Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 68/118

For it is easy and downhill to hate the wicked because they are wicked, but rare and pious to love those same men because they are men, so that in one and the same person you may both disapprove the fault and approve the nature, and therefore hate the fault the more justly, because by it is defiled that nature which you love. He, then, is bound not by a fellowship of iniquity but rather of humanity, who for this reason is a persecutor of the crime, that he may be a liberator of the man. Moreover, of morals to be corrected there is no other place than in this life; for after this life each will have that which he has gained for himself in this. Therefore we are compelled by charity of the human race to intervene for the accused, lest they so end this life through punishment that, this life ended, they cannot end their punishment.

Do not doubt, therefore, that this office of ours descends from religion, since God—with whom there is no iniquity, whose power is supreme, who not only sees what sort of man each is but also foresees what sort he will be, who alone can not err in judging because in knowing He cannot be deceived—yet does, as the Gospel says, make His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust. That we may be imitators of His marvelous goodness, the Lord Christ, exhorting, says: 'Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in the heavens.'

'who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust.' Who does not know that many abuse this divine indulgence and gentleness to their own destruction? Reproving these and gravely rebuking them, the Apostle says: 'Do you think, O man, every one that judges those who do such things and does them yourself, that you shall escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of His kindness and patience and long-suffering? Are you ignorant that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness of heart and impenitent heart you treasure up to yourself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works.'

Surely, because these persist in their wickedness, God does not therefore fail to persist in His patience, punishing very few things in this world lest divine providence be thought not to exist, and reserving many things for the final examination, so that the judgment to come may be commended to us? Not, as I think, does that heavenly Master command us to love impiety, when He commands that we love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who persecute us—since without doubt, if we piously worship God, we can have as enemies, and those stirred against us with the fiercest hatreds and as persecutors, none but the impious. Are the impious, then, to be loved? Is good to be done to the impious? Is prayer to be made even for the impious? So indeed, plainly.

For He who commands this is God; nor yet does He by this compact join us to the fellowship of the impious, to whom He Himself, by sparing them and by lavishing life and salvation, is surely not joined. For His counsel, as far as it is granted to a pious man to know, the Apostle sets forth, saying: 'Are you ignorant that the patience of God leads you to repentance?' To this we wish those to be led, for whom we intervene; we neither spare nor favor their sins. For certain men, whose crimes are manifest, though freed from your severity, we nevertheless remove from the fellowship of the altar, that by repenting they may be able to appease Him whom by sinning they had despised, and by punishing themselves. For he who truly repents does nothing else than not suffer that which he has done wrongly to be unpunished.

For in that way He spares the man who does not spare himself, He whose lofty and just judgment no despiser escapes. But if He, by sparing the iniquitous and wicked and lavishing life and salvation upon them, even upon very many of those whom He knows will not perform repentance, nevertheless shows patience, how much more ought we to be merciful toward those who promise correction—and of whom we are uncertain whether they do what they promise—so that by interceding for them we may bend your rigor; for whom we also pray to God—from whom nothing of their morals, even future, is hidden—not, however, shamelessly, because He Himself commanded this!

But to such an extent does the iniquity of men sometimes advance, that even after repentance has been performed, after reconciliation at the altar, they commit either like or graver things; and yet God makes even upon such men His sun to rise, and gives no less than He gave before—the most lavish gifts of life and salvation. And although that place of repentance is not conceded to them in the Church, God nevertheless does not forget His patience over them. And if any one of their number should say to us:

'Either give me the same place of repenting again, or pronounce me a hopeless case, so that I may do whatever shall please me, as far as I am helped by my own resources and am not prohibited by human laws—in harlotry and every luxury damnable indeed before God but even praiseworthy before very many men; or, if you call me back from this wickedness, tell me whether it profits me anything unto the life to come, if in this life I have despised the blandishments of most alluring pleasure, if I have curbed the incitements of lusts;'

'if for the chastening of my body I have withdrawn from myself many things even lawful and permitted, if by repenting I have tormented myself more vehemently than before, if I have groaned more piteously, if I have wept more abundantly, if I have lived better, if I have supported the poor more generously, if I have burned more ardently with that charity which covers a multitude of sins'—who of us so loses his senses as to say to this man: 'Those things will profit you nothing hereafter; go, at least enjoy the sweetness of this life'? May God avert so monstrous and sacrilegious a madness!

