which had been entrusted to the Jews, he was not being forbidden—what wonder if Paul was constraining him freely to assert that which he remembered he had decreed with the other apostles at Jerusalem? But if—which I rather think—Peter did this before that council of Jerusalem, not even so is it a wonder that Paul was unwilling timidly to cover over, but wished confidently to assert, that which he already knew Peter equally to hold; whether because he had conferred the gospel with him, or because in the calling of Cornelius the centurion he had received that Peter had even been divinely admonished on this matter, or because before those whom he had feared had come to Antioch, he had seen him eating together with the Gentiles. For we do not deny that Peter was already of this opinion, in which Paul also was.
Therefore Paul was not then teaching him what was true in that matter, but was reproving his dissimulation, by which the Gentiles were being compelled to Judaize—for no other reason than that all those things were being carried on in a simulatory manner, as though that were true which those men said, who thought that believers, without the circumcision of the foreskin and the other observances of the shadow of things to come, could not be saved. Therefore he circumcised Timothy also for this reason: lest to the Jews, and especially to his mother's kindred, those who had believed in Christ from among the Gentiles should seem to detest circumcision as idolatry is to be detested, since God had commanded that to be done, and Satan had persuaded this. And he did not circumcise Titus for this reason:
lest he should give occasion to those who said that believers could not be saved without that circumcision, and, to the deception of the Gentiles, should boast that Paul too was of this opinion. This he himself sufficiently signifies, where he says: 'But not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised—but because of the false brethren brought in unawares, who had crept in to spy out our liberty, that they might bring us into bondage; to whom we yielded in subjection not even for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.' Here it appears
what he understood them to be aiming at, so that he should not do what he had done in the case of Timothy—which he could do by that liberty whereby he might show that those sacraments ought neither to be sought after as necessary, nor condemned as sacrilegious. But it must assuredly be guarded against in this discussion, lest, like the philosophers, we should call certain deeds of men intermediate, between a right action and a sin, which are to be numbered neither among right actions nor among sins; and lest we be pressed by this, that to observe the ceremonies of the law cannot be a matter of indifference, but is either good or evil, so that, if we call them good, we too are compelled to observe them; but if evil, we must believe that they were observed by the apostles not truly but feignedly.
But I, for my part, do not so much fear the example of the philosophers in the case of the apostles—since they too in their disputation say something of the truth—as that of the forensic advocates, who lie in pleading other men's causes. If the likeness of these has been thought fittingly to be brought in, in the very exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, to confirm the dissimulation of Peter and Paul, why should I, before you, fear the name of the philosophers, who are vain not because they say all things falsely, but because they both trust in very many false things, and, where they are found to say things true, are aliens from the grace of Christ, who is Truth itself?
But why should I not say that those precepts of the old sacraments were neither good—since men are not justified by them, for they are shadows foreannouncing the grace by which we are justified—nor yet evil, since they were divinely commanded, being suited to the time and to the persons? Especially since even the prophetic saying aids me, by which God says that he gave to that people precepts that were not good. For perhaps for this reason he did not say 'evil,' but only 'not good'—that is, not such that by them men should be made good, or that without them they should not be made good. I would wish your kindly sincerity to teach me whether any holy man of the East, when he has come to Rome, fasts feignedly on the Sabbath, except on that day of the paschal vigil.
But if we should say that this is evil, we shall condemn not only the Roman Church, but also many churches near to it and somewhat more remote, where the same custom is held and remains. But if we should think it evil not to fast on the Sabbath, with what rashness shall we accuse so many churches of the East, and the much greater part of the Christian world! Does it please you that we should say it is something intermediate, which is nevertheless acceptable to him who does this not feignedly but with fitting fellowship and observance? And yet we read nothing therein to have been prescribed to Christians in the canonical books.
How much less do I dare to call that evil which I cannot, by the Christian faith itself, deny that God commanded—the faith by which I have learned that I am justified not by it, but by the grace of God through Christ our Lord, according to the laws! I say, therefore, that circumcision of the foreskin and other things of this kind were divinely given to the former people, through the testament which is called the Old, for the signification of things to come, which had to be fulfilled through Christ; and that, when these had arrived, those things remained for the Christian only to be read for the understanding of the prophecy sent before, but not to be necessarily performed, as though the revelation of the faith, which was signified by them as about to come, were still to be awaited.
