And so, in the confidence of your unanimity, which we must look up to, we have even dared to write to him himself, presuming that through you we may be both excused for our inexperience and commended to his charity—as also to all the saints, by whose offices, even in their absence, you have deigned to keep us safe, doubtless meaning to care for us with equal affection, so that through your holiness they may be greeted in turn by our services, both the companions in the clergy of your holiness and the emulators of your faith and virtue in the monasteries. For although you act among the peoples and over the people, feeding the sheep of the Lord's pasture, a watchful shepherd on anxious vigils, yet by the renunciation of the world and the repulse of flesh and blood you have made yourself a desert, set apart from the many, called among the few.
Indeed, by a vicarious office to some extent—though in all things unequal to you—I have, as you had bidden, provided that history of Eusebius, the venerable bishop of Constantinople, concerning all the ages. But in this there was a delay in complying, because, at your instruction, since I did not myself have this codex, I found it at Rome with our truly most holy kinsman Domnio, who without doubt more readily obeyed me in this benefit, which I indicated was to be conveyed to you. Yet nevertheless, because you deigned to signify to me also your locations, as you yourself advised, I have written to the venerable partner of your crown, our father Aurelius, so that, if you should now be residing at Hippo Regius, he might deign to send you our letters and the parchment transcribed at Carthage.
This also we asked of the holy men whom we came to know through your discourse as an index of their charity—Comes and Euodius—that they themselves would take care to write, lest either the codex should be too long lacking to our kinsman Domnio, or, once transmitted to you, it should remain without the necessity of being returned. But especially this I ask of you, since you have filled me, undeserving and unexpecting, with a great love of yourself: that in return for this history of the times you would relate to me the whole history of your holiness, so that you might set forth 'who your race, and whence' you are, called by the Lord from so great a home, by what beginnings, separated from your mother's womb, you passed over to the mother of the sons of God rejoicing in offspring, having abjured the stock of flesh and blood, and were translated into a royal and priestly race.
As for what you have indicated—that you had already learned of our humble name at Milan when you were being initiated there—I confess that I wish to learn it more inquisitively, so that I may know you in every part, and rejoice the more if, through my having received our father Ambrose, you were either invited to the faith or consecrated to the priesthood by him, so that we may seem both to have the same author. For I, although baptized by Delphinus at Bordeaux, and ordained by Lampius at Barcelona in Spain through the sudden violence of an inflamed populace, was nevertheless always nurtured toward the faith by Ambrose's love, and am now cherished in the ordination of my priesthood. In short, he wished to claim me for his own clergy, so that, even though I dwell in different places, I might be reckoned his presbyter.
But that you may not be ignorant of anything about me, know that I, a most ancient sinner, was not so long ago led forth from darkness and the shadow of death to breathe the breath of the air of life, nor did I so long ago set my hand to the plough and take up the Lord's cross; wherefore, that we may be able to carry it through to the end, may we be aided by your prayers. This reward will be added to your merits, if by your intercession you relieve our burdens. For the holy man, aiding one who labors—since we dare not call him brother—shall be exalted like a great city. And you indeed are a city built upon a mountain, or a lamp kindled upon a lampstand, shining forth with a sevenfold brightness; but we lie hidden beneath the bushel of our sins.
Visit us with your letters, and bring forth into the light—you who yourself dwell conspicuous above the golden lampstands; your utterances will be a light to our paths, and with the oil of your lamp our head shall be anointed; and faith shall be kindled when from the spirit of your mouth we have taken food for the mind and light for the soul. May the peace and grace of God be with you, and may the crown of righteousness abide for you in that Day, lord and father deservedly most beloved, venerable and most longed-for.
