Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 37/118

On receiving the letter of your Excellency, in which you have overthrown the worship of idols and the ceremonies of temples, I seemed to myself to hear the voice of a philosopher — not of him whom they recall sitting in the shadowy corners of the Lyceum of the Academy upon the ground, sunk in some deep meditation, his head drawn to his brow, wrapped up upon his knees, so that, a needy sort of caviller, he might assail the illustrious discoveries of another's teaching, and, though he defends nothing of his own, might accuse the things illustriously affirmed — but plainly, roused by your oration, there stood before my eyes Marcus

Tullius the consular, who, having preserved the lives of countless citizens, would bring the victorious standards of the forensic field, laurelled, before the astonished schools of Greece, and would turn that trumpet of his melodious voice and tongue — which, breathless, he had blown with the spirit of just indignation against the accused of crimes and against the parricides of the commonwealth — and, with the folded pages of its creases unloosed, imitating the fashion of a Greek cloak, would twist back his very toga. Therefore, when you were urging us toward the worship and religion of the most exalted God, I gladly hearkened; when you were persuading that the heavenly fatherland must be looked upon, I gratefully received it.

For you seemed to me to speak of that city not which some circuit of walls encloses, nor that which the discourse of philosophers, calling it worldly, professes to be common to all, but that in which the great God, and souls truly deserving in her, dwell and inhabit — which all laws seek after by diverse ways and paths, which we cannot express in speaking, though perhaps we may be able to find it in thinking.

Although this city, therefore, is to be sought and loved chiefly, yet I do not think that other one should be deserted, in which we were born and begotten, which first poured into us the use of this light, which nourished us, which brought us up — and, to say what pertains properly to the matter, concerning which most learned men declare that for men well deserving of her a dwelling is prepared in heaven after the death of the body, so that a certain promotion to the celestial realm is granted to those men who have deserved well of their native cities, and that those dwell the more with God who are shown to have given salvation to their fatherland either by counsels or by works.

As for that which you were pleased to say jestingly, that our city blazes not with arms but with flames and conflagrations, and breeds thorns rather than flowers — this is no very great reproach, since we know that flowers are for the most part produced from thorns. For who doubts that roses too are born from thorns, and that the very grain-crops are hedged about with a palisade of beards? So too sweet things are for the most part mingled with harsh. Lastly, it was in the letter of your Eminence that neither head nor blood was demanded in vindication for the Church, but that those men be despoiled of the things they most fear to lose.

But I, unless opinion deceives me, judge thus: that it is more grievous to be despoiled of one's goods than to be slain — since indeed, as you know is often repeated in letters, death takes away the sense of all evils, while a life of want brings forth everlasting calamity; for it is more grievous to live badly than to end evils by an evil death. This too the very method of your work indicates, in which you support the poor, relieve the sick by your care, apply medicine to afflicted bodies, and in short do all things by every means so that those condemned to it may not feel the long duration of calamity. But as regards the measure of the sins, it makes no difference what the sin may seem to be for which indulgence is sought.

For first of all, if repentance both grants pardon and cleanses the offence, then surely he repents who makes the plea, who clasps one's feet; and if, as some philosophers hold, all sins are equal, then indulgence ought to be common to all alike. Someone has spoken too wantonly—he has sinned; another has hurled insults or accusations—he has sinned no less; someone has plundered another's goods—it is counted among wrongdoings; another has violated places profane or sacred—he is not to be set apart from indulgence.

Finally, there would be no room for pardon unless sins came first.— Now, since I have replied at greater or lesser length, as they say, not as much as I ought but as much as I could, I beg and beseech you—would that I could do so in your presence, so that you might see even my tears—that you consider again and again, and give heed, to who you are, what you profess, what you do; consider what kind of city that is from which men are dragged off to be led to punishment; what the lamentation of the mothers, of the wives, of the children, of the parents; with what shame those set free but tortured can come home to their homeland; what griefs or groans the sight of wounds and scars renews.

And when you have weighed all these things, consider God first, and think of the good repute of men; seek rather a friendly kindness and a familiar bond, and win praise by forgiving rather than by avenging. And let this be said concerning those whom the true guilt of their own confession binds fast—those to whom indeed, by regard for the law (which I never cease to commend), you have granted pardon. But this other matter can scarcely be set forth: how great a cruelty it is to attack the innocent, and to summon to a capital trial those who are known to be free of the crime. And if it should happen that they are cleared, consider, I pray, from how great an odium the accusers will be delivered, when, defeated, they have of their own accord released the guilty and left the innocent untouched.

