Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 110/118

This is rightly done by some, when others are not lacking through whom the ecclesiastical ministry may be supplied, lest it be deserted by all — as we said above that Athanasius did; for how necessary it was to the church, and how profitable, that that man remained in the flesh, the catholic faith knows, which was defended against the Arian heretics by his mouth and his love. But when the danger is common, and it is rather to be feared lest anyone be believed to do this not from a will to take counsel but from fear of dying, and lest he do more harm by the example of fleeing than good by the service of living — then it must by no means be done.

Finally, holy David, lest he expose himself to the perils of battle and perhaps be extinguished — as it was there said, the lamp of Israel — took this course at the request of his own people, and did not presume it of himself; otherwise he would have made many imitators of cowardice, who would believe him to have done this not from consideration of the good of others but from the disturbance of his own dread. Here another question presents itself, which we ought not to despise. For if this usefulness is not to be neglected, that some ministers should flee when some devastation is imminent so as to be preserved to minister to those whom they may afterward find surviving that slaughter, what shall be done where all seem about to perish, unless some flee? What then?

For if that destruction should rage so far as to persecute only the ministers of the church, what shall I say? Is the church to be abandoned by fleeing ministers, lest it be more wretchedly abandoned by dying ones? But if the laity are not sought for death, they can somehow hide their bishops and clergy — as he shall help in whose power are all things, who is able even to preserve the one who does not flee by his marvellous power. But we ask this precisely so that we may not be judged to tempt the Lord by expecting divine miracles in all things. Indeed this present storm is not of such a kind, since the danger is common to laity and clergy, just as in one ship the danger is common to merchants and sailors.

But far be it that this ship of ours be so lightly esteemed that the sailors, and above all the helmsman, ought to desert it in its peril, even if by leaping into a skiff or even by swimming they might escape. For those on whose account we fear lest they perish by our desertion — it is not temporal death, which will come at some time, that we fear for them, but eternal death, which can come if it be not guarded against, and can also, if it be guarded against, even not come. But in the common danger of this life, why do we suppose that, wherever a hostile incursion occurs, all the clergy and not also all the laity are about to die, so that at the same time they end this life for which the clergy are necessary?

Or why should we not hope that, just as some laity, so also some clergy will remain, by whom the necessary ministry may be rendered to them? And yet, oh if only among God's ministers there were this dispute — which of them should remain, lest the church be deserted by the flight of all, and which of them should flee, lest it be deserted by the death of all! For such a contest would be between them where both parties burn with love and both are pleasing to love. And if this dispute could be ended in no other way, then, as it seems to me, those who are to remain and those who are to flee must be chosen by lot. For those who say they ought rather to flee will seem either timid, because they were unwilling to endure the imminent evil, or arrogant, because they judged themselves — who were to be preserved — more necessary to the church.

Then perhaps those who are better will choose to lay down their lives for the brethren, and those will be preserved by fleeing whose life is less useful, because they have less skill in counselling and governing; who nevertheless, if they are godly in their thinking, will contradict those whom they see ought rather both to live and to prefer death to flight. Therefore, as it is written, the casting of lots settles disputes and decides between the mighty; for God judges better than men in perplexities of this kind, whether he deign to call the better to the fruit of martyrdom and to spare the weak, or to make the latter stronger for enduring evils and to withdraw from this life those whose life cannot profit God's church as much as the life of the others.

The thing indeed will be somewhat unusual, if this casting of lots be done; but if it be done, who will dare to censure it? Who but the inexperienced or the envious will fail to praise it with fitting proclamation? But if it does not please to do that for which no precedent presents itself, let no one's flight cause that the ministry of the church — most necessary and due, especially in such great perils — be lacking. Let no one take his own person into account, so that, if he seems to excel in some grace, he should on that account say himself the more worthy of life and therefore of flight. For whoever thinks this is too well pleased with himself; and whoever also says it displeases all. There are indeed some who think that bishops and clergy, by not fleeing in such perils but remaining, cause the common people to be deceived.

For they do not flee, they say, because they see their leaders remaining. But it is easy to turn aside this objection, or this ill-will, by addressing those same peoples and saying: 'Let it not deceive you that we do not flee from this place; for it is not for our own sake but rather for your sake that we remain here, lest we should fail to minister to you whatever we know to be necessary for your salvation, which is in Christ. If therefore you wish to flee, you have also loosed us from these bonds by which we are held.' This I think should be said when it truly seems useful to migrate to safer places. Which having been heard, if either all or some should say: 'We are in the power of him whose wrath no one, wherever he goes, escapes, whose mercy...

...wherever he may be, can be found by him who wishes to go nowhere, whether hindered by certain necessities or unwilling to labour toward uncertain refuges and not to ending but to changing dangers' — without doubt these are not to be deserted by the Christian ministry. But if, having heard this, they should prefer to depart, then neither must those remain who were remaining on their account, because those on account of whom they still ought to remain are no longer there. Whoever, therefore, flees in such a way that the necessary ministry of the church is not lacking by his flight, does what the Lord has commanded or permitted. But whoever flees in such a way that the nourishment by which Christ's flock spiritually lives is withdrawn from it, that man is a hireling,

who sees the wolf coming and flees, because he has no care for the sheep. This, dearest brother, because you consulted me, I have written back to you with what truth I judged and with sure love; but I have not prescribed that you should not follow a better opinion, if you find one. Yet in these perils we can find nothing better for us to do than prayers to the Lord our God, that he have mercy on us. And this very thing — namely, that they should not desert the churches — by the gift of God some prudent and holy men have both been worthy to will and to do, and amid the teeth of detractors have in no way fallen away from the purpose of their resolve. CCXXIX. To the deservedly illustrious and most magnificent lord, and most dear son in Christ, Darius, Augustine.

From my holy brothers and fellow bishops Urbanus and Novatus I have learned what kind of man you are and how great; of whom the one came to know you at Carthage, in the town of Hilara and lately in that of Sicca, while the other came to know you at Sitifis. Through these, therefore, it has come about that not even I could hold you unknown. For not because bodily infirmity and a twofold chill — that is, of winter and of age — does not permit me to converse with you face to face, do I therefore not see you: for that one made you present to me even now, when he deigned to come to me, while the other, by letters, has shown not the face of your flesh but of your heart, so that I might see you the more sweetly the more inwardly.

This your face you yourself also, by God's favour, most joyfully behold in the holy Gospel, as in a mirror, where it is written by the Truth who says: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Great indeed are they, and they have their glory, not only the bravest warriors but also — what is the origin of truer praise — the most faithful, by whose labours and perils, with the help of God protecting and aiding, the untamed enemy is conquered, and rest is procured for the commonwealth and for the provinces at peace; but of greater glory it is to slay wars themselves by a word rather than men by the sword, and to acquire or maintain peace by peace, not by war. For even those who fight, if they are good, without doubt seek peace, yet nevertheless through blood;

but you were sent so that no one's blood should be sought. And so to others belongs that necessity, to you this felicity. Therefore, deservedly illustrious and most magnificent lord, and most dear son in Christ, rejoice in this your so great and true good, and enjoy it in God, from whom you have received both to be such a man and to undertake such deeds to be performed. May God confirm what he has wrought through you for us. Receive this our greeting, and deign to repay us your own. As brother Novatus wrote to me, he brought it about that your excellency and erudition might come to know me even in my little works. If therefore you have read what he gave, I too have become known to your inner senses, not much displeasing, as I judge, if you have read with more of goodwill than of severity.

It is not much, but it is much appreciated, if in exchange for these and those letters of ours you would render us one epistle. I also greet, with the love which I owe, the pledge of peace which, by the help of the Lord our God, you have happily received. CCXXX. Darius to Augustine his lord, greeting. Would that, holy lord and father, just as my name has been brought to your ears by the kindly favour toward me of your fellow bishops Urbanus and Novatus, as you say, so the God of all, your God, had presented me myself to your hands and eyes — not that the benevolent discourse and the commendation of the letters of such great men had made me greater, or perhaps such as they made me,

but that the better file of your judgement might have tested me; rather that I might have drawn the most true and immortal fruits of your heavenly wisdom from your mouth, as it were the sweetness of some pure water from the very present and perpetual flow of the fountain itself! O me blessed not only thrice or four times, as it is in I know not which author, but a thousand times and more beyond all number, if it had been granted me to gaze upon your truly starry countenance in your presence, and if it had been permitted to receive and drink in your divine voice singing divine things, not only with the fruit of the mind but also with the delight of the ears! I should surely think that I was receiving certain laws of immortality, not only from heaven but established in heaven itself, and hearing certain voices of God, not far from the temple but beside the very judgement-seat of God as it stood by.

