Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 34/118

We greatly rejoice indeed over the firm and stable faith of certain persons, and those not few, who from the occasion of these very laws have been converted to the Christian religion or to catholic peace; for whose everlasting salvation it delights us even to be imperiled in this temporal life. For on this account especially we now sustain the graver assaults of enmities from men too hard and perverse — assaults which some of these very converts most patiently sustain along with us; but we greatly fear for their weakness, until they learn and are able, with the most merciful grace of the Lord aiding, to despise the present world and man's day with a stronger vigor of heart.

The memorandum which I sent, let it be delivered by your eminence to the brethren bishops, if, as I think, they are not yet there, when they shall have come. For so great a confidence we have of your most sincere heart, that, with the Lord our God aiding, we would have you not only a bestower of aid but even a partaker of counsel. XCVIII. To Bishop Bonifatius, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. You ask of me whether parents harm their baptized little ones when they attempt to heal them by the sacrifices of demons; and, if they do not harm them, in what manner the faith of the parents profits them when they are baptized, whose faithlessness cannot injure them.

To this I answer that so great is the power of that sacrament — that is, of saving baptism — in the holy framework of the body of Christ, that one once begotten through the carnal pleasure of others, when he has once been regenerated through the spiritual will of others, can thereafter not be bound by the bond of another's iniquity to which he consents by no will of his own. For 'both the soul of the father is mine,' He says, 'and the soul of the son is mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' But he does not himself sin when his parents, or anyone else, apply to him — being wholly unaware — the sacrileges of demons; but for this reason he drew from Adam that which the grace of that sacrament would loose, because there was not yet a soul living separately, that is, another soul, of which it might be said:

'Both the soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine.' Therefore, now that a man is in his own self made another than he who begot him, he is not held liable to another's sin without his own consent. He drew guilt, then, because he was one with him and in him from whom he drew it, at the time when that which he drew was committed; but the one does not draw from the other, when each is now living by his own proper life — whence it may be said: 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' But that he may be able to be regenerated through the office of another's will, when he is offered to be consecrated, this one Spirit does, by whom he is regenerated when offered. For it is not written: 'Except a man be born again of the will of his parents,' or 'of the faith of those offering or ministering,' but:

'Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit.' The water therefore, outwardly exhibiting the sacrament of grace, and the Spirit, inwardly working the benefit of grace, loosing the bond of guilt, reconciling the good of nature, regenerate in the one Christ the man begotten from the one Adam. The regenerating Spirit, therefore, is common to the elders who offer and to the little one offered and reborn; and so, through this fellowship of the one and the same Spirit, the will of those offering profits the little one offered. But when the elders sin against the little one, offering him and attempting to bind him with the sacrilegious bonds of demons, the soul of both is not common, so that they can also have guilt in common.

For guilt is not communicated through another's will in the same manner as grace is communicated through the unity of the Holy Spirit. For one and the same Holy Spirit can be in both this man and that, even if they do not know one another, through whom the grace of both is common; but the spirit of a man cannot be both this man's and that man's, through which, when one sins and the other does not sin, there might yet be guilt in common. And through this, a little one, once begotten of his parents' flesh, can be regenerated by the Spirit of God, so that the obligation contracted from them may be loosed; but one once regenerated by the Spirit of God cannot be regenerated from his parents' flesh, so that the obligation which has been loosed may again be contracted.

And therefore the little one does not lose the grace of Christ once received, except by his own impiety, if with the increase of age he should turn out so evil. For then he will begin to have his own sins also, which are not taken away by regeneration, but healed by another cure. Nevertheless, parents, or whatever elders, attempting to bind their sons or any little ones who have been baptized with the sacrileges of demons, are rightly called spiritual homicides. For in them indeed they do not commit slaying, but, as far as in them lies, they become slayers. Rightly is it said to them, when they are forbidden from this crime: 'Do not slay your little ones'; for the apostle also says:

'Quench not the Spirit' — not because He can be quenched, but because, as far as in them lies, those are deservedly called His quenchers who so act as to wish Him quenched. In this sense can rightly be understood what the most blessed Cyprian wrote in his epistle On the Lapsed, when, rebuking those who in the time of persecution had sacrificed to idols: 'And that nothing might be lacking,' he says, 'to the heap of the crime, the infants also, placed in or dragged by their parents' hands, lost as little ones that which they had obtained at the very first outset of their nativity.' They lost it, he said, as far as it pertained to the crime of those by whom they were compelled to lose it; they lost it in the mind and will of those who committed so great a wickedness against them.

