XXXVII. To the most blessed lord, and to be embraced with venerable and most sincere charity, father Simplicianus, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. A letter full of good joys — because you are mindful of me and, as you are wont, love me, and because whatever of his gifts the Lord has deigned to confer upon me, by his mercy and not by my merits, is a matter of great congratulation to you — sent as the gift of your holiness, I have received. In it I have drawn a fatherly affection toward me, from your most kindly heart, not sudden and new, but I have sought again one plainly tried and known, most blessed lord, and to be embraced with venerable and most sincere charity.
But whence has arisen such great felicity for our literary labour, in which we have sweated over the composition of certain books, that they should be read by your worthiness, unless because the Lord, to whom my soul is subject, willed to console my cares and to relieve me from that fear by which I must needs be anxious in such works, lest perchance, being somewhat unlearned or incautious, I should stumble even on the most level plain of truth? For when what I write pleases you, I know whom it pleases, since I know who dwells in you. For the same distributor and bestower of all spiritual gifts has, through your judgement, confirmed my obedience. For whatever those writings have worthy of your delight, in my ministry God said:
'Let it be,' and it was made; but in your approval God saw that it is good. As for the little questions which you have deigned to bid me unravel, even if, entangled by my own slowness, I did not understand them, yet, aided by your merits, I might open them up. Only this I ask, that for my weakness you would beseech God, and that, whether in those things in which you have kindly and fatherly willed to exercise me, or in others — whatever of ours may perchance come into your holy hands, since I consider both the things given as God's and my own errors as mine — you would not only expend the care of a reader, but also assume the censure of a corrector. XXXVIII. To brother Profuturus, Augustine. According to the spirit, as far as it pleases the Lord and he himself deigns to supply strength, we are well; but in body I am in bed;
for I can neither walk nor stand nor sit, because of the pain and swelling of a fissure or of haemorrhoids. But even so, since it pleases the Lord, what else is to be said, except that we are well? For rather, if we do not want what he wants, we are to be blamed, than that he is to be thought to do or to permit anything not rightly. You know all these things; but because you are to me another self, what would I more gladly speak of with you than what I speak of with myself? We commend, therefore, both our days and our nights to your holy prayers, that you may pray for us, that we may not use our days intemperately, that we may endure our nights with an even mind, that, even if we walk in the midst of the shadow of death, the Lord may be with us, that we may not fear evils. That the old man Megalius has died —
who could doubt that you have already heard? Now, when I was writing these things, it was about twenty-four days from the burial of his body. Whether you have already seen — for you were making arrangements — the successor to his primacy, we wish to know, if it can be. There is no lack of scandals, but neither of refuge; there is no lack of griefs, but neither of consolations. And amid these things, how one must keep watch, lest hatred of anyone hold the innermost parts of the heart, and not allow us to pray to God in our chamber with the door shut, but shut the door against God himself — you know most excellently, most excellent brother; and it creeps in, while to no one who is angry does his anger seem unjust.
For anger, growing old, turns into hatred, while a sweetness as it were of righteous grief, being mingled in, keeps it too long in the vessel, until the whole turns sour and spoils the vessel. Wherefore it is far better not even justly to be angry with anyone than, by being angry as if justly, to slide by the hidden ease of anger into hatred of someone. For in receiving unknown guests we are wont to say that it is far better to endure an evil man than perhaps through ignorance to shut out a good one, while we take care lest an evil man be received. But in the affections of the soul it is the reverse. For it is incomparably more wholesome not to open the inner chamber of the heart even to anger that knocks justly, than to admit one that will not readily depart and that will pass from a twig to a beam.
Indeed it dares shamelessly even to grow more quickly than one supposes. For it does not blush in the darkness, when the sun has gone down upon it. You surely recall—with what care and how great solicitude I have written these things, if you recall what you lately said to me on a certain journey. We greet brother Severus and those who are with him. Perhaps we would write to them also, were it permitted, given the haste of the bearer. But I ask that, with our brother Victor—to whom I also give thanks before your Holiness, because when he was setting out for Constantina he informed me—you help by petitioning, on account of the business which he himself knows, concerning which I bear a most grievous burden, since the elder Nectarius earnestly pleads much for that matter, that he not think it burdensome to return by way of Calama; for so he promised me.
