Then I inquired among which fruits drunkenness was named, and recited that passage to the Galatians: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornications, uncleannesses, wantonnesses, the service of idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like; of which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God. After which words I asked, by what fruit of drunkenness we Christians should be recognized — we whom the Lord commanded to be recognized by our fruits. I added also for reading that which follows:
But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, continence. And I urged that they should consider how shameful and lamentable it was that concerning those fruits of the flesh they wished not only to live privately, but even to bring honor to the church; and, if the power were given, they would fill the whole space of so great a basilica with crowds of feasters and drunkards; but concerning the spiritual fruits, to which they were invited both by the authority of the divine Scriptures and by our groanings, they are unwilling to bring offerings to God and to celebrate above all the feasts of the saints therewith.
These things being done, I handed back the volume, and, prayer having been commanded, as far as I was able, and as far as the very peril was pressing me, and as the Lord deigned to supply strength, I set before their eyes the common peril — both of themselves, who had been committed to us, and of us, who were to render an account concerning them to the chief Shepherd; by whose humility, notable insults, blows, and spittings in the face, and slaps, and crown of thorns, and cross, and blood I besought that, if they had given some offense to themselves, they would either have pity on us and consider the ineffable charity of the venerable old man Valerius toward me — who did not hesitate to lay upon me so perilous a burden of handling the words of truth, on their account, and often said to them that his prayers had been heard concerning our coming, at which he rejoiced that we had come to him, not indeed to a common death or a spectacle of their death, but to a common striving toward eternal life.
Finally I also said that I was certain and trusted in Him who knows not how to lie, who through the mouth of His prophet promised concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, saying: If his sons forsake my law and walk not in my precepts, if they profane my justifications, I will visit their crimes with a rod and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not take away from him. That in Him therefore I trust: that, if they should despise these so great things which had been read and said to them, He would visit with the rod and with the scourge, and would not permit them to be condemned with this world. In which complaint it was so conducted that, according to the greatness of the business and the peril, our Guardian and Governor supplied both spirit and capacity.
It was not I who moved their tears with my own tears; but when such things were being said, I confess, overcome by their weeping, I could not hold back my own. And when we had now wept together alike, my sermon came to an end amid the fullest hope of their amendment. But on the next day, when the light dawned upon that day for which their gullets and bellies were wont to prepare themselves, it was reported to me that some even of those who had been present at the sermon had not yet ceased from murmuring, and that the force of that most wicked custom prevailed so strongly in them that they used only its very words and said: 'Why now? for before this, those who did not forbid these things were surely not un-Christians.' On hearing this, I was utterly at a loss what engines, so to speak, of greater weight I should prepare to move them.
Nevertheless I resolved that, if they thought I must persist, after reading that passage from the prophet Ezekiel—'The watchman is acquitted if he has given warning of the danger, even if those to whom warning is given have refused to take heed'—I would shake out my garments and depart. But then the Lord showed that He does not forsake us, and by what means He exhorts us to presume upon Him; for before the very hour at which we were to ascend the platform, there came in to me those same men whom I had heard had complained of the assault upon the ancient custom. Having received them kindly, in a few words I brought them over to a sound opinion.
And when the time for discourse had come, laying aside the reading I had prepared—since it now seemed unnecessary—I said a few words upon this very question: that we can bring forward against those who say 'Why now?' nothing shorter or truer than to say in turn, 'Even now, at last!' Yet, lest those who before us either permitted or did not dare to forbid such manifest crimes of an untrained multitude should seem to be touched by any insult from us, I set forth to them by what necessity these things had seemed to arise in the Church.
Namely, that after persecutions so many and so violent, when peace had been made and the throngs of the heathen, desiring to come into the Christian name, were hindered by this—that they were accustomed to spend their festal days with their idols in abundance of feasting and in drunkenness, and could not easily abstain from these most pernicious yet most ancient pleasures—it had seemed good to our forefathers that this weak part should for a time be spared, and that in place of the festivals they were abandoning they should celebrate other festal days in honour of the holy martyrs, not indeed with a like sacrilege, yet with a like extravagance.
Now, however, that they are bound by the name of Christ and made subject to the yoke of so great an authority, the saving precepts of sobriety should be handed on to them—precepts which, out of honour and fear of Him who commands, they could not withstand. Therefore it is now high time that those who dare not deny that they are Christians should begin to live according to the will of Christ; so that the things which were granted them in order that they might become Christians should now, when they are Christians, be spurned. Then I exhorted them that we should be willing to be imitators of the churches across the sea, in which such practices have in part never been received, and in part have already been corrected through good rulers, the people obeying.
