Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:1115–5:1153 (4615 verses in all)
Otherwise both the gentleness which we desire to preserve, and the discipline which we strive to use with moderation, can be hindered, if something else pleases God in secret—whether that He judges this so great an evil should be punished with a sharper scourge, or even that, being more vehemently angry, He wills it for a time to be unpunished, if they are not corrected nor converted to Him. Your prudence in a certain way prescribes to us concerning the episcopal person, and you say that your fatherland 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 for a bishop,' you say, 'it is not lawful 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.'
This we strive entirely to observe, that no one be punished with a severer censure, neither by us nor by any other with us interceding, and we desire to impart salvation to men—salvation which is set in the felicity of living rightly, not in the security of doing evil. We also press to earn pardon not only for our own but also for the offences of others, which we cannot obtain except wholly on behalf of those corrected. You add also and say: '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.' Receive briefly what was committed, and yourself distinguish the guilty from the innocent.
Against the most recent laws, on the Kalends of June, a festival of the pagans, a sacrilegious solemnity was carried on with none forbidding it, with such insolent audacity that—what was not done even in the times of Julian—a most wanton crowd of dancers passed in that very street directly before the doors of the church. When the clergy attempted to forbid this most unlawful and most unworthy thing, the church was stoned. Then, after about eight days, when the bishop had recited the well-known laws to the town council, and while they were arranging as it were to fulfil the things that were commanded, the church was stoned again.
On the following day, when our men wished to speak in the public records to impose upon the ruined ones what fear seemed possible, the public rights were denied them; and on that very same day, lest they should be terrified even by divine means, a hailstorm was repaid for their stonings; when this had passed, immediately they inflicted a third stoning and finally fires upon the ecclesiastical buildings and upon the men, killed one of the servants of God who, wandering about, chanced to meet them, while the rest partly hid where they could, partly fled by whatever way they could—when meanwhile, thrust and crammed into a certain place, the bishop was hiding himself, where he heard the voices of those seeking him for death and reproaching themselves that, he not being found, they had perpetrated so great a crime in vain.
These things were done from about the tenth hour until no small part of the night. No one attempted to restrain, no one to succour, of those whose authority might have been weighty, except one stranger, through whom both very many servants of God were freed from the hands of those attempting to kill them, and much was wrested from the plunderers. Through him it was made clear how easily those things either would not have happened at all, or, once begun, would have ceased, if the citizens, and especially the leading men, had forbidden them to be done and completed. Accordingly, in that whole city you will perhaps be able to distinguish not the innocent from the guilty, but the less guilty from the more guilty.
For those are guilty of a small sin who, deterred by fear—and above all lest they give offence to those whom they knew to be very powerful in that town and enemies of the Church—did not dare to bring help. But all are wicked to whom these deeds were entrusted, even though they neither did them nor incited them, yet were willing that they be done; more wicked are those who committed them; most wicked those who instigated them. But concerning the instigation, let us take it to be suspicion rather than certain truth, and let us not examine those things which can in no way be discovered except by the torture of those through whom they are investigated. Let us also grant pardon to the fear of those who thought it better to entreat God on behalf of the bishop and His servants than to give offence to the powerful enemies of the Church.
As for those who remain, do you think they should be restrained by no discipline, and do you judge that so monstrous an example of madness should be set forth unpunished? It is not by avenging what is past that we strive to feed our anger, but we are anxious mercifully to provide for the future. Wicked men have that whereby, even through Christians, they may be punished not only gently but even usefully and wholesomely: for they have it. In that they live with their bodies unharmed, they have that whereby they live; they have that whereby they live wickedly. Let the first two be preserved, that there may be those who repent; this we desire, and this, so far as in us lies, we press for even with expended labour. But the third, if God shall will it to be cut away as something rotten and harmful, He will punish most mercifully;
but if He should will something more, or should not even permit this, the reasoning of a higher and assuredly juster counsel rests with Him. From us care and duty must be expended, as far as it is granted us to see, while we beseech Him to approve the disposition of our mind, by which we wish that provision be made for all, and to allow nothing to be done through us which He Himself knows far better than we to be inexpedient both for us and for His Church. Lately, when we were at Calama, so that our people in so grave a grief might either be consoled in their affliction or be calmed when inflamed, as far as we could—which we judged the time required—we dealt with the Christians.
Then we also admitted the pagans themselves, the head and cause of so great an evil, when they requested that we would see them, so that we might take this occasion to warn them what they ought to do, if they were wise, not only for the removal of the present anxiety but also for the seeking of everlasting salvation. They heard many things from us, and they themselves also asked much; but God forbid that we should be such servants as would delight to be entreated by those by whom our Lord is not entreated. Whence you perceive, according to the liveliness of your mind, that we must strive toward this, while Christian gentleness and moderation are preserved: either to deter the rest from imitating their perversity, or to hope that the rest may imitate their correction.
The losses that were inflicted are either borne by Christians or made good through Christians. But we long that the gaining of souls, for the acquiring of which we hunger even at the peril of our own blood, may both come forth more profitably in that place, and not be hindered in other places by that example. May the mercy of God grant us to rejoice over your salvation. XCII. To the excellent lady, deservedly most distinguished and to be honoured in the love of Christ, his daughter Italica, Augustine the bishop, greeting in the Lord. Not only from your letters but also from the account of the very man who delivered them, I have learned that you earnestly demand a letter from me, believing that from it you can have very great consolation.
You therefore will see what you may draw from it; yet I ought not to deny or delay it. But may your faith and your hope console you, and that very charity which is poured out in the hearts of the godly through the Holy Spirit, of whom we have now received something as a pledge, so that we may learn to desire that very fulness itself.
For you ought not to think yourself desolate, since in the inner man you have Christ present through faith in your heart; nor ought you to grieve as the Gentiles do, who have no hope, since with a most true promise we hope that we shall come, in this life—whence we are to depart, and whence we have not lost those of ours who have departed but sent them ahead—to that life where they will be to us as much more dear as they are better known, and lovable without the fear of any parting. Now here, although your husband, by whose departure you are called a widow, was very well known to you, he was nevertheless better known to himself than to you. And whence is this? Although you saw his bodily face, which he himself certainly did not see, save that the knowledge of ourselves is more certain within.
For who knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? But when the Lord shall come and enlighten the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the thoughts of the heart, then nothing in one's neighbour will be hidden from his neighbour, nor will there be anything that each opens to his own and conceals from strangers, where there will be no stranger. But that light itself, by which all these things shall be illumined that are now stored up in hearts—of what kind or how great it is, what tongue can utter, what mind, however feeble, can attain? Assuredly that light is God Himself, since God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all; but it is the light of purified minds, not of these bodily eyes. Then therefore the mind will be fit to see that light, which now it is not yet.
But this the eye of the body can neither now do nor then be able to do. For everything that can be beheld with the eyes of the body must of necessity be in some place, nor is it wholly everywhere, but occupies a smaller place with its smaller part and a larger place with its larger part. Not so is God, invisible and incorruptible, who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see. For He cannot be seen by man through that by which man sees bodies with the body. For if He were inaccessible even to the minds of the godly, it would not be said: 'Come unto Him and be enlightened'; and if He were invisible to the minds of the godly, it would not be said: 'We shall see Him as He is.'
For consider that whole sentence in the epistle of John: 'Dearly beloved,' he says, 'we are the sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' In so far, therefore, shall we see, as we shall be like Him; because now too, in so far do we not see, as we are unlike. Thence therefore shall we see, where we shall be like. But who, most demented, would say that in body we either are or shall be like God? It is in the inner man, then, that this likeness lies, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of Him who created him.
And we are made so much the more like Him, the more we advance in the knowledge and love of Him; because, although our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner is renewed from day to day—yet so indeed, that in this life, however great the progress may be, it is far from that perfection of likeness which will be fit for seeing God, as the Apostle says, face to face.
In which words, assuredly, if we should wish to understand a bodily face, it will follow that God too has such a face, and that there is some interval between ours and His, when we shall see Him face to face; and if an interval, then surely an end, and a bounded arrangement of members, and other things absurd and impious to say and to think, by which the animal man, not perceiving the things that are of the Spirit of God, is deluded with most deceitful vanities. For certain of those who prate such things say—as it could reach me—that we see God now with the mind, then with the body, so that they even assert that the ungodly likewise will see Him in the same manner. See how far they have advanced for the worse.
While without any limit of fear or shame, that unpunished loquacity is carried wandering here and there. Formerly they said that Christ had granted this only to His own flesh, that He might see God with bodily eyes; then they added that all the saints too, having received back their bodies in the resurrection, would see God in the same way; now they have already bestowed this possibility even on the ungodly. Let them by all means bestow as much as they will and on whom they will; for who would dare to speak against men bestowing from their own? For he who speaks a lie, speaks from his own. But you, together with those who hold sound doctrine, dare to appropriate nothing of these things from your own; but when you read: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' understand that the ungodly will not see;
for the ungodly are not blessed and pure in heart. Likewise when you read: 'We see now through a glass, in an enigma, but then face to face,' understand that we shall then see face to face by that whereby we now see through a glass in an enigma. But both of these are the office of the inner man, whether when in this pilgrimage we still walk by faith, in which he uses the glass and the enigma, or when in that fatherland he will contemplate by sight, for which vision 'face to face' is set down. Let the flesh, drunk with carnal thoughts, hear: 'God is a Spirit, and therefore they who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth.' If they must worship, how much more see!
For who would dare to affirm that the substance of God is seen bodily, when He has willed not to be worshipped bodily? But they think they speak cleverly, and as it were press us by questioning: 'Could Christ grant to His flesh that it might see the Father with bodily eyes, or could He not?'—so that, if we answer that He could not, they may proclaim that we have derogated from the omnipotence of God; but if we grant that He could, they may conclude their argument from our answer. How much more tolerably do those rave who assert that the flesh will be turned into the substance of God, and that it will be what God is, so that in this way at least, by being made God, they may render it fit for seeing God, not unlike Him by so great a diversity. Which vanity I believe these men drive away from their faith, and perhaps also from their ears.
And yet, if they are pressed by a question about this in the same way—whether God can or cannot bring this about—will they detract from His power, if they answer that He cannot; or will they confess that this will come to pass, if they grant that He can? Just as, then, they escaped from that snare of another's making, so let them escape from their own. Next, why do they contend that this gift is attributed to the eyes alone of Christ's body, and not to the other senses as well? Will God then be a sound, that He may be perceived also by His ears? And will He be a breath, that He may be sensed by His smell? And will He be some liquid, that He may also be drunk? And will He be a mass, that He may also be touched? 'No,' they say. What then? Can God do that and not this? If they say He cannot, why do they derogate from the omnipotence of God?
If they answer that He can but will not, why do they favour the eyes alone, but grudge it to the other senses of Christ's body? Or, how long do they choose to rave? How much better do we, who fix no bounds to their folly, but rather do not wish them to rave at all! Many things can be brought forth to refute this madness. But if at any time it should assail your ears, read these things to them meanwhile, and let it not weary you to write back what they answer, as you can. For to this end are our hearts cleansed by faith, because the vision of God is promised to us as the reward of faith. But if this shall be through the eyes of the body, in vain is the mind of the saints exercised for perceiving it; nay rather, the mind so perversely disposed is not exercised in itself, but is wholly in the flesh.
For where will it dwell more tenaciously and more fixedly than there whence it presumes it will see God? And how great an evil this is, I leave rather to your understanding than labour to explain by a long discourse. May your heart ever dwell under the protection of the Lord, excellent lady, deservedly most distinguished and to be honoured in the love of Christ as a daughter. Your children, honourable and most beloved in the Lord to you and to us, I greet in return with the duty owed to your merits. XCII A. To his deservedly most sincere lord, holy brother and fellow-presbyter Cyprian, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. I have sent a letter to our blessed daughter Italica, which I ask that you yourself deign to convey to her, in which I have said something against the opinion of those who can hope nothing concerning God,
except what they perceive concerning bodies, although they dare not say that God is a body. Yet in another way altogether they say this, when they assert that He can be seen 'with the eyes of the body,' which He created for nothing but to behold bodies. But these men seem to me to know neither what a body is, nor how far God as spirit is from a body. On the occasion, therefore, on which I thought she was somehow to be consoled, I did not wish to pass over where the true consolation of the pilgrimage of us all is established.
But what those who hold that view—which we have attempted to refute in a few words—may say against it, let your holiness not find it burdensome to write back to me; if perchance his modesty should shrink from undertaking this contest, as it were, even though on another's presumption, or at least let your charity bring it about that those who hold this view, and do not cease to scatter and trample it everywhere, may write back to me concerning these things which I have written, so that thenceforth there may be dealt with them what your holy prudence perceives, together with me, ought to be done concerning this matter. For not without harm is the rational soul, fed on such phantasms, shut off and utterly stopped up, lest it perceive that highest and unchangeable good, if its hope is fixed on this, that it presumes to see it .......
But I give thanks to your love, that you have sent me those things which I asked to read. XCIII. To his most beloved brother Vincentius, Augustine. I have received a letter which it did not seem to me incredible to be yours; for the man who brought it, who was established to be a catholic Christian, was one who, as I think, could not dare to lie to me. But even if perchance the letter is not yours, I thought that I ought to write back to him who wrote it, that I am now rather eager for quiet and one who seeks it, than at that time when you knew me as a youth, while Rogatus, whom you succeeded, was still living, at Carthage. But the Donatists are exceedingly restless, whom to restrain and correct through the powers ordained by God does not seem to me useless.
For we already rejoice over the correction of many, who so truthfully hold and defend catholic unity, and who so rejoice that they have been freed from their former error, that we marvel at them with great congratulation.
Yet these, by I know not what force of habit, would in no way have thought of being changed for the better, unless, struck by this terror, they had bent their anxious mind to the consideration of the truth—lest perchance, if not for justice' sake but for the sake of the perversity and presumption of men they had suffered those very temporal troubles with unfruitful and vain endurance, they might afterwards find with God nothing but the due punishments of the ungodly, who had despised His so gentle admonition and fatherly scourges; and thus, made teachable by this reflection, they might find—not in calumnies and human fables but in the divine books—the Church promised throughout all nations, which they behold restored before their own eyes, in which they would not in the least doubt that Christ too, foretold, even though not seen, is above the heavens.
Was I then in any way to envy the salvation of these men, so as to call back my colleagues from a fatherly diligence of this kind, through which it has come to pass that we see many accuse their former blindness? For while they believed in Christ exalted above the heavens, even without seeing Him, yet His glory over all the earth, even while seeing it, they denied—though the prophet embraced both in one sentence with so great a manifestation, saying: 'Be Thou exalted above the heavens, O God, and Thy glory above all the earth.'
These men, therefore, once our fierce enemies, gravely harassing our peace and quiet with various kinds of violence and treachery—if we so despised and tolerated them that nothing at all which could avail to terrify and correct them were devised and put forward by us, we should truly be rendering evil for evil. For if anyone should see his enemy, made frenzied by dangerous fevers, running headlong, would he not then rather render evil for evil, if he permitted him so to go, than if he saw to his being seized and bound? And yet at that time he would seem most troublesome and most hostile to him, precisely when he had proved most useful and most merciful;
but plainly, once his health was restored, he would give him thanks so much the more abundantly, the more he perceived that he had spared him the less. Oh, if only I could show you how many, from those very Circumcellions, we now have as manifest catholics, condemning their former life and pitiable error, wherein they supposed themselves to be acting on behalf of the Church of God whatever they did with restless recklessness! Yet these would not have been brought to this soundness, unless they had been bound, like frenzied men, by the fetters of those laws which displease you. What of that other kind of most grave sickness, of those who indeed had no turbulent audacity, but were oppressed by a certain old sluggishness, saying to us: 'You indeed speak truly; there is nothing that can be answered;
but it is hard for us to abandon the tradition of our fathers'? Were they not wholesomely to be shaken out of it by the rule of temporal troubles, so that, as it were from a lethargic sleep, they might emerge and awaken to the salvation of unity? How many, even of these, now rejoicing with us, accuse the former burden of their pernicious work, and confess that we ought to have been troublesome to them, lest they should perish as though by a deadly sleep, so by the disease of a torpid custom. But some, you say, these things do not profit. Is medicine therefore to be neglected, because the pestilence of some is incurable? You attend only to those who are so hard that they do not receive even this discipline. For concerning such it is written: 'In vain have I scourged your sons;
