Do not, therefore, increase my torments by failing, whether in false suspicions or in the sins of others; do not, I beseech you, that I may not have to say of you: And they added to the sorrow of my wounds. For those who rejoice over these sorrows of ours—concerning whom, in the person of the body of Christ, it was foretold so long before: They insulted against me who sat in the gate, and they made songs against me who drank wine—these are borne with far more tolerably; yet for these very ones also we have learned to pray and to wish them good. For to what other end do these men sit, and what else do they aim at, except that, whenever any bishop or cleric or monk or nun shall have fallen, they may believe all such to be so, may boast,
contend, but that not all can be made manifest. And yet these same men, when some married woman is found to be an adulteress, neither cast out their own wives nor accuse their own mothers; but when concerning any of those who profess the holy Name something of a crime either has been falsely rumored or truly disclosed, they press, they busy themselves, they solicit, that it be believed of all. These men, therefore, catching from our sorrows the sweetness of their evil tongue, it is easy for us to compare to those dogs—if perchance they are to be understood in an evil sense—which licked the wounds of that poor man who lay before the rich man's gate and, until he should come to the rest of Abraham's bosom, endured all things laborious and unworthy.
Do not you multiply those very wounds which they lick—you, for whom we are in peril every hour, having fightings without, fears within, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils from the nations, in perils among false brethren. I know that you grieve, but is it more keenly than I? I know that you are troubled, but I fear lest, among the tongues of the slanderers, the weak one fail and perish, for whom Christ died. Let not our sorrow increase because of you, since your sorrow was not made by our fault. For this is what I tried to guard against: that, if it could be done, this evil might neither be neglected as a thing to be avoided, nor brought to your knowledge, where the strong would be tormented fruitlessly and the weak dangerously disturbed.
But may He who, knowing this, permitted you to be tempted, give you strength to endure, and instruct you out of His law, and teach you, and give you rest from the days of evil, until the pit be dug for the sinner. I hear that some of you are the more saddened from this: that concerning the fall of those two deacons who had come from the party of Donatus, they insulted, as it were, the discipline of Proculianus, as though glorying over us, that from our discipline nothing of the kind had appeared in the clergy. Whoever of you did this, I confess to you, you did not do well. Behold, God has taught you that he who glories should glory in the Lord. Nor should you cast at heretics anything except that they are not Catholics, lest you become like them, who, not having what to defend in the cause of their division,
aim at nothing but to collect the crimes of men, and boast of these very things, more numerous, most falsely, so that, because they cannot criminate and obscure the very truth of the divine Scripture, by which the Church of Christ, everywhere diffused, is commended, they bring the men through whom it is preached into hatred, concerning whom they are able even to feign whatever comes into their mind. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and been taught in Him. For He Himself made His faithful secure even concerning evil stewards doing their own evil deeds and speaking His good things, where He says: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not. Pray indeed for me, lest perhaps, preaching to others, I myself be found a reprobate;
yet, when you glory, glory not in me but in the Lord. For however much the discipline of my house may keep watch, I am a man and live among men, nor do I dare to arrogate to myself that my house be better than the ark of Noah, where nevertheless among eight men one reprobate was found; or better than the house of Abraham, where it was said: Cast out the bondwoman and her son; or better than the house of Isaac, of whose two twins it was said: Jacob I loved, Esau I hated; or better than the house of Jacob himself, where a son defiled his father's bed; or better than the house of David, whose son lay with his sister, whose other son rebelled against his father's so holy meekness;
or better than the cohabitation of the Apostle Paul, who nevertheless, if he had dwelt among all good men, would not have said what I mentioned above: Without are fightings, within are fears; nor would he have said, when he spoke of the sanctity and faith of Timothy: I have no one who is genuinely solicitous for you; all seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ; or better than the cohabitation of the Lord Christ Himself, in which eleven good men tolerated the treacherous thief Judas; or better, finally, than heaven, whence the angels fell. Simply I confess to your charity, before the Lord our God, who is witness over my soul, from the time that I began to serve God:
As I have found it difficult to experience men better than those who have advanced in monasteries, so I have found none worse than those who have fallen away in monasteries; and so from this I judge that it is written in the Apocalypse: 'Let the just become more just, and the filthy grow filthier still.' Wherefore, although we are saddened over certain refuse that must be cleared away, we are nevertheless consoled by the many things that adorn. Do not, then, on account of the dregs by which your eyes are offended, detest the winepresses from which the Lord's storehouses are filled with the fruit of a brighter oil. May the mercy of the Lord our God guard you in his peace against all the snares of the enemy, most beloved brethren. LXXIX. In vain you shuffle and evade, since it is plain from afar what sort of man you are.
What the brethren said in conversation with you, they have reported to me. It is well that you do not fear death; but you ought to fear that death which you bring upon yourself by blaspheming God with such things. And as for your understanding that this visible death, which all men know, is the separation of the mind from the body—that is nothing great to understand; but when you add, in accordance with your teaching, that it is the separation of good from evil, if the mind is good and the body evil, then he who mingled them is not good. Yet you say that God, who is good, mingled these things: therefore he is either evil, or he feared evil. And you boast that you do not fear man, while you fashion for yourself such a God as feared the darkness, so that he mingled good and evil!
But do not be lifted up in spirit, as you have written—namely that we make you great by the very fact that we wish to hinder your poisons, lest the pestilence should creep among men. For the Apostle does not make great those whom he calls dogs when he says, 'Beware of dogs,' nor did he make great those whose talk he said spread like a cancer. And so I give you notice in the name of Christ that ......... ..... if you are prepared, resolve the question in which your predecessor Fortunatus failed, and so departed hence that he would not return unless, after conferring in debate with his own party, he could find what he might answer in reply when disputing with the brethren.
But if you are not prepared for this, depart hence, and do not pervert the ways of the Lord, nor ensnare and infect with poisons the weak souls, lest—with the right hand of our Lord aiding—you be put to shame in a way you had not expected. LXXX. To the holy brethren, beloved of God and deservedly to be venerated, and greatly to be longed for, Paulinus and Therasia, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. When our dearest brother Celsus was asking again for a reply in writing, I hastened to render what was owed—and truly I hastened; for while I supposed that he would still linger with us some days, he suddenly, having discovered the chance of a ship, informed me last night of his departure set for the day before. What was I to do, since I could not detain him?
For he was hastening to you, with whom it would be better for him to be; and even if I could detain him, I ought not. Accordingly I snatched up on the spot these few things to be dictated and sent, confessing myself a debtor of a fuller letter—one which I shall pay after the return of our venerable brethren and colleagues Theasius and Evodius, once I have first been in some part satisfied concerning you. For we hope that you will come to us more abundantly, in their breasts and mouths, very soon now, in the name of Christ and with his help. As we were writing this, I had also, a few days before, already given another letter, to be carried to Rome by our like-minded son Fortunatianus, presbyter of the church of Thagaste, who was about to sail there. Now therefore, as I am wont, I ask that you do what you are wont to do:
that you pray for us, that the Lord may look upon our lowliness and our labour, and forgive all our sins. But I long to converse with you by letter—if you will deign it—on such matters as we might discuss if we were present to your senses. Behold that little question which I had lately proposed, as though, present to you present, I set it before you amid sweet talk. You resolved it, indeed, with plainly Christian understanding and devotion, but too hastily and briefly. For the grace of your speech might have dwelt there somewhat longer and more richly, if, when you had said that you had determined to persevere in that station which you happily occupy, so that, if the Lord should be pleased with something else concerning you, you would set his will before your own—
you had explained that very thing somewhat more openly: namely, in what way we may know the will of God, which is to be preferred to our own will. Whether only in that matter which we ought to bear willingly for this reason, that even unwilling we should be compelled to it—for there indeed happens what we do not will, but we correct ourselves for this end, that we may will it, because He wills it whose excellence it is not lawful to refuse nor whose omnipotence permitted to evade, just as another girded Peter and bore him whither he had not willed; yet nevertheless he went whither he would not, though unwilling he underwent a bitter death—or also in that case where there is the power not to change one's resolve, although something else present itself, in which rather the will of God, calling us to change our resolve, may appear.
—not because our former resolve was evil, but one in which we might rightly remain, were we not called by Him to another. For it was not evil for Abraham to nourish and rear his son, as long as he could, as far as lay in him, to the very end of his life; but being suddenly commanded to slay him, he changed a resolve which was assuredly not previously evil, but which would have been evil had it not been changed after the command. Hence too I do not doubt that nothing else seems so to you.
