Meanwhile there shall come whatever writings of the good are yet to be, of saving discourse, and those to be matched with the shrines of the ancients, when you ponder what nectar-honey, conceived in the deep breast, you have vomited forth into the light; they will render you yourself present to me, if you will indulge my wish and hand over the books in which the sluggish Muse reclines upon you—for I am all afire for them. Grant it, so may the truth lie open to us by reason, so may it flow more than the Eridanus, and may the contagions of the world flit in vain about the fields of us who till them. XXVII. To his lord truly holy and venerable, and to be proclaimed with exceptional praise in Christ, his brother Paulinus, Augustine greeting in the Lord. O good man and good brother, you were hidden from my soul. And I say to it, that it should endure that you are as yet hidden from my eyes;
and it scarcely obeys me—nay, it does not obey. Or does it endure? Why then does the desire of you torment me within my very soul? For if I were suffering discomforts of the body, and if they did not disturb the equanimity of my mind, I should rightly be said to endure them; but since I do not bear with an even mind the fact that I do not see you, it is intolerable to call this endurance. Yet, since you are such as you are, to be without you would perhaps be borne the more intolerably. It is well, then, that I cannot bear with an even mind that which, if I bore it with an even mind, I should not deserve to be borne with an even mind. It is a marvel, yet nevertheless true, what has happened to me: I grieve that I do not see you, and the very grief consoles me. Thus displeasing to me is that fortitude by which the absence of good men, such as you are, is patiently borne.
For we surely desire the Jerusalem that is to come, and the more impatiently we desire it, the more patiently do we endure all things for its sake. Who, then, can help rejoicing at having seen you—so that, as long as he does not see you, he cannot help grieving? Therefore I can do neither, and since, if I could, I could do it monstrously, I am delighted at not being able; and in the fact that I am delighted there is no little solace. And so grief consoles me as I grieve—grief not soothed, but considered. Do not, I beg, rebuke me with that holier gravity in which you excel, and say that I do not rightly grieve that I have not yet come to know you, since you have laid open your mind to me—that is, your inner self—to be gazed upon. For what?
If somewhere—even in your earthly city—I had learned you to be my brother and lover, and so great and such a man in the Lord, would you suppose that I should feel no grief, if I were not permitted to know your house? How then should I not grieve that I do not yet know your face—that is, the house of your soul, which I know as my own? For I have read your letters flowing with milk and honey, displaying the simplicity of your heart, in which you seek the Lord, thinking of him in goodness, and rendering to him brightness and honor. The brethren have read them, and rejoice untiringly and unspeakably in gifts of God so abundant and so excellent, your good things. As many as have read them snatch at them, because they are snatched away when they read them.
How sweet the fragrance of Christ, and how it breathes forth from them, cannot be told. When those letters of yours present you to be seen, how greatly they stir us up to seek you! For they make you at once discernible and desirable. The more they in some fashion set your presence before us, the less they suffer us to bear your absence. All who read them love you and long to be loved by you. God is praised and blessed, by whose grace you are such a man. There Christ is roused up, that He may deign to still the winds and seas for you as you press on toward His steadfastness.
There the reader sees a wife who is no leader of her husband toward softness, but one led back into the bones of her husband unto fortitude — a wife whom, brought back and restored into your unity, and joined to you by spiritual bonds all the firmer as they are the more chaste, we greet again together with the duties owed to your holiness, in you who are one. There the cedars of Lebanon, laid low to the earth and raised up into the building of the ark by the framework of charity, cleave the waves of this world without decay. There glory is despised, that it may be gained, and the world is forsaken, that it may be possessed. There the little ones, or even the somewhat grown-up, sons of Babylon are dashed against the Rock — that is, the vices of the world's confusion and pride.
Such spectacles as these, most sweet and most holy, do your letters offer to their readers — those letters, letters of faith unfeigned, letters of good hope, letters of pure charity! How they breathe upon us your thirst and your longing, and the faintness of your soul for the courts of the Lord! What most holy love they exhale! What abundance of a sincere heart they pour forth! What thanks they render to God! What blessings they win from God! Are they more caressing or more ardent? more luminous or more fruitful? For what is it that so soothes us, so kindles us, so bedews us, and is withal so serene? What is it, I ask you, or what shall I repay you for them, save that I am wholly yours in Him whose you are wholly? If that is too little, more I surely do not have;
but you yourself have made it seem to me not too little, you who deigned to honor me in that letter with such great praises, so that, when I pour myself back to you, if I should think this too little, I would be convicted of not having believed you. It shames me indeed to believe so much good of myself, yet it grieves me more not to believe you. There is something I can do. I will not believe myself to be such as you suppose, since I do not recognize it in myself; and I will believe that I am loved by you, since I feel and plainly perceive it. Thus I shall be neither rash concerning myself nor ungrateful concerning you. And when I offer my whole self to you, it is not too little; for I offer him whom you most vehemently love, and I offer, if not such a one as you judge me to be, yet him for whom you pray that I may deserve to be such.
For this rather I now beg you to do: that you may not wish less to be added to me toward what I am, while you esteem me already to be what I am not. Behold, my dearest friend, most intimately dear to me from the very beginning of youth, is he who bears this letter to your excellency and most surpassing charity. His name is in the book On Religion, which your holiness — so far as your letters indicate — read most gladly; for he became the more pleasing to you through the commendation of so great a man also, who sent him to you. Yet even to this friend of mine, so intimate, I would not have you believe whatever, in praising me, he may perchance have said.
For I have often perceived that he too is deceived — not out of any zeal for lying, but out of an inclination to love — as he judges and supposes that I have already received certain things, for the receiving of which I still gape with the open mouth of my heart toward the Lord. And if this is his opinion to my very face, who would not conjecture how much better than truer he gladly pours forth about me in my absence? But he will provide an abundance of our books through his reverent zeal; for I know of nothing I have written, whether for those outside the Church of God, or for the ears of the brethren, that he himself does not possess.
But when you read, my holy Paulinus, do not let the truth which speaks through our weakness so seize you that you attend less diligently to those things which I myself speak — lest, while you eagerly drink in the good and right things given to the minister, you fail to pray for the sins and errors which I myself commit. For in those things which will rightly displease you, if you attend, I myself am seen; but in those things which, through the gift of the Spirit that you have received, rightly please you in my books, He is to be loved and to be proclaimed with whom is the fountain of life, and in whose light we shall see light without riddle and face to face — but now we see in a riddle. In those things, therefore, which I myself have belched forth from the old leaven, when reading them I recognize them, I judge myself with sorrow;
but in those things which I have said from the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, the gift of God, I exult with trembling. For what have we that we have not received? But surely he is better who is rich in the greater and more numerous gifts of God than he who is rich in the fewer and smaller. Who denies it? Yet again it is better even to give thanks to God for a small gift of His, than to wish thanks given to oneself for a great one. That I may always confess these things from my heart, and that my heart may not be discordant with my tongue, pray for me, brother; pray, I beseech you, that not wishing to be praised, but praising, I may call upon the Lord, and I shall be saved from my enemies. There is also another reason why you should love this brother the more; for he is a kinsman of the venerable and truly blessed bishop Alypius, whom you embrace with your whole heart, and deservedly so.
For whoever thinks kindly of that man thinks of the great mercy of God and of the wonderful gifts of God. And so, when he had read your request, in which you indicated that you desired him to write his own history for you, he both wished to do it on account of your goodwill, and was unwilling on account of his own modesty. When I saw him wavering between love and shame, I transferred the burden from him onto my own shoulders; for this he even enjoined upon me by letter. Quickly then, if the Lord will help, I shall implant the whole of Alypius in your inmost heart;
for this is what I chiefly feared: lest he should shrink from disclosing all the things which the Lord has bestowed upon him, for fear that to someone less understanding — since those things would not be read by you alone — he might seem to be proclaiming not the divine gifts granted to men, but himself; and that you, who know in what manner you ought to read these things, on account of guarding against the weakness of others, might be defrauded of the fraternal acquaintance that is your due. This I would already have done, and you would already be reading of him, had not the brother's sudden and unexpected departure abruptly seemed good — whom I commend so to your heart and tongue that you may show yourself to him as courteously as though you had come to know him, not now, but earlier along with me. For if he does not hesitate to disclose himself to your heart, he will be healed, either wholly or in great part, through your tongue.
For I wish him to be more abundantly pounded by the voices of those who love a friend not after a worldly manner. But his son — our son, whose name too you will find in some of our books — even though he himself was not journeying to the presence of your charity, I had determined to hand over by letter into your hand, to be consoled, exhorted, and instructed not so much by the sound of your mouth as by the example of your strength. For I burn with desire that, while his age is still in the green grass, he may turn the tares into grain, and may believe those who have experience concerning that which he dangerously desires to experience. Now, therefore, from his poem and from the letter which I have sent to him, your most benevolent and most gentle prudence understands what I grieve about him, what I fear, what I long for.
Nor do I despair that the Lord will be present, so that through you His minister I may be freed from such great surges of cares. Truly, since you are about to read many of our writings, your love will be all the more welcome to me if, out of those things which have displeased you, you amend me — a righteous man in mercy — and reprove me. For you are not one of those by whose oil I should fear to have my head made fat. The brethren — not only those who dwell with us and who, dwelling wherever they please, serve God alike, but nearly all who gladly know us in Christ — greet, venerate, and long for your brotherliness, your blessedness, your humanity. I do not dare to ask, but if you have leisure from ecclesiastical duties, you see what Africa thirsts for together with me. + 28.
To the most beloved lord, and to be honored and embraced with the most sincere devotion of charity, my brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine. Never has anyone become known to another by his face as well as, to me, the quiet joy of your studies in the Lord and your truly liberal exercise. Although therefore I greatly long to know you altogether, yet there is some little of you that I lack — namely, the presence of your body. And even that, after the brother Alypius — now a most blessed bishop, but then already worthy of the episcopate — saw you and, returning, was seen by me, I cannot deny has for the most part been impressed upon me by his account; and even before his return, when he was seeing you there, I was seeing you — but with his eyes.
For whoever knew us would say that in mind I and he are not two, but one, and two only in body — at least as regards concord and most faithful intimacy, not as regards merits, in which he far excels. Since therefore you love me, first through the communion of the Spirit by which we strive to be one, and then from his mouth, by no means do I, as though some unknown person, impudently commend to your brotherliness the brother Profuturus, whom we hope will truly be profitable (profuturum) — first to our endeavors, and then by your help; unless perhaps it be that he is such a man that through him I may be made more commended to you than he through me. Thus far perhaps I ought to have written, if I wished to be content with the manner of formal letters.
But my mind teems to share words with you about our studies, which we have in Christ Jesus our Lord, who deigns to minister to us, not slightly, even through your charity, many benefits and certain provisions for the journey that has been shown to us by Him. We ask therefore — and together with us asks the whole zealous fellowship of the African churches — that you not think it a burden to spend care and labor on translating the books of those who have treated our Scriptures in Greek most excellently. For you are able to bring it about that we too may have such men, and one above all, whom you more gladly sound forth in your letters.
But as for rendering the holy canonical Scriptures into the Latin tongue, I would not have you labor, except in that manner in which you translated Job — namely, with signs applied, so that it may appear what difference there is between this translation of yours and that of the Seventy, whose authority is most weighty. I cannot sufficiently marvel if anything is still found in the Hebrew copies which escaped so many translators most skilled in that language. For I pass over the Seventy, concerning whose greater harmony of counsel or of spirit — greater than if it were one man — I dare not pronounce any settled opinion one way or the other, save that I judge their pre-eminent authority in this office ought without controversy to be granted them.
Those move me more who, since they translated at a later time and held, as is reported, more tenaciously to the way and rules of the Hebrew words and idioms, not only did not agree among themselves, but even left many things to remain, to be dug out and brought forth so long afterward. For if those things are obscure, it is believed that you too can be deceived in them; if they are manifest, it is not believed that they could have been deceived in them. Concerning this matter, therefore, out of your charity, with the reasons set forth, I would beg you to make me certain. I have also read certain writings said to be yours, on the Epistles of the apostle Paul; and when you wished to unravel the one to the Galatians, there came into my hands that passage in which the apostle Peter is recalled from a pernicious dissimulation.
There, that a patronage of lying should have been taken up — whether by you, so great a man, or by anyone, if another wrote those things — I confess I grieve not a little, until those things which trouble me be refuted, if perchance they can be refuted. For to me it seems most destructive to believe that there is any lie in the holy books — that is, that those men, through whom that Scripture was ministered to us and set down in writing, lied about anything in their books. For it is one question whether a good man may ever lie, and another question whether a writer of the Holy Scriptures ought to have lied — nay rather, it is not another question, but no question at all.
For once some officious lie is admitted into so lofty a height of authority, there will remain no particle of those books which, as it shall seem to each — either as difficult for morals or as incredible for faith — may not by that same most pernicious rule be referred to the design and office of a lying author. For if the apostle Paul was lying when, rebuking the apostle Peter, he said: If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of the Gentiles and not in the Jewish manner, how do you compel the Gentiles to Judaize?
and Peter seemed to him to have acted rightly, whereas he both said and wrote that Peter had not acted rightly — as though to soothe the minds of those in an uproar — what shall we answer when perverse men shall arise forbidding marriage, whose coming he himself foretold, and shall say that the whole of what the same apostle spoke about confirming the right of marriages was a lie told on account of men who could be roused to tumult by love of their wives — not, forsooth, that he thought this, but that their hostility might be appeased? There is no need to recall many instances. For even lies about the praises of God can be made to seem officious, so that among more sluggish men the love of Him may catch fire. And thus nowhere in the holy books will there be any sure authority of chaste truth.
Do we not observe the same apostle saying, with immense care for commending the truth: But if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain. Moreover we are found to be even false witnesses of God, because we have given testimony against God, that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up? If anyone should say to him: Why do you shudder at this lie, since you have said that which, even if it be false, pertains most of all to the praise of God? — would he not, detesting this madness with whatever words and expressions he could, lay open the inmost recesses of his heart into the light, crying out that to praise falsehood in God is a crime no less, or perhaps even greater, than to disparage truth?
It must be brought about, therefore, that such a man come to the knowledge of the divine Scriptures as will esteem the holy books so devoutly and truthfully that he refuses to be delighted in any part of them through officious lies, and rather passes over that which he does not understand than prefers his own heart to that truth. For assuredly, when he says this, he demands to be believed himself, and works to this end: that we should not believe the authorities of the divine Scriptures. And I indeed, with whatever powers the Lord supplies, would show that all those testimonies which have been adduced for building up the usefulness of a lie ought to be understood otherwise, so that everywhere their firm truth might be taught. For as the testimonies ought not to be lies, so they ought not to favor a lie.
But this I leave to your understanding. For with a more diligent consideration applied to the reading, you will perhaps see it far more easily than I. And to this consideration your piety will compel you — that piety by which you recognize that the authority of the divine Scriptures wavers, so that in them each believes what he wishes and does not believe what he does not wish, if once it has been made convincing that those men, through whom these things have been ministered to us, could have lied officiously in their writings — unless perchance you are going to give certain rules by which we may know where it behooves one to lie and where it does not behoove. And if this can be done, by no means, I pray you, explain it by lying and doubtful reasonings.
And do not judge me burdensome or impudent — by the most truthful humanity of our Lord. For, that I may not say no fault, at least no great fault of mine is it that my error favors truth, if truth can rightly favor a lie in you. Many other things I could wish to speak with your most sincere heart, and to confer about Christian study; but for this desire of mine no letter is enough. More amply can I do it through the brother, whom I rejoice to have sent to be mingled and nourished by your sweet and useful discourses. And yet, however much I might wish, not even he himself, be it said with his leave, perhaps has capacity for it. Although I would in no wise prefer myself to him; for I confess myself more capacious of you, but I see him being made fuller, in which without doubt he excels me.
And after he returns — which, with the Lord's help, I hope will prosper — when I have become a partaker of his breast filled by you, he will not fill up what will still in me be empty and greedy for your perceptions. Thus it will come about that even then I shall be the more needy, he the more abounding. Truly the same brother is carrying some of our writings with him. If you deign to read them, apply also, I pray, a sincere and fraternal severity. For not otherwise do I understand that which is written: The righteous man shall correct me in mercy and reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head — save that the rebuker who heals loves more than the flatterer who anoints the head.
But I most difficultly read as a good judge what I have written, being either more timid than is right, or more desirous. I even see sometimes my own faults, but these I prefer to hear from better men, lest, when I have perhaps rightly reproved myself, I again flatter myself and seem to have passed on myself a sentence more timid than just. 29. Concerning the business meanwhile — which I cannot but attend to — I have been able to write nothing certain in the absence of brother Macarius, who, it is said, will quickly return; and what, with God's help, can be carried through, shall be carried through.
But concerning our solicitude on their behalf — although our brethren, the citizens who were present, could have set you at ease — nevertheless a thing worthy of an epistolary conversation, by which we console one another, has been granted by the Lord; in the meriting of which we believe ourselves to have been much helped by your very solicitude, which surely could not have been without intercession for us. And so let us not omit to relate to your charity what has been done, that you may give thanks to God together with us for the benefit received, you who poured out prayers together with us for the receiving of it.
When, after your departure, it had been reported to us that the people were in an uproar and were saying that they could not bear it if that solemn observance were forbidden — which, calling it 'gladness,' they vainly try to conceal under the name of drunkenness, as indeed was already being announced even while you were present — it fell out opportunely for us, by the hidden ordering of almighty God, that on the fourth day of the week that chapter in the Gospel came up to be treated in due course: Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine. There was a discourse, therefore, about dogs and swine, in such wise;
so that both those wrangling with obstinate barking against the precepts of God, and those given over to the filth of carnal pleasures, were compelled to blush; and it was so concluded that they might see how wicked it was to do within the walls of the church, under the name of religion, that which, if they persisted in doing it in their own houses, ought to bar them from what is holy and from the ecclesiastical pearls. But although these things were received gratefully, yet because few had assembled, satisfaction had not been given to so great a matter. And when this discourse was ventilated abroad by those who were present, each according to his ability and zeal, it had many contradictors.
But afterward, when the day of the Forty had dawned and a great multitude flocked together at the hour of the discourse, there was read that passage in the Gospel where the Lord, having cast out from the temple the sellers of animals and overturned the tables of the money-changers, said that the house of His Father had been made, in place of a house of prayers, a den of thieves.
Which chapter, when I had made them attentive by the proposed question of drunkenness, I myself also recited; and I added a disputation by which I might show how much more indignantly and vehemently our Lord would drive from the temple drunken banquets — which everywhere are base — seeing that He thence drove out lawful commerce, when those things were being sold which were necessary for the sacrifices at that time permitted; asking of them to which they thought the den of thieves more like: to those selling necessary things, or to those drinking immoderately.
And since the prepared lessons that were to be adduced were being held ready, I then added that the still carnal people of the Jews themselves, in that temple where the body and blood of the Lord were not yet offered, never celebrated banquets that were not only drunken but not even sober; nor are they found in history to have been publicly intoxicated under the name of religion, except when they discharged festivals for a fabricated idol. And while I was saying these things, I even took the volume and recited that whole passage.
I added also, with what sorrow I could, that since the apostle says — in order to distinguish the Christian people from the hardness of the Jews — that his epistle was written not on tablets of stone but on the fleshly tablets of the heart, when Moses the servant of God had, on account of those chiefs, broken the two tablets of stone: how were we not able to break the hearts of these men, who, on the days when the saints of the New Testament are to be celebrated, wished to exhibit solemnly those things which the people of the Old Testament celebrated but once, and for an idol? Then, having handed back the volume of Exodus, aggravating the crime of drunkenness as much as the time allowed, I took up the apostle Paul, and, among what sins it was placed, I showed by reading that passage:
If any one who is called a brother be either a fornicator, or a servant of idols, or covetous, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or rapacious — with such a one not even to take food; admonishing with groaning, with how great peril we would feast with those who were made drunk even in their houses. I also read that which follows at no long interval: Do not err; neither fornicators, nor servants of idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with males, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God. And such indeed you were, but you are washed, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. Which things having been read, I said that they should consider how the faithful could hear:
but you are washed — those who still suffer in their heart, that is, in the inner temple of God, the filth of such concupiscence, against which the kingdom of heaven is closed. Thence we came to that chapter: When therefore you come together into one, it is not to celebrate the Lord's supper; for each one takes his own supper beforehand in the eating, and one indeed is hungry, another is drunken. Have you not houses to eat and to drink in? Or do you despise the church of God? Which having been recited, I more diligently urged that not even honorable and sober banquets ought to be celebrated in the church, seeing that the apostle did not say:
'Have you not houses to make yourselves drunk in?' — as though only to get drunk in church were unlawful, but 'to eat and to drink,' which can be done honorably yet outside the church by those who have houses where they can be refreshed with necessary nourishment. And yet we have been brought to these straits of corrupt times and of dissolving morals, so that we should long, not yet for modest banquets, but at least for the domestic kingdom of drunkenness to be confined to the home. I also recalled the Gospel chapter which I had treated the day before, where it is said of false prophets: By their fruits you shall know them. Then I brought back to memory that the fruits are in that place called nothing but works.