But although they were not to be imposed upon the Gentiles, yet they were not so to be taken away from the custom of the Jews as though they were to be detested and condemned.
Gradually, therefore, and little by little, while the preaching of the grace of Christ was glowing warmly—the grace by which alone believers might know that they were justified and made whole, and not by those shadows of things that once were to come but were now already arriving and present—so that in the calling of those Jews whom the bodily presence of the Lord and the apostolic age had found in such a state, all that dealing with shadows might be consumed. For it was enough for its commendation that it should not be shunned as something detestable and akin to idolatry; yet it should have no further progress, lest it be thought necessary, as though either salvation came from it or could not exist without it—which is what the heretics supposed, who, while they wished to be both Jews and Christians, could be neither Jews nor Christians.
You have most kindly deigned to warn me to beware of their opinion, though I have never held it. It was not into agreement with that opinion, but into a pretense of it out of fear, that Peter had fallen, so that Paul wrote most truly of him that he had seen him not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel, and told him most truly that he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize. This Paul certainly did not compel to be done. On this account he truly observed those old rites, where it was needful, so as to show that they were not to be condemned; yet he preached insistently that the faithful were made whole not by them, but by the grace of faith revealed—lest he should force anyone to take them up as though they were necessary.
Thus I believe that the apostle Paul did all those things truly; yet even now I neither compel nor permit any man made a Christian out of a Jew to celebrate such things truly—just as you, to whom Paul seems to have feigned them, neither compel nor permit such a man to feign such things. Or would you have even me say that this is the sum of the question—nay, of your own opinion—that after the Gospel of Christ believing Jews do well if they offer sacrifices (which Paul offered), if they circumcise their sons, if they observe the Sabbath (as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and as all the Jews observed), provided only that they do these things feignedly and deceitfully?
If this be so, we no longer slide into the heresy of Ebion, or of those commonly called Nazarenes, or into any other old heresy, but into some new one—I know not what—which is the more pernicious in that it springs not from error but from deliberate purpose and a deceitful will. But if you answer, in order to clear yourself of this opinion, that the apostles then feigned these things laudably—
lest the weak should be scandalized, many of whom had believed out of the Jews and did not yet understand that these things were to be rejected; but now, when the teaching of Christian grace has been confirmed throughout so many nations, confirmed also throughout all the churches of Christ by the reading of the Law and the Prophets—so that these things are recited to be understood, not to be observed—whoever should wish to do them by way of pretense would be mad; then why is it not permitted me to say that the apostle Paul and other Christians of the right faith at that time, by observing those old sacraments for a little while, truly ought to have commended them, lest those observances of prophetic signification, kept by the most holy fathers, should be detested by their descendants as though they were diabolical sacrileges?
For when faith had now come—the faith which had before been foretold by those observances, and after the death and resurrection of the Lord was revealed—they had lost, as it were, the life of their function. Yet, just as the dead bodies of our kinsfolk must in some manner be carried to burial—and that not feignedly but reverently, and not to be forsaken outright or cast forth to the detractions of enemies as though to the biting of dogs—so now whatever Christian, even though he be of the Jews, should wish to celebrate them in like manner, digging up as it were the slumbering ashes, will be no pious conductor or bearer of the body, but an impious violator of the grave.
I confess indeed that in what my letter contains—namely, that Paul had undertaken to celebrate the sacraments of the Jews when he was already the apostle of Christ, 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—I put too little, in that I did not add 'at that time at least, when the grace of faith was first revealed'; for then this was not pernicious. But with the progress of time those observances were to be forsaken by all Christians, lest, if they were then performed, no distinction should be drawn between what God commanded to His people through Moses and what the unclean spirit instituted in the temples of demons. Therefore it is rather my negligence that is to be blamed, in that I did not add this, than your rebuke.
Yet long before I received your letter, in writing against Faustus the Manichaean, I had, however briefly, expounded that same passage, and had not there passed this over. Your kindness, and those most dear to you, through whom I have now sent these writings, will be able to read it, if he does not disdain to. However you may wish it, believe me that I dictated that beforehand; and concerning my own mind, trust me.
Speaking as in the presence of God, by the right of charity I earnestly protest that it has never seemed to me that even now Christians made out of Jews ought to celebrate those old sacraments with any affection or in any spirit whatever, or that it is in any way lawful for them—since concerning Paul I have always held this opinion, from the time when his writings first became known to me, just as it does not seem to you that these things are now to be feigned by anyone at this time, although you believe that the apostles did this.
