Latin original · 40 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:2626–5:2665 (4615 verses in all)
Let the maiden, noble in birth, nobler in holiness, rejoice the more that through divine fellowship she will attain a chief sublimity in the heavens, than if through human wedlock she were to propagate a sublime offspring. For more nobly did the Anician posterity choose to bless so illustrious a family by not knowing marriage, than to multiply it by bearing children, and already in the flesh to imitate the life of angels, rather than from the flesh to increase the number of mortals. This is a richer and more fertile felicity: not to grow heavy in the womb but to grow great in the mind, not to give milk from the breast but to glow bright in the heart, not to bring forth earth from the bowels but heaven by prayers.
Ladies most worthy of honor and deservedly illustrious and most excellent daughters, enjoy fully in her that which was lacking to you, that she might be born of you; may she persevere even to the end, cleaving to a wedlock that has no end. Let many handmaids imitate their mistress, the ignoble the noble, the frailly exalted her more exaltedly humble; let virgins who long for themselves the splendor of the Anicii choose holiness. For that other thing—with however great desire—when will they attain it? But this thing, if they have fully desired it, they will presently have. May the right hand of the Most High protect you unharmed and more happy. Ladies most worthy of honor and most excellent daughters.
We greet the pledges of your holiness—especially her who is herself chief in holiness—with the office due to your merits and with love of the Lord. We received most gratefully the gift of the veiling. TO THE LORD DESERVEDLY ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST WORTHY OF DUE HONOR FROM ME, SON CAECILIANUS, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD. The complaint against me set forth in your letter is the more welcome to me the fuller it is of love. If therefore I should try to clear myself of that which I kept silent about, what else shall I attempt but to show that you had no cause for which you ought to be angry with me? But since I love in you rather this—that you deigned to take offense at my reticence—than that I had believed it to be of no moment among your cares, I shall abandon my own case if I contend to clear myself.
For if you ought not to have been indignant because I did not write to you, you count me as nothing—you who bear it with indifference whether I speak or keep silent. But since you took it ill that I was silent, this indignation is an act of esteem. Therefore I do not so much grieve that I did not offer my speech, as I rejoice that you desired our conversation. For that I comforted with no address an old friend—and this ought to be passed over in silence by you but acknowledged by us—such and so great a man, set among strangers and laboring amid public cares: that I be arraigned for this is to me an honor, not a grief. Pardon me therefore as I give thanks, because you did not deem me unworthy, one at whose silence you should be angry.
For now, amid so many and so great affairs—not yours but public, that is, everyone's—I have believed my letters not only could be not burdensome, nay not only could not be burdensome, but even could be welcome to your benevolence, by which you surpass excellence. For when I had received a letter sent to me by the brethren from the holy and, for his surpassing merits, venerable Pope Innocent, which was shown by sure signs to have been given to me through your eminence, I had therefore supposed that no page of yours had been conveyed at the same time, because in your care of writing and answering you had not wished, being occupied with weightier matters, to be bound. For assuredly it seemed fitting that one who deigned to convey to me the writings of so holy a man and so holy, should take them up with your own additions.
Hence therefore I had determined that my letters would be no burden to your mind, unless it were necessary for the sake of commending someone, to whom I could not deny this by the office of intercession—which is wont to be our custom of granting to all, and a certain profession that is even importunate yet not to be disapproved. And so I did; for I commended my friend to your kindness, from whom I have also already received your reply, giving thanks—which I too give. But if I thought any evil of you, especially in that case which, though not expressed, your letter yet gave off to me, God forbid that I should write anything of the sort to you, where I asked any benefit for myself or for anyone.
For either I would keep silent, watching for the time when I might have you present, or, if I thought the matter must be dealt with by letters, I would rather do that, and do it in such a way that you could scarcely bear my grief.
For therefore, after that man's impious and cruel treachery—against which, even through your solicitude shared with us, we vehemently but vainly pressed, lest he should strike our heart with that grief, but should butcher his own conscience with so great a crime—I straightway set out from Carthage, concealing my departure, lest so many and so great persons, who dreaded even his sword within the church, should hold me back with their violent weepings and groanings, thinking that my presence could avail them something: so that I, who could not worthily enough rebuke him for his soul, should be compelled even to plead for their bodies—whose bodily safety the walls of the church sufficiently guarded.
But I was hemmed in by harsh straits, because neither would that man endure me as I ought to be, and moreover I was compelled to do what was not fitting. I also grieved heavily on behalf of my venerable fellow-bishop, the ruler of so great a church, to whose office it was said to pertain, after the man's so nefarious deceit, still to show himself humble, that the rest might be spared. I confess: since I could tolerate so great an evil with no strength of breast, I departed. This would be even now the cause of my silence toward you, which was then the cause of my departure, if I believed that you had acted with him, so that he might so nefariously avenge your injuries.
Those who do not know believe such things—do not know in what manner and how often and what things you said to us, when with anxious care we were carrying it through, so that the more familiarly he clung to you, the more frequently you came to him, the more often you conversed with him alone, so much the more should he take care of your reputation, lest to those who were said to be your enemies he give such an end that you might be thought to have done nothing else with him. Which indeed neither I believe, nor these my brethren, who both heard in his speeches and saw in the hearing and in every movement the signs of your kindly breast. But, I beseech you, pardon those who believe;
for they are men, and in the minds of men there are such lurking-places and such recesses that all suspicious persons, though they are deservedly blamed, yet think they ought even to be praised for being cautious. The circumstances stood thus: we knew that you had suffered a most grievous injury from one of those whom he had suddenly ordered to be seized. His brother too, in whom he most persecuted the church, was said to have answered you somewhat harshly, as if on his brother's behalf. Both were thought to be suspected by you. When, having been summoned, they had withdrawn, with you remaining there and, as was reported, speaking with him more secretly, they were suddenly ordered to be detained. Men spoke of your friendship as not recent but old.
So great a conjunction and so assiduous a conversation of one alone with the other confirmed the report. His power was then great; the facility for calumny lay close at hand. It was no great business to procure someone who would say that the man had ordered, with safety promised, what was to be said. All these things at that time favored the outcome, so that even by a single witness, as by an odious and credible charge, anyone might be taken out of the midst without the risk of the one giving the order.
Meanwhile we, since there was a rumor that the ecclesiastical hand might be able to rescue them, were played with by false promises, so that, with him not only as though willing but even urging on their behalf, a bishop was sent to the imperial court, with this promise interposed to episcopal ears, that until something should be done there on their behalf, no examination of their case would be set in motion. At last, the day before they were struck down, your eminence came to us;
you gave a hope such as you had never given before, that he could grant them to you as you were about to set out, since you had gravely and prudently told him that all which he so assiduously, familiarly, and secretly conversed with you about, did not so much honor you as burden you, and tended to this end, that concerning the counsel of their death communicated and discussed between you, no one would doubt, if that death should follow after all these things.
When you were informing us that you had said this, in the midst of your telling you sprang up and, stretching out your hands toward that place where the sacraments of the faithful are celebrated, you swore to us, as we stood astonished, that you had spoken these words in such a way that not only then but even now, after so dreadful and unexpected an outcome, when I recall all your movements, I should seem to myself utterly shameless if I were to believe anything evil of you. You said that he had been so moved by these words of yours that you did not despair, but hoped he would grant you their safety as a kind of familiar provision for the journey.
Hence I confess to your love that on the following day, on which that nefarious offspring of that travail was brought forth, when it was suddenly announced to us that they had been led out of prison to that judge, although we were troubled, yet I, considering both what you had told us the day before and what day was to dawn after that one, since it was the day before the solemn feast of blessed Cyprian, supposed that he had even chosen the day on which he would both grant you what you had requested and, suddenly gladdening the whole Church of Christ, wished to ascend to the shrine of so great a martyr by the kindness of sparing, being more sublime than by the power of killing—when behold, a messenger burst in upon us, so that we knew they had been struck down before we could even inquire in what manner they had been given a hearing.
For a place had been provided close at hand, not assigned to the punishment of men but rather for the adornment of the city, where it is rightly believed that for this reason he had ordered certain others to be slaughtered some days before, lest in these there should be an odious novelty—men whom it had been his plan to be able thus to snatch from the Church, if they were ordered not only to be struck down suddenly but also to be struck down in a nearby place. And so he sufficiently showed that he did not fear to inflict torment upon her, that mother whose intervention he feared—namely, the holy Church, among whose:
faithful ones, baptized in her bosom, we knew that he too certainly was. After the outcome, then, of so great an undertaking, when the matter had been handled with us so carefully that through you—even though you knew it not—we were on the previous day made almost secure and almost certain of their safety, who of such men, as the multitude of men is, would not hold it beyond doubt that words were given to us even by yourself, while life was taken from them? Therefore, as I said, good man, even if we do not believe this, forgive those who do believe it. Far be it, however, from my heart and from whatever my life may be, that I should intercede with you on anyone's behalf or ask any favor of you, if I believed you to be the author of so great an evil and of a crime of such wicked cruelty.
But I plainly confess: if you are even hereafter in that same intimacy in which you were before—by your leave let grief speak freely—you greatly compel us to believe what we did not wish to believe. Yet it is consistent that I should not believe even this, I who do not believe those things of you. Your friend, by the unexpected success of a sudden power, persecuted their life no more than your reputation. Nor in saying these things do I, forgetful of my disposition and my profession, inflame your hatred against him, but I summon you to a more faithful love. For he who deals with the wicked in such a way that they may repent of their wickedness knows how to take counsel for them even by indignation; for as the wicked harm by flattering, so the good profit even by opposing.
Indeed, with that same sword by which he most insolently slew others, he more grievously and more deeply struck his own soul, which after this life—if he does not correct it by repentance and make good use of God's patience—he will be forced to find and to feel. But often the present life, even of good men, by the deep judgment of God, has been permitted to be snatched away by the wicked, lest such things be thought an evil to suffer. For to be killed in the flesh—what can it harm those who are going to die? Or what do those who fear to die accomplish, except that they die a little later? Whatever harms the dying comes from life, not from death; in which life, if they had such souls as those to which Christian grace comes to aid, their death was surely not the setting of a good life but the occasion of a better one.
And the character of the elder brother appeared to be more friendly to this world than to Christ, although he too, having taken a wife, had in no small measure corrected his earlier youthful and worldly life. Yet perhaps the merciful God did not wish him to be his brother's companion in death except out of mercy. But the other lived religiously and in great part with a heart and life truly Christian. This reputation went before him, so that he came thus in the cause of the Church; this reputation followed him, when he had come. What integrity was in that man's morals, what fidelity in friendship, what zeal in learning, what sincerity in religion, what chastity in marriage;
in judgment, self-restraint; toward enemies, patience; toward friends, affability; toward the saints, humility; toward all, charity; in bestowing benefits, readiness; in asking, modesty; in things rightly done, love; in sins, grief! What grace of honor, what splendor of favor, what care of piety, what mercy in coming to aid, what benevolence in forgiving, what confidence in prayer! What he knew to his own health, with what modesty he spoke it! What he did not know to no profit, with what diligence he searched it out! How great in him was the contempt of present things, how great the hope and desire of eternal goods!
The bond of marriage hindered him from laying aside all worldly pursuits and taking up the girdle of Christian soldiery; bound already by that bond, he had begun to desire better things at a time when it was no longer permitted to break those—however inferior—ties. One day his brother, when they were now being held together in custody, said to him: 'If I suffer these things for the deserts of my sins, you, whose life we have known to be so attentively and fervently Christian, by what evil deserts have you been brought to this?' But he replied:
'Do you think,' he said, 'that a small benefit is conferred on me from heaven—if indeed this testimony of yours concerning my life is true—that by what I suffer, even if I suffer it to the shedding of blood, there my sins may be punished and not reserved for me unto the judgment to come?' Here perhaps someone might believe that he was conscious to himself of certain hidden sins of unchastity. I will therefore tell what the Lord God willed me to hear from his own mouth, to my great consolation, and plainly to know.
When, being anxious about this very matter—as human affairs go—I dealt alone with him alone, now placed in that same custody, lest there be anything on account of which he ought to appease God with greater and more marked penance, he—being of singular modesty, though he blushed even at my false suspicion, yet received the admonition most gratefully—smiling modestly and gravely, and taking hold of my right hand with both his hands, said: 'I call to witness the sacraments which are offered through this hand, that I have known no intercourse except with my wife, neither before nor afterward.' What evil, then, befell this man in death, and not rather the greatest good, when, possessing these gifts—together with Christ, without whom they are possessed in vain—he departed from this life?
These things I would not recall to you, if I believed you were offended by his praises; but since I do not believe this, neither do I believe that other thing, that he could have been killed—I do not say at your instigation, but even with your willing or wishing it. Accordingly, you judge with us the more sincerely as you are the more innocent, that he dealt more cruelly with his own soul than with that man's body, when—despising us, despising his own promises, despising so many and so great petitions and admonitions of yours, and finally despising the Church of Christ—by what but by Christ within her he came, through this death, to the end of his machination. Or is that man's honor even to be compared with this man's prison, when the one raged exalted while the other rejoiced shut up?
The conscience of a wicked man surpasses, with dreadful and penal darkness, not only all prisons but even the nether regions. And to you what harm did it do—whose reputation, though he grievously wounded it, he yet did not destroy your innocence? Although even that reputation itself is safe both among those who know you better than we, and among us ourselves, who beheld the cares you bore with us, lest so monstrous a crime be perpetrated, expressed with such great feeling that we almost discerned with our eyes the invisible things of your heart. To himself, therefore, he did harm, whatever harm he did; his own soul he pierced through, his own life, his own conscience, his own reputation at last—which even the worst men are wont to covet as good—by that blind cruelty he laid waste.
For he is so much the more hateful to all good men, the more he strove to please the impious or rejoiced to have pleased them. But where could it more clearly appear that he had not the necessity which he pretended to have—that under its cover he might, as though a good man, do so great an evil—than in this, that he did not even please him by whose command he dared to excuse himself? Let the holy deacon Quintianus report to your excellence—for he himself had been joined to the bishop whom we had sent on their behalf—in what manner it seemed that pardon should not even be granted to them, lest they be branded with any crime even so, but only a memorandum, whereby it should be ordered that they be dismissed free from all molestation.
With gratuitous cruelty, therefore, under no necessity—although perhaps there were also other causes, which we suspect and which there is no need to commit to writing—he savagely grieved the Church, to whose bosom his brother, fearing to perish, had fled for refuge, so that he might find him alive as the counselor of so great a crime; whose Church even he himself, when he had offended its patron, sought aid, and it could not be denied him. If you love this man, detest him; if you do not wish him to be punished eternally, shudder at him. Thus must your reputation, thus must his life, be cared for: for he who loves in a man that which God hates, not only hates the man but also himself.
Since these things are so, I neither believe of your kindness that you were the author or partaker of so great a crime, or that you deceived us by malicious cruelty—which be far from your life and character—nor do I want such friendships of yours, by which both he may glory in evil unto his own ruin and human suspicion may be confirmed, but rather such as by which he may be brought down to repentance—and to such and so great a repentance as so dreadful wounds demand as their medicine. For you will be his friend the more, the more you are the enemy of his crimes. I truly desire to know from your excellence by written reply where you were on the day when that deed was committed, in what manner you received the news, what you did afterward, whether you saw him, what you said to him, what you heard from him.
For I, from the time that I suddenly departed thence on the day following, have been able to hear nothing from you that pertains to this matter. But as to what I read in your letter, that you are now compelled to believe that I am, as it were, refused to you and denied you at Carthage—you rather compel me by these words not to keep silent about the causes of my absence. Of these, one is that I can no longer endure the labor which must be undergone in that city, and which, if I wished to expound it, would require as much again to be said; to my own infirmity—known to all who know me more familiarly—there has been added old age as well, which is the common infirmity of the human race. The other cause is that I have resolved, if the Lord will, to devote, as far as time is given me from other occupations which the necessity of the Church, which I serve in my proper office,
of necessity demands, that time whatever is granted, to expend all of it upon the labor of studies pertaining to ecclesiastical letters, wherein I think, if it please the mercy of God, I shall be of some profit even to posterity. There is one thing, however—if you wish to hear the truth—that I bear most grievously in you: that, being now both of this age and of this life and probity, you still wish to be a catechumen, as though the faithful could not, the more faithful and better they are, so much the more faithfully and better administer the commonwealth. What good do you do amid these so great cares and labors of yours, except that it may be well with men?
For if you do not do this, it were better to sleep both nights and days than to keep watch in public labors that will profit no benefit of men. Nor indeed do I doubt that your excellence, with prudent... CLII. TO THE LORD DESERVEDLY VENERABLE AND UNIQUELY TO BE HONORED FATHER AUGUSTINE, MACEDONIUS. I received the much-desired letters of your holiness through Bonifatius, the priest of the venerable law, whom I loved the more warmly for having received him, because he had brought to me the things I desired—the discourse of your holiness and the news of your well-being, O lord deservedly venerable and uniquely to be honored father. And so without delay he obtained what he wished. But since an occasion has arisen, this very thing, however small it be, which upon being admonished I have granted, I do not wish to remain without reward.
For I desire to receive that reward which may benefit me without disadvantage to the one who owes it—nay rather, which may benefit me with glory to the one who pays it. You say that it is the office of your priesthood to intervene on behalf of the accused, and, unless you obtain your request, to be offended, as though you carried back nothing of what was your office. Here I greatly hesitate whether this descends from religion. For if sins are so far prohibited by the Lord that not even the opportunity of repenting is granted after the first repentance, in what manner can we, on grounds of religion, contend that whatever that crime may have been should be remitted to us—which surely, when we wish it unpunished, we approve?
And if it is agreed that in all things which are sinned, the author is held no less guilty than the approver, it is certain that we are bound by fellowship in the fault as often as we desire him to be unpunished who is held liable to the fault. Then, besides, there is added this, which is more grievous. For all sins seem more pardonable when he who is guilty promises correction; but now, as our manners are, men both desire the penalty of the crime to be relaxed for themselves and to possess that on account of which the crime was committed. For these too your priesthood thinks it should intervene, concerning whom there is so no hope for the future that even in the present the same reasoning of crime persists;
for he who so obstinately holds fast to that on account of which he committed the crime shows that, where license shall be given, he will sin in like manner. On these accounts, therefore, I consult your prudence and desire to be freed by you from this ambiguity in which I labor; nor should you think you have been consulted for any other cause. For the rest, this is my resolve: that to intercessors, especially of such merit as you are, I should even give thanks. For very many things which I do not wish to seem to do of my own accord—lest a remission of severity arm others toward crimes—I choose to relax at the request of good intercessors, so that what I willingly concede may, with the severity of judgment preserved, seem to have been granted by the merit of another. May the eternal Godhead guard your holiness safe with most abundant length of days, O lord venerable and truly to be honored father.
You had promised me some of the writings of your holiness, and I have not received them; I ask that you send them even now, and that you reply to this my letter, so that, since it is not granted me meanwhile to see your holiness, I may at least be fed by your discourses. CLIII. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, SERVANT OF CHRIST AND OF HIS HOUSEHOLD, TO HIS BELOVED SON MACEDONIUS, GREETING IN THE LORD. A man most busied in the commonwealth and most attentive not to his own but to others' advantages—such as we congratulate both you to be, and human affairs to have—we ought neither to abandon by silence nor to weary by a lengthy preface. Receive therefore what you either wished to know through me, or to test whether I myself knew it.
But if you judged it small or superfluous, you would in no way reckon that it should be attended to amid your so great and so necessary cares. You ask of me why we say that it is the office of our priesthood to intervene on behalf of the accused, and, unless we obtain our request, to be offended, as though we carried back nothing at all of what was our office. Here you say you greatly hesitate whether this descends from religion. Then, adding by what reasoning you are thus moved: 'For if sins,' you say, 'are so far prohibited by the Lord that not even the opportunity of repenting is granted after the first, in what manner can we, on grounds of religion, contend that whatever that crime may have been should be remitted to us?' You press yet more grievously and say that we approve what we wish to be unpunished;
and that if it is agreed that in all things which are sinned the author is held no less guilty than the approver, it is certain that we are bound by fellowship in the fault as often as we wish him to be unpunished who is held liable to the fault. With these words whom would you not terrify, one ignorant of your gentleness and humanity? Whence we, who know you and do not in the least doubt that you wrote these things for the sake of inquiring, not of deciding, answer these points the more readily from your other words. For as though you were unwilling for us to hesitate in this question, you either foresaw what we would say, or admonished us what we ought to say. And you said: 'Then, besides, there is added this, which is more grievous. For all sins seem more pardonable when he who is guilty promises correction.'
Before, therefore, I discuss what that more grievous thing is which follows in your letter, this meanwhile which you have granted I will accept, and I will use it to remove this mass by which our intercessions seemed able to be repressed. For therefore, as far as the ability is given, we intercede for all sins, because 'all sins seem more pardonable when he who is guilty promises correction.' This is your opinion, and this too is ours. In no way, then, do we approve the faults which we wish to be corrected, nor, because what is wrongly committed pleases, do we therefore wish it to be unpunished; but pitying the man, while detesting the deed or the outrage, the more the vice displeases us, the less do we wish the vicious man to perish unamended.