Latin original · 38 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:2742–5:2779 (4615 verses in all)
if I should be less free in admonishing that which I judge it most wholesome for me to admonish. Let me indeed be more bashful when I intercede with you on behalf of others; but when I intercede on behalf of your very self, so much the freer as I am more friendly, because so much the more friendly as I am more faithful—although I would not say even these things, were I not acting rather bashfully. And if this be, as you yourself have written, 'the greatest efficacy of difficult things among good men,' let it aid me on your behalf with you, that in Him I may enjoy you who has furnished me this door and confidence toward you—especially since what I suggest I judge to be already easy for your soul, propped up and equipped with so many divine gifts.
For if, perceiving from whom you have received the virtues which you have received, and giving Him thanks, you were to confer them upon His worship even in these your secular honours, and were to raise up and lead the men subject to your power to worship Him, both by the example of your religious life and by the very zeal of taking counsel for them, whether by cherishing or by frightening them, and were to wish nothing else in that whereby through you they live more securely, except that they may hence merit Him with whom they shall live blessedly—then both those will be true virtues, and by the aid of Him by whose bounty they were granted they will so grow and be perfected as, without any doubt, to lead you to the truly blessed life, which is none other than eternal; where now neither shall evils be prudently discerned from goods, for they shall not exist, nor shall adversities be bravely endured, for there shall be nothing there save what we love, not also what we endure; nor shall lust be temperately bridled, where we shall feel none of its incitements; nor shall the needy be justly relieved with help, where we shall have no one poor and in want.
There will be one virtue, and that very thing will be both virtue and the reward of virtue, which the man who loves this says in the holy oracles: But for me it is good to cleave to God. This will there be full and everlasting wisdom, and the same, truly now the blessed life; for it is the arrival at the eternal and supreme Good, to cleave to which forever is the end of our good. Let it be called prudence, because it will most foresightedly cleave to the good which is not lost; and fortitude, because it will most firmly cleave to the good from which it is not torn away; and temperance, because it will most chastely cleave to the good in which it is not corrupted; and justice, because it will most rightly cleave to the good to which it is deservedly subject. And yet even in this life virtue is nothing but to love what ought to be loved;
to choose this is prudence; to be turned from it by no troubles is fortitude; by no allurements is temperance; by no pride is justice. But what should we choose to love above all, save that than which we find nothing better? This is God; to whom if in loving we either prefer or make equal anything, we know not how to love ourselves. For it is so much the better for us the more we go into Him than whom nothing is better. And we go, not by walking, but by loving. Whom we shall have the more present the purer we have been able to have that same love by which we tend toward Him; for He is neither extended nor enclosed by bodily places. To Him, therefore, who is everywhere present and everywhere whole, one may go not by the feet but by the manners of life.
But our manners of life are wont to be judged not from what each one knows, but from what he loves; nor do anything make manners good or evil except good or evil loves. Therefore by our own crookedness we are far from the rectitude of God; whence by loving the right we are corrected, that being made right we may cleave to the Right. To Him, therefore, let us with all the effort we can act that even those may come whom we love as our very selves, if we have already, by loving Him, come to know how to love ourselves. For Christ, that is, the Truth, says that on these two precepts hang the whole law and the prophets: that we love God with the whole heart and with the whole soul and with the whole mind, and love our neighbours as our very selves.
Now the neighbour in this place is to be reckoned not by kinship of blood but by the fellowship of reason, in which all men are partners. For if a money-relationship makes partners, how much more the relationship of nature, common not by the law of trafficking but of birth! Hence too that comic poet—for the splendour of truth is not wanting even to brilliant talents—when he composed a saying addressed by one old man to another: Have you so much leisure from your own affairs, that you concern yourself with the affairs of another, which pertain nothing to you? The other returned in answer: I am a man; I count nothing human alien to me. To which sentence they say that even whole theatres, full of foolish and unlearned men, applauded. For so did the fellowship of human souls naturally touch the feeling of all,
so that no man there felt himself to be anything but the neighbour of any man whatsoever. Since therefore, with that love which the divine law commands, a man ought to love God and himself and his neighbour, yet on this account three precepts were not given, nor was it said 'in these three,' but: On these two precepts hang the whole law and the prophets—that is, in the love of God with the whole heart and with the whole soul and with the whole mind, and of one's neighbour as oneself—namely, that it might be understood that there is no other love by which anyone loves himself, except that he loves God. For he who loves himself otherwise must rather be said to hate himself;
for he becomes unjust and deprives himself of the light of justice, when, turned away from the mightier and more excellent Good and thence turned even to himself, he is converted to lower and needy things, and there comes to pass in him what has been most truthfully written: But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul. Since therefore no one loves himself save by loving God, there was no need that, once the precept concerning the love of God had been given, a man should also be commanded to love himself, since in that he loves God he loves himself.
He ought therefore to love both God and his neighbour as himself, so that whatever man he can—whether by the consolation of beneficence, or by the instruction of teaching, or by the coercion of discipline—he may lead to worship God, knowing that on these two precepts hang the whole law and the prophets. He who chooses this with sober discretion is prudent; he who is turned away from it by no affliction is brave; he who by no other delight, is temperate; he who by no elation, is just.
By these virtues divinely imparted through the grace of the Mediator between God and us, the man Christ Jesus—through whom, after the enmities of iniquity, we are reconciled to God in the Spirit of charity—by these virtues, I say, divinely imparted, both the good life is now led, and afterward its reward, which cannot but be eternal, the blessed life, is paid out. For here these same virtues are in act, there in effect; here in the work, there in the wage; here in the office, there in the end. And so all the good and holy, even in torments of any kind whatsoever, supported by divine aid, are called blessed in the hope of that blessed end by which end they shall be blessed;
for if they were forever in those same torments and most atrocious pains, no sound reason would doubt that they are wretched, whatever virtues they had. Piety therefore, that is, the true worship of the true God, profits unto all things, both that which averts or softens the troubles of this life, and that which leads to that life and salvation, where we shall no more suffer any evil and shall fully enjoy the supreme and everlasting Good. To attain this more perfectly and to retain it most perseveringly I exhort you as I do myself. For unless you were already a partaker of it, and judged that these temporal honours of yours ought to serve it, you would not, for the purpose of reducing the Donatist heretics into the unity and peace of Christ, say by edict: 'For you this is done;
for you the priests of uncorrupted faith, for you the emperor Augustus, for you also we his judges labour,' and many other things which you have set in that same edict in such a way that it appears you, in the girdle of an earthly judge, are pondering in no small part the heavenly commonwealth. Wherefore, if I have wished to speak with you at somewhat greater length concerning the true virtues and the true blessed life, I beg that I be not reckoned burdensome to your occupations; nay rather, I am confident that I am not, since you bear so great a soul, and one wonderfully to be praised, that you neither desert those cares nor are occupied with these more gladly and familiarly. 156. TO HIS LORD, HOLY AND BY RIGHT AND MERIT VENERABLE AND IN ALL THINGS TO BE REVERENCED, BISHOP AUGUSTINE, FROM HILARIUS.
The grace of your holiness, which is known to all, has persuaded my littleness that, when our people were returning from Syracuse to Hippo, I should send this letter to praise your venerableness, asking the supreme Trinity that, safe and vigorous by the favour of our God, you may receive this my writing to be examined, my holy lord, by right and merit venerable and in all things to be reverenced. Therefore I beg that you deign to be mindful of me in your holy prayers, and to instruct our inexperience concerning that which certain Christians at Syracuse set forth, saying: that a man can be without sin and easily keep God's commandments, if he will; that an infant not baptized, cut off by death, cannot perish by desert, since he is born without sin;
that a rich man remaining in his riches cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he has sold all that he has, nor can it profit him if perchance from those very riches he has done the commandments; that one ought not to swear at all; and concerning the Church, which it is, of which it is written that it has neither wrinkle nor spot—whether this is the one in which we are now gathered, or that one which we hope for; and a certain one has laid down that this is the Church in which we now assemble the peoples, and that it cannot be without sin. Concerning all these things I beg your holiness, with as many prayers as I am able, that you would command us to be more openly instructed, so that we may know to what extent we ought to hold an opinion.