Therefore, just as you speak on the contrary side and, even against the protests of the world (as you write), proclaim with free voice that the ceremonies of the Jews are both pernicious and deadly to Christians, and that whoever observes them, whether from the Jews or from the Gentiles, has been plunged into the pit of the devil—so I wholly confirm this saying of yours, and I add: whoever observes them, not only truly but even feignedly, has been plunged into the pit of the devil. What more do you seek?
But just as you separate the pretense of the apostles from the reasoning of this present age, so I separate the truthful conduct of Paul the apostle in all these things at that time from the observance of Jewish ceremonies in this present age—an observance that, however unfeigned, is now to be detested—since then it was to be approved, but now to be detested. And so, although we have read:
'The Law and the Prophets were until John the Baptist'; and that the Jews on this account sought to kill Christ, because He not only broke the Sabbath but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God; and that 'we have received grace for grace'; and that 'the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ'; and that through Jeremiah it was promised that God would give a new covenant to the house of Judah, not according to the covenant which He made with their fathers—yet I do not think that the Lord Himself was deceitfully circumcised by His parents; or, if by reason of His age He was in no way forbidding it, neither do I think that He said deceitfully to the leper (whom certainly not that observance commanded through Moses, but He Himself had cleansed):
'Go and offer for yourself the sacrifice which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them'; nor did He deceitfully go up to the feast day—so far from doing it for the sake of display before men that He went up not openly, but secretly. But indeed the same apostle said: 'Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.' Did he then deceive Timothy and make Christ of no profit to him? Or is it that, because this was done feignedly, it therefore did no harm? But he himself did not put it thus, nor did he say 'if you be circumcised truly'—just as neither 'feignedly'—but without any exception he said: 'If you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.'
Therefore, just as you wish to give room here to your own opinion, so that you would have 'unless feignedly' understood, so I not shamelessly demand that you allow us also to understand there that it was said 'if you be circumcised' to those who wished to be circumcised for this reason: because they thought that otherwise they could not be saved in Christ. With this mind, then, with this will, with this intention, whoever was then circumcised, Christ profited him nothing at all—just as he says openly elsewhere: 'For if righteousness is by the Law, then Christ died in vain.' This also declares what you yourself have recalled: 'You are made void from Christ, you who are justified in the Law; you are fallen from grace.'
He therefore rebukes those who believed that they were justified in the Law, not those who observed those legal ordinances in honor of Him by whom they were commanded, understanding both that they were commanded for the sake of foretelling the truth, and how long they ought to endure. Whence is that saying: 'If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law' (from which, as you gather, it appears that whoever is under the Law is so not by way of dispensation—as you suppose our elders wished—but truly, as I understand, and does not have the Holy Spirit). A great question, it seems to me, is what it is to be under the Law in the way that the apostle blames.
For I do not think he says this on account of circumcision, or those sacrifices which, done then by the fathers, are now not done by Christians, and other things of that kind, but this very thing also which the Law says, 'You shall not covet'—which we certainly acknowledge Christians ought to observe, and above all to preach with evangelical illumination. He says the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good; then he adds: 'Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it may appear sin, wrought death in me through that which is good, that the sinner or sin might become beyond measure sinful through the commandment.' And what he here says—that sin is made beyond measure through the commandment—he says elsewhere: 'The Law entered in, that sin might abound':
'but where sin abounded, grace did more abound.' And elsewhere, when he was speaking above concerning the dispensation of grace, that grace itself justifies, he says, as though questioning: 'What then is the Law?' And to this question he immediately replied: 'It was set for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.' Those, therefore, he says are damnably under the Law whom the Law makes guilty as not fulfilling the Law, since, by not understanding the benefit of grace, they presume in proud elation, as it were of their own strength, to perform the commandments of God. For the fullness of the Law is charity; but the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, not by ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.
But to this matter, insofar as is sufficient, an extended discourse—perhaps of its own separate volume—is owed. If, then, that which the Law says, 'You shall not covet,' if human weakness has not been helped by the grace of God, holds one guilty under itself and rather condemns the transgressor than frees the sinner, how much more could those things which were commanded for the sake of signification—circumcision and the rest, which, as the revelation of grace became more widely known, had of necessity to be abolished—justify no one! Yet not on that account were they to be shunned as the diabolical sacrileges of the Gentiles, even when grace itself had already begun to be revealed, the grace which had been foretold by such shadows; but they were to be permitted for a little while, chiefly to those who had come from that people to whom they had been given.