And since examples of daily wine-bibbing were being alleged from the basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter, I said, first, that we had often heard it had been forbidden there; but because the place is remote from the bishop's oversight, and in so great a city there is a large multitude of carnal folk—especially pilgrims, who keep coming newly, and hold to that custom the more violently the more ignorantly—so monstrous a pestilence had not yet been able to be checked and stilled. Yet nevertheless, if we honoured Peter the Apostle, we ought to hear his precepts, and to gaze far more devoutly upon the epistle in which his will appears, than upon the basilica in which it does not appear; and at once, taking the book, I read aloud where he says:
'For as Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention; for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that henceforth he may live the rest of his time in the flesh no longer by the desires of men, but by the will of God. For the time past suffices to have wrought the will of men, when we walked in lusts, desires, drunkenness, revellings, and abominable servitudes of idols.' These things being done, when I perceived that all with one mind were going forward into good will, having despised the evil custom, I exhorted them to be present at the midday hour for the divine readings and psalms.
And so that day was to be celebrated far more purely and sincerely to God's pleasure, and surely from the multitude of those assembling it could easily be seen who followed the mind and who the belly. So, when all had been read, the sermon came to a close. But in the afternoon a greater multitude was present than before midday, and right up to the hour at which we should go out with the bishop, there was reading and singing of psalms by turns; and when we had gone out, two psalms were read. Then, though I was unwilling—for I now longed that so perilous a day should be brought to an end—the old man's command compelled me to say something to them.
I gave a brief sermon, in which I gave thanks to God; and since we could hear from the heretics in their basilica the accustomed banquets being celebrated—while even at that very time in which these things were being done by us, they persisted at their cups—I said that the beauty of day is adorned by comparison with night, and that a white colour is the more pleasing by the nearness of black. So our assembly of spiritual celebration would perhaps have been less delightful, had not carnal gorging been set alongside it on the other side; and I exhorted them earnestly to seek after such feasts, if they had tasted how sweet the Lord is;
but that those men should be fearful who pursue as though it were the chief good that which shall one day be destroyed—since each one becomes the companion of the thing he worships—and that the Apostle has heaped scorn upon such men, saying: 'Whose god is their belly,' though the same Apostle has said in another place: 'Food for the belly, and the belly for food; but God shall bring to nought both it and them.' We therefore ought to follow that which is not brought to nought, that which, being most remote from the affection of the flesh, is held fast by the sanctification of the spirit.
And when, in accordance with this theme and as the occasion allowed, the things which the Lord deigned to suggest had been said, the evening services were held which are wont to be held daily; and when we had withdrawn with the bishop, the brethren said hymns in that same place, a considerable multitude of both sexes remaining and singing psalms until the day grew dark. I have laid out for you, as briefly as I could, what—who could doubt it?—you desired to hear. Pray that God may deign to turn away from our endeavours every scandal and every weariness. We do indeed for a great part rest together with you with eager fervour, because such frequent gifts of the spiritual church of the people of Tagaste are reported to us. The ship with the brethren has not yet come.
At Asna, where the presbyter brother Argentius is, the Circumcellions, invading our basilica, shattered the altar. The case is now being pleaded; that it may be pleaded peaceably, and as befits the catholic Church, for the silencing of the tongues of an unpeaceable heresy, we greatly beg you to pray. We have sent a letter to the Asiarch. May you most blessed persevere in the Lord, mindful of us. Amen. XXX. TO THE LORD, HOLY AND LIKE-MINDED BROTHER AUGUSTINE, PAULINUS AND THERASIA, SINNERS. Long since, my like-minded brother in Christ the Lord, when I came to know you—though you knew it not—in your holy and pious labours, and beheld you though absent, having embraced you with my whole mind, I hastened to approach you also by letter in familiar and brotherly address.
And I believe that, in the hand and grace of the Lord, my discourse was carried through to you; but since the boy still delayed—the one we had sent to you and to other beloved ones, equally to be greeted in God, before winter—we could no longer both suspend our duty and restrain our most eager longing for converse with you. And so we have now written a second time, whether our former letter has been granted to reach you, or for the first time, if it had not the good fortune of coming into your hands. But do you, spiritual brother who judge all things, weigh not our love toward you by mere duty or by the timing of letters.