We ask with much affection and homage to greet the blessed companions and emulators of your holiness, our brothers in the Lord—if they will deign it—both in the churches and in the monasteries at Carthage, Tagaste, Hippo Regius, and in all your parishes, and in every place known to you throughout Africa, who serve the Lord in the catholic manner. If you receive that parchment of holy Domnio, may you deign to send it back to us transcribed. And this too I ask you to write to me: which hymn of mine you have recognized. We have sent to your holiness a single loaf, for the sake of the grace of unity, in which also the solidity of the Trinity is contained. This loaf you will make a eulogia by deigning to partake of it. XXV. To his lord, brother of one mind and venerable, Augustine—Paulinus and Therasia, sinners.
The love of Christ, which constrains us and, though we are absent, binds us together through the unity of faith, has itself, once shame was driven away, granted me the confidence to write to you, and through your letters has brought you deep into my heart—those letters which, overflowing both from the resources of learning and sweet with heavenly honeycombs, I keep for the present in five books as physicians and nurses of my soul; which we received by the gift of our blessed and venerable bishop Alypius, not only for our own instruction, but also for the benefit of the church of many cities.
These books, therefore, I now have for my reading; in them I delight; from them I take food—not that which perishes, but that which works the substance of eternal life through our faith, by which we are incorporated in Christ Jesus our Lord, when our faith, which, neglecting things visible, gazes eagerly upon things invisible, is strengthened by the letters and examples of the faithful, believing all things according to the truth of the almighty God through charity. O truly salt of the earth, by which our inmost hearts are seasoned, lest they be able to vanish away in the error of the world!
O lamp worthily set above the lampstand of the church, which, pouring forth over the catholic cities from your sevenfold wick a light fed with the oil of gladness, scatter—though thick—the mists of the heretics, and by the splendor of your illuminating discourse clear away the light of truth from the confusion of the shadows! You see, brother of one mind, admirable in Christ the Lord and worthy to be received, how familiarly I have come to know you, with how great astonishment I marvel, with how great love I embrace you—I who daily enjoy the conversation of your letters and feed upon the breath of your mouth. For I might rightly call your mouth a pipe of living water and a vein of the eternal fountain, since in you Christ has become a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life.
For desire of him my soul has thirsted within you, and my land has longed to be made drunk with the abundance of your river. And therefore, since with this Pentateuch of yours against the Manichaeans you have armed me sufficiently, if you have prepared any defenses against the other enemies of the catholic faith as well—since our enemy, who has 'a thousand arts of doing harm,' must be attacked with weapons as various as the snares with which he assails—I beg you, do not refuse to bring forth for me from your armory and to bestow upon me the arms of righteousness. For I am, even now, a laborious sinner under a great burden, a veteran in the number of sinners, but to the eternal King a new recruit of the incorporeal warfare. The wisdom of the world I have hitherto, wretch that I am, admired, and through useless letters and reprobate prudence I have been foolish and mute toward God.
After I had grown old among my enemies and vanished away in my own thoughts, I lifted my eyes unto the mountains, gazing up to the precepts of the Law and the gifts of grace, whence my help came from the Lord, who, not requiting me according to my iniquities, enlightened the blind, loosed the fettered, and humbled the one wrongly upraised, that he might raise up the one piously humbled. I follow, therefore, though with steps not yet even, the great footprints of the just, if by your prayers I may be able to lay hold of that in which by God's mercies I have been laid hold of. Rule, then, a little one crawling uncertainly, and teach him to walk in your steps. For I would not have you consider me according to the age of my bodily birth rather than of my spiritual rising up.
For my age according to the flesh is now that at which he was who was healed by the apostles at the Beautiful Gate by the power of the word. But in the nativities of that soul, the time of infancy is still upon me—that soul which, offered up amid the wounds inflicted for Christ, ran before with worthy blood as a victim, and inaugurated the Lord's passion. And therefore, as one who is still an infant and suckling in the word of God and in spiritual age, nourish with your words me who gape for the breasts of faith, wisdom, and charity. If you consider our common office, you are a brother; if you consider the maturity of your intellect and senses, you are a father to me, even though you may perhaps be younger in years, since your gray-headed prudence has advanced you, even young, to the maturity of merit by the honor of elders.