But for the most part it is not by a voice from heaven, not through a prophet, not through a revelation whether of a dream or of a rapture of mind—which is called ecstasy—but by the very things that befall, and that call us to something other than we had determined, that we are compelled to recognize a will of God other than ours was: as though we should determine to set out, and something should arise which Truth, consulted concerning our duty, should forbid us to abandon; or, as we resolve to remain, something should be announced which, that same Truth being consulted, should compel us to set out. Concerning this third kind of causes for changing a resolve, I beg that you converse with me more fully and more clearly as to what seems to you. For it often disturbs us, and it is difficult not to omit something
—something which ought rather to have been done, while we are unwilling to change that in which we had earlier resolved to remain: a thing not indeed evil, yet now for that very reason evil, because that which ought rather to be done is deserted when it presents itself—whereas, had it not presented itself, we should have persisted in that former course not only without blame but even with praise. Here it is difficult not to be deceived; here the prophetic voice altogether prevails: 'Who understands his faults?' Hence, I pray, make me a partaker of your thoughts—what in such cases you are wont to do, or find ought to be done. LXXXI. To the truly holy lord and most blessed pope Augustine, Jerome, greeting in Christ. When I anxiously inquired of our holy brother Firmus what you were doing, I heard with joy that you were in good health.
Again, when I was not so much hoping for, as demanding, a letter from you, he said that he had set out from Africa without your knowing of it. And so through him I render to you the offices of greeting, he who embraces you with singular love; and at the same time I beseech you to pardon my modesty, in that I could not refuse one who had long been urging me to write back. Nor was it for you, but for the cause's sake, that I have answered the cause. And if it is a fault to have replied—I beg you to hear me patiently—it is a much greater fault to have provoked. But away with complaints of this kind; let there be between us a pure brotherhood, and let us henceforth send to each other writings not of controversies but of charity. The holy brethren who serve the Lord with us salute you abundantly. The holy ones who bear with you the light yoke of Christ—
I pray that you would greet in my devotion, especially the holy and venerable pope Alypius. May Christ our God, the omnipotent, keep you unharmed and mindful of me, truly holy lord and most blessed pope. If you have read the book of explanations on Jonah, I think you will not take up that ridiculous question of the gourd. But if the friend who first assailed me with the sword has been driven back by the pen, let it belong to your humanity and justice to rebuke the accuser, not the one who answers. In the field of the Scriptures, if it please you, let us sport with one another without pain. LXXXII. To the most beloved lord, and to be honoured in the bowels of Christ, the holy brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine, greeting in the Lord.
Some time ago I sent to your charity a lengthy letter, in reply to that letter of yours which you recall having sent through your holy son Asterius—now not only my brother but even my colleague. Whether it has deserved to come into your hands, I still do not know, except that, through the most sincere brother Firmus, you write, 'If he who first assailed you with the sword has been driven back by the pen, let it belong to my humanity and justice to rebuke the accuser, not the one who answers'; from this one very slight indication alone I somehow conjecture that you have read that letter of mine. For in it I lamented that so great a discord had arisen between you, over whose great friendship—wherever fame had spread it abroad—fraternal charity used to rejoice.
This I did, not by reproving your brotherliness—of which in that matter I would not dare say I had recognized any fault—but by grieving over human wretchedness, whose persistence in retaining friendships by mutual charity, however great that charity be, is uncertain. But I had rather have learned from your reply whether you have granted me the pardon which I had begged. This I desire to be more plainly intimated to me, although a certain more cheerful countenance of your letter seems to signify that I have obtained even this—if, however, it was sent after that letter of mine had been read, which does not at all appear in it. You ask, or rather with the confidence of charity command, that in the field of the Scriptures we sport with one another without mutual pain. For my part, so far as I am concerned, I would rather that we conducted these matters seriously than in sport.
But if you were pleased to use this word on account of its easiness, I confess that I seek something greater from the kindness of your powers, and from a prudence so learned, and unhurried, ripe with years, studious, ingenious, and diligent—the Holy Spirit not only granting but even dictating these things to you—namely, that in great and laborious questions you may help me, not as one sporting in the field of the Scriptures, but as one panting on the mountains. But if, on account of the cheerfulness that befits dearest friends discoursing together, you thought it should be said 'let us sport,' whether that of which we converse be open and plain, or steep and difficult, teach me this very thing, I beseech you.
quonammodoadsequiualeamus, ut, cumfortealiquidnosmouet, quodnobisetsinoncautiusadtendentibuscertetardiusintellegentibusnonprobatumest, et, quidnobisuideatur.