May the mercy of our God preserve your holiness safe for innumerable years, I wish, my holy lord, by right and merit venerable and in all things to be reverenced. 157. AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP, SERVANT OF CHRIST AND OF HIS CHURCH, TO HIS MOST BELOVED SON HILARIUS, GREETING IN THE LORD. From your letter I have learned not only of your safety, but also of your religious zeal concerning the word of God and your pious care for your salvation, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Wherefore, giving thanks to God, I have not deferred to render a reply. If therefore you ask whether in this life anyone so advances in the perfection of righteousness that here he lives altogether without any sin, attend to what the Apostle John, whom the Lord chiefly loved among His disciples, has said:
If we say, he says, that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If therefore those about whom you have written to me say that they are without sin, you see that they deceive themselves and the truth is not in them. But if they confess themselves to be sinners, that they may be able to obtain God's mercy, let them also restrain themselves from deceiving others, whom they endeavour to persuade of this pride. For to all is necessary the Lord's Prayer, which the Lord gave even to those very rams of the flock, that is, to His apostles, that each one may say to God: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.
For he to whom these words in the prayer were not necessary must be pronounced to live here without sin. And if the Lord had foreseen that there would be any such, better indeed than His apostles proved to be, He would have taught them another prayer, in which they would not ask that their sins be forgiven them—sins which had all already been forgiven them in baptism. For if holy Daniel, not before men as though with a deceitful humility, but before God, that is, in the prayer by which he besought God, confessed not only the sins of his people but also his own, as is expressed by his truthful mouth, nothing else seems to me to be said to these men, except what the Lord commands to a certain proud one through the prophet Ezekiel: Are you wiser than Daniel?
But plainly, he who, aided by God's mercy and grace, has abstained from those sins which are even called crimes, and has not neglected to cleanse, by works of mercy and pious prayers, those sins without which one does not live here, will deserve to depart hence without sin—although, while he lived here, he had some sins; because, just as these were not lacking, so also there were present the remedies by which they might be purged.
But whoever, upon seizing this as a kind of pretext, when he has heard that no one here lives by his own choice without sin, gives himself over to lusts and binds himself fast to abominable crimes, and persists in these criminal and utterly wicked ways right up to his last day, whatever alms he may give amid all this both leads his life unhappily and ends it more unhappily still. Yet such people are somehow to be tolerated when they say that there either is or has been here some just man—apart from the one Holy of Holies—who had no sin whatsoever.
But that assertion of theirs—that a man's free will suffices for fulfilling the Lord's commandments, even if it be not helped toward good works by the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit—must by every means be anathematized and detested with every execration. For those who assert this are utterly estranged from the grace of God, since, being ignorant of God's righteousness, as the Apostle says of the Jews, and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For the fullness of the law is nothing else than love; and indeed the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not through ourselves nor by the powers of our own will, but through the Holy Spirit who is given to us.
Free will, therefore, avails for good works if it be helped from on high—which comes about by humbly asking and confessing; but if forsaken by divine aid, however much it may excel in knowledge of the law, it will in no way have the solidity of righteousness, but only the swelling of impious pride and a deadly tumor. This same Lord's Prayer teaches this. For it is in vain that, praying to God, we say, 'Lead us not into temptation,' if this is so placed within our own power that we can fulfil it without any help from Him. For it is said, 'Lead us not into temptation,' which is understood: 'Do not permit us to be led in by forsaking us.'
For 'God is faithful,' says the Apostle, 'who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.' To what end did he say that God does this, if it lies in our power alone without His help? For the law itself was given as a help to those who use it lawfully, that through it they may know either what righteousness they have already received, for which to give thanks, or what still is lacking to them, which they should urgently ask for. But those who so hear what the law says—
'Thou shalt not covet,' so that, because they have learned it, they think it suffices them, and do not believe that virtue to do what is commanded is given them by the help of God's grace, nor ask for it—to such the law entered in secretly, that sin might abound, which was said concerning the Jews. For it is too little that they do not fulfil what the law commanded, 'Thou shalt not covet'; but over and above they are even proud, so that, being ignorant of God's righteousness—that is, the righteousness which God gives, who justifies the ungodly—and wishing to establish their own, as though wrought by the powers of their own will, they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believes; who indeed came for this, that where sin abounded, grace might super-abound.