Cherish me therefore and strengthen me in the sacred letters and spiritual studies—me who am, as I said, newly come to them, and on this account, after long dangers, after many shipwrecks, still raw in practice, scarcely yet emerging from the waves of the world; do you, who now stand upon the firm shore, receive me with your whole bosom, that in the harbor of salvation, if you judge me worthy, we may sail together. Meanwhile, sustain me by your prayers as by a plank, as I strive to escape from the perils of this life and from the deep of sins, that I may come out of this world naked as from a shipwreck.
For this very reason I have taken care to lighten myself of my baggage and to strip off the garments that weigh me down, so that I might swim through this billowing sea of the present life—which, by our intervening sins barking between, separates us from God—unencumbered of all clothing of the flesh and care of the following day, at the command and with the aid of Christ. Nor do I boast that I have accomplished it, for even if I could boast, I would boast in the Lord, whose it is to accomplish what lies within our power to will; but my soul still desires to long for the judgments of the Lord. See when he attains the effect of God's will, who still desires even to desire it. Yet as much as is in me, I have loved the beauty of the holy house, and, as far as was in me, I had chosen to be an outcast in the house of the Lord.
But he who was pleased to separate me from my mother's womb and from the friendship of flesh and blood, and to draw me to his grace, was likewise pleased to raise me up, destitute of every good of mind, from the earth, and to lead me out of the pit of miseries and from the mire of the dregs, that he might set me with the princes of his people and place my portion in your lot, so that, by your bestowing it, I might be made equal, joined to you in the office of merits. Not, therefore, by my own presumption, but by the pleasure and ordinance of the Lord, claiming for myself a covenant of your brotherhood, I—unworthy of so great an honor—deem myself worthy, because I know for certain, on account of your holiness, that you—for you are wise with truth—do not set your mind on high things, but consort with the humble.
And therefore I hope that you will receive the charity of our humility promptly and inwardly, which indeed I trust that you have already received through the most blessed priest Alypius—since he deigns it—our father. For he, without doubt, has given you an example from himself of loving us before we were known and beyond our deserving—he who was able, by the spirit of true love, which everywhere both penetrates and pours itself out, both to see us in loving, though we were unknown to him and separated only by the intervening space of land or sea, and to reach us in addressing us. He gave us here the first proofs of his affection and the pledges of your charity in the aforesaid gift of the books.
And with how great expense of effort he strove that we might not be able to love only moderately your holiness—made known to us not by his own words alone, but more fully by your eloquence and faith—with just as great care we believe he took, that in turn, by imitation of him, you might love us very greatly. May the grace of God be with you, and abide, as it is, unto eternity, we pray, brother of one mind in Christ the Lord, venerable, most longed-for. We greet with the utmost affection of a single-minded brotherhood your whole household and every companion and emulator of your holiness in the Lord. We ask that you bless by accepting the single loaf which we have sent to your charity as a token of oneness of mind. XXVI. Scarcely have I found an occasion for writing to you. Who would believe it? Yet I must nevertheless believe Licentius.
I do not wish you to pry into the causes and reasons, which, even if they could be given, I do not owe to the faith by which you trust me. For I did not even receive your letters through those by whom I could return what was written. But what you asked me to ask, I have seen to by letter, as far as it seemed fit to bring forward; but what I have accomplished, you shall see. And if it has not yet been accomplished, either, when I learn of it, I shall act more insistently, or, when you yourself again remind me. Thus far let me have spoken with you of the things that clamor with the chains of this life; now receive in a few words the ardors of my heart concerning your hope—not the transitory one—namely, that in a certain way a road may lie open for you unto God.
My Licentius, again and again I fear for you—who refuse and dread the fetters of wisdom—lest you be most powerfully and most ruinously fettered by mortal things. For wisdom, whomever she has first bound and tamed with certain training labors, she afterward looses, and gives herself to the freed for their enjoyment; and those whom she has first instructed with temporal bonds, she will afterward bind with eternal embraces, than which bond nothing can be conceived either more delightful or more solid. These first bonds I confess to be somewhat hard; but those last I would call neither hard, because they are most sweet, nor soft, because they are most firm. What then, save that which cannot be spoken, yet can nevertheless be believed and hoped and loved?