—in what manner we may be able to attain this: that, when perchance something moves us which has not been proved to us (even if we attend not too cautiously, at least because we understand too slowly), and we try to assert against it what seems to us the case,
—if we say this with somewhat freer liberty, we may not fall into the suspicion of childish boastfulness, as though by accusing illustrious men we were seeking fame for our own name; and if, on the other hand, we soften with gentler eloquence some harsh thing brought forth by the necessity of refutation, that it may become tolerable, we may not be judged to draw a sword smeared with honey. Unless perhaps that is the way by which we may guard against both this vice, or the suspicion of the vice: namely, if we so dispute with a more learned friend that whatever he shall say we are bound to approve, and it be not permitted, even for the sake of inquiry, to resist a little. Then indeed we sport, as it were, in the field, without any fear of giving offence—but it is a wonder if we are not made sport of.
For I confess to your charity that I have learned to render this fear and honour to those books of the Scriptures alone which are now called canonical, so that I most firmly believe no author of them erred in anything in writing; and if in those writings I stumble upon something which seems contrary to truth, I do not doubt that it is nothing else than that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not attained what was said, or that I have not understood it. But others I so read that, however much they excel in holiness and learning, I do not therefore think a thing true because they themselves held it so, but because they were able to persuade me—whether through those canonical authors or by probable reasoning—of that which does not depart from the truth. Nor do I think, my brother, that you feel otherwise;
altogether, I say, I do not think that you wish your own books to be read as if they were those of the prophets or apostles, of whose writings—that they are free from all error—it is impious to doubt. Far be this from that pious humility and that truthful thought concerning yourself, with which, unless you were endowed, you certainly would not say: 'Would that we might deserve your embraces, and by mutual conference either teach or learn something.' But if I believe that you said this out of consideration of your own life and character, not feignedly nor deceitfully, how much more just is it that I should believe that the Apostle Paul did not feel otherwise than he wrote, where he says of Peter and Barnabas: 'When I saw that they were not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all:
You, though you are a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews; how then do you compel the Gentiles to Judaize?' For of whom shall I be certain that he does not deceive me in writing or speaking, if the Apostle was deceiving his sons, whom he was again bringing forth in travail until Christ—that is, the truth—should be formed in them; to whom, when he had premised, saying, 'Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I do not lie,' he nevertheless was not writing truthfully, but by some dispensational feigning was deceiving them, in saying that he had seen Peter and Barnabas not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, and had withstood Peter to his face for no other reason than that he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize?
But indeed it is better to believe that the Apostle Paul wrote something not truthfully, than that the Apostle Peter did something not rightly. If this be so, let us say—which God forbid—that it is better to believe that the gospel lies, than that Christ was denied by Peter; and that the book of Kings lies, than that so great a prophet, chosen by the Lord God so excellently, committed adultery in coveting and carrying off another man's wife, and so horrible a homicide in slaying her husband.
Nay rather, let me read the Holy Scripture—set upon the highest and heavenly summit of authority—being certain and secure concerning its truth, and let me truly learn therein of men either approved, or corrected, or condemned, rather than that, while I sometimes fear to believe that human deeds, in certain persons of praiseworthy excellence, are to be reprehended, the divine oracles themselves should everywhere be suspect to me. The Manichees contend that very many passages of the divine Scriptures—by which their nefarious error is refuted with the clearest perspicuity of their statements, because they cannot wrest them into another sense—are false; yet so, that they attribute this same falsity not to the apostles who wrote, but to certain corruptors of the manuscripts—I know not whom.
But since they have never been able to prove this by more numerous or more ancient copies, nor by the authority of the antecedent tongue from which the Latin books were translated, they retire, overcome and confounded by a truth well known to all. Does not then your holy prudence understand how great an occasion for their malice would be laid open, if we should say that the apostolic writings had been falsified, not by others, but that the apostles themselves wrote falsehoods? 'It is not credible,' you say, 'that Paul reproved in Peter that which Paul himself had done.' I am not now asking what he did; I ask what he wrote. This pertains most of all to the question
which I have undertaken—namely, that the truth of the divine Scriptures, committed to memory for the building up of our faith, being received not by any persons whatsoever but by the apostles themselves, and through this into the summit of canonical authority, may persist in every part truthful and beyond doubt. For if Peter did that which he ought to have done, Paul lied in saying that he saw him not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. For whoever does that which he ought to do, assuredly does rightly; and therefore he speaks falsely of him who says that he did not do rightly what he knew he ought to have done. But if Paul wrote truly, it is true that Peter was then not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel; therefore he was doing that which he ought not to do.
And if Paul himself had already done some such thing, I would rather believe that he too had been corrected, and could not neglect the correction of his fellow-apostle, than that he had set down something mendaciously in his own epistle—and in any epistle whatsoever, how much more in that one in which he had said by way of preface: 'Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I do not lie.' I indeed believe that Peter acted in such a way as to compel the Gentiles to Judaize. For this I read that Paul wrote, whom I do not believe to have lied. And therefore Peter was not acting rightly; for it was against the truth of the gospel that those who believed in Christ should think that without those old sacraments they could not be saved. For this they were contending at Antioch,
those, namely, who had believed from among the circumcision, against whom Paul perseveringly and sharply contends. But Paul himself did not do this for the purpose—whether in circumcising Timothy, or in fulfilling a vow at Cenchreae, or in undertaking, when admonished by James at Jerusalem, to observe with those who had made a vow the customary rites—that he might seem to be thought to grant even Christian salvation through those sacraments; but rather lest those things which God had commanded to be done in former times, as was fitting, in shadows of things to come, should be believed to be condemned as the idolatry of the Gentiles.
For this is what James said to him had been heard of him—that he taught a separation from Moses; which is assuredly unlawful, that those who believe in Christ should be separated from the prophet of Christ, as though detesting and condemning his doctrine, concerning whom Christ himself says: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.' Attend, I beseech you, to the very words of James: 'You see, brother,' he says, 'how many thousands there are in Judaea who have believed in Christ, and these are all zealous for the law. But they have heard of you that you teach a separation from Moses of those Jews who are among the Gentiles, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, nor to walk according to the custom. What then is it?
The multitude must certainly assemble; for they will hear that you have come. Do therefore this which we tell you. We have four men who have a vow upon themselves. Take these, and sanctify yourself with them, and be at charges for them, that they may shave their heads; and all will know that the things which they have heard concerning you are false, but that you yourself also walk keeping the law. But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we have written, judging that they should observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from what is offered to idols, and from blood, and from fornication.' It is not, I think, obscure that James also admonished this for the reason that they might know to be false the things which those had heard of him—those who, having believed in Christ from among the Jews,
were nevertheless zealous for the law, lest through the doctrine of Christ those things should be thought to be condemned as sacrilegious and written without God's command, which had been ministered through Moses to the fathers. For this they had boasted of Paul—not those who understood with what mind these things ought then to be observed by the faithful of the Jews, namely for the sake of commending the divine authority and the prophetic sanctity of those sacraments, and not for the sake of attaining salvation, which was now being revealed in Christ and ministered through the sacrament of baptism—but those had spread this concerning Paul who so wished them to be observed as though without them there could be no salvation for believers in the gospel.
For they had perceived him to be the most vehement preacher of grace, and, most opposed to their aim, teaching that a man is not justified through those observances, but through the grace of Jesus Christ—for the sake of foreannouncing whom those shadows were commanded in the law. And therefore they, contriving to stir up envy and persecution against him, accused him as though he were an enemy of the law and of the divine commandments; and the odium of which false accusation he could not more fittingly avoid than by himself celebrating those very things which he was thought to condemn as sacrilegious, and thus showing that neither were the Jews then to be forbidden them as things nefarious, nor were the Gentiles to be compelled to them as things necessary.
For if in very truth he so disapproved of these things, as had been heard concerning him, and therefore undertook to celebrate them so that by a feigned action he might conceal his own opinion, James would not have said to him, 'And all will know,' but would have said, 'And all will suppose,' since the things which they have heard of you are false—especially because in Jerusalem itself the apostles had already decreed that no one should compel the Gentiles to Judaize, but had not decreed that no one should then forbid the Jews to Judaize, although even them the Christian doctrine did not now compel. Accordingly, if after this decree of the apostles Peter had that dissimulation at Antioch, by which he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize—since he himself was not being compelled, although on account of commending the oracles of God