they received not discipline.' Yet I think that they were scourged in love, not in hatred. But you ought also to attend to the many over whose salvation we rejoice. For if they were terrified and not taught, it would seem like a wicked domination. Again, if they were taught and not terrified, hardened by the oldness of custom, they would be more sluggishly moved to lay hold of the way of salvation—since indeed many, as we well know, when reason had been rendered to them and the truth made manifest by divine testimonies, answered us that they desired to pass over into the communion of the catholic Church, but dreaded the violent enmities of abandoned men, which indeed for the sake of justice and eternal life they ought certainly to have despised;
but the weakness of such must be borne with until they be made strong, not despaired of. Nor must it be forgotten that the Lord Himself said to Peter, while still weak: 'Thou canst not follow Me now'—yet 'thou shalt follow' is added—so that not only may the light of truth expel the darkness of error, but also the force of fear may burst the fetters of evil custom. Over the salvation of many, as I have said, we rejoice, who bless with us and give thanks to God, that with His promise fulfilled, whereby He promised that the kings of the earth would serve Christ, He has so cured the sickly, so healed the infirm. Not everyone who spares is a friend, nor is everyone who strikes an enemy. Better are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.
It is better to love with severity than to deceive with gentleness. More usefully is bread taken from the hungry man, if, secure of food, he was neglecting justice, than that bread is broken to the hungry man, so that, seduced, he may acquiesce in injustice. And both he who binds the frenzied man and he who rouses the lethargic is troublesome to both, and loves both. Who can love us more than God? And yet He does not cease not only to teach us sweetly but also wholesomely to terrify us. To the gentle fomentations by which He consoles, He often adds even the most biting medicine of tribulation, exercising with famine the patriarchs, even the godly and religious; He harasses a contumacious people with graver punishments; He does not take away from the Apostle the thorn of the flesh, though thrice besought, that He may perfect virtue in weakness.
Let us also love our enemies, because this is just, and this God has commanded, that we may be sons of our Father who is in heaven, who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust. But as we praise these gifts of His, so let us also consider His scourges upon those whom He loves. Do you think that no one ought to be compelled to justice, when you read that the father of the household said to his servants: 'Whomsoever you find, compel them to come in,' when you read also that that very man—first Saul, afterward Paul—was driven to knowing and holding the truth by the great violence of Christ compelling him? Unless perhaps you think that money, or any possession whatsoever, is dearer to men than this light which is gathered by the eyes.
This light he, cast down by the heavenly voice, having suddenly lost, did not recover, save when he was incorporated into the holy Church. And do you think that no force must be applied to a man, that he may be freed from the destruction of error, when you see God Himself—than whom no one loves us more usefully—do this by most certain examples, and hear Christ saying: 'No one comes to Me, unless the Father draw him,' which happens in the hearts of all who turn to Him through the fear of divine wrath; and when you know that sometimes a thief scatters fodder to lead away the cattle, and sometimes a shepherd recalls the straying cattle to the flock with a whip?
Did not Sarah, by the power given to her, rather afflict the contumacious handmaid? And assuredly she did not cruelly hate her whom she had earlier by her own kindness made a mother, but wholesomely tamed the pride in her. But you are not ignorant that those two women, Sarah and Hagar, and their two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, are figures of the spiritual and the carnal; and although we read that the handmaid and her son suffered grave troubles from Sarah, yet the Apostle Paul says that Isaac was persecuted by Ishmael: 'But as then,' he says, 'he who was according to the flesh
persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so also it is now'—so that those who can may understand that the catholic Church rather suffers persecution from the pride and impiety of the carnal, whom it endeavours to amend by temporal troubles and terrors. Whatever, therefore, the true and lawful mother does, even if it be felt to be harsh and bitter, she does not render evil for evil, but by expelling the evil of iniquity she applies the good of discipline—not out of hatred of harming, but out of love of healing. When the good and the evil do the same things and suffer the same things, they are to be distinguished not by the deeds and the punishments, but assuredly by the causes. Pharaoh oppressed the people of God with hard labours; Moses afflicted the same people, when they acted impiously, with hard chastisements;