But the bonds of this world have a real harshness, a false pleasantness; a certain sorrow, an uncertain delight; hard labor, a fearful rest; a thing full of misery, an empty hope of blessedness. Into these do you insert both neck and hands and feet, when you both aspire to be subjected to honors of this kind, and think your deeds not otherwise fruitful, and are ambitious to cling to that whither you ought to have gone not only not invited, but not even compelled? Here perhaps you will give me the answer of Terentius's slave: 'Aha! Do you pour out words here, O wisdom?' Take it, then, that I may pour out rather than pour away. Or if I sing, but you dance to another tune, not even so do I repent.
For the singing itself has its own gladness, even when it moves no limbs to it, when it is sung to one full of the modulation of charity. Certain words in your letters moved me, but to treat of these, while care for your deeds and your whole life burns me up, I judged unfitting. If your verse were made perverse by disordered measures, if it did not stand by its own laws, if it offended the hearer's ear with unequal measures, you would certainly be ashamed, and would neither defer nor desist until you had ordered, corrected, established, and made even your verse, by learning and practicing the metrical art with the keenest zeal and any labor whatsoever. What then?
When you yourself, being disordered, are made perverse—when you yourself do not stand by the laws of your God, nor in the conduct of life harmonize with the honorable vows of your own people and with this very learning of yours—do you think it should be cast behind your back and neglected? As if you were of less worth to yourself than the sound of your tongue, and as if the fact that you offend the ears of God with disordered morals were a lighter thing than if the authority of grammar were to grow angry at your disordered syllables. You write: 'O if only the dawn of former days would recall for me, with her gladdening wheels, the suns that are past, which, free of care, we spent together, essaying idle leisure and the bright rights of the good, in the midst of Italy and among the high mountains! Neither would the harsh chills of hoar-frost keep me back, nor a fierce storm, the West Wind and the roarings of the North, but that I would press upon your footsteps with anxious pace.'
'Only that you might command this work.' Wretched me, if I do not command, if I do not compel and enjoin, if I do not ask and entreat! But if your ears are closed against my words, let them lie open to your own mouth, let them lie open to your own poem; hear yourself, O most hard, most savage, most deaf one. Of what use to me is a golden tongue and an iron heart? With what songs, but rather with what lamentations, shall I be able to bewail your songs, in which I see what a soul, what a genius, it is not permitted me to lay hold of and to offer up to our God? Do you wait for me to command that you be good, be quiet, be blessed? As if any day dawned upon me more welcome than that I might enjoy your genius in the Lord—or as if you truly did not know that I hunger and thirst for you, or as if in this very poem you did not confess it.
Recall the mind with which you wrote these things; now tell me: 'Only that you might command this work.' Behold my command: give me yourself, if this is so great a work; give yourself to my Lord, who is Lord of us all, who gave you that genius. For what am I, but your servant through him, and your fellow-servant under him? Or does he himself not command? Hear the Gospel. Jesus, it says, stood and cried out: 'Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.'
If these things are not heard, or are heard only as far as the ears, do you wait, Licentius, for Augustine to command his fellow-servant, and not rather to lament that his Lord commands in vain—nay, does not command, but invites and in a certain way entreats, that those who labor may be refreshed by him? But no doubt, to your most strong and overconfident neck, the yoke of the world is pleasanter than the yoke of Christ. Yet if he compelled us to labor, see who it is that would compel, and with what reward he would compel. Go into Campania, learn Paulinus, that distinguished and holy servant of God, how great a pride of this world he shook off without hesitation with a neck all the more noble as it was the more humble, that he might subject it to the yoke of Christ, as indeed he did subject it; and now, with him as guide of his journey, quiet and modest, he exults.