But afterward, as though buried with honor, they were to be irreparably forsaken by all Christians. But this that you say, 'not by way of dispensation, as our elders wished'—what does it mean, I pray you? For either it is what I call an officious lie, so that this dispensation is a service, as it were, of honorable lying; or, what else it may be, I do not at all see—unless perhaps by the addition of the name 'dispensation' it comes about that a lie is not a lie. But if this is absurd, why then do you not openly say that the officious lie is to be defended?
Unless perhaps the word disturbs you, because the term 'officium' is not so customary in ecclesiastical books—a term which our own Ambrose did not fear, who chose to entitle certain of his books, full of useful precepts, 'On Duties' (De Officiis). Or, if anyone lies officiously, is he to be blamed; but if by way of dispensation, to be approved? I ask you. Let him lie, wherever he has read that he may, who thinks this permissible—for this too is a great question, whether it is ever lawful for a good man, nay for a Christian man, to lie—men to whom it was said: 'Let it be in your mouth, Yea, yea; Nay, nay'; and who hear with faith: 'You shall destroy all who speak a lie';
but, as I have said, this too is another and a great question. Let him who so judges choose what he will—where he may lie—provided only that it be unshakably believed and defended that from the writers, the authors of the Holy Scriptures, and above all of the canonical ones, all lying is utterly absent; lest the dispensers of Christ, of whom it was said, 'Here now it is required among dispensers, that a man be found faithful,' should seem to have faithfully learned some great thing for themselves—namely, to lie for the sake of dispensing the truth—whereas faith itself is called in the Latin tongue by this name (fides), because what is said comes to pass (fit). But where what is said comes to pass, there is assuredly no place for lying.
The faithful dispenser, therefore, the apostle Paul, without doubt shows us faith in his writing, because he was a dispenser of truth, not of falsehood. And through this he wrote truly that he had seen Peter not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel, and had withstood him to the face, because he compelled the Gentiles to Judaize. But Peter himself received what was done by Paul, profitably, in the freedom of charity, with the piety of holy and kindly humility; and thus he set before posterity a rarer and holier example than Paul—that they should not disdain to be corrected even by their juniors, if perchance anywhere they had left the path of rectitude; whereby the lesser might confidently dare to resist the greater in defense of evangelical truth, with fraternal charity preserved.
For although it is better to swerve from the road one is keeping in nothing than in anything, yet it is much more wonderful and praiseworthy to accept willingly one who corrects than boldly to correct one who goes astray. The praise, therefore, of just liberty in Paul and of holy humility in Peter ought, as far as it seems to me according to my small measure, rather to have been defended against the calumniating Porphyry, than that a greater occasion of detraction should be given to him, whereby he might much more bitingly accuse Christians of either deceitfully writing their own letters or deceitfully carrying the sacraments of their God.
You demand of me that I show at least some one person whose opinion in this matter I have followed, seeing that you have named by name so many who went before you in what you maintain, asking that, if in this I reprove you as erring, I suffer you to err with such men, of whom, I confess, I have read none. But since they are about six or seven, of these you yourself also weaken the authority of four. For the one from Laodicea, whose name you keep silent, you say has lately departed from the Church; Alexander you call an old heretic; and Origen and Didymus I read as reproved by you in your more recent little works, and that not slightly, nor concerning slight questions—although you had wonderfully praised Origen before.
With these, then, I think you would not yourself allow yourself to err—although it is said as if in this opinion they had not erred. For who is there who would wish to err with anyone whatever? There remain, therefore, three: Eusebius of Emesa, Theodore of Heraclea, and, whom you mention a little later, John, who once governed the Church of Constantinople in the episcopal rank. Further, if you should inquire or recall what our own Ambrose thought hereon, and likewise what our own Cyprian, you would perhaps find that we too have not lacked men whom we might follow in what we assert.
那麼，我想你自己也不願與這些人一同走錯——儘管這話說得彷彿他們在這見解上並未走錯似的。因為有誰願意與任何人一同走錯呢？因此還剩下三位：以彌沙的優西比烏（Eusebius of Emesa）、赫拉克利亞的狄奧多若（Theodore of Heraclea），以及你稍後所提及的約翰（John）——他曾以主教的職分治理君士坦丁堡的教會。再者，你若查考或回想我們的安波羅修在此事上的見解，並同樣回想我們的居普良（Cyprian）的見解，或許就會發現：連我們這一方，在所主張之事上也不乏可跟從的人。
Although, as I said a little before, I owe this ingenuous servitude only to the canonical Scriptures, whereby I so follow them alone that I do not doubt their writers erred in nothing at all in them, and set down nothing deceitfully. Accordingly, when I seek a third, that I too may set three against three, I could indeed, as I think, easily find one, if I had read much. Yet the apostle Paul himself presents himself to me in place of all these, nay above all these. To him I flee for refuge; to him, from all who think otherwise—
and to the expounders of his letters, I appeal; questioning him himself, I interpellate him and inquire, in that which he wrote to the Galatians—that he saw Peter not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel, and had therefore withstood him to the face, because by that pretense he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize—whether he wrote the truth, or perhaps lied by some dispensatory falsehood. And I hear him, a little above, at the very outset of that same narration, crying out to me with a religious voice: 'Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.' Let whoever thinks otherwise grant pardon; I rather believe so great an apostle, swearing in and for his own letters, than any most learned man disputing about the letters of another.
Nor do I fear to say that I thus defend Paul, that he did not feign the error of the Jews, but was truly not in error—since neither did he feign error, who with apostolic liberty, as befitted that time, by performing those old sacraments where there was need, commended them as instituted prophetically, not by the cunning of Satan for deceiving men, but by the providence of God for foretelling things to come; nor was he truly in the error of the Jews, who not only knew, but even insistently and sharply preached, that those men erred who thought these things were to be imposed on the Gentiles, or necessary for the justification of any of the faithful whatever.
But as to what I said—that he became to the Jews as a Jew and to the Gentiles as a Gentile, not by the cunning of one deceiving, but by the affection of one having compassion—you seemed to me to have paid too little heed to the manner in which I said it; nay, perhaps I myself could not sufficiently explain it. For I did not say this because he mercifully feigned those things, but because he did not so feign the things he did that were like the Jews, in the same way as neither those things he did that were like the Gentiles—which you too have recalled, and in this have helped me in a matter I do not ungratefully confess.
For when I had asked you in my letter how he should be thought to have become to the Jews as a Jew because he deceitfully undertook the sacraments of the Jews, seeing that he became also to the Gentiles as a Gentile, and yet did not deceitfully undertake the sacrifices of the Gentiles, you replied that he became to the Gentiles as a Gentile in that he received the uncircumcised, in that he indifferently permitted the eating of foods which the Jews condemn. Here I ask whether he did this too feignedly; and if that is most absurd and most false, then likewise also those things in which he conformed to the custom of the Jews were done by prudent liberty, not by servile necessity, nor—what is more unworthy—by a deceitful rather than a faithful dispensation.
For to the faithful, and to those who have known the truth, as he himself testifies (unless perhaps here too he deceives), 'every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving.' Therefore to Paul himself also—not only a man, but a most faithful dispenser, not only a knower but also a teacher of the truth—every creature of God in foods was good, not feignedly but truly. Why, then, by undertaking nothing feignedly of the sacred rites and ceremonies of the Gentiles, but by thinking and teaching the truth concerning foods and the uncircumcised, did he nevertheless become as a Gentile to the Gentiles, and could not become as a Jew to the Jews except by deceitfully undertaking the sacraments of the Jews?
Why, in the wild olive that was grafted in, did he preserve the truthful faith of the dispensation, but to the natural branches, set not outside but in the tree, did he hold out some veil, I know not what, of dispensatory pretense? Why, having become as a Gentile to the Gentiles, does he teach what he thinks, and think what he does; but, having become as a Jew to the Jews, shut up one thing in his breast, and bring forth another in words, in deeds, in writings? But far be it to be thus minded. For to both he owed charity out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
And through this he became all things to all men, that he might gain all—not by the cunning of one deceiving, but by the affection of one having compassion; that is, not by falsely doing all the evils of men, but by procuring, out of the diligence of medicine and mercy, for the evils of all others, as though they were his own. Since, therefore, he did not at all refuse that those sacraments of the Old Testament should be performed even by himself, he did not mercifully deceive, but, deceiving in no way at all, and in this manner commending that these had been commanded by the Lord God unto a dispensation lasting to a certain time, he distinguished them from the sacrilegious rites of the Gentiles.