Latin original · 41 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:1074–5:1114 (4615 verses in all)
you say you suffer persecution, and our eyes are put out by your armed men with lime and vinegar; and besides, even if they bring some deaths upon themselves of their own accord, they wish these to be odious to us, glorious to us. What they do to us, they do not impute to themselves; and what they do to themselves, they impute to us. They live like robbers, they die like Circumcellions, they are honoured like martyrs — and yet not even of robbers have we ever heard that they blinded those whom they had plundered: they carry off the slain from the light, they do not carry off the light from the living. We meanwhile, whenever we lay hold of your people, keep them unharmed with great charity; we speak to them and read to them all those things by which the error itself is refuted, which separates brothers from brothers;
we do what the Lord commanded through the prophet Isaiah, saying: 'Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble; say: You are our brethren, to those who hate you and who curse you, that the name of the Lord may be honoured and may appear to them in gladness, but they themselves may be ashamed.' And thus we join some of them, when they consider the evidence of the truth and the beauty of peace — not by baptism, which they had already received like deserters as a royal mark, but to the faith which was lacking to them, and to the charity of the Holy Spirit, and to the body of Christ. For it is written: 'Purifying their hearts by faith'; and again it is written: 'Charity covers a multitude of sins.'
But if, either through excessive hardness, or through shame at not bearing the mockery of those with whom they used to hurl so many falsehoods and devise so many evils against us, or rather through fear lest they should now suffer with us such things as they used to do to us before, they have refused to consent to the unity of Christ — then, just as they were kept unharmed, so they are dismissed by us unharmed. This, as far as we can, we admonish even our laity, that they keep them unharmed and lead them to us to be corrected and instructed. But some hear us and, if they can, do it; others deal with them as with robbers, because in truth they suffer such things from them; some, when their blows are threatening their own bodies, ward them off by striking, lest they be struck by them first;
some offer the men they have seized to the judges, nor spare them even when we intercede, since they dread suffering monstrous evils from them. In all which things those men do not lay aside the deeds of robbers, yet demand for themselves the honour of martyrs. This, then, is our desire, which by these letters and by the brethren whom we have sent we lay before your gravity: first, if it can be done, that you confer peaceably with our bishops, so that in whomever it be found, not the men but the error itself may be removed; that men be not punished but corrected; that you at least now meet together, since you before despised their meeting. For how much better you do this among yourselves,
so that what you have transacted, written down and subscribed, you may send to the emperor — this is how much better it is than that this should be done before earthly powers, which cannot but serve laws already given against you! For your colleagues who had sailed said before the prefects that they had come to be heard, and they named our holy father, the Catholic bishop Valentinus, who was then at court, saying that they wished to be heard with him — which the judge could not grant them, who was already judging according to the laws which have been established against you; nor had that bishop come thus, or received any such mandate from his bishops.
How much better, therefore, will the emperor himself — who is not subject to those same laws, and who has it in his power to enact other laws — when your conference has been recited to him, be able to judge concerning the whole cause itself, although it was long ago said to have been concluded! But we wish you to confer for this reason: not that the cause may be concluded again, but that to those who do not know it, it may be shown already concluded. But if our bishops be unwilling to do this, what thereby do you lose, and do you not rather gain — since your will becomes known, lest it be deservedly reproached with diffidence?
Or do you perhaps think it not permissible for this to happen, when it does not escape you that the Lord Christ discoursed even with the devil about the Law, and that not only the Jews but even the Gentile philosophers of the Stoic and Epicurean heresy conferred with Paul? Or do perhaps these laws of the emperor not permit you to meet with our bishops? Look then, meanwhile, meet with our bishops who are in the region of Hippo, where we suffer so many evils at the hands of your people. For how much more freely and unhindered do your writings reach us through your own men than their weapons do! Finally, through these very brethren of ours whom we have sent to you, write back such things. But if you are unwilling even for this, at least hear us together with your people, at whose hands we suffer such things.
Show us the truth for which you say you suffer persecution, while we suffer such great cruelty from your people. For if you convict us of being in error, perhaps you will grant us that we not be rebaptized by you, deeming it just that you concede this to us who were baptized by those whom you have condemned by no judgment—just as you conceded it to those whom Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras had baptized over so long a time, when you were trying to drive them from their basilicas by the orders of judges, because they were in communion with Maximianus, together with whom they were expressly and by name condemned by you in the Council of Bagai.
All these things we demonstrate by judicial and municipal records, in which you even cited your own council, when you wished to show the judges that you were driving your schismatics out of the basilicas. And yet you, who have made a schism from that very seed of Abraham in which all nations are blessed, are unwilling to be driven from the basilicas—not by judges, as you did to your own schismatics, but by the very kings of the earth who, with the prophecy fulfilled, adore Christ; before whom, having accused Caecilianus, you departed defeated.
But if you are willing neither to hear nor to teach us, come, or send men with us into the region of Hippo, that they may see your armed force—though no soldier has added lime and vinegar to the number of his weapons for the eyes of barbarians. If you will not even this, at least write to those men, that they no longer do these things, that they now restrain themselves from our slaughter, from plunder, from the blinding of eyes. We do not wish to say, 'Condemn them'; for you yourselves shall see how those men do not defile you—men whom we have just now shown to be robbers within your communion—and yet defile us; men whom you were never able to show to be traitors. Out of all these, choose what you will.
But if you scorn our complaints, we shall in no way regret having wished to act in a peaceable manner. The Lord will be present to His Church, so that you rather may come to regret having scorned our humility. LETTER 89. To his most beloved and honourable, and worthy-to-be-received son Festus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.
If men, for the sake of error and a damnable dissension and a falsehood convicted in every way, presume so far that they do not cease so boldly to lie in wait for and threaten the Catholic Church which seeks their salvation, how much more just is it and fitting that those who maintain the truth of Christian peace and unity—a truth manifest even to those who dissemble and suppress it—should exert themselves urgently and untiringly, not only for the fortifying of those who are already Catholics, but also for the correction of those who are not yet so!
For if obstinacy strives to have unconquerable strength, how great ought to be the constancy which, in that good which it does perseveringly and untiringly, both knows itself to please God and beyond doubt cannot displease prudent men! But what is more wretched and more perverse than what the Donatists do, who boast that they suffer persecution—that is, from the restraint of their iniquity—and are not only unashamed to be confounded, but even wish to be praised, being ignorant with wondrous blindness, or dissembling with damnable animosity their knowledge, that it is not the penalty but the cause that makes true martyrs?
And this indeed I would say against those whom only the darkness of heretical error enveloped, for which sacrilege they would pay most worthy penalties, and yet no violent madness would dare to injure anyone. But against these men what shall I say, whose so pernicious perversity is restrained either by the terror of losses or is taught by exile how the Church—as it was foretold would come to pass—is everywhere diffused, a Church which they would rather assail than acknowledge? And if the things they suffer through most merciful discipline be compared with the deeds they commit in furious rashness, who would not see which are the more rightly to be called persecutors?
Although evil children, by that very fact that they live in ruin—even if they lay no violent hands—more grievously persecute the piety of their parents than when a father or mother, the more they love them, the more they compel them without any dissembling to a good life. There exist most firm documents of public records, which you can read if you will—indeed I beg and exhort you to read them. By these it is proved that the elders of those who first divided themselves from the peace of the Church of their own accord dared, through Anulinus then proconsul, to accuse Caecilianus before the emperor Constantine. And in that very judgment, if they had won, what would Caecilianus have been to suffer from the emperor, save what he pronounced against these men after they were defeated?
But of course, if with them accusing and prevailing, Caecilianus and his colleagues had been driven from the sees they held, or even, persisting in their conspiracy, had been more grievously punished—for the royal censure could not despise the vanquished who resisted—then these men would have trumpeted with praises their own foresight and their anxious care for the Church as worthy to be proclaimed. But now, because they themselves have been vanquished, who could by no means prove the things they intended, if they suffer anything for their iniquity, they call it persecution;
nor do they in the least repress such lost fury, but even seek the honour of martyrs—as though indeed the Catholic Christian emperors, against their most obstinate iniquity, followed anything other than the judgment of Constantine, before whom the accusers of Caecilianus appeared of their own accord, whose authority they preferred to all the bishops overseas, so that they referred the cause of the Church not to those bishops but to him; so that they might accuse before him again the episcopal judgment given at the city of Rome, in which they were first defeated; so that, from another episcopal judgment given at Arles, they appealed to him—before whom, however, being at last vanquished, they remained in their perversity.
I think that the devil himself, if he were so often defeated by the authority of the judge whom he had of his own accord chosen, would not be so shameless as to persist in that cause. But let these be reckoned human judgments, and let it be said that they could have been circumvented and deceived, or even corrupted. Why then is the Christian world of all the earth still accused and defamed by I know not what crimes of traitors—the world which surely neither could nor ought to have trusted any but chosen judges rather than defeated litigants? Those judges have their case before God, whether good or bad;
what has the Church, diffused throughout the whole world, done—the Church which by these men is judged to be rebaptized for no other reason than that in that cause, in which it could not judge what was true, it thought it should believe rather those who could judge than those who, even when defeated, did not yield? O great crime of all the nations, which God promised should be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and, as He promised, so He displayed! When with one voice they said, 'Why do you wish to rebaptize us?', it is answered them: 'Because you do not know who were in Africa the betrayers of the holy books, and in that which you did not know, you chose to believe the judges rather than the accusers.' If another's crime does not burden anyone, what does it matter to the whole world what anyone committed in Africa?
If an unknown crime does not burden anyone, how could the whole world have come to know either the crime of the judges or of the accused? Judge, you who have a heart. This is heretical justice: that, because the whole world does not condemn an unknown crime, the party of Donatus should condemn the whole world unheard? But surely it suffices for the whole world to hold the promises of God and to see fulfilled in itself what the prophets sang so long before, to recognize the Church in those same Scriptures where its King Christ also is recognized. For where such things were foretold of Christ as we read fulfilled in the Gospel, there were foretold of the Church such things as we already discern being fulfilled throughout the whole world.
Unless perhaps it will disturb any prudent person, what they are wont to say about baptism—that the baptism of Christ is true only when it is given by a righteous man—when even from this the whole world holds the most evident and evangelical truth, where John says: 'He who sent me to baptize in water, He Himself said to me: Upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending as a dove and remaining upon Him, He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' Whence the Church, secure, places no hope in man, lest it fall into that sentence in which it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man,' but places its hope in Christ, who so took the form of a servant that He did not lose the form of God; of whom it was said: 'He it is who baptizes.'
Accordingly, whatever man, as minister of His baptism, may carry whatever burden, it is not that man but He upon whom the dove descended who baptizes. But those who think vain things are followed by so great an absurdity that they find no way to flee from it. For since they confess that baptism is valid and true when someone criminal, whose crimes are hidden, baptizes among them, we say to them: 'Who then baptizes?' And they have nothing to answer except 'God'—for they cannot say that an adulterous man sanctifies anyone. To whom we reply:
'If then, when a manifestly righteous man baptizes, he himself sanctifies, but when a secretly wicked man baptizes, then not he but God sanctifies, those who are baptized ought to prefer to be baptized by secretly evil men rather than by manifestly good men; for God sanctifies them much better than any righteous man. But if it is absurd that anyone to be baptized should prefer to be baptized by a hidden adulterer rather than by a manifest chaste man, it surely remains that, whatever human minister approaches, the baptism is therefore valid, because He upon whom the dove descended, He it is who baptizes.'
And yet, though so clear a truth strikes the ears and hearts of men, so great a whirlpool of evil custom has submerged certain persons that they prefer to resist all authorities and reasons rather than consent. But they resist in two ways: either by raging or by growing sluggish. What then should the medicine of the Church do here, seeking the salvation of all with maternal charity, tossed as it were between the frenzied and the lethargic? Should it despise them? Should it, or can it, desist? It is necessary that it be troublesome to both, because it is hostile to neither. For the frenzied do not wish to be bound and the lethargic do not wish to be roused; yet the diligence of charity perseveres in chastising the frenzied, goading the lethargic, loving both.
Both are offended, but both are loved; both, being troubled, so long as they are sick, are indignant; but both, when healed, give thanks. Finally, we do not receive them, as they think and boast, such as they were, but wholly changed; because they do not begin to be Catholics unless they have ceased to be heretics. For their sacraments are not hostile to us, which in them are common to us, because they are not human but divine. Their own peculiar error is to be taken away, which they wrongly imbibed—not the sacraments, which they received in like manner, which they carry and possess to their own punishment, the more unworthily they possess them, yet possess them nonetheless.
Therefore, with error abandoned and the depravity of separation corrected, they pass over from heresy to the peace of the Church, which they did not have—without which what they did have had been pernicious to them. But if, when they pass over, they are feigning, this is now not our judgment but God's; and yet certain ones, when they were thought to be feigning, since they passed over through the terror of an edict directed to us, were afterwards found in some temptations to be such that they were preferred to certain old Catholics. Therefore nothing is achieved in vain when it is done urgently: for the wall of hard custom is not stormed by human terrors alone, but the faith and understanding of the mind is also instructed by divine authorities and reasons.
Since these things are so, will not your kindness see that your men who are in the region of Hippo are still Donatists, and that your letters have availed nothing among them? Why they have not availed, there is no need to write; but send some one of your own—whether of your household or of your friends—one to whose faith you can entrust this, who will come first not to those places but to us, with those men wholly unaware; and, the plan first thoroughly discussed with us, let him do what shall have seemed to be done with the Lord's help. For we do not act only for them when we do this, but also for our own people already made Catholics, to whom the nearness of those men is so hostile that it can in no way be despised by us. And this indeed I could have written briefly;
but I wished you to have some letter of ours, by which you might not only yourself know the reason of my care, but also have something to answer to anyone who would dissuade you from urgently spending effort on the correction of your men, and who would disparage us for wishing such things. But if I have done this superfluously—because you had already either learned these things or thought them out yourself—or if I have been burdensome, because I have thrust a lengthy letter upon one so occupied with public cares, I ask that you grant pardon, provided only that you do not spurn what I have suggested and requested. So may the mercy of God protect you. LETTER 90. To the distinguished lord and deservedly-to-be-received brother, bishop Augustine, from Nectarius. How great is the love of one's fatherland, since you know it, I pass over. For it alone is that which surpasses affection by the right of parents.
And if there were for good men any measure or limit of caring for it, we should already have deserved to be worthily excused from its duties. But since the love and grace of one's city grows day by day, and the nearer one's age is to its end, the more one desires to leave the fatherland unharmed and flourishing, therefore I rejoice first of all that this discourse of mine has been set before a man instructed in all disciplines. In the colony of Calama there are many things which we deservedly love, whether because we were born there or because we seem to have rendered it great services. This city therefore, most excellent lord and deservedly-to-be-received one, has lapsed through no slight fault of its people. And if indeed we measure this by the rigour of public law, it ought to be punished with a severer censure.
But it is not lawful for a bishop to do anything except to impart salvation to men, and to be present at causes for the sake of a better condition, and to earn before almighty God pardon for the offences of others. Wherefore, with as much supplication as I can, I beg that, if the matter is to be defended, the guiltless be defended, and that trouble be separated from the innocent. Grant this, which according to your nature you perceive is being asked. Concerning the damages an easy assessment can be had; only the punishments do we deprecate. May you live more acceptable to God, distinguished lord and deservedly-to-be-received brother. LETTER 91. To the excellent lord and deservedly honourable brother Nectarius, from Augustine.
That your spirit glows with love of your fatherland even now, when your limbs grow cold with old age, I do not wonder, and I praise; and that you not only retain by memory but even demonstrate by your life and conduct that for good men there is no measure or limit of caring for the fatherland—this I accept not unwillingly, indeed even gladly.
Whence we should wish to have you yourself also such a citizen of a certain heavenly fatherland—in whose holy love, according to our small measure, we face peril and toil among those whom we counsel toward attaining it—that you might reckon there to be no measure or limit of caring for its little portion sojourning here on earth, becoming so much the better as you rendered the services owed to a better city; in whose eternal peace you would find no end of rejoicing, even as for its labours for a time you would set for yourself no end of caring.
But until this comes to pass—for one must not despair that you can acquire that fatherland, or already most prudently ponder it as to be acquired, to which even your father, who begot you in this one, has gone before you—until this therefore comes to pass, grant us pardon if, for the sake of our fatherland, which we desire never to leave, we grieve your fatherland, which you desire to leave flourishing. And if concerning its flowers we should dispute with your prudence, there is no fear lest it be difficult to persuade you, or lest it should not even readily occur to you in what manner a city ought to flourish. That most illustrious poet of your literature commemorated certain flowers of Italy;
but in your fatherland we have experienced not so much by what men that land flowered, as 'with what arms it burned'—nay rather, not with arms but with flames; nor did it burn, but was set ablaze. If so great a wickedness be left unpunished, with no worthy correction of the depraved, do you think you will leave your fatherland flourishing? O flowers plainly not of fruits but of thorns! Compare now whether you prefer your fatherland to flourish by piety or by impunity, with morals corrected or with deeds unpunished; compare these things and see whether in love of your fatherland you surpass us, whether you desire it to flourish more and more truly than we do. Look a little at those very books on the Republic, from which you drank in that affection of a most loving citizen—that for good men there is no measure or limit of caring for the fatherland.
Look, I beseech you, and discern with what great praises frugality and continence are extolled there, and fidelity toward the marriage bond, and chaste, honourable, and upright morals—by which, when a city excels, it is truly to be called flourishing. Now these morals, in the churches growing throughout the whole world, are taught and learned as it were in holy auditoriums of the peoples—and above all that piety by which the true and truthful God is worshipped, who not only commands that all these things be undertaken, by which the human soul is instructed and fitted for the divine fellowship, to inhabit the eternal and heavenly city, but also grants that they be fulfilled. Hence it is that He both foretold that the images of the many false gods would be overthrown, and commanded that they be overthrown.
For nothing renders men so incapable of fellowship by perversity of life as the imitation of those gods, such as they are described and commended in their writings. Finally, those most learned men who sought out or even described the Republic and the earthly city, such as it seemed to them it ought to be, rather in private disputations than established and formed it by public actions, proposed for the education of the character of youth outstanding and praiseworthy men, whom they thought such, to be imitated rather than their own gods.
And in truth that youth in Terence, who, gazing at a picture painted on the wall, in which there was a painting concerning the adultery of the king of the gods, kindled the lust by which he was seized with the goads even of so great an authority—by no means would he have slipped into that disgrace by coveting, or plunged into it by perpetrating, if he had preferred to imitate Cato rather than Jove. But by what means could he do this, when in the temples he was compelled to adore Jove rather than Cato? But these things from comedy, by which the debauchery and sacrilegious superstition of the impious might be convicted, perhaps we ought not to bring forward. Read or recall, in those same books, how prudently it is discussed that the writings and performances of comedies could in no way have been accepted, unless the morals of those receiving them had been in harmony.
Thus by the authority of most illustrious men, eminent in the Republic and disputing about the Republic, it is confirmed that the most worthless of men become worse by the imitation of gods—not indeed true gods, but false and fictitious ones. But indeed all those things which were written of old concerning the life and morals of the gods are to be understood and interpreted far otherwise by the wise. But that such wholesome interpretations are recited in the temples to the assembled peoples—only yesterday and the day before did we hear this. I ask you, is the human race so blind against the truth that it does not perceive things so open and manifest?
In so many places is Jupiter painted, cast, hammered, sculpted, written, read, acted, sung, and danced as committing such great adulteries; how much would it have been worth that at least in his own Capitol he should be read forbidding these things? These evils, most full of disgrace and impiety, if with none forbidding them they seethe among the peoples, are adored in the temples, laughed at in the theatres, are cities said to flourish—when men sacrifice victims to these gods, when even the cattle of the poor are laid waste, when actors perform and dance these things, when the patrimonies of the rich are poured out?
Of these flowers plainly no fertile earth, no rich virtue, but that goddess Flora has been found to be a worthy mother, whose stage-games are celebrated with such more unrestrained and licentious foulness that anyone may understand what sort of demon it is that cannot be appeased otherwise than by having there perish, as though offered in sacrifice, not birds, not quadrupeds, not finally human blood, but—far more wickedly—human modesty. These things I have said on account of what you wrote: that the nearer your age is to its end, the more you desire to leave your fatherland unharmed and flourishing. Let all those vain and insane things be taken away; let men be converted to the true worship of God and to chaste and pious morals;
then you will see your fatherland flourishing, not in the opinion of fools but in the truth of the wise, when this fatherland of your carnal generation shall have become a portion of that fatherland into which we are born not by body but by faith, where all the saints and faithful of God, after the wintry labours as it were of this life, shall flourish in unending eternity. It is therefore in our heart neither to lose Christian gentleness nor to leave in that city a pernicious example of imitation for the rest. In what manner we may do this, God will be present, if He be not so gravely angered at them.