Although, then, it has been cautiously and wholesomely provided that the place of that most humble repentance be conceded but once in the Church—lest the medicine, being cheap, should be less useful to the sick, whereas it will be so much the more wholesome the less contemptible it is—yet who would dare say to God: 'Why do you still again spare this man who, after his first repentance, again binds himself in the snares of iniquity?' Who would dare say that toward these is not done what the Apostle says: 'Are you ignorant that the patience of God leads you to repentance?' Or that these are excepted from what is written: 'Blessed are all they who trust in Him,' or that to these does not pertain what is said: 'Act manfully, and let your heart be strengthened, all you who hope in the Lord'?

Since, then, over sinners there is such patience, such mercy of God, that in this temporal life, their morals being amended, they are not condemned eternally—God who awaits from no one any mercy to be shown to Him, since none is more blessed than He, none more powerful, none more just—what sort of men ought we to be toward men, we who, with whatever praise we heap upon this our life, do not say that it is without sin, because, if we say so, we deceive ourselves, as it is written, and the truth is not in us!

Accordingly, although the person of the accuser is one, that of the defender another, that of the intercessor another, that of the judge another—concerning whose proper offices it would be too long and not necessary to discourse in this discussion—yet even the avengers of crimes themselves, and those who in this office are not stirred by their own anger but are ministers of the laws and avengers not of their own but of others' injuries duly examined, such judges as they ought to be, divine censure has so terrified, that they should consider that God's mercy is necessary to themselves on account of their own sins, and should not think it pertains to the fault of their office if they act mercifully toward those over whose life and death they hold lawful power.

For when the Jews had brought to the Lord Christ a woman taken in adultery, and, tempting Him, said that she had been commanded by the law to be stoned, and then asked what He Himself would prescribe concerning her, He answered them: 'He of you who is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her.' Thus He neither disapproved the law, which had commanded such guilty women to be killed, and by terrifying them recalled to mercy those by whose judgment she could have been killed. I think that, this sentence of the Lord being heard, if the husband himself was also present, who was demanding that the violated fidelity of his bed be avenged, being terrified he turned his mind from the desire of avenging to the will of sparing.

For in what manner was the accuser admonished not to prosecute his own injuries, when the very judges were thus prohibited from avenging, who in punishing the adulteress were not compelled to serve private grief but the law! Whence Joseph, to whom the Virgin Mary, the Lord's mother, had been betrothed, when he had found her to be with child, with whom he knew he had had no union, and on this account had believed her nothing other than an adulteress, nevertheless did not wish her to be punished, nor was he an approver of the outrage. For this will of his is even reckoned to justice; for thus it is written concerning him: 'And since he was a just man and was unwilling to expose her, he resolved to dismiss her secretly.' While he was thinking these things, an angel appeared to him, who might teach that to be of the divine which he had supposed to be of crime.

If, then, when the frailty common to us all is considered, both the accuser's indignation and the judge's severity are softened, what at last do you suppose the office of an advocate or an intercessor ought to be on behalf of the accused, seeing that even you good men, who are now judges and who once, practising in the courts, took up the causes of men, know how much more gladly you were accustomed to defend than to accuse? And yet an advocate differs greatly from an intercessor; for the one bestows his effort chiefly upon washing away or covering up the charges, whereas the intercessor, even when the guilt is established, takes care that the penalty be removed or moderated. This is what the righteous are before God on behalf of sinners; this is what those who themselves sin are admonished to do for one another; for it is written:

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. These offices of humanity every man claims for himself before his fellow man, wherever he can. For the very fault that a man would punish when committed in his own house, he wishes to go unpunished in another's house. For whether one is called in before a friend, or before someone who has power to avenge, and while present grows angry, or comes upon the angry man by chance, he is judged not most just but most inhumane if he does not intervene. I myself know that you, together with your other friends, once interceded in the church of Carthage on behalf of a cleric with whom the bishop was justly angry; and there certainly no shedding of blood was feared, but only a bloodless discipline;

and while you did not wish that which displeased even you to go unavenged, we did not judge you as approvers of the offence, but heard you as most humane intercessors. If, then, it is lawful for you to soften ecclesiastical correction by interceding, how must a bishop intercede against your sword, when that sword is drawn so that he against whom it is drawn may live well, whereas this other is drawn so that he may not live at all! Finally, the Lord Himself interceded among men that the adulteress might not be stoned, and in that way commended to us the office of intercession — save that He did by inspiring fear what we do by entreaty. For He is the Lord, and we are servants. Yet He so struck fear that we all ought to fear. For who among us is without sin?

When He had said this to those by whom the sinful woman was brought to Him for punishment — that whoever knew himself to be without sin should first cast a stone at her — their cruelty gave way as their conscience trembled; for then, slipping away one by one from that assembly, they left the wretched woman alone with the Merciful One. Let the piety of Christians yield to this sentence, to which the impiety of the Jews yielded; let the humility of the obedient yield to it, to which the pride of the persecutors yielded; let the confession of the faithful yield to it, to which the pretence of the tempter yielded. Spare the wicked, good man; the better you are, the gentler be; the higher you rise in power, the humbler become in piety. I indeed, looking upon your character, have called you a good man. But you, looking upon the words of Christ, say to yourself:

No one is good except God alone. And though this be true — for Truth said it — I nevertheless ought not to be thought to have spoken with flattering deceit, nor to have set myself as it were against the words of the Lord, so that, whereas He says, No one is good except God alone, I should call you a good man; for the Lord Himself did not speak things contrary to Himself when He said, A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. God, therefore, is good in a singular way and cannot lose this goodness; for He is not good by participation in any other good, since the good by which He is good is Himself to Himself; but man, when he is good, is good from Him, since he cannot be good from himself.

For by His Spirit all become good who do become good, and our nature was created capable of Him through its own will. It pertains to us, then, in order that we may be good, to receive and to hold what He gives who is good of His own; and by neglecting Him each man becomes evil of his own. Accordingly, in so far as a man acts rightly — that is, works good knowingly and lovingly and piously — so far is he good; but in so far as he sins — that is, turns aside from truth and charity and piety — so far is he evil. But who in this life is without any sin? Yet we call that man good in whom good things prevail, and that man best who sins least.

Therefore the Lord Himself, those whom He calls good because of their participation in divine grace, the same He also calls evil because of the vices of human frailty, until the whole of that which composes us, being healed of all viciousness, passes over into that life where nothing at all shall be sinned. For assuredly it was the good, not the evil, whom He taught to pray, when He commanded them to say: Our Father, who art in heaven; for it is from this that they are good — that they are sons of God, not begotten by nature but made so by grace, as those to whom, receiving Him, He gave power to become sons of God. This spiritual generation, according to the manner of the Scriptures, is also called adoption, that it may be distinguished from that generation of God from God, coeternal from the Eternal, whereof it is written: Who shall declare His generation?

When, therefore, He had shown them to be good whom He willed to say truly to God: Our Father, who art in heaven, He nevertheless commanded that in the same prayer, among other things, they should say: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And although it is manifest that these debts are sins, He afterward declared it yet more manifestly, saying: For if you forgive men their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins. This prayer the baptized pray; nor is there any of past sins that is not forgiven to those baptized in the holy Church. But since afterward, living in this mortal frailty, they would contract that which needed to be forgiven, they could not truly say: Forgive us our debts.

They are therefore good in so far as they are sons of God, but in so far as they sin — which they attest by their own confession, and no lying confession — they are surely evil. Unless perchance someone should say that the sins of the good are of one kind and those of the evil of another, which is not altogether improbable to say. Yet the Lord Jesus, without any ambiguity, called those very same men evil whose Father He said was God. For in the same sermon in which He teaches that prayer, in another place, exhorting them to pray to God, He says: Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you; for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened; and a little later:

If then you, He says, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask Him! Is God, then, the Father of the evil? Far be it. How, then, is He called 'your heavenly Father' to those to whom it is said 'though you be evil,' unless because the Truth shows both — what we are by God's goodness, and what we are by human vice — commending the one and correcting the other? Rightly did Seneca say, who lived in the times of the apostles, and some of whose letters even to the apostle Paul are read: 'He who hates the wicked hates all men.' And yet the wicked are to be loved for this reason: that they may not be wicked — even as the sick are loved not that they may remain sick, but that they may be healed.

But whatever we sin, while abiding in this life, after that abolition of all sins which takes place in baptism — even if it be not such as compels us to be removed from the divine altars — is expiated not by barren grief but by sacrifices of mercy. What we therefore do, that you may act at our intercession, know that you offer to God on our behalf. For you have need of the mercy which you show; and see who it is that said: Forgive, and you shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given to you. And although, even if we so lived that there were no cause for us to say, Forgive us our debts, yet the purer the soul were from wickedness, the fuller it ought to be of clemency, so that, if we were not pricked by the sentence of the Lord who says:

Whichever of you is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her — the example of Him who said this we should follow, who, though He was assuredly without sin, said to the woman whom those terrified men had left behind: Neither will I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more. For that disgraced woman might well have feared lest, when those who had reflected on their own sins had departed so as to spare another's sin, He Himself, who was without sin, might now most justly condemn her. But He, not fearful in conscience but full of clemency, when she had answered that she had been condemned by no one, said: Neither will I condemn you — as if to say: If malice could spare you, why do you fear innocence? And lest He seem to be not the pardoner but the approver of offences:

Go, He says, from now on sin no more — so that He might show that He had spared the person, not that the person's guilt had pleased Him. You see, then, that our conduct descends from religion, and that we are not bound up in fellowship of crimes because we very often intercede even for the wicked — though we ourselves are not wicked, yet sinners for sinners; and — take this as spoken truthfully rather than injuriously — I think that we intercede in the presence of sinners. Nor indeed have the power of the king, the right of the sword in the judge, the hooks of the executioner, the arms of the soldier, the discipline of the ruler, yea even the severity of a good father, been established in vain. All these things have their own measures, causes, reasons, and uses.

When these are feared, both the wicked are restrained and the good live more peacefully among the wicked — not that those are to be pronounced good who do not sin through fearing such things (for no one is good through fear of punishment, but through love of righteousness); yet not uselessly is human boldness restrained even by the fear of laws, so that innocence may be safe among the wicked, and in the very wicked, while their power is bridled by dread of punishment, and God being invoked, their will may be healed. But to this ordering of human affairs the intercessions of bishops are not contrary; nay rather, there would be neither cause nor occasion for interceding, if these things did not exist. For the benefits of those who intercede and spare are the more welcome, the more just are the punishments of those who sin.

Nor for any other reason, so far as I understand, did the sterner vengeance of the law rage in the times of the ancient prophets, in the Old Testament, except that it might be shown that penalties are rightly appointed for the wicked; so that, in that by the indulgence of the New Testament we are admonished to spare them, it may be either a remedy of salvation whereby our own sins too are spared, or a commendation of gentleness, so that through those who spare, the Truth once proclaimed may not only be feared but also loved. But it matters very much with what mind each one spares. For as there is sometimes a mercy that punishes, so also a cruelty that spares. For — to set down something manifest by way of example — who would not more truly call him cruel who spared a boy bent most obstinately on playing with serpents?

And who would not call him merciful, who, forbidding such things, corrected even with blows the boy who despised his words? And therefore discipline should not be extended even to death, so that there may remain one to whom it can be of profit. Although, even when a man is killed by a man, it makes a great difference whether it be done through desire of doing harm or of unjustly taking something away — as is done by an enemy, as by a robber — or by way of vengeance or obedience — as by a judge, as by an executioner — or by the necessity of escaping or of coming to another's aid — as a robber is slain by a traveller, an enemy by a soldier. And sometimes he who was the cause of the death is rather in fault than he who does the killing, as if someone deceive his own surety and the latter suffer the lawful penalty in his stead.

Yet not everyone who is the cause of another's death is guilty. What, for instance, if someone should demand a shameful act and kill himself if he does not obtain it? What if a son, fearing his father's dutiful chastisement, should perish by a fall? What if another, when a man has been set free, or lest another be set free, should bring death upon himself? Are we, on account of these causes of others' deaths, either to consent to wickedness, or must the punishment of sin — which is inflicted not from a zeal for doing harm but for correcting, even a father's punishment — be done away, or must works of mercy be restrained? When these things happen, we owe them human grief; yet we do not, on account of them, that they may not happen, curb our will to do what is right. So too, when we intercede for a sinner to be condemned.

Sometimes things follow which we do not will — whether in the very person who is freed by our intercession, so that, unpunished, a boldness subject to greed and thankless for the leniency may rage yet more monstrously, and one man snatched from death may slay many; or, though that man himself be changed for the better by our benefit and corrected in his morals, another may perish by living wickedly and, having this man's impunity set before him, commit such deeds or worse. These evils, I think, are not to be imputed to us when we intercede, but rather those goods which, when we do this, we look to and will — that is, the commendation of gentleness for winning affection by the word of truth, and that those who are freed from a temporal death may so live as not to run into the eternal, from which they would never be freed.

Your severity, then, is profitable, by whose ministry our tranquillity too is aided; and our intercession is profitable, by whose ministry your severity too is tempered. Let it not displease you that you are entreated by the good, since neither does it displease the good that you are feared by the wicked. For even the apostle Paul terrified the iniquity of men not only with the judgment to come but also with your present axes, asserting that these too pertain to the dispensation of divine providence. Let every soul, he says, be subject to the higher powers; for there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained by God. Wherefore he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God; and they that resist purchase to themselves judgment;

for rulers are not a terror to good work, but to evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do good, and thou shalt have praise from it; for it is God's minister to thee for good. But if thou do evil, be afraid; for it beareth not the sword in vain, for it is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him who does evil. Therefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath but also for conscience' sake. For this cause you also pay tribute; for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour. Owe no man anything, but to love one another. These words of the apostle show the usefulness of your severity.

Accordingly, just as those who fear are commanded to owe love to those who inspire terror, so those who inspire terror are commanded to owe love to those who fear. Let nothing be done from a desire to do harm, but all things from a charity that seeks the good, and nothing will be done monstrously, nothing inhumanely. Thus shall the vengeance of the judge be dreaded, in such a way that the religion of the intercessor be not despised; for both by punishing and by pardoning this alone is well done — that the life of men be corrected. But if there be such perversity and impiety that neither discipline nor pardon can avail to correct it, still by the good, in that intention and conscience which God discerns, whether by severity or by leniency, nothing but the office of love is fulfilled. But as to what follows in your letter, where you say:

'But now, such as our morals are, men both desire that the penalty of their crime be relaxed for them and desire to possess that on account of which the crime was committed' — you make mention of the worst kind of men, for whom the medicine of repentance is of no profit at all. For if another's property, on account of which the sin was committed, is not restored when it can be restored, repentance is not done but feigned; but if it is truly done, the sin will not be remitted unless what was taken away is restored — but, as I said, when it can be restored. For very often he who takes away loses it, whether by suffering other evildoers or by living wickedly himself, and has nothing else from which to make restitution. To such a one, certainly, we cannot say, 'Restore what you took away,' except when we believe him both to have it and to deny it.

And in that case indeed, if he endures certain torments from one who demands restitution, while he is thought to have what he might restore, there is no injustice; because, even though he has nothing from which to pay the money taken away, yet deservedly, while he is compelled through bodily distresses to give it back, he pays the penalties of the sin whereby it was wrongfully taken. But it is not inhumane to intercede even for such men, as for those accused of crimes — not to the end that another's property be by no means restored, but that a man may not vent his rage in vain upon a man, especially one who has already remitted the fault, but seeks the money and fears to be defrauded, not desires to be avenged. In short, in such cases, if we can persuade the demanders that those on whose behalf we intervene do not have what is demanded, their vexations are at once relaxed for us.