Go, learn with what resources of genius he offers to him the sacrifices of praise, pouring back to him whatever good he has received from him, lest he lose all if he do not lay it up again in him from whom he has these things. Why do you seethe? Why do you toss? Why do you lend your ear to the imaginings of deadly pleasures and turn it away from us? They lie, they die, they drag into death. They lie, Licentius—so may the truth lie open to us by reason, as you wish, so may it flow more than the Eridanus. Nothing speaks truth but the Truth: Christ is the Truth; let us come to him, that we may not labor. That he himself may refresh us, let us take his yoke upon us and learn of him, for he is meek and humble of heart, and we shall find rest for our souls. For his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
The devil seeks to be adorned by you. If you had found a golden cup in the earth, you would give it to the church of God. You have received from God a genius spiritually golden, and from it you minister to your lusts, and in it you pledge your very self as a toast to Satan! Do not, I beseech you; so may you one day perceive with what a wretched and pitiable heart I have written these things, and may you at last pity me, if you have made yourself cheap to yourself. 'Searching out the arcane path of profound Varro, my mind grows dull and, terrified, flees the opposing light. Nor is it any wonder; for all my care for reading lies prostrate, you not lending a hand, and it fears to rise alone.'
For as soon as love urged me to unroll the intricate compendia of so great a man and to touch upon his sacred meanings—he who gave to that One the number of tones and expounded that the world sings to the Thunderer and drives its balanced dances—it entangled my breast in a manifold darkness, and the violence of things drew a cloud over my mind; thence, mad, I ask for the forms of figures set down without dust, and I strike against other heavy shadows; and, to sum up, the causes and bright courses of the stars, whose obscure positions he shows through the clouds. Thus I lay, wavering, in such utter ruin that neither he who forbids us to know the hidden places of heaven, nor the person of the departed, entrusted to the caverns of the deep, would give it.
For the fables of the ancient Pelasgians tell of Proteus, who, when he is unwilling to open up the future to the anxious, foams as a boar, ends as a wave, roars as a lion, hisses as a snake—yet, once caught, is turned into small gifts of birds. But I, who am too much tormented by heavier cares, seek out all sweet things for the soul, half-sweet fodder; Varro's answers lie hidden. What guardian or nymph should I ask with suppliant chant, what streams should I demand? Or should I call you with my voice, whom the ruler of bright Olympus set over the fountains of infants and bade to belch forth from the hidden abundance of the mind streams that flow afar? Bring your aid at once, O master, do not desert my feeble strength, and begin with me to overturn the sacred clods; for the time, unless mortal things deceive me, slips away and drags on into old age.
For you our Apollo fills the heart, and reconciles his own Father and the Father of the gods, and shows the good law and the bloody peace, and, the veil once drawn aside, lays open each thing. For you had perhaps measured out twenty long circuits of the sun, when the most beautiful reason of the world, richer than empires and sweeter than all nectar, seized you as you wandered, and set you and placed you in the midst, whence you might direct your gaze to all things. O good one, take up the journey of the years; how greatly wisdom grows by love of itself, ever finding new summits! Go on the way by which the illustrious offspring of the Thunderer leads you, leveling steep places into flat plains. And when evening has deferred the light-bringing stars unto their risings, and you have blessed the holy fire above, be mindful yourself of me.
You who set your thirsty ear to the unconquered laws, beat your breasts with your palms, stretch your limbs upon the ground, rouse up the sorrows you have deserved, and forbid the wicked deed. God commands one thing to all, the bishop admonishes, and the coming thunderbolts strike terror. O if only the dawn of former days would recall for me, with her gladdening wheels, the suns that are past, which, free of care, we spent together, essaying idle leisure and the bright rights of the good, in the midst of Italy and among the high mountains! Neither would the harsh chills of hoar-frost keep me back, nor a fierce storm, the West Wind and the roarings of the North, but that I would press upon your footsteps with anxious pace. Only that you might command this work: let gore drench my limbs, at the solstice I will follow the Neuri, in winter the Hister.