Farewell. XXXIX. To the truly holy lord and most blessed pope Augustine, Jerome, greeting in Christ. Last year, through our brother Asterius the subdeacon, I had sent to your Worthiness a letter rendering the ready duty of salutation, which I think was delivered to you. Now also, through my holy brother Praesidius the deacon, I beseech first that you remember me; then that you hold the bearer of these letters commended, and know him to be most truly a brother to me, and that in whatsoever things necessity shall require you cherish and support him—not that by Christ's granting he lacks anything, but because he most eagerly seeks the friendships of good men, and reckons that in forming these he has obtained the greatest of benefits.
But why he has sailed to the West, you will be able to learn from his own account. We, settled in the monastery, are buffeted by diverse waves on every side and endure the hardships of exile abroad. But we trust in him who said: 'Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,' that by his granting and governance we may obtain the victory against the enemy the devil. I beseech you to greet, on my behalf, our holy and venerable brother pope Alypius. The holy brothers who with us hasten to serve the Lord in the monastery greet you heartily. May Christ our God, the almighty, keep you safe and mindful of me, truly holy lord and pope to be received with honour. XL.
To the most beloved lord, and to be revered and embraced with the most sincere devotion of charity, his brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine. I am grateful that in return for a mere postscript of greeting you rendered me a full letter—yet much briefer than I would wish to receive from such a man, from whom, however much the times may occupy him, no discourse is too lengthy. Although, therefore, we are hemmed in by huge cares of other people's affairs, and those secular ones, nevertheless I would not easily forgive the brevity of your letter, did I not consider with how few words of my own it would be answered.
Wherefore engage, I beg you, in this literary conversation with us, lest bodily absence be permitted to do much toward separating us—although in the Lord we are joined by unity of spirit, even if we rest from the pen and are silent. And indeed the books which you have wrought from the Lord's storehouse present almost the whole of you to us. For if for this reason we do not know you, because we have not seen the face of your body, then in this way you do not know yourself either, for you too do not see it. But if you are known to yourself for no other reason than that you know your own mind, we too know it not slightly in your writings, in which we bless the Lord that he has given you such as you are to yourself and to us and to all the brothers who read your works.
A certain book of yours, among others, not long ago came into our hands. What its title is, we do not yet know; for the codex itself did not, as is customary, display it on the opening page. Yet the brother in whose possession it was found said that it was called 'Epitaph' (De viris illustribus). We would believe that this was the name you were pleased to have given it, if we had read there only the lives or writings of those who were already deceased. But since the works of many who were living both at the time it was written and even now are commemorated there, we wonder why you either imposed this title upon it, or are believed to have imposed it. Certainly we sufficiently approve the same book as usefully composed by you.
In your exposition of the Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Galatians we have also found something that greatly disturbs us. For if to the Holy Scriptures there be admitted as it were dutiful lies, what authority will remain in them? What sentence, pray, will be brought forward from those Scriptures, by whose weight the wickedness of contentious falsehood may be crushed? For at once, as soon as you have brought it forward, if he who strives against it thinks otherwise, he says that what has been produced was a lie told by the writer out of some honourable duty. For where will this not be possible, if it was possible in that narrative which the Apostle began, saying: 'Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not,' and it be believed and affirmed that he lied in that place where he spoke of Peter and Barnabas:
'When I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel'? For if they were indeed walking uprightly, then he lied; but if he lied there, where did he speak the truth? Or will he seem to have spoken the truth in the place where he said what the reader approves, while, whenever something occurs contrary to the reader's judgement, it shall be reckoned a dutiful lie? For there will be no lack of reasons why it may be supposed that he not only could but even ought to have lied, if room be granted to this rule. There is no need to argue this case with many words, especially with you, to whom, wisely providing, a word is enough.
But by no means would I presume so far as to strive to enrich with my small coins your genius, which is golden by the divine gift; nor is there anyone more suited than you to amend that work. For I need not be taught by you how it is to be understood that the same Apostle says: 'I became to the Jews as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews,' and the rest that is said there, out of a merciful fellow-suffering, not out of a deceitful pretence. For he becomes as it were a sick man who ministers to the sick—not when he lies that he has a fever, but when with the mind of one who suffers together with him he considers how he himself would wish to be served, if he himself were sick.