If the Jews, ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, were enemies of this grace, why are these people also its enemies, if they have believed in Him whom the Jews slew? Or is it that those who, having slain Christ, accused their own impiety and submitted themselves to that grace once it was known, shall receive the reward, while these, who wish so to believe in Christ as to try to slay His very grace, shall bear judgment? For those who believe rightly believe in Him for this end, that they may hunger and thirst after righteousness and be filled by His grace. For everyone, as it is written, who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved—not indeed with the salvation of the body, which many have who do not call upon the name of the Lord, but with that salvation of which He Himself says:
'They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick'; and, expounding consequently what He had said: 'I came not,' He says, 'to call the righteous, but sinners.' The righteous, therefore, He called the whole; but sinners He called the sick. Let not the sick man, then, presume upon his own strength, for 'a man shall not be saved by his great strength.' For if he presumes therefrom, let him beware lest these be not the strengths such as belong to the healthy, but such as belong to the frenzied; who, though insane, think themselves so healthy that they neither seek a physician but even, as though he were an intruder, strike him besides—just as these people, in their insane pride, in a certain manner strike Christ, contending that the so kindly help of His grace is not necessary for doing righteousness, once the precept of the law is given.
Let them cease, then, from thus raving mad, and let them understand that they have free will for this—not that by a proud will they should reject the help, but that by a devout will they should call upon the Lord. For this free will shall be the freer the healthier it is, and the healthier the more it is subject to the divine mercy and grace. For it faithfully prays and says: 'Order my steps according to Thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.' For how is that will free over which iniquity has dominion? But that it may not have dominion over it, see by whom it is invoked. For it does not say: 'I order my steps according to free will, so that no iniquity has dominion over me,' but:
'Order my steps,' he says, 'according to Thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.' He prays, he does not promise; he confesses, he does not profess; he desires the fullest liberty, he does not boast of his own power. For 'not everyone who trusts in his own strength, but everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.' 'But how shall they call upon Him,' he says, 'in whom they have not believed?' For this end, then, do those who believe rightly believe—that they may call upon Him in whom they have believed, and may be able to do what they have received in the lawful precepts, since what the law commands, faith obtains. For, to pass over for now the many precepts of the law and to recall thence what the Apostle chose to recall, when the law says:
'Thou shalt not covet.' What else does this seem to command but continence from unlawful desires? For the soul is borne, as if by a weight, by love, wheresoever it is borne. We are commanded, then, to take away from the weight of desire what may be added to the weight of love, until the former be consumed and the latter perfected; for the fullness of the law is love. And yet concerning that very continence, see what is written: 'And when I knew,' he says, 'that no one can be continent unless God grant it, and this itself was a mark of wisdom—to know whose gift this was—I went to the Lord and besought Him.' Did he say: 'And when I knew that no one can be continent except by his own free will, and this itself was a mark of wisdom—to know that this good was from myself'?
He plainly did not say this, which certain men in their vanity say, but what had to be said in the truth of Holy Scripture: 'When I knew,' he says, 'that no one can be continent unless God grant it.' God, therefore, commands continence and gives continence; He commands through the law, He gives through grace; He commands through the letter, He gives through the Spirit; for the law without grace makes sin abound, and the letter without the Spirit kills. He commands, therefore, for this reason: that we, having tried to do what is commanded and being wearied under the law in our own weakness, may learn to beg the help of grace, and that, if we have been able to do any good work, we may not be ungrateful to Him who helps us. This is what this man too did; for wisdom taught him whose gift this was.