The unknown Garamantian will loose for me the bonds of his nation, and, fleeing the Exampaean lakes, the Hypanian river will resound foaming to the Scythian waves of the Callipidae. We shall go even to the Leuci, where Leucia stretches toward the risings of the sun, and to the deserted summits of vast Casius—Cassian, which likens to itself the Epidaphnaean crags—whence I might see the resting dawn and the loosed chariots and the day lulled to sleep at midnight; at your persuasion I will seek it, for no toil or any fear terrifies, where God hears the innocent with open prayers. And now the seats of the sons of Romulus and the empty heights of Remus, the revel-mad houses and the vain tumults, I would desert, and would come whole, once for all, into your heart, did not my mind, bent upon marriage, hold me back as I go.
Believe my ills, O learned one, and my true grief, that without you the sails promise no harbors, and we wander far over the troubled seas of life, headlong like sailors in a thick fog, whom the shrieking southern fury and the blast from Eurus have struck, and the whirlwind has robbed of their captains snatched away; forthwith the wretches are rolled in the broken waves; they can bring neither the prows outward, nor thereafter the sails to bear the gales, and the reason of steering lies stupefied: thus the wind drives me and the surges of desire roll me into the death-bearing sea. Nor are the lands at once absent, but, pondering with myself your bright words, O master, I deem these things rather to be true—to trust in you.
'It is a crafty thing, it deceives and contrives nets for our souls.' For, having forgotten the things past, the things present are now at hand and dear to you—we who have not slipped from your heart. Ah me, whither shall I be borne, whence would I wish to lay open my mind to you!
Sooner shall the pious doves fit their roofs beneath the Aegean, and the halcyon, turned about, build its nests in a tree; sooner shall the hungry lioness feed following calves, and the unfed she-wolf long nourish tender lambs; and, the world once divided into its parts changing places, either the Barcaean plough the Taurus, or Hyrcania the Moors; sooner, the day again ill-frightened by the banquets of Thyestes, shall the interrupted daylight vanish back into risings; sooner shall the rains give the Nile, and above the ether the deer shall wander, and the mountains sing and the rivers give praise, than your gifts, O master, shall come behind my back. Love bars it and the bond of a shared uprightness holds it. Here, here reigns the glory of friendship, the enemy put to flight. For not on account of glassy riches and rebellious gold do we join the assents of our souls.
For neither did the fortune of the crowd, rushing headlong, which separates lofty things, join us; but labor, gleaning the inner things—things made common by little books—and the things discovered by your mind, and noble doctrine expounded, and answers reported back against the good. And my Calliope, although at close quarters she shudders at you on high and hides her face, handling a useless thing—yet this, this bond of the mind and these faithful knots, not that which broke the Alps fortified with mountainous crags and pressed down the Italian cities with their walls could break, nor wear away anything from our strength. Go far off, you waters risen in swelling windings, or from the Arimphaean Riphaeans, or the towns of Caspus, and the Cimmerian homes—to sunder with a broad river the Maeotic tracts and the sea which Helle overwhelmed, and let them stretch the far-off divisions of Europe and Asia.
Did not Dodona, wearying the herds of oxen along either flank, cut off the Molossians from the Talarian borders, .......... and the kindred Arabs? Nor did a friendly pact of peace remain between the Sidonians and the Pelasgian kingdom and the sacrilegious Phrygians, although for a time a common hospitality belonged to all. What, finally, shall I sing of the discord of brothers and their fights? What of the honorable beatings of parents? What of the furies of mothers and the proud sons? There is even among the gods above a concordant discord of things, and as many rites flow forth as opinion gives laws. But one love holds us.
Not if Boreas should give me a hundred murmurs and as many souls, and a tongue, stiffened with adamant, should roar through a hundred mouths, could we recount the things which the associated nature of ancient places first put asunder, and which glory smoothed away in the polished world. But us—besides that we rise from one city, that one house bore us, that we are dyed with one blood of the ages—the Christian faith has knit together; and although an immense journey marks us off, and the sea poured between confines us, love despises both, which, spurning the joys of the eyes, ever enjoys the absent friend, since it hangs from the deep heart and searches out the fodder of the inner fiber.