For the Lord is witness, who, one and the same, works His charity in His own everywhere, that from that time onward—from when, by the kindness of the venerable bishops Aurelius and Alypius, we came to know you through your works against the Manichees—so deeply was love of you implanted in us, that we seemed to ourselves not to be taking up some new friendship, but rather to be resuming, as it were, an old charity. In short, even now, though we write as untrained in speech, yet not as though untrained also in affection, and in the spirit, through the inward man, we recognise you, as it were, in return. Nor is it any wonder if, though absent, we are present to one another, and, though unknown, we know ourselves, since we are members of one body, have one Head, are flooded with one grace, live by one bread, walk one way, and dwell in one house.
In fine, in all that we are, with the whole hope and faith by which we stand in the present, we strain toward the future; in spirit as in body we are one, unless we are to be nothing, if we fall away from the One. How little, then, is that of which bodily absence deprives us of ourselves—unless indeed that fruit whereon the eyes of those who look for temporal things are fed? Although even bodily grace ought not to be called temporal in the case of spiritual persons, to whom the resurrection shall bestow even an eternity of their bodies, as we shall dare, in the power of Christ and of the goodness of God the Father, to presume upon, unworthy though we be. Therefore, would that the grace of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, might grant us this gift also—that we might see your face even in the flesh!
Not only would great joy be conferred upon our longings, but light too would grow upon our minds, and our poverty would be enriched out of your abundance. And this indeed you can bestow even upon the absent, especially by this occasion, when our sons, like-minded and most dear to us in the Lord, Romanus and Agilis—whom we commend to you as we do our other selves—shall return in the name of the Lord, their work of charity fulfilled. In this we ask that they may enjoy the affection of your charity in a special way. For you know how lofty are the things the Most High promises to a brother who helps his brother. Through these men, if you would wish to requite me with any gift of the grace that has been given you, you will do so safely. For they are, believe me if you will, one heart and one soul in the Lord with us.
May the grace of God be with you, as it is, and abide unto eternity, O like-minded brother in Christ the Lord, venerable, most beloved, and most longed-for. Greet from us all the saints in Christ, such as are, beyond doubt, closely joined to you. Commend us to all the saints, that they may deign to pray for us together with you. XXXI. TO THE LORDS MOST BELOVED AND MOST SINCERE, TRULY MOST BLESSED, AND BY THE MOST ABUNDANT GRACE OF GOD MOST EXCELLENT BROTHERS, PAULINUS AND THERASIA, AUGUSTINE, GREETING IN THE LORD.
Whereas I had most earnestly wished that my letter, by which I answered your earlier one—if indeed your letters can in any way be answered by me—might come with all speed into the hands of your charity, so that by some means, though absent, I might quickly be with you, my own slowness has brought me the gain of your letter. Good is the Lord, who often does not grant what we wish, that He may grant what we should prefer. For it is one thing that you are going to write upon receiving my letter, another what you wrote by not receiving it. And though we shall read that former with the greatest gladness, this present gladness would surely have been lacking to us, if—as we wished and most greatly desired—our letter had swiftly made its way to your holiness.
But now both to have these things written and to hope for those replies to be written back delights us with a more heaped-up joy. Thus neither can any fault be charged to us, and the Lord's more bounteous kindness has brought about what He judged more conducive to our desire. The holy brothers Romanus and Agilis—another letter of yours, hearing our voices and rendering them back, and a most sweet portion of your presence, yet one by which we gaped the more greedily to see you—we received with great joy in the Lord. Whence, or when, or in what way could either you afford or we require, that by writing you should teach us as much about yourselves as we learned from their mouth?
There was present too—what can be present to no sheet of paper—so great a joy in the narrators, that through the very countenance and eyes of the speakers we read you, written in their hearts, with unspeakable gladness. This also was more: that any page whatsoever, however great the good things it may contain in writing, profits itself nothing, though it be unfolded for the profit of others; but this letter of yours—that is, your brotherly soul—we so read in their conversation, that it appeared to us the more blessed, the more richly it had been written out of you. And so, most zealously questioning them about everything concerning you, we transcribed that letter into our own hearts, unto the imitation of the same blessedness.
Nor yet on that account did we let them, so soon returning from us to you, go without vexation. For see, I beg you, by what affections we were shaken. They were, of course, all the more quickly to be dismissed, the more eagerly they longed to obey you; but the more they longed for this, the more present they made you to us; for by that very thing they showed how dear were your inward bowels of love; therefore we were all the less willing to dismiss them, the more justly they pressed to be dismissed. O thing not to be borne—except that by this separation we do not depart from one another, since we are 'members of one body, have one Head, are flooded with one grace, live by one bread, walk one way, dwell in one house'! For why should we not use even the same words?
For you recognise, I believe, that these words are from your letter. But why should these rather be your words than mine—words which, in so far as they are true, come to us alike from the communion of the same Head? And even if they had something of your own bestowed upon them, so much the more did I love them thus, that they should besiege the way of my breast and not suffer the words to pass from my heart to my tongue, until they should come forth as much purer as they are yours. Holy brothers, beloved of God and members of one another with us, who could doubt that we are quickened by one Spirit—save one who does not feel by what love we are bound together? Yet I should like to know whether you bear this bodily absence more patiently than we bear it more easily.
If it is so, I confess, I do not love that fortitude of yours—unless perhaps because we are such that we ought to be longed for by you less than you ought to be longed for by us. In me certainly, if there were the patience to endure your absence, it would displease me; for I should be acting sluggishly in seeking to see you; and what is more absurd than to be made more sluggish by fortitude? But by what care of the church I am held, of this your charity ought to take note from this: that the most blessed father Valerius—who both greets you together with us and how greatly he thirsts for you, you shall hear from the brothers—did not suffer me even to be his presbyter, unless he laid upon me the greater burden of a co-episcopate.
And since—by reason of so great a charity in him and so great a zeal in the people—I believed that the Lord willed this, some precedents having already gone before by which every excuse was closed off to me, I greatly feared to excuse myself. But although the yoke of Christ is in itself gentle and His burden light, yet, on account of our harshness and infirmity, if this bond frets me at all and this load presses, it would be rendered somewhat more tolerable and bearable to me, unspeakably, by the solace of your presence. But you, I hear, live more unencumbered and freer from cares of this kind. Wherefore I do not immodestly ask you and beg and importune you, that you deign to come into Africa, which labours under a greater thirst for such men than under the notoriety of its drought. God knows.
That not only for the sake of my longing, nor only for the sake of those who have learned of your resolve either through us or from fame's proclaiming it anywhere, but also for the sake of the rest—who partly do not hear, partly, having heard, do not believe, yet, once they have found it out, are able to love it—we desire that you be present, even bodily, to these lands. For although you do this diligently and mercifully, yet let your work also shine before the men of our regions, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven. The fishermen, at the Lord's call, because they left their little boats and their nets, in recalling that they had left all and followed the Lord, rejoiced. And in very truth he despises all who not only—
—as much as he was able, but even as much as he wished to have, despises all. But in that which was desired, the eyes of God are witnesses; in that which was possessed, the eyes of men also. Now in some way, when superfluous earthly things are loved, they constrain us more tightly when attained than when coveted. For whence did that man go away sad, who sought from the Lord counsel for attaining eternal life, when he had heard that he must sell all his goods and distribute them to the poor and have treasure in heaven, if he would be perfect, save because—as the Gospel says—he had great riches? For it is one thing to be now unwilling to incorporate what is lacking, another to tear away what is already incorporated: the one is refused like food, the other cut off like limbs.
With how great, then, and how marvellous a joy does Christian charity in our times behold done gladly, through the Lord's Gospel, that which the rich man heard with sorrow from the Lord's own mouth! Although I could unfold in no words the conception and travail of my heart, yet because you prudently and piously understand that this is not yours—that is, human—but in you the Lord's glory (for you regard even the enemy most cautiously and act most devoutly, that as disciples of Christ you may be humble of heart and meek; for it is more profitably that earthly wealth is held humbly than proudly relinquished)—since therefore you rightly understand that this is not your glory but the Lord's, you will see how small and slight are the things I have said.
For I have spoken of the praises of Christ, to which even the tongues of angels are unequal. This glory of Christ, therefore, we long to have set also before the eyes of our fellow men—in one wedlock, examples of trampling upon pride and of not despairing of perfection, set forth to both sexes. I know not whether you do anything more merciful than that you should be as unwilling to hide that you are such, as you were willing to be such. Vetustinus, a boy pitiable even to the impious, I commend to your kindness and charity. The causes of his calamity and of his wandering you shall hear from himself. For his resolve too—by which he promises that he will serve God—a more ample time, a more robust age, and the fear now past, will indicate more surely.
Three books—and would that they were as good expounders of so great a question as they are large—I have sent to your holiness and charity, fearing the labour of your reading them so much the less, the more I perceive your ardour of loving; for their question is about free will. These books I know that brother Romanianus either does not have, or does not have them all—he through whom I gave over nearly everything I could write, adapted to any ears whatever, by his zeal toward us not to be brought, but I only indicated that they should be read. For he had all of them and carried them about with him; and through him I sent the first replies. I believe your holiness, by the spiritual sagacity which the Lord has bestowed on you, has already learned by experience what that man bears of good in his mind, and in what part of infirmity he limps.
Wherefore I have, I hope, both commended himself and his son to your humanity and charity—with what solicitude, and by how great a bond of necessity they are joined to me, you have read. May the Lord build them up through you—which is rather to be sought from Him; for I know how much you would wish it. That you are writing against the pagans I have learned from the brothers. If we deserve anything from your breast, send it without hesitation, that we may read it; for your breast is such an oracle of the Lord, that from it I presume there will be given to us responses so well-pleasing and so thoroughly unfolded against the most loquacious questions. The books of the most blessed pope Ambrose I believe your holiness has;
but those I greatly desire which he wrote most carefully and copiously against certain most unlearned and most arrogant men, who contend that our Lord made progress from the books of Plato. The most blessed brother Severus, of our fellow-discipleship, bishop of the church of Milevis, well known to the brethren in that same city, greets your holiness with the office due together with us. All the brothers too, serving the Lord together with us, do this as much as they long for you, long for you as much as they love you, and love you as much as you are good. The bread which we have sent—a richer blessing shall be made by the love of your kindness in receiving it.
May the Lord guard you from this generation for ever, O lords most beloved and most sincere, truly kindly, and by the most abundant grace of the Lord most excellent brothers. XXXII. TO THE LORD, DESERVEDLY TO BE PROCLAIMED AND HONOURED, BROTHER ROMANIANUS, PAULINUS AND THERASIA. On the day before we gave these lines, when our brothers had returned from Africa—in expectation of whom you saw us hanging in suspense—we had received from thence letters of the most longed-for of holy and dearest men: namely of Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, Profuturus, Severus, now all alike bishops.
Therefore, rejoicing in the most recent discourses of so many such holy men, we hastened to report our gladness to you, that to you also we might convey, by most festive tidings, the joy awaited amid your anxious pilgrimage. If perhaps you have learned the same things about those venerable and most loving men through the arrival of other ships, receive them again through us as well, and exult anew as though with renewed cheerfulness. But if this first message shall come to you from us, rejoice that so great a charity has, by Christ's gift, been brought forth for us in your native land—so that whatever the divine Providence there works, ever wonderful, as it is written, in His saints, we may know either among the first or with the first.
But we write that this is to be rejoiced over, not only because Augustine has received the episcopate, but because the African churches have deserved this care of God—that they should receive heavenly words from Augustine's mouth—who, advanced to the greater grace of the Lord's gift in a new manner, was so consecrated that he did not succeed a bishop in the chair, but was added to him. For, Valerius being still unharmed, Augustine is co-bishop of the church of Hippo. And that blessed old man—whose most pure mind no stain of envious spite ever overspread—now receives from the Most High fruits worthy of his heart's peace: that the one whom he simply wished to be the successor of his priesthood, this same one he is granted to hold as a colleague. Could this have been believed before it came to pass?
But in this work also of the Almighty may be spoken that Gospel saying: 'These things are hard for men; but with God all things are possible.' Let us therefore exult and be glad in Him who alone does wondrous things, and who makes the like-minded to dwell in a house, since He Himself has regarded our lowliness and visited His people in good, who has raised up a horn in the house of David His servant, and now has exalted the horn of His Church among His elect, that He may break the horns of sinners—as He promises through the prophet—that is, of the Donatists and Manichees. Would that now the Lord's trumpet, by which He thunders through Augustine, might strike the hearing of our son Licentius—but that he may hear it with that ear by which Christ enters, from which the enemy does not snatch the seed of God!