For if they had lost it in their own persons, they would surely have remained, by the divine sentence, condemned without any defense. But if holy Cyprian had thought this, he would not have gone on at once to append their defense, saying: 'Will they not, when the day of judgment comes, say: We did nothing; nor did we of our own accord hasten to profane pollutions, forsaking the food and cup of the Lord; another's treachery destroyed us; we found our parents to be our murderers; they denied us the Church for a mother, they denied us the Lord for a father, so that, while as little ones, unforeseeing and ignorant of so great a crime, we were joined by others to a share in the offense, we were caught by another's fraud?' He would not have subjoined this defense unless he believed it most just and profitable for the little ones in the judgment of God. For if it is truly said:

'We did nothing; the soul that has sinned, it shall itself die,' then those will not perish under God's just judgment whom their parents, by their own wickedness, so far as concerns the parents themselves, have destroyed.

But as for that which is recorded in the same letter—that a certain little girl, left to her nurse by her parents in their flight amid the disturbance, and by that same nurse subjected to the sacrilegious rites of demons, when afterwards the Eucharist was brought to her in the church, spat it out with wondrous movements—this seems to me to have been done by divine agency for this reason: that the elders might not suppose they were committing no sin against the little ones by that iniquity, but might rather understand that through the child's action, which in a certain manner signified this, the bodies of those who could not yet speak were marvelously admonishing them what they themselves ought to do, who after so great a wickedness were rushing upon the saving sacraments, from which indeed they ought by penance to have abstained.

Nor, when divine providence works some such thing through infants, is it to be believed that they themselves do it with knowledge or reason. For, because God willed to restrain the madness of a certain prophet even by a speaking ass, the wisdom of asses is not therefore to be admired. Furthermore, if through an irrational animal something most like a man sounded forth—which is to be attributed to a divine miracle, not to an ass's heart—so too could the Almighty, through an infant's soul, not where there was no reason but where it was as yet dormant, show by its body's gesture what those ought to see to who had sinned both in themselves and in their little ones.

But since the infant does not revert into the parent, so as to be with him and in him one man, but is altogether another, having its own flesh and its own soul, the soul that has sinned, it shall itself die. Nor let this move you, that some bring little ones to receive baptism not with that faith by which they may be reborn by spiritual grace unto eternal life, but because they think that by this remedy they retain or recover temporal health. For they are not on that account left unregenerated because they are not offered by these with this intention; for through such persons the necessary ministries and words of the sacraments are performed, without which a little one cannot be consecrated.

But that Holy Spirit, who dwells in the saints—out of whom that one silvered dove is forged together by the fire of charity—works what he works even sometimes through the service of those who are not only simply ignorant but even damnably unworthy. For little ones are offered to receive spiritual grace not so much by those in whose hands they are borne (though also by these, if they too are good and faithful), as by the whole society of the saints and faithful. For they are rightly understood to be offered by all those to whom it is pleasing that they are offered, and by whose holy and undivided charity they are aided toward communion with the Holy Spirit. This, therefore, the whole mother Church does, which is in the saints.

She does it because, being whole, she brings forth all, and being whole, she brings forth each one. For if the sacrament of Christian baptism, since it is one and the same, avails even among heretics and suffices for consecration—although it does not suffice for participation in eternal life—which consecration indeed makes the heretic guilty, holding the Lord's mark outside the Lord's flock, yet sound doctrine admonishes that he is to be corrected, not consecrated again in the same way—how much more, in the Catholic Church, are grains to be purged carried even through the ministry of chaff, that through the threshing-floor as a medium they may be brought to the fellowship of the mass!

But I do not wish this to deceive you—that you should suppose the bond of guilt drawn from Adam cannot be broken otherwise than if the little ones are offered by their parents to receive the grace of Christ; for you write thus, saying: 'That, just as the parents were the authors unto their punishment, so likewise by the parents' faith they may be justified'—whereas you may see that many are offered not by their parents but even by any strangers, just as sometimes little slaves are offered by their masters. And sometimes, their parents being dead, little ones are baptized, offered by those who were able to show them this kind of mercy.

Sometimes too, those whom their parents have cruelly exposed are gathered up to be nourished by anyone at all, sometimes by consecrated virgins, and are offered by them for baptism—women who certainly neither have had any children of their own nor purpose to have any. And by this you see that nothing else is done here than what is written in the Gospel, when the Lord had asked who had been neighbor to the man wounded by robbers and left half-dead on the road; for the answer was: He who showed mercy on him. You seemed indeed to have proposed to me a most difficult question at the end of your inquiry, with that intention, namely, by which you are wont vehemently to guard against falsehood.

'If I set before you,' you say, 'a little one and ask whether, when he grows up, he will be chaste, or will not be a thief, you will without doubt answer: I do not know; and whether, being established in that same infant age, he thinks anything good or evil, you will say: I do not know. If, then, you dare promise nothing certain about his future morals and about his present thought, what is that, that when they are offered for baptism, on their behalf the parents answer as sureties and say that they are doing what that age cannot think, or, if it can, it is hidden? For we ask those by whom they are offered, and we say: Does he believe in God?—of that age which does not even know whether God exists; and they answer: He believes;

and thus is answer given to all the other several things that are done. Hence I marvel that in these matters parents answer so confidently on behalf of the little one, saying that he does such great goods, which at the hour when he is baptized the baptizer asks about; yet at that same hour, if I add: Will the one who is baptized be chaste, or will he not be a thief?—I do not know whether anyone dares to say either that any of these things will or will not be, as he answers me without hesitation that he believes in God and that he turns himself to God.' Then, concluding your writing, you add and say: 'To these questions, therefore, I beg you may deign to reply briefly, in such a way as not

prescribe to me from custom, but render a reason.' Having read and reread these letters of yours, and having considered them as far as the strait limits of time permitted, I recalled my friend Nebridius, who, since he was a most diligent and keen inquirer into obscure matters especially pertaining to the doctrine of piety, greatly hated a brief answer to a great question. And whoever demanded such a thing, he bore it most ill, and, if the person allowed, would restrain him with an indignant countenance and voice, reckoning him unworthy who would ask such things, when, of so great a matter, he knew not how many things might and ought to be said. But I am not angry with you as he was wont to be; for you are a bishop occupied with many cares, as I am;

whence neither is it easy for you to have leisure to read anything lengthy, nor for me to write it. For that youth of former days, who was unwilling to hear such things briefly and who inquired many things about me in our conversation, inquired as a man of leisure from a man of leisure; but you, now considering who you are and from whom you demand these things, bid me answer briefly on so great a matter. Behold, I do as much as I can; may the Lord help me, that I may be able to do what you ask. Surely we often speak in such a way that, as Easter draws near, we say the Lord's Passion is tomorrow or the day after, though he suffered so many years ago, and that Passion was accomplished only once. Surely on the Lord's Day itself we say: 'Today the Lord has risen,' though so many years have passed since he rose.

Why is no one so foolish as to charge us, when we speak thus, with having lied, except because we name these days according to the likeness of those on which these things were done, so that the day is called the very day which is not itself the same but is like it by the revolution of time, and it is said that on that day this happens—on account of the celebration of the sacrament—which did not happen on that day but was already done long ago? Was not Christ immolated once in his own person, and yet in the sacrament he is immolated for the peoples not only through all the solemnities of Easter but every day, and he assuredly does not lie who, when asked, answers that he is immolated? For if the sacraments did not have a certain likeness of those things of which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all.

But from this likeness they very often take the very names of those things themselves. As therefore, according to a certain manner, the sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, the sacrament of the blood of Christ is the blood of Christ, so the sacrament of faith is faith. But to believe is nothing else than to have faith. And accordingly, when it is answered that the little one believes, who does not yet have the disposition of faith, it is answered that he has faith on account of the sacrament of faith, and that he turns himself to God on account of the sacrament of conversion, because that very answer too pertains to the celebration of the sacrament—just as concerning baptism itself the Apostle says: We have been buried together with Christ through baptism into death; he does not say: 'We have signified burial,' but says outright:

We have been buried together. He therefore named the sacrament of so great a thing by no other term than that of the thing itself. And so the little one, although that faith which consists in the will of believers is not yet in him, is nonetheless already made faithful by the sacrament of faith itself. For as they are answered to believe, so also they are called faithful—not by assenting to the thing itself in mind, but by receiving the sacrament of the thing itself. But when a man begins to have understanding, he will not repeat that sacrament, but will understand it and will be fitted to its truth with a consenting will also.

