Works 3 part 3/4

It is a great testimony of piety and faith that across the vast distances of so many regions and through so many intervening perils of circumstance you extend to us the breadth of your charity. In this our exile the artful mercy of our God exercises a twofold office: with fatherly diligence it scours away our rust, and it makes clear your faith toward us and approves your piety. Its benign skill files us down, but it brings you forward; it salutarily straitens us, but it enlarges you; we are reproved, but you profit. Our losses pass over into your advantages. Since you are our creditors, you begin to be our debtors, seeing that we are the occasion of your devotion and the matter of your reward.

Your works take gain from us, your merits borrow increase from our scourgings. The affection of your solicitude reaches to us, its fruit reaches to God; and thus in a twofold way, both by our chastisement and by your recompense, we are bound to the divine benefits. But indeed the perfection of your consolation had almost imposed on me the silence of not replying. For the very solicitude of your questioning is already a pattern of living, which daily you sufficiently draw from the effective teachings and present examples of my lord your father, the holy bishop Leontius. Yet I do not wonder if you also seek my instruction, however superfluous, of one whose singular affection toward you you know.

You believe, for the help of your faith, that my teaching is as perfect as your wish; but although my discourse, which even present infirmity renders more sluggish, can scarcely suffice for your ardor, nevertheless in a few words I will not so much instruct your manner of life as recall it. The recognition of sin, the fear of judgment, the terror of eternal fire yield great instruction to the anxious. And so, for offering the sacrifices of prayers, the nightly silences are friendly to those who enjoy them; let a moderate reading follow these up to the third hour, so that spiritual exercise may never cease to be desired and may always be capable of increase.

Would that the Lord may provide at least two faithful comforts, with whom you may discharge your daily and nightly functions, and at least two days in the week enjoy the services of those who greet you. Arduous are the things of which we speak in accordance with the fervor of the one questioning; but may that benign helper of the laboring make his yoke as light for you as his reward will be delightful. Therefore, if your still trembling beginnings allow a little more, let the winter days be passed with alternate fasts, which, as it is fitting to moderate them, so it is necessary to double them. To double them, I say. For there are two kinds of abstinence:

One is to restrain the appetite of incontinence from food and drink and from the diverse enticements of carnal sweetnesses, and by the vomit of the cross to subdue the earth of the subject outer man, and to serve necessity rather than pleasure with tempered moderation—to take a meal, if infirmity permit, even on alternate days, until the force of long habit is gradually unlearned. But as to the use of garments, let gravity gradually lower itself to humbler things, lest the very novelty of a sudden moderateness give offense. For care must be taken that pride be not generated even from excessive humility, and vice be not born of virtue.

Yet it will easily be overcome, if that shameful history of one's past manner of life is brought before the eyes and the guilty conscience is set before the trembling senses. So it will come to pass that, while by the recollection of past evils the presumption instilled by the devil is chastised, and while boastfulness, conquered by the strong weapons of one's own faults, is repelled, the crimes which had begotten death begin to serve unto salvation, offenses profit toward remedy, and medicine is drawn from the wounds, and, as the Apostle said, out of sin let us strive to condemn sin.

The other kind of abstinence is far more sublime and far more precious: to govern the movements of the soul, to subject to the command of the mind the irrational disturbances and the rebellious tumults of thoughts struggling among themselves; to spit out the venom of malice, as though some deadly sorcery, from the inmost recesses of the heart, and to steer the soul against the floods of diverse temptations by the guidance of constancy; and against hidden passions, as against domestic enemies, to wage a certain contest by the authority of an angry faith; to drive far away empty cares, and to abstain from harmful conversations and desires on which the devil feeds; and through meekness, patience, and tranquillity to cultivate the image of God in the countenance of the inner man—so that an evenness of magnanimity may show forth the man who ponders spiritual and divine things, whom sadness may not break nor joy dissolve, a breast steadfast in the fear of God; that to us also may be applied that famous beginning of the little book:

'There was a certain man abstaining from every evil thing.' 'A man,' it says, 'one'—that is, always the same, because there was in him nothing doubtