Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 116/118

He indeed accepted it not unwillingly — nay, he even rejoiced at it; but by the right of friendship he was, not unreasonably, grieved that nothing had been written to them about it. For perhaps her mother, who does not now appear, will appear — whose will, in giving away her daughter, nature, as I think, sets before all others — unless the same girl should already be of such an age that she may, by a freer right, herself choose what she wishes. Let your sincerity also consider this: that even if the supreme and entire power over her marriage were granted to me, and she herself, being now mature and unwilling to marry, should commit herself to me to be given to whomever I wish, under God as judge — I say this, and I say the truth, that this arrangement pleases me in such a way that, on account of God the judge, I could not reject a better one.

Whether she is to come to this, is of course uncertain. Wherefore your charity sees how many things worthy of consideration come together, so that nothing can now be promised by me to anyone at all. Letter 255. To his most beloved lord, and deservedly to be praised and to be received, brother Rusticus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Although I wish for you and for your whole household all good things — not only such as pertain to the happiness of the present age, but also such as pertain to the life to come and everlasting, which has not yet been persuaded upon you as a thing to be believed — nevertheless, the things which move me, so that concerning the girl whom you ask for I dare as yet to promise nothing, I have written back, as far as seemed sufficient, to my holy brother and fellow-bishop Benenatus, most beloved lord and venerable son.

For if you, when you most certainly knew that, even though it were in our absolute power to give any girl whatever in marriage, a Christian woman could not be given by us save to a Christian, were nevertheless unwilling to promise me any such thing concerning your son, whom I hear is still a pagan — how much more ought I, on account of those things which you will be able to read in the letter of my aforementioned brother, not to pledge anything concerning that girl's marriage, even if, as I said concerning your son, I not only held the promise but already rejoiced that the deed was done! Letter 256. To his lord, deservedly to be proclaimed and sincerely most dear and most longed-for, brother Christinus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Your letter announced to me that you desire my letter;

but brother Jacobus came as a richer witness of your longing toward us, because he told me many sweet things about you, experienced in his own self, more than that little sheet of paper could. Wherefore I congratulate your kindness, and I give thanks concerning your Christian heart to the Lord our God, whose gifts these are, my lord, deservedly to be proclaimed and sincerely most dear and most longed-for brother. But as for what you ask, that I should seek you with letters — I seek you with an affection which surpasses all letters, and I know where I may seek you, in a way that you well understand. But as far as concerns my being read, I fear rather that my loquacity may be censured in your hands than that my eloquence should be sought.

This one thing let me say briefly, which, if you ruminate upon it with long meditation, you will perceive what it savours of: that in the way of God easier and fruitful things are shunned through slothful dread, while in the way of the world harder and barren things are endured with wearisome toil. May you flourish and make progress unharmed in Christ, my lord, deservedly to be proclaimed and sincerely most dear and most longed-for brother. Letter 257. To his excellent lord, deservedly honourable and to be received son Orontius, Augustine.

I give thanks that you deigned to anticipate the arrival of your Excellency even by a letter, and sent conversation ahead of the sight of you, so that I might enjoy your address before your countenance, and, in a manner foretasting through the solace of a letter the acquaintance I had long desired, might await it the more eagerly and ardently, so as to receive it the more joyfully and gratefully, my distinguished lord, deservedly to be honored, and son to be embraced. And so I render to your merits and your forestalling courtesies the due service of a greeting in return, rejoicing that your welfare has been announced and wishing it continual. And as to what you added by way of demanding a reply from my littleness by the right of a benevolence already extended, saying:

'If, however, we may deserve to obtain this from so great a holiness,' I dare in no way to despair that the very fount of that same holiness—from a draught of which, in our small measure, we are something—will, to your prudence's pleasure, be not only praised but also shared together with us; so that God, incomparably and unchangeably good, may through His power be the founder of your so good mind, and also through His grace its restorer. May God almighty keep you safe and more blessed, my distinguished lord, deservedly to be honored and son to be embraced. Letter 258. To Marcianus, a lord deservedly to be embraced and a brother most beloved and most longed-for in Christ, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.

I have snatched, or rather stolen, and in a manner filched myself away from my many occupations, in order to write to you, a most ancient friend—whom, however, I did not truly possess as long as I did not hold you in Christ. For you know how 'the greatest author of Roman eloquence, Tullius,' as someone puts it, defined friendship. He said, and said most truly: 'Friendship is agreement on things human and divine, together with goodwill and love.' But you, my dearest, once agreed with me in human things, when I desired to enjoy them after the manner of the crowd; and by your favor you set the sails for my grasping at those things of which I now repent—nay rather, among my chief admirers of that time, with the breeze of praise you swelled the sails of my desires.

Moreover, in divine things—of which at that time no truth had shone forth to me—our friendship was assuredly lame in the greater part of that definition; for it was an agreement on things only human, not also divine, though with goodwill and love. And after I ceased to desire those things, you indeed, with persevering goodwill, wished me to be safe with a mortal safety, and happy with that prosperity of affairs which the world is accustomed to wish for. And so even then there was to some degree between us a benevolent and dear agreement on human things. Now therefore, how greatly I rejoice over you—in what words could I unfold it—since him whom in whatever manner I long had as a friend, I now have as a true friend? For agreement on divine things has been added as well.

For you who once led with me the temporal life in the most delightful kindness, have now begun to be with me in the hope of eternal life. And now indeed there is between us no dissension even about human things, since we weigh them by the knowledge of divine things—not to attribute to them more than the measure of them most justly demands, nor, by casting them away in unjust contempt, to do injury to their Creator, the Lord of things heavenly and earthly. So it comes about that, among those friends in whom there is no agreement on divine things, agreement on human things too cannot be full and true. For it is necessary that he estimate human things otherwise than he ought, who despises divine things; nor can anyone know how rightly to love a man, who does not love Him who made man. Accordingly I do not say:

'Now you are more fully my friend, who were so in part,' but rather, as much as reason shows, you were not my friend even in part, when you did not hold true friendship with me even in human things. For of divine things, by which human things are rightly weighed, you were not yet my partner—whether at the time when I myself was not in them, or after I had begun in whatever way to have a taste for those things from which you were then far shrinking away. But I do not wish you to take offense, nor let it seem absurd to you, that at that time, when I was seething amid the vanities of this world, although you seemed to love me much, you were not yet my friend, since I was not even a friend to myself but rather an enemy. For I loved iniquity, and the saying is true, because divine, which is written in the holy books:

'But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul.' Since then I hated my own soul, how could I have a true friend, who wished for me those things in which I was suffering myself to be my own enemy? But when the kindness and grace of our Savior shone upon me, not according to my merits but according to His own mercy, how could you, being a stranger to this, be my friend—you who were utterly ignorant of that whence I could be blessed, and did not love me in that in which I had, in whatever way, already been made a friend to myself? Thanks therefore be to the Lord, that at length He deigns to make you my friend. For now there is between us 'agreement on things human and divine, with goodwill and love' in Christ Jesus our Lord, our most true peace.

He who enclosed all the divine proclamations in two commandments, saying: 'You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind,' and: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself: on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.' In that first is the agreement on divine things; in this second is the agreement on human things, with goodwill and love. If you hold these two most firmly with me, our friendship will be true and everlasting, and will join us not only to each other but even to the Lord Himself. That this may come to pass, I exhort your gravity and prudence to receive now also the sacraments of the faithful; for it befits your age and accords, so far as I believe, with your character.

Remember what you once said to me as I was setting out, recalling indeed a comic verse from Terence, yet one most apt and most useful: 'Now this day brings another life, demands other manners.' And if you said this truthfully—as I ought not to doubt concerning you—then assuredly you already so live as to be worthy of saving baptism, to receive remission of past sins. For there is none other at all to whom, save the Lord Christ, the human race may say: 'Under your leadership, whatever traces of our guilt remain, being made void, shall release the lands from perpetual dread.' This Virgil confessed he had translated from the Cumaean, that is, the Sibylline song, since perhaps even that prophetess had heard in the spirit something concerning the one Savior, which she found herself compelled to confess.

These things, my lord deservedly to be embraced and most beloved and most longed-for brother in Christ—whether they be few or perhaps many—I have written, in whatever way, though most busy. I desire to receive your reply, and to learn now, at this very moment, that you have either given your name among the competentes or are about to give it. May the Lord God, in whom you have believed, preserve you both here and in the age to come, my lord deservedly to be embraced and most beloved and most longed-for brother in Christ. Letter 259. To Cornelius, a lord most beloved and honorable brother, from Augustine. You wrote to me to send you some lengthy consolatory letter, because you were grievously moved by the death of your excellent wife, just as you recalled that holy Paulinus did to Macarius.

And that soul indeed, received into the fellowship of the faithful and chaste, neither cares for nor seeks human praises; but because these things are done for the sake of those who are living, it is prior that you, who desire to console yourself by her praise, should so live that you may deserve to be there where she herself is. For I do not doubt that you do not believe her to be there where those women are who have either polluted the marriage bed by adulteries, or, bound by no marriage, have melted away in fornication. Wherefore, to praise her before a husband so utterly unlike her—as if wishing to drive away sorrow—is flattery, not consolation. For if you loved her, as she herself loved you, you would have kept for her what she herself kept for you;

and since she, if you had died first, could in no way be believed by anyone to have been about to marry again, would you not—if you truly grieved at her death, to be consoled by her praises—not even seek a single and lawful wife after her? Here you are about to say: 'Why do you deal harshly with me? Why do you rebuke sternly?' Behold, amid these words we have grown old, while life is led that ought rather to be ended than corrected. You wish me to pardon your ruinous complacency; how much better do you pardon my solicitude for you, if not lovable, at least pitiable! With a hostile mind indeed Tullius inveighed, and the aim of one governing an earthly commonwealth was far otherwise, and yet he says:

'I desire, conscript fathers, to be merciful; I desire, amid such great perils of the commonwealth, not to seem dissolute.' How much more justly do I say—since you yourself know how friendly a mind I bear toward you, I who am set in the service of the eternal City, a minister of the divine word and sacrament: 'I desire, brother Cornelius, to be merciful; I desire, amid such great perils, yours and mine, not to seem dissolute!' A rabble of women keeps watch at your sides; the number of concubines grows daily; and shall we bishops patiently hear the lord—nay rather the slave—of that same number, flowing apart with insatiable lust through so many harlots, demanding from us, as though to soothe his sorrow, by the right of friendship the praises of his departed chaste wife?

When you were—I will not say a catechumen, but a young man set with us in a most ruinous error, junior to us who were younger—you had corrected yourself of this vice by a most temperate resolve; into which, not long after, having rolled back more foully, then baptized in the extreme peril of your life, you have not yet amended yourself—I will not say, though a believer, but even for us who are now already old men and moreover bishops. You wish to be consoled by us for the death of a good wife; who consoles us for this truer death of yours? Or, because we cannot forget your so great merits toward us, are we therefore still to be tormented by your morals, therefore to be despised and held for nothing, when we groan to you about you? But we confess that we are nothing toward correcting and healing you;

let God be regarded, let Christ be considered. Let the Apostle be heard, saying: 'Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot?' If you spurn in your heart the words of a bishop who is your friend, whatever sort he be, consider the body of your Lord in your body. Finally, how long will you go on sinning by putting off from day to day, when you know not your own last day? Now I shall prove how much you desire the praises of Cypriana from our mouth. Surely, if I still sold words to pupils in the school of rhetoric, I would first take the fee from them. I wish to sell you the praise of your most modest wife: first give me my fee—your own chastity; give it, I say, and receive. I speak after a human manner because of your weakness:

I think that Cypriana is not deserving of you, in praise of whom you set before her the love of your concubines—which you will assuredly do, if you prefer to remain in that love rather than to attain to these praises. What do you wish to extort from me by demanding, when you see that what I demand is for your own good? Why do you entreat as a subject, what you could command once corrected? Let us send gifts to the spirit of your wife: you, imitation; I, praise. Although, as I said above, she now seeks no praise from men, yet even in death she seeks only your imitation, as much as she loved you even when unlike her while she lived. I will do concerning her what you wish, when you shall have done what both I and she wish. For if that proud and impious rich man—

as the Lord speaks in the Gospel—who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day, when he paid the penalties of his evil deserts among the dead and had not been able to obtain a drop of water from the finger of the poor man he had despised before his gate, remembered his five brothers and begged that that same poor man be sent to them—whose repose he beheld from afar in Abraham's bosom—lest they too should come into that place of torments: how much more does your wife remember you! How much more, being chaste, does she not wish you to come to the punishments of adulterers, if not even a proud man wished his brothers to come to the punishments of the proud!

And since a brother would not wish his brothers to be joined with him in evils, how much less does a wife, established in good things, wish to have her husband separated among the evils! Read the very place in the Gospel: it is the loving voice of Christ; believe God. You grieve, no doubt, for your dead wife, and you think that, if I praise her, you will be consoled by my addresses. Learn rather what you should grieve for—if you shall not be with her. Or ought it to grieve you more that she is not yet praised by me, than it grieves me that you are not loved by you? For assuredly, if you loved, you would desire to be with her after death—where you will certainly not be, if, being such as you are, such you shall remain. Love, then, her whose praise you demand; lest what you demand mendaciously, I justly deny.

[And in another hand:] May the Lord grant us to rejoice over your salvation, my lord most beloved and honorable brother. Letter 260. To the truly praiseworthy father Augustine, exceedingly to be looked up to and to be attended with every kind of praise, Audax sends greeting in the Lord. I owe thanks to your Blessedness, that you willingly received my attempts at discourse; for then daring is given to sons of good faith, when it has been bedewed with the showers of the paternal fountain. And so I called forth, sweet prelate, not that I might take a tiny libation from a most bountiful breast, but that I might drink a mighty river from the rich source abundantly. I desired the treasure of wisdom, but I received less than I wished—although it ought to be called not less but a gift.

What oracle of the Law Augustine has bestowed—Augustine, consecrator of justice, restorer of spiritual glory, dispenser of eternal salvation. The worldly globe is as well known to you as it is marked by you; you are as well known to it as you are approved by it. And so I long to be fed on the flowers of wisdom and to be watered with draughts of the living fountain. Grant to one who desires what may profit both. For the covering of a half-naked stock can be made green, if it deserves to be increased little by little by your streams. And so I promise the presence of my humility, not so much by pen as by vow, if I shall reread the writings of your Venerableness in place of the sight of you. May divine clemency guard you for countless years, venerable lord. Why has the fountain of the world flowed to me in scant discourse? Or has it hoped for hearts less fitted for its streams?

Since every mind lies open to the waters and gazes upon the eloquent aid of religion, it gives welcome showers to the senses—showers which the full faith of Christ, hanging from the stem, awaits. Letter 261. To Audax, a lord most beloved and to be proclaimed in Christ and exceedingly to be desired brother, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Your brief but plainly vehement letter, an exactress demanding a lengthy letter of mine, I received not unwillingly, nay rather even gladly—not that I could easily satisfy your eagerness, but that I congratulate your charity, because, even though you seek from one not suitable, yet it is good, what you seek.

And indeed for writing a long letter, it is leisure rather than ability that I lack—being, to be sure, most busy with ecclesiastical cares, from which the scanty few drops of time scarcely refresh me, whether thinking out something, or dictating those things which more press upon me and seem to me likely to profit more people, or restoring the bodily strength necessary to our servitude. For words are not lacking, by which much paper could be filled; but that which you desire from me in the same prolixity of discourse—to this I answer that I am not suitable. For you said that you desired the treasure of wisdom, but received less than you wished, whereas I myself, with beggarly prayer, ask a daily pittance from that treasure and scarcely obtain it.

But how am I an oracle of the Law, of whose broad and hidden inmost recesses I know far more that I do not know than that I do know, and whose manifold folds and shadowy retreats I am not able to approach and penetrate as I wish, and I know myself to be nothing other than less than worthy? Further, who am I, a consecrator of justice, for whom it is a very great thing to have been myself consecrated? And now, as to your calling me a restorer of spiritual glory—pardon me—you know not greatly to whom you speak; for I myself am even now so being restored in this glory, that from day to day I confess it lies hidden from me not only how much I advance, but whether I advance at all. A dispenser, plainly, of eternal salvation I am, together with my other innumerable fellow-servants. And if I do this willingly, I have a reward.

But if unwilling, only a stewardship has been entrusted to me; for to be a dispenser of that salvation through word and sacrament is not the same as being also a partaker of it. For if it were not dispensed through good men, the Apostle would not rightly say: 'Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.' Again, if it were not dispensed through evil men, the Lord would not say concerning certain ones: 'What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not.' Many, therefore, are the dispensers through whose ministry one arrives at eternal salvation;

but it is asked among the dispensers, that one be found faithful; and among the faithful themselves—in whose number may He who is not deceived reckon me—one is thus, another otherwise, even as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith. And so may the Lord rather feed you, dearest and sweetest brother, with the flowers of wisdom and water you with draughts of the living fountain. But if you think that anything can be conferred upon your most religious zeal through my little work, since I understand you to be capable and perceive you to be eager, your mind is rather to be directed to our other little works, which are comprised in many volumes, than to hope for anything through letters that could fulfill your desire.

Or at least receive in person what I shall be able to give—for I think you do not present yourself to us on this account, because you do not wish to; for what great thing is it, with the Lord helping, that you, a free man, exempt from any local duty, should come to us, whether to be with us long, or, after even a little time is spent, to return again? Behold, it is almost done, what you set in the third of your five verses, namely that you should have my letter more talkative than eloquent. But as to there being seven feet in the fifth and last verse—did the number escape your hearing, or did you wish to test whether I still remember how to judge these things, which perhaps those have now forgotten who, once devoted to such studies, afterward advanced very greatly in ecclesiastical letters?

The Psalter translated from the Hebrew by holy Jerome I do not have. We ourselves, however, did not translate it, but corrected certain faults of the Latin manuscripts from the Greek copies. Whence perhaps we have made something more serviceable than it was, yet not such as it ought to be. For even now, whatever things then perhaps escaped us, if they move the readers, we correct by comparing the manuscripts. Thus that which is perfect, we too seek together with you. Letter 262. To the most religious lady, daughter Ecdicia, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Having read the letter of your Reverence, and having questioned its bearer

about those matters which remained to be inquired of, I grieved vehemently that you had wished to deal thus with your husband, so that the edifice of continence, which had already begun to be built up in him, should, with perseverance lost, miserably collapse into the ruin of adultery. For whereas he would be lamentable if, after continence vowed to God and now in very act and manner undertaken, he had returned to the flesh of his wife, how much more now is he to be lamented, plunged into a deeper destruction—he who by so abrupt a dissolution commits adultery, angry at you, ruinous to himself, as though he raged the more bitterly against you, if he himself perish! But this so great an evil befell,

is because you did not treat his spirit with the moderation you ought; for although you were no longer joined together in carnal intercourse by mutual consent, yet in other matters you, a wife, ought to have served your husband with conjugal compliance—especially since you were both members of the body of Christ. And certainly, if, being faithful, you had had an unbelieving husband, you ought to have conducted yourself in submissive behavior, so that you might win him for the Lord, as the apostles advised. For I pass over the fact that I have learned you undertook that very continence, while he did not yet consent, not according to sound doctrine.

For you ought not to have been defrauded of the debt of your body—rather, he ought not to have been defrauded—before his will too should accede to your will toward that good which surpasses conjugal chastity; unless perhaps you had not read, nor heard, nor attended to the Apostle saying: 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman; but on account of fornications let each man have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife has not power over her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife. Do not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer, and come together again to the same, lest Satan tempt you on account of your incontinence.'

According to these apostolic words, even if he himself had wished to contain himself and you had been unwilling, he would be compelled to render the debt to you, and God would impute continence to him, if, yielding not to his own but to your weakness, lest you fall into the damnable disgrace of adultery, he did not deny you marital intercourse. How much more ought you—who ought the more to have been submissive—in rendering a debt of this kind, to have complied with his will, since God accepted from you the will of containing, because you were doing this for the very purpose that your husband should not perish!

But this, as I said, I pass over, since afterward he himself consented—when you were unwilling to consent to him for rendering the conjugal debts—to those same compacts of continence, and lived most continently with you for a long time, and by his own consent absolved you from that sin whereby you were denying him the debt of the flesh. Therefore in your case this question is no longer turned—whether you ought to return to intercourse with your husband. For what you had both vowed to God by equal consent, you both ought to have rendered perseveringly even to the end. And if he has lapsed from that resolve, do you at least most constantly persevere. This I would not exhort you to, except that he himself had consented to it with you.

For if you had never held his assent, no number of years would have defended you; but after however long a time you had consulted me, I would answer you nothing other than what the Apostle says: 'The wife has not power over her own body, but the husband.' And of this power he had already so permitted you continence, that he himself also undertook it with you. But this is what I am saddened that you observed less: that you ought to have complied with him and been obedient to him in domestic conversation the more humbly, the more religiously he had granted to you, even by imitating, so great a thing. For not because you were equally abstaining from carnal union had your husband therefore ceased to be your husband;