So long as he cannot do this, the sacrament will avail for his protection against the adverse powers, and will so avail that, if before the use of reason he departs from this life, through the sacrament itself, with the charity of the Church commending him, he is by Christian aid delivered from that condemnation which entered into the world through one man. He who does not believe this and thinks it cannot come to pass is assuredly faithless, even though he have the sacrament of faith; and far better is that little one who, even if he does not yet have faith in his thought, yet does not set against it the obstacle of a contrary thought, whence he receives its sacrament to his salvation.

I have answered, as I think, your questions—as far as concerns those less capable and contentious, not enough; but as far as concerns those who are peaceable and understanding, perhaps more than enough. Nor have I set custom before you as my strongest excuse, but I have rendered, as I was able, the reason of a most wholesome custom. XCIX. TO THE MOST RELIGIOUS HANDMAID OF GOD, ITALICA, DESERVEDLY AND HOLILY PRAISEWORTHY AMONG THE MEMBERS OF CHRIST, AUGUSTINE: GREETING IN THE LORD. I had received three letters of your kindness when I wrote this in reply:

one, which still demanded my letters; another, which indicated that mine had already reached you; a third, which contained your most benevolent care for us, even concerning the house of the most distinguished and excellent young man Julian, which adjoins our walls. Having received this, I did not delay to answer at once, because your Excellency's agent wrote that he could quickly send it to Rome. By his letters we were gravely saddened, because he did not take care to inform us of what is being done there in the city or around the city, so that it might become certain to us what we were unwilling to believe on uncertain rumor. For by the letters of the brethren sent before, although grievous and hard things, yet much lighter, were reported.

I wondered indeed, more than can be told, that neither on so great an occasion of your people did the holy brother bishops write, nor did your letter intimate to us anything of your so great tribulations, which surely, through the bowels of charity, are ours as well—unless perhaps you did not think it should be done, because you judged it profited nothing, or you were unwilling to sadden us by your letters.

It profits something, as I judge, even to know these things: first, because it is unjust to be willing to rejoice with those who rejoice and unwilling to weep with those who weep; then, because tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope, and hope does not confound, because the charity of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Far be it, therefore, that we should refuse to hear even those things which are bitter and sad concerning our dearest ones. For in some way, I know not how, that which one member suffers becomes less if the other members suffer with it.

Nor is the relief of the evil itself brought about through the sharing of the calamity, but through the solace of charity, so that, although some suffer by bearing and others suffer-with by coming to know, yet the tribulation is common to those for whom the proof, the hope, the love, and the Spirit are common. But the Lord consoles us all, who both foretold these temporal evils and after these promised eternal goods. Nor ought he to be broken when he does battle who wills to be crowned after the battle; he flourishes green while he supplies strength to the contenders, who prepares ineffable gifts for the victors. Let not those replies of ours take from you the confidence of writing to us, especially since you have soothed our fear by no improbable defense.

We return greetings to your little ones, and we desire that they grow up for you in Christ, who already at this age discern how perilous and hurtful is the love of this world. And would that, when great and hard things are shaken, small and pliant things might be corrected. About that house, what shall I say, save that I give thanks for your most kindly care? For the one we are able to give, they do not want; but the one they do want, we cannot give. For it was not, as they falsely heard, left to the church by my predecessor, but is possessed among his ancient estates and adheres to another ancient church, just as this one which is in question adheres to another. C. TO THE DISTINGUISHED LORD, DESERVEDLY HONORABLE AND SIGNALLY PRAISEWORTHY SON DONATUS, AUGUSTINE: GREETING IN THE LORD.

I should indeed not wish the African church to be set in these afflictions, so as to need the aid of any earthly power. But because, as the Apostle says, there is no power but from God, without doubt, when it is succored through you, the most sincere sons of the Catholic mother, our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. For who would not perceive that, in such great evils, no small consolation has been sent us from God, when you, such a man and most loving of the name of Christ, have been raised on high with proconsular insignia, so that a power allied to your good will might restrain the enemies of the church from wicked and sacrilegious attempts? O distinguished lord, deservedly honorable and signally praiseworthy son.