For the choice of the will is not taken away because it is helped, but rather it is helped because it is not taken away. For he who says to God, 'Be Thou my helper,' confesses that he wills to fulfil what He commanded, but that he seeks help from Him who commanded, that he may be able. So this man too, when he knew that no one could be continent unless God grant it, went to the Lord and besought Him; assuredly he went willing, he besought willing—nor would he have asked, unless there were a will. But unless he had asked, how much would the will avail? For even if it can, before it asks, what does it profit him, unless he give thanks for what he can to Him from whom must be asked what he cannot yet do? Hence, even he who is already continent by no means has continence unless the will be present;
but unless it had received, what would the will have? 'For what hast thou,' he says, 'that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?'—that is, why dost thou glory as though thou hadst of thyself that which, if thou hadst not received it, thou couldst not have of thyself? And this was said so that he who glories may glory not in himself but in the Lord, and that he who does not yet have whereof to glory may not hope from himself, but beseech the Lord. For it is better that each should have less which he asks of God than more which he attributes to himself, since it is more expedient to rise from the depths than to fall from the heights; for God, it is written, 'resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'
For the abounding of transgressions, therefore, the law teaches us what we ought to will, so that grace may help—that we may be able to do what we will, and may fulfil what we have been able to do. And it will help, if, not presuming on our own strength, we savor not high things, but consenting with the humble, both give thanks for those things which we can already do, and, for those we cannot yet do, humbly ask of God with a longing will, supporting our prayer by giving to mercy in the fruitful works of compassion—that it may be given to us, by forgiving, that it may be forgiven us. But as to their saying that an infant cut off by death unbaptized cannot perish, because it is born without sin—the Apostle does not say this, and I think it is better that we believe the Apostle rather than these men.
For that teacher of the Gentiles, in whom Christ spoke, says: 'By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned'; and a little after he says: 'For judgment indeed was by one unto condemnation, but grace is of many offences unto justification.' Accordingly, let these people, if they should perhaps find an infant not begotten of the concupiscence of that one man, declare that he is not liable to that condemnation, nor to be freed from that condemnation through the grace of Christ. For what is 'by one offence unto condemnation,' but by that offence whereby Adam offended?
And what is 'of many offences unto justification,' but that the grace of Christ looses not only that one offence, by which infants begotten of that one man are bound, but also the many offences which men, when they have grown, add by their own evil ways? Yet even that one offence, by which the carnal stock is bound that draws its origin from that first man, he says suffices for condemnation. Therefore the baptism of little ones is not superfluous, so that those who by generation are bound to that condemnation may by regeneration be loosed from the same condemnation; for just as no man is found who is carnally begotten apart from Adam, so no man is found who is spiritually regenerated apart from Christ.
But carnal generation is liable to that one offence and to its damnation; whereas spiritual regeneration causes to be abolished not only that one, on account of which infants are baptized, but the many offences which men, by living wickedly, have added to that in which they were begotten. Therefore he goes on and says: 'For if by one man's offence death reigned through one, much more they who receive abundance of grace and of righteousness shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offence of one upon all men unto condemnation, so also by the righteousness of one upon all men unto justification of life';
'for as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.' What will they say to these things? Or what remains for them, but to contend that the Apostle erred? The vessel of election cries out, the teacher of the Gentiles, the trumpet of Christ: 'Judgment was by one unto condemnation'; and these people cry out against it, asserting that little ones—whom they confess to draw their descent from that one man of whom he speaks—do not go into condemnation, even if they have not been baptized in Christ. 'Judgment,' he says, 'was by one unto condemnation.' What does he say by 'one,' but 'offence'? For there follows: 'But grace is of many offences unto justification.'
Therefore on the one side judgment leads even from one offence unto condemnation, but on the other side grace leads even from many offences unto justification. Wherefore, if they dare not resist the Apostle, let them expound to us why judgment leads from one offence unto condemnation, when men to be damned come to judgment from many offences. Or if they think it was said thus because the beginning of sin was made from Adam, which the rest imitated, so that from that one offence they were drawn into judgment and condemnation who by imitating him sinned in many ways—why was it not also said thus concerning grace and justification? Why did he not say likewise: 'And grace from one offence unto justification'?
For just as men's many offences are found to lie midway between that one which they imitated and the judgment by which they are punished—for from one they came to many, so that from many they might be led to judgment and damnation—so those same many offences lie in the same way midway between this very one, by the imitation of which they were committed, and the grace by which they are forgiven, since from that one they came to many, that from many they might come to the grace of justifying.