May God most high keep you and preserve you as a guard of His law and our ornament. CIV. TO MY MOST EXCELLENT LORD, DESERVEDLY HONOURABLE AND WORTHY OF ESTEEM, BROTHER NECTARIUS, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD. I have read the letter of your kindness, in which you replied to me long after I had given my own to be delivered to you. For I had written back while my holy brother and fellow-bishop Possidius was still with us and had not yet set sail; but this letter, which you deigned to deliver to him on my behalf, I received on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, nearly eight months after I had written. Why then my letters reached you so late, or yours reached me, I am wholly at a loss to know—unless perhaps it has now pleased your prudence to write back, when before you had scorned to do so.

If this is so, I wonder from what it comes. Or have you heard something that is still hidden from us—that my brother Possidius has obtained, against your citizens (whom, be it said with your leave, he himself loves far more wholesomely than you do) that they be punished more severely? For your letter too shows that you fear this, when you warn me to set before my eyes what kind 'that city is from which men are dragged off to be led to punishment; what the lamentation of the mothers, of the wives, of the children, of the parents; with what shame those set free but tortured can come home to their homeland; what griefs or groans the sight of wounds and scars renews.' Far be it from us that we should press—whether through ourselves or through anyone—that such things be inflicted upon any of our enemies;

but, as I said, if rumour has brought you any such report, set it forth more plainly, that we may know either what to do so that these things do not come to pass, or what we ought to reply to those who believe them. Look rather at my own letter, which you were loath to answer: for there I sufficiently expressed our mind. But, as I suppose, having forgotten what I wrote back to you, you reported to me things altogether different and unlike. For, as though recalling what I set down in my letter, you inserted into yours what I did not set down at all. For you say that this stood at the end of my letter: 'that neither the life nor the blood of anyone is demanded in the Church's vengeance, but that they should be stripped of the things they most fear to lose.'

Then, showing how great an evil this is, you add and weave in—unless my opinion deceives me—that you judge it 'a graver thing to be despoiled of one's possessions than to be slain.' And, to expound more plainly what possessions you meant, you go on and add that I know—being frequently reminded in letters—that 'death takes away the perception of all evils, but a life of want begets everlasting calamity.' Then you concluded that it is a graver thing to live amid evils than to end one's evils by death. And for my part, I do not recall having read anywhere—neither in our writings, to which I confess I applied my mind later than I could have wished, nor in yours, which I learned from my earliest age—that a life of want begets everlasting calamity.

For toilsome poverty has never been a sin, and it is in some measure a restraint and check upon sins. And therefore it is not to be feared that, after this brief life, this should avail towards the everlasting calamity of anyone's soul, namely that he has lived poor here; and in this very life which we pass on earth, there can in no way be any everlasting calamity, since the same life cannot be everlasting, which is not even long-lasting, to whatever age and old age it may attain. For this I rather read in those writings: that this very life which we enjoy is brief—in which you suppose, and, being (as you say) frequently reminded in letters, now warn, that there can be everlasting calamity;

but that death is the end of all evils—this indeed your writings do hold, yet not even all of them; for this is the opinion of the Epicureans, and of any others who think the soul mortal. But those whom Tully calls, as it were, 'consular philosophers'—because he sets great store by their authority—hold that when we complete our last day the soul is not extinguished but migrates; and they maintain further that its merits, whether good or evil, endure either unto blessedness or unto misery. This agrees also with the sacred writings, of which I desire to be a scholar.

Death, then, is the end of evils—but in those whose life is chaste, pious, faithful, and innocent; not in those who, burning with desire for temporal trifles and vanities, and though here they seem happy to themselves, are by the very perversity of their will convicted of being wretched, and after death are compelled not only to have but even to feel graver miseries.

Since, then, these things are frequently repeated both in certain of your writings (which you hold in greater honour) and in all of ours, O good lover even of your earthly homeland, fear for your fellow-citizens a life of luxury, not one of want; or, if you fear want, then rather warn them to shun that want which, though it flows round about with great abundance of earthly things, yet, by insatiably gaping after them, is (to use the words of your own authors) 'diminished neither by plenty nor by scarcity.'