That these things might befall me, on account of my most ardent desire for you I perhaps deserved; on account of my conscience, I confess, I did not deserve. Yet even in absence I have received no small fruits of a good longing, and from secondary goods there is for me the highest perfection of good things. I have been commended to him to whom I would wish, by the mouth of holy men, and of two priests distant from each other in place and region: of the one, as I have already said, a benevolent and present discourse concerning me, so to speak, a testimony; of the other, of the same mind and like judgement, writings flying to you concur. They have woven for me before you a certain crown of such great and such men, not with the bud of verdant flowers but with the testimony of glorious speech, as it were with certain little gems of perpetuity.

For this I pray the most high God for you, and I demand your intercession, holy father, that — since I am by no means conscious in myself of so great a testimony — it may at some time come to pass that I be such. Now have not all those losses of my absence been overcome by the fact that you yourself deign to converse with us, to write, to greet, and do not suffer me, absent, to be absent from you? I grieved that I had not seen my saviour, after God my Saviour; yet nevertheless you attend not to the face of the flesh — for so you say — but, what is more, to that of the heart, and thereby I seemed to you the more pleasant the more deeply you looked within. May God bring it about that I answer to your judgement, my father, and that I be not guilty before my own conscience, since I do not inwardly see myself to be such as you yourself have fashioned me to be.

In the same divine and heavenly letter of yours, after your custom, with eloquence ministering to what you were pleased to praise, you say — I say — that I slay wars by a word. But here, my holy father, my spirit emerged, as it were, from certain shadows of thoughts, as though it had recognized true praises of itself. For that I may confess the whole briefly and simply to your beatitude: if we have not extinguished wars, certainly we have deferred them, and by the help of God the ruler of all, those evils which had already grown to a certain summit of calamities have been lulled to rest. Yet I hope from him from whom, whatever is good, we ought to hope for the whole; nay, I even augur from the blessing of that very letter of yours, so bountiful, so certain, that this very deferral of wars, which I have mentioned,

may have and hold a perennial and perpetual firmness of peace. For you have said, and have fixed it by the perpetual law of God, that I should rejoice in this — as you say — my so great and truly good thing, and enjoy it in God, from whom you say I have received both to be such and to undertake such deeds to be performed. Then you connect: May God, you say, confirm what he has wrought through me for us. O vows uttered not only for me but for the salvation of all! For neither can this my glory be separated from the salvation of all; and that I may be able to be happy through your prayers, it is necessary that all be happy together with me. Long, father, may you take up and utter such vows for the Roman empire, for the Roman commonwealth, for these also whom you shall find worthy of you, until at last, late, you are raised into heaven.

May you hand it on to posterity and entrust it to those who follow. I have perhaps advanced further than I ought, but certainly have spoken less than I wished. For I confess: writing to you, I imagine to myself your countenance as though you were present, and, though rude speech and a poor tongue have long since failed me, nevertheless, as though I were conversing and talking with you face to face, I am not sated. Therefore measure hence also our longings toward you. Since now for a long while the perhaps unwelcome verbosity of an epistolary page has deserved an end, I lay aside modesty while I consult my desire, and I suspect that to leave off speech is to withdraw from you. I do not wish, therefore, not to cease, but I cannot.

For if you believe, my father, you have clung to our senses and inmost hearts from the moment when, not content with your fame so glorious, so very great, we preferred to behold you in your own writings — since this single and brief letter of yours has stirred up in me such great flames and conflagrations of ardour. Whence we entreat you, and with all our mind demand, that — since we have, even by reading you, despised the rites of the Gentiles as never before, abundantly and to the full (for although from parents, from grandparents, and even to the last offspring of our race we have received the laws of Christ, yet sometimes into our senses there crept the proud vanity of superfluous superstition) — I beg that you also deign to send and give us the books of the Confessions written out by you.

For if others too have lavished their writings upon us with a ready spirit and kindly mind, how much more ought you yourself not to excuse yourself concerning your own! It is related that there is a letter of a certain satrap, or rather king, entreating the Lord Christ our God, while he still dwelt within the regions of Judaea and had not yet returned to his heaven — because, being hindered by sickness from going and proceeding to him, and believing that he could not otherwise be healed, he asked that, if he would deign, the salvation and medicine of the world would hasten down to him; and lest injury should seem to be done to so great a majesty, which the ignorant king had conceived with provident but not perfect mind, he is said moreover to have praised his own city, so that God, allured by the beauty of the city and the hospitality of the king, might not disdain the prayers of the suppliant.

God was present to the king; he was healed; and, enlarging the gift of the petition, by a letter he transmitted not only health, as to a suppliant, but also security, as to a king; he moreover commanded that his city should be for ever and always immune from enemies. What can be added to these benefits? I, lowly and a servant of kings, ask of you, my lord, that with that Christ, the Lord and prince of all, God, you would not delay to intercede daily for my sins, and that untiringly you would pray and ask for me whatever you yourself would will. If our long letter brings you weariness, moderate this by the patience of your magnanimity and impute it to yourself, since you yourself commanded it. Yet we pray and again and again entreat that you would write once more;

for hence it will come about that we may suppose you to have gladly received our writings. May God grant us your beatitude, praying for us through many years, truly holy lord and father. Our son Verimodus greatly greets your beatitude, who was exceedingly glad that your letter to us deigned to make mention of him. Certain medicines received from the chief physician who is with us we have given to Lazarus, the holy presbyter, to be conveyed to your beatitude; which, as the aforesaid man affirms, will avail not a little for the alleviation of pain and the cure of disease. CCXXXI. Augustine, servant of Christ and of the members of Christ, to Darius, son, a member of Christ, greeting in Him.

That I have gladly received your letter, you wished my reply to be the token. Behold, I write back, and yet by writing back I cannot make this known — neither by these words nor by any others whatsoever, whether I write briefly or most at length; for neither by few nor by many words can that be indicated which cannot be indicated by words. And I indeed speak too little, even though I speak much; but I would by no means concede to any eloquent man that by however great a letter of his he could unfold the feeling which yours has wrought in me — which I cannot do, even if he could see it in my mind as I do. It remains, therefore, so to indicate to you what you wished to know, that in my words you may feel also what they do not indicate.

What then shall I say, except that I was delighted by your letter exceedingly, exceedingly? This repetition of the word is not a repetition, but as it were a perpetual utterance; for because it could not be that it should be said forever, therefore it came about that it should at least be repeated: for thus perhaps that can be said which cannot be said. Here, if anyone should ask what after all delighted me in your letter so exceedingly — whether the eloquence — I shall answer: 'No'; and he perhaps will answer: 'Then your own praises'; but concerning these too I shall answer: 'No' — and not because these things are not in that letter: for there is such eloquence there that it shines forth most brilliantly, both that you are born with excellent talent and are sufficiently learned in such disciplines, and it is altogether full of my praises.

'So then,' someone says, 'do these things not delight you?' Indeed they do; 'for my fibre is not of horn,' as a certain one says, that I should not feel these things or feel them without delight. These things too delight me; but compared to that by which I said I was greatly delighted, what are these? For your eloquence delights me, since it is gravely sweet or sweetly grave; but as for my praises, since assuredly I am not delighted by all, nor by all men, but by those such as you, who have judged me worthy — and by such as you are, that is, those who love the servants of Christ for Christ's sake — I cannot deny that I was delighted even by my praises in your letter.

Let grave and skilled men consider what they think of that Themistocles — if indeed I rightly recall the man's true name — who, when at a banquet (as the illustrious and learned of Greece were wont to do) he had refused to sing to the lyre, and was on that account held the more unlearned, and had spurned that whole kind of merriment, was told: 'What then delights you to hear?' To which he is reported to have answered: 'My own praises.' Let them consider, therefore, with what end, with what intention they believe he said that, or with what intention he himself said it. For he was, according to this world, a magnificent man. For even when it had been said to him: 'What then do you know?' 'To make,' he said, 'a commonwealth great from small.' But I — as Ennius says:

'(All mortals long to be praised)' — I think this is partly to be approved and partly to be guarded against. For as truth is to be sought, which without doubt, even if it be not praised, is alone praiseworthy, so that vanity is to be shunned which easily creeps in, in the praise of men: and this is when either those very goods which are worthy of praise are not thought worth having unless a man be praised by men, or when each man wishes to be much praised in himself even for those things which are worthy of scant praise, or even of blame. Whence Horace, more vigilant than Ennius, says: Do you swell with the love of praise? There are certain expiations which, when the little book has been thrice read with a pure mind, will be able to restore you.

Thus he thought that the swelling from the love of human praise, like the bite of a serpent, must be charmed away, as it were, by medicinal words. And so the good Master taught us through his apostle that we should not on that account live rightly and act rightly in order to be praised by men — that is, not to place the end of our rightness in the praises of men — and yet to seek the praises of men for the sake of those very men. For when the good are praised, it profits not those praised but those who praise. For to them, so far as pertains to themselves, it is enough that they are good; but to those to whom it is expedient to imitate the good, it is a matter for congratulation when the good are praised by them, since thus they show that those please them whom they truly praise. The apostle therefore says in a certain place:

If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ; and the same says in another place: Please all men in all things, as I also please all men in all things — but adding the cause: Not seeking what is profitable to myself, but to the many, that they may be saved. Behold what he sought in the praise of men, where he also said: For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever chaste, whatsoever holy, whatsoever most dear, whatsoever of good report; if there be any virtue, if any praise, think on these things; which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, these do, and the God of peace shall be with you. Therefore the other things which he mentioned above he embraced under the name of virtue, saying 'if there be any virtue';

but that which he added, 'whatsoever of good report,' he followed up with another single fitting word, saying 'if any praise.' Therefore that which he says: If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ, is assuredly to be so understood as if he had said: 'If I did the good things that I do for the end of human praise, I should swell with the love of praise.' The apostle therefore wished to please all men, and rejoiced to please them — not those by whose praises he swelled within himself, but those whom, being praised, he edified in Christ. Why then should it not delight me to be praised by you, since you are both a good man (that you may not deceive me) and you praise those things which you love and which it is useful and salutary to love, even if they be not in me? Nor does this profit you only, but me also.

For if they are not in me, I salutarily blush and, that they may be, I burn with zeal. And through this, those things of mine which I recognize in your praise, I rejoice to have, and that they and I myself are loved by you on their account; but those which I do not recognize, I not only desire to attain that I myself may have them, but also that those who love me sincerely may not always be deceived in praising me. Behold how many things I have said, and yet what that is which delighted me in your letter far more than your eloquence, far more than my praises, I have not yet said. What do you think it is, O good man, but that I have made you, such a man, my friend even unseen — if indeed I ought to say unseen, whose not body but soul I have seen in your very letter?

Where I believed concerning you not, as before, my brothers, but you yourself? For who you were, I had indeed already learned; but of what sort you were toward me, I did not yet grasp. From this friendship of yours, even my praises — with what end they delight me, I have said sufficiently — I do not doubt will profit the church of Christ far more richly, since indeed you so hold, so read, so love, so proclaim even my labours in the defence of the Gospel against the remnants of the impious daemon-worshippers, that in them I become the more known the nobler you yourself are; for you, illustrious, illustrate them lying hidden, and declare them famous and clear, and where you shall perceive that they can profit, you will not suffer them to be wholly unknown. If you ask whence I know this, such you appeared to me in your letters.

From this now see how greatly those letters could delight me — if, thinking well of me, you consider how greatly the gains of Christ delight me. But now, as for the fact that you yourself, who (as you write) were able to receive the laws of Christ from parents, from grandparents, and even to the last offspring of your race, nevertheless signify that against the rites of the Gentiles you have been helped as never before by these same labours of mine — do I think but little how much good, and to how many, how illustrious, and how easily, and how salutarily, our writings, through you commending and disseminating them, may confer upon the rest to whom such things are suited? Or, thinking this, can I be flooded with the pleasantness of small or middling joys?

Since, then, I could not put into words how great a delight I took from your letter, I have told you the reason why it delighted me. Now what I could not say adequately — that is, how much it delighted me — I leave for you to infer. Take, therefore, my son; take, good man, and a Christian in a Christian way, not on the surface but in Christian charity. Take, I say, even the books you desired, the books of my Confessions: look upon me there, lest you praise me beyond what I am; there believe not others about me but myself; there attend to me and see what I have been in my own self by my own doing. And if anything in me has pleased you, praise there together with me the One whom I willed to be praised concerning me — for not myself, since He made us and not we ourselves; but we had lost ourselves, yet He who made us has remade us.