those, that they may not suffer evils; he, that he may not do them; those, that they may not hate the Catholic Church, if against a Catholic bishop they are not helped by Catholic bishops and most of all by the Apostolic See itself; but he, that he may not bind himself with so great a crime that those whom he strives to make his own against their will he should make aliens from Christ. As for me indeed—for this must be confessed to your Beatitude—

In this peril of both parties, so great a fear and grief torment me that I even think of withdrawing from the office of exercising the episcopate and of giving myself over to lamentations befitting my error, if through him, to whose episcopate I gave my imprudent support, I should behold the Church of God laid waste and—which God himself avert—perish even with the perdition of the one laying it waste. For, recalling what the Apostle says: 'If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged by the Lord,' I will judge myself, that he may spare me who is to judge the living and the dead.