Yet in that letter of mine, to which you replied, I did not say that your citizens, the Church's enemies, are to be amended by that destitution in which the necessities of nature are lacking—destitution which mercy relieves, and concerning which you thought fit even to lecture us, saying that the reckoning of our works shows this, by which we support the poor, relieve the sick with care, and apply medicine to afflicted bodies (although even so it is more profitable to be in want than to abound in all things for the satisfying of wickedness); but far be it from me to have judged that those of whom we treat should be reduced by that restraint to such hardship.

Read over my letter again, if indeed you thought it worthy—if not worthy that you should re-read it when it had to be answered, at least worthy that you should so put it aside that it might be produced for you at your command, whenever you wished—and attend to what I said. You will surely find something to which, as far as I judge, you will confess that you did not reply. For from that letter I now insert my own words: 'We do not,' I say, 'strive to feed our anger by avenging past deeds, but we are earnestly busy in mercifully providing for the future. Evil men have wherein they may be chastised by Christians not only gently but even usefully and wholesomely; for they have this, that they live sound in body; they have that whereby they live; they have that whereby they live wickedly. Let the first two remain safe, so that there may be those who repent;

this we desire, this, as far as lies in us, we press for even with expended labour. But the third, if the Lord shall will it to be cut away as rotten and harmful, He will punish most mercifully.' If you had reviewed these words of mine when you deigned to write back to me, you would think that we ought to be entreated, not so much dutifully as invidiously, to spare from death and even from bodily losses those on whose behalf you plead—those of whom I said that we wish to be safe in them that which is their living sound in body; nor would you have feared on our account a life of want for them, such that they should need sustenance imparted by others. And of them I said that we wish that second thing also to be safe, namely that they have wherewith to live.

But the third—that whereby they live wickedly—that is, to say no more, at least that whereby they fashioned silver images of false gods, for the keeping or the worshipping or the still practising with sacrilegious rite of which they burst out even to the burning of the Church of God, and offered up the supports of the most devout poor to be plundered by an unhappy mob, and blood to be shed—this, you who take counsel for your city, why do you fear should be cut away, lest by all means, through pernicious impunity, a reckless boldness be nourished and strengthened? Explain this to us, teach us by careful argument what evil there is in it; attend diligently to what we say, lest what we say to you should seem, under a certain guise of petitioning, to be cast as an oblique accusation.

Let your citizens be honest, of upright morals, not of superfluous wealth; we do not wish them to be brought by us, through any restraint, to the plough of Quintius and the hearth of Fabricius—by which poverty those chieftains of the Roman commonwealth were not only not held cheap by their fellow-citizens, but were on that very account especially dearer to them and more fit for governing the resources of the homeland. Nor even do we desire or aim at this, that of the rich of your homeland there should remain that ten pounds of silver plate of the twice-consul Rufinus, which then, by praiseworthy severe censure, was judged as still to be cut away, as a vice.

Only, the custom of a degenerate age persuades us to handle more gently souls grown all too soft, so that what to those censors seemed just should to Christian gentleness seem too much; and you see how great a difference there is whether a fault is already to be punished merely to have so much, or whether, on account of other most grievous faults, one should be permitted to have so much. What was then already a sin, we now wish to be at least the penalty of sin. But there is something that can and ought to be done, so that severity should not proceed even to such extremes, nor over-secure impunity rejoice and run riot, and set an example of imitation for the unhappy, leading to the most grievous and most hidden punishments.

At least grant this, that those who contrive to burn and lay waste our necessities should fear for their own superfluities. Let it be permitted to bestow this benefit too upon our enemies: that, while they fear for the things which it is no harm to lose, they should not attempt to commit what is harmful to themselves. For this is not to be called the punishment of sin, but the safeguarding of counsel; it is not to inflict torment, but to fortify against incurring torment. Whoever deprives an imprudent person, with some sense of pain, lest, grown accustomed to needless crimes, he should one day pay the most atrocious penalties—he plucks a boy's hair lest the boy clap his hands at serpents; and so, where love is troublesome, no limb is injured, whereas that from which it deters imperils health and life.

We are not benefactors when we do what is asked of us, but when we do what does not harm the petitioners. For in very many cases we do good by not giving, and would do harm if we gave. Hence that proverb: 'Nor a sword to a boy.' 'Nay,' says Tully, 'not even to an only son.' For the more we love anyone, the less ought we to entrust to him in matters where sinning is fraught with great danger. And, if I mistake not, when he said this he was speaking of riches. Accordingly, things which are entrusted with peril to those who use them ill are often, and wholesomely, withdrawn. Physicians, when they see that rottenness must be cut and cauterized, often turn a merciful deaf ear to many tears.

If, as often as we, when small or even somewhat grown, entreated pardon for our wrongdoings, we had as often obtained it from our parents or teachers, which of us would have grown up to be tolerable? Which of us would have learned anything useful? Such things are done providently, not cruelly. Do not, I beg, in this cause aim at nothing else than how you may bring it about among us that you obtain what your people ask of you; but weigh all things diligently. If you neglect the past, which cannot now be made not to have happened, look ahead somewhat to the future; attend prudently not to what those who entreat you desire, but to what is expedient for them. Truly we are not proved to love them faithfully if we look only to this, that by not doing what they demand, the love in which they hold us should not be diminished;

and where is that which your own writings too praise—the ruler of a homeland who takes counsel rather for the people's benefit than for their will? 'It makes no difference,' you say, 'what kind the sin may seem to be, when indulgence is sought.' You would say this rightly, if the question were of punishing men, not of correcting them. For far be it from a Christian heart to be swept off, by lust for vengeance, to the punishment of anyone; far be it, in remitting anyone's sin, either not to anticipate the prayers of the petitioner or at least to follow them at once; but this indeed—that one may not hate the man, may not render evil for evil, may not be inflamed with the ardour of harming, may not desire to feed on vengeance even lawfully owed—yet not that one should fail to take counsel, to look ahead, to restrain men from evils.

For it can happen that by opposing too vehemently one may neglect the amendment of a man whom he too grievously hates, and that by some troublesome dealing one may make better, through restraint, the man whom he most loves. For repentance too, as you write, obtains pardon and cleanses the offence—but that repentance which is enacted in true religion, which considers the coming judgement of God; not that which is displayed or feigned to men for the hour, not that the soul may be cleansed from wrongdoing unto eternity, but that a life soon to perish may for the time be freed from the present fear of trouble.

Hence it is that, for the Christians who confessed and entreated—those who had been implicated in that wrongdoing either by not coming to the aid of the Church as it was about to burn, or by carrying off something from those most wicked plunderings—we believed that the pain of repentance was fruitful, and reckoned it sufficient for their correction that there is in their hearts the faith by which they could consider what they ought to dread concerning the divine judgement. But what repentance can heal those who not only neglect to acknowledge the very fountain of indulgence, but do not even cease to mock and blaspheme it?

And yet against these too we do not retain enmities in our heart—which lies open and bare to Him whose judgement, both in the present and in the future life, we fear, and whose help we hope for. But we think that we too provide something even for them, if men who do not fear God should fear something whereby not their benefit is harmed but their vanity is chastened; lest by them God Himself, whom they scorn, should through harmful security be more grievously offended by bolder deeds; and lest that same security should be set before others for imitation far more perniciously. In short, on behalf of those for whom we are entreated by you, we entreat God for them, that He may turn them to Himself, that, cleansing their hearts by faith, He may teach them to perform a true and wholesome repentance.

Behold how much—be it said with your leave—more orderly and more usefully than you do we love those with whom you suppose us to be angry, on whose behalf we entreat both for the avoiding of so much greater evils and for the attaining of so much greater goods. If you too loved them, out of the heavenly gift of God and not after the earthly manner of men, and were sincerely writing back to me that, when I urged you to the worship and religion of the most exalted God, you gladly gave ear, you would not only wish these things for them, but would yourself go before them to these things. Thus the whole business of your petition would with us be brought to an end with great and sound joy;

thus you would earn that heavenly homeland which, when I urged that it should be contemplated, you said you gladly received—earn it also out of the true and pious love of this homeland which begot you after the flesh, truly taking counsel for your own not unto the vanity of temporal gladness nor unto the most pernicious impunity of crime, but unto the grace of everlasting felicity. You have set forth, in this cause, the thoughts and desires of my breast. But what lies hidden in the counsel of God, I confess—I am a man—I do not know; yet most certainly I know that, whatever it is, it is more just and more wise, and most firmly established with incomparable excellence above all the minds of men. For it is true, that which is read in our books:

'Many are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but the counsel of the Lord abides for ever.' Accordingly, what time may bring, what facility or difficulty may arise for us, what turn of will, in the end, may suddenly come to be out of the correction or the hope of present affairs; whether God is so displeased at these deeds that they should be punished more severely by that very impunity they seek, or should in the manner that pleases us be judged mercifully to be restrained; or whether, by some sharper but more wholesome correction going before them, and by a true conversion not to the mercy of men but to His own mercy, He may turn away whatever of terror was being prepared and turn it into joy—this He Himself already knows, but we do not know.