In short, there is one thing only that we dread in your justice: lest perhaps, since whatever evil is committed against the Christian society by impious and ungrateful men is assuredly graver and more atrocious than if such things were committed against others, you too should judge it must be punished according to the enormity of the crimes and not rather according to the consideration of Christian gentleness. We beseech you, by Christ himself, that you not do this. For neither do we seek vengeance upon our enemies in this land, nor indeed ought the straits of soul which we suffer to constrain us so far that we forget what he has enjoined upon us, for whose truth and name we suffer: we love our enemies and we pray for them.

Wherefore, from the occasion of dread judges and laws, lest they fall into the penalties of the eternal judgment, we desire that they be corrected, not slain; nor do we wish discipline concerning them to be neglected, nor the punishments which are deserved to be exercised. So then restrain their sins in such a way that there be those who may repent of having sinned. We ask, therefore, that when you hear the causes of the church, however it may have been assailed or afflicted by whatever nefarious injuries you have learned, you forget that you have the power of killing, and do not forget our petition. Let it not be to you cheap or contemptible, honorably most beloved son, that we ask you that they not be killed, for whom we ask the Lord that they be corrected.

Apart also from the fact that we ought not to recede from our perpetual purpose of overcoming evil by good, let your prudence also consider this: that no one but ecclesiastics takes care to bring ecclesiastical causes before you. Accordingly, if you should think men must be killed in these matters, you will deter us from allowing anything of the sort to come to your judgment through our effort; and this once discovered, they, with the necessity forced upon us, will run riot to our destruction with a more licensed boldness, so that we choose even to be killed by them rather than to bring them to be killed by your judgments. This my admonition, petition, and entreaty, I beg you, do not receive disdainfully.

For I do not think that you fail to recall that I could have had great confidence toward you, and much loftier than you now are, even if I were not a bishop. Meanwhile, let the heretical Donatists quickly learn, through the edicts of your Excellency, that the laws passed against their error remain in force—laws which they now suppose to be of no avail, and boast of it—lest thus, in any measure, they be able to spare us.

But you will greatly aid our labors and perils, that they may be fruitful, if you take care that their most empty sect, most full of impious pride, be so repressed by the imperial laws that they do not seem to themselves or their own to be enduring any hardships whatever for truth and justice, but rather suffer those who, when this is sought from you, are convicted and instructed by the most manifest documents of certain facts in the records, whether of your Eminence or of the lesser judges—so that both they themselves, who are constrained at your command, may, if it can be done, bend their hard will unto the better, and may wholesomely read those documents to the rest. For a diligence is more burdensome than useful whereby, although a great evil is to be forsaken and a great good held fast, men are only forced, not taught. CI.

TO THE MOST BLESSED LORD, VENERABLY MOST DEAR AND MOST SINCERE, MOST LONGED-FOR BROTHER AND FELLOW-BISHOP MEMORIUS, AUGUSTINE: GREETING IN THE LORD. I ought not now to have sent any letter to your holy charity without these books, which by the right of holy love you most violently demanded of me, so that by this obedience at least I might answer your letters, by which you have deigned rather to burden than to honor me. Although where I succumb, because I am burdened, there too, because I am loved, I am lifted up. For I am not loved by just anyone—am lifted up, am chosen—but by that man and priest of the Lord, whom I perceive to be so accepted by God that, when you lift your soul, so good, up to the Lord, since you have me in it, you lift me up too.

I ought therefore now to have sent the books which I had promised I would emend, and I did not send them for this reason: because I did not emend them—not because I was unwilling, but because I could not, being occupied, evidently, with many cares and cares much prevailing. But it was too ungrateful and iron-hard that you, who so love us, should either not learn this holy brother and colleague of ours, Possidius—in whom you will find no small presence of ours—or should learn him without our letters. For he has been nourished through our ministry, not by those letters which the slaves of various lusts call liberal, but by the Lord's bread, as much as could be dispensed to him through our straits.

For what else is to be said to those who, though they are wicked and impious, seem to themselves liberally learned, except what we read in truly liberal letters: If the Son shall have freed you, then you shall be truly free? For through him it is granted that even those very disciplines which are called liberal by those who have not been called into liberty may be recognized as to what of the liberal they have in themselves. For neither do they have anything befitting liberty except what they have befitting truth. Whence that very Son says: And the truth shall free you.