For assuredly he was a Jew; but having become a Christian, he had not abandoned the sacraments of the Jews, which that people had received suitably and lawfully at the time when it was fitting. And therefore he undertook to observe them, even when he was already Christ's apostle, but in order to teach that they were not pernicious to those who wished to keep them, as they had received them from their forefathers through the Law, even after they had believed in Christ—yet not so that they should now place in them the hope of salvation, since through the Lord Jesus that very salvation, which was signified by those sacraments, had come. And therefore he judged that upon the Gentiles they must by no means be imposed, since they were calling back those unaccustomed to them from the faith by a grievous and unnecessary burden.
Wherefore he did not correct Peter for observing the ancestral traditions—which if he had wished to do, he would have done neither falsely nor unfittingly, for though now superfluous they were customary and would not harm—but because he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize, which he could in no way do unless he acted thus, as though even now, after the Lord's coming, they were necessary to salvation; and this the truth, through the apostleship of Paul, vehemently dissuaded. Nor was the apostle Peter ignorant of this, but he did it fearing those who were of the circumcision. Thus he himself was truly corrected, and Paul narrated true things, lest the holy Scripture, which was issued for the faith of posterity, once the authority of a lie were admitted, should waver and fluctuate wholly in doubt.
For it cannot, nor ought it, be set forth in writing how many and how inexplicable evils would follow, if we should concede this; but it could be shown conveniently and with less danger, if we were conversing together face to face. This therefore Paul had abandoned of the Jews' way, which they held as evil, and in the first place that, namely, that being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own righteousness, they were not subject to the righteousness of God;
then that, after the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, when the sacrament of grace after the order of Melchizedek had been given and made manifest, they still thought that the old sacraments were to be celebrated not from the custom of solemnity but from the necessity of salvation—which, however, if they had never been necessary, then the Maccabean martyrs would have died for them fruitlessly and vainly; lastly that, the Jews persecuted the Christian preachers of grace as though they were enemies of the Law.
These and errors and vices of this kind he says that he counted as losses and dung, that he might gain Christ—not the observances of the Law, if they were celebrated in the ancestral manner, as they were celebrated by himself without any necessity of salvation, as the Jews thought they must be celebrated, or with deceitful pretence, which he had reproved in Peter.
For if he celebrated those sacraments for this reason, because he pretended himself to be a Jew, that he might gain them, why did he not also sacrifice with the Gentiles, since to those also who were without law he became as it were without law, that he might gain them too?—unless it was because he did the former as a Jew by nature, and said all this not that he might feignedly pretend to be what he was not, but that he might feel he must so come to their aid in mercy, as if he himself were labouring in the same error—not, of course, by the cunning of one lying, but by the affection of one suffering-with. Just as in that very place he generally inferred: 'I became weak to the weak, that I might gain the weak,' so that the following conclusion:
'To all I became all things, that I might gain all,' is to be understood as referring to this: that he might appear to have pitied the weakness of each one as if in his very self. For not even when he said: 'Who is weak, and I am not weak?' did he wish it to be understood that he had pretended another's weakness rather than felt grief-with it. Wherefore lay hold, I beseech you, of a candid and truly Christian severity together with charity, to correct and amend that work, and, as it is said, sing your 'palinode' (recantation). For incomparably more beautiful is the truth of the Christians than the Helen of the Greeks. For our martyrs fought more valiantly for her against this Sodom than those heroes for Helen against Troy.
Nor do I say this that you may recover the eyes of the heart, which far be it that you have lost, but that you may turn your attention—those eyes which, though you have them sound and watchful, by some dissimulation you have turned away, so that you did not perceive what adverse things follow, if once it be believed that a writer of the divine books could, honourably and piously, in some part of his work, lie. I had already written to you a letter from here at some time, which was not delivered, because he to whom I had entrusted it to convey did not proceed. From that letter this point was suggested to me, as I was dictating these things, which in this one also I ought not to pass over: that, if your opinion is different and it is the better one, you would gladly pardon my fear.
For if you feel otherwise, and you feel what is true—for unless it be true, it cannot be better—then, not to say no fault, at least no great fault of mine, my error favours the truth, if truth can rightly in anyone favour a lie. But as to what you have deigned to write back concerning Origen, I already knew that not only in ecclesiastical writings but in all writings you approve and praise the right and true things which we may find, but disapprove and reprove the false and depraved. Yet this I desired from your prudence and learning, and still desire: that you make known to us those very errors of his, by which that so great a man is convicted of having departed from the faith of the truth.
Also in the book in which you have commemorated all the ecclesiastical writers, whom you were able to recall, and their writings, it would be done more conveniently, as I think, if, having named those whom you know to be heretics—since you were unwilling to pass over even them—you were also to add in what points they must be guarded against, although you have passed over not a few as well.
I would wish to know with what purpose this was done; or, if perhaps you did not wish to burden that volume, so that in commemorating the heretics you did not add in what respects the catholic authority has condemned them, I beg that it not be burdensome to your literary labour—by which, through the grace of our Lord, you have not slightly both kindled and aided the studies of the saints in the Latin tongue—to do that which fraternal charity, through my humility, enjoins upon you: that, if your occupations allow, you set forth the perverse dogmas of all heretics, who up to this time have attempted, whether by shamelessness or by obstinacy, to corrupt the rightness of the Christian faith, briefly arranged in a single little book, for the knowledge of those who either have not leisure on account of other business, or are not able, on account of a foreign language, to read and learn so many things.
I would ask you at length, were it not that this is wont to be a sign of one presuming too little concerning charity. Meanwhile I strongly commend to your kindness this our brother Paul in Christ, to whose reputation in our regions we bear good testimony before God. XLI. To the most blessed lord, to be received with veneration and most sincerely dearest, his brother and fellow-priest pope Aurelius, Alypius and Augustine, greeting in the Lord. Our mouth was filled with joy and our tongue with exultation, when your letters announced that your holy purpose, with the Lord's help—who inspired it—had been brought to effect concerning all our ordained brethren, and especially concerning the sermon of the presbyters which is poured forth in your presence to the people.
Through their tongues your charity cries out with a greater voice in the hearts of men than they do in their ears. Thanks be to God. For what better thing can we both carry in mind, and utter with the mouth, and express with the pen, than 'Thanks be to God'? This can neither be said more briefly, nor heard more gladly, nor understood more grandly, nor done more fruitfully. Thanks be to God, who has both enriched you with so faithful a heart toward your children, and has brought forth into the light that which you had in the inmost part of your soul, where no human eye penetrates, granting to you not only to will well, but also the means in which what you willed might appear. So indeed let it be, let it be. Let these works shine before men; let them see, rejoice, glorify the Father who is in heaven;
may you be delighted with such things in the Lord; may he himself deign to hear you praying for them, whom you do not disdain to hear speaking through them; let there be a going, a walking, a running in the way of the Lord; let the little ones be blessed together with the great, gladdened among those who say to them: 'We will go into the house of the Lord'; let those go before and these follow, made imitators of them as they too are of Christ; let the journey of the holy ants glow warm, let the works of the holy bees be fragrant, let fruit be borne in patience with the health of persevering unto the end; and let not the Lord permit us to be tempted above that which we are able to bear, but let him make, with the temptation, also a way of escape, that we may be able to endure. Pray for us, worthy to be heard;
for with so great a sacrifice you draw near to God—the sacrifice of most sincere love and of his praise in your works. Pray that these things may shine even to us, since he whom you entreat knows with how great a joy of ours they shine to you. These are our vows; these, the multitudes of consolations according to the multitude of our sorrows, gladden our soul in our heart. So it is, because so it has been promised; so it shall be, as for what remains, just as it has been promised. We beseech you, by him who gave you these things and who through you flooded with this blessing the people whom you serve, that you command each of those sermons that you wish, written down and corrected, to be sent to us.
For I too do not neglect what you commanded; and concerning the seven rules or keys of Tyconius, as I have already often written, I await to learn what seems good to you. We heartily commend brother Hilarinus, chief physician and leading man of Hippo. For as to what you are busying yourself about concerning brother Romanus, we know it, and nothing is to be asked, save that the Lord may help you on his behalf. Amen. XLII. To the lords praiseworthy in Christ, most holy brothers Paulinus and Therasia, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. Could even this be hoped or expected, that through brother Severus we should have to demand replies, so long not rendered to us who so ardently long for them from your charity? What is this, that we are made to thirst two summers, and those in Africa? What more shall I say?
O you who daily give away your own possessions, pay what you owe! Or is it perhaps because I had heard that you were writing against the demon-worshippers, and had shown that I vehemently desired that work, that, wishing to complete and send it, you have for so long put off your letters to us? Would that at least you would at last grant to my hunger, now grown old from your pen, so rich a table! And if it is not yet prepared, we shall not cease to complain, if, while you are completing it, you do not meanwhile refresh us. Greet the brethren, especially Romanus and Agilis. From here, those who are with us greet you, and are a little angry with us, if they love you too little. XLIII. To the most beloved lords and rightly to be extolled, brothers Glorius, Eleusius, the Felixes, Grammaticus, and the rest to whom this is welcome, Augustine.
The Apostle Paul indeed said: 'A heretical man, after one admonition, avoid, knowing that such a one is subverted, and sins, and is condemned by his own judgement.' But those who defend their own opinion, however false and perverse, with no stubborn animosity—especially one which they have not begotten by the audacity of their own presumption, but have received from parents who were led astray and fallen into error—and who moreover seek the truth with cautious solicitude, ready to be corrected when they have found it, are by no means to be reckoned among heretics.
Such then unless I believed you to be, perhaps I would send you no letter. Although, even the heretic himself, however swollen with hateful pride and mad with the obstinacy of evil contention—just as we warn that he must be avoided, lest he deceive the weak and the little ones—so we do not refuse that he must be corrected by whatever means we can. Whence it came about that we wrote even to some of the leading Donatists, not letters of communion—which they, on account of their perversity, have long since not accepted from the catholic unity that is spread throughout the whole world—but such private letters as it is lawful for us to use even toward pagans. And though they sometimes read these, yet either they would not, or, as is more to be believed, they could not, answer them.
Whereupon it seemed to us that we had sufficiently fulfilled the duty of charity, which the Holy Spirit teaches that we owe not only to our own but to all men, saying to us through the Apostle: 'But may the Lord multiply you and make you to abound in charity toward one another and toward all.' He also admonishes in another place that those who think differently are to be corrected with moderation: 'Lest perhaps,' he says, 'God give them repentance to acknowledge the truth, and they recover themselves out of the snares of the devil, being held captive by him at his will.' These things I have said by way of preface, lest anyone suppose that I have sent you writings more shamelessly than prudently, and that in this manner I have wished to transact something with you concerning the business of your soul, because you are not of our communion, when nevertheless—
if I were writing to you something concerning the business of an estate, or of some pecuniary lawsuit to be settled, no one perhaps would reprove it. To such a degree is this world dear to men, and they have become worthless in their own eyes. This letter, therefore, shall be for me a witness for my defence in the judgement of God, who knows with what mind I have done it, and who said: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.' Therefore, that you may deign to remember, when we were in your city and were transacting some things with you concerning the communion of Christian unity, certain records were produced by your side, in which it was recited that some seventy bishops condemned Caecilian, formerly a bishop of our communion in the church of Carthage, together with his colleagues and ordainers.
Where also the case of Felix of Aptunga was ventilated much more invidiously and with more accusation than the rest. When all these things had been read through, we replied that it was not to be wondered at, if men who then made that schism thought—not without the drawing up of records—that those against whom they had been incited by rivals and abandoned men were to be rashly condemned, absent and with their case unheard;
but that we have other ecclesiastical records, in which Secundus of Tigisis, who then held the primacy in Numidia, left to God to be judged those who were present and had confessed to being traditors, and permitted them to remain in their episcopal sees, just as they were—whose names are counted among the condemners of Caecilian—even though Secundus himself held the presidency of that same council, where he condemned as it were traditors, by their sentences, those who were absent, while he pardoned those who were present and had confessed.
Then we said that, somewhat after the ordination of Majorinus—whom by a wicked crime they raised up against Caecilian, erecting altar against altar and dissipating the unity of Christ by furious discords—these men petitioned Constantine, then emperor, for bishops as judges, who by an impartial arbitration might judge concerning their disputes, which, having arisen in Africa, were breaking the bond of peace. After this was done, with Caecilian present and those who had sailed against him, Melchiades, then bishop of the city of Rome, judging together with his colleagues, whom the emperor had sent at the prayers of the Donatists, nothing could be proved against Caecilian, and thereby, he being confirmed in his episcopate, Donatus, who was then present against him, was disapproved.
When these matters had been carried through, since all those men remained in the pertinacity of a most wicked schism, afterward the said emperor took care that the same case be more diligently examined and terminated at Arelate (Arles); but that they appealed from the ecclesiastical judgement, so that Constantine himself might hear the case. When it afterward came to this, both parties standing by, Caecilian was judged innocent, and they withdrew, overcome, and yet remained in the same perversity. Nor did negligence follow concerning the case of Felix of Aptunga, but, at the command of the same emperor, by proconsular records he too was cleared.