Why then should I and your excellency here labour in vain among ourselves before the time? Let us set aside for a little the care whose hour has not come, and, if you please, let us do that which always presses upon us. For there is no time in which it is not fitting and needful to do that whereby we may please God—which, in this life, up to that perfection that no sin at all should be in a man, either cannot be fulfilled or is perhaps most difficult. Therefore, all delays being cut off, we must flee for refuge to His grace, to whom can most truly be said what was said, in a flattering song, to some nobleman or other, who yet confessed that he had received it from the Cumaean, as it were prophetic, song:

'Under thy leadership, if any traces of our guilt remain, they shall, being made void, release the lands from perpetual dread.' For under this Leader, when all sins are loosed and dismissed, by this way one comes to the heavenly homeland—by whose habitation, when I commended it to you as worthy of your love as much as I could, you were much delighted. But because you said that all laws seek it by diverse ways and paths, I fear lest perhaps, while you suppose that even the way in which you now stand tends thither, you should be too slothful to hold to that way which alone leads there. Yet again, attending diligently to the word you set down, I seem to myself not imprudently to lay open your meaning.

For you did not say that all laws by diverse ways and paths 'attain' or 'point out' or 'find' or 'enter upon' or 'obtain' it, or anything of that sort, but by saying 'seek after,' with a word weighed and pondered, you signified not the attainment but the desire of attaining. Thus you neither excluded that way which is true, nor admitted the others which are false; for that way too seeks it, which leads thither, and not every way that seeks this leads thither. And whoever is led thither is, without any doubt, blessed; but we all wish to be blessed—that is, we seek after it—and yet not all of us who wish can, that is, we do not all attain what we seek after.

He therefore attains it who holds the way not only whereby he seeks it, but whereby also one arrives; leaving others on the roads of seeking without end of attaining—since there would be no error if nothing were sought after, nor if, once the truth were sought after, it were held. But if you spoke of diverse ways in such a sense that we should not understand them as opposed—just as we speak of diverse precepts, all of which nevertheless build up a good life, some concerning chastity, some patience, some faith, some mercy, and whatever others there be—then that homeland is not only sought after by ways and paths thus diverse, but is even found. For in the holy Scriptures both 'ways' are read and a 'way': ways, as in that passage:

'I will teach the wicked thy ways, and the ungodly shall be converted unto thee'; a way, as in that: 'Lead me in thy way, and I will walk in thy truth'—those ways are not other, this way another, but all are one, of which in another place the same holy Scripture says: 'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.' And if these things be diligently considered, they beget a copious discourse and a most delightful understanding; but this, if need be, I will defer to another time. But now, what I judge to be sufficient in the office I have undertaken of writing back to your excellency—since Christ said:

'I am the way'—it is in Him that mercy and truth are to be sought, lest, if we seek elsewhere, we go astray, holding a way that seeks but does not also lead through—as if we should wish to hold this very thing whereof you made mention, that all sins are equal. Would this not send us far off as exiles from that homeland of truth and blessedness? For what more absurd, what more insane, can be said than that he who has laughed somewhat too immoderately, and he who has more savagely burned down a homeland, should be judged to have sinned equally?

This way—which you, following the opinion of certain philosophers, thought should be applied, not as a way diverse yet leading to the heavenly habitation, but as plainly perverse, leading to the most pernicious error, and applied not out of your own conviction but for the cause of your citizens—so that we should thus forgive those by whose raging fires the Church was burned, in the same manner as we would forgive if we were attacked by them with some wanton insult. But see how you have propounded this: 'And if, as pleases certain philosophers,' you say, 'all sins are equal, indulgence ought to be common to all.' Then, when you as it were endeavour to show that all sins are equal, you subjoin and say: 'Someone has spoken too wantonly—he has sinned;

he has hurled insults or accusations—he has sinned equally.' This is not to teach, but to propound, without any building-up of proofs, what is perversely opined. For to this, that you say 'he has sinned equally,' it is quickly answered: he has not sinned equally. You will demand, perhaps, that I prove it: but have you already proved that he sinned equally? Or must that be heard which you join on: 'Someone has plundered another's goods—it is counted among wrongdoings'? Here even you yourself have felt shame; for you were ashamed to say that he sinned equally, but 'it is counted,' you say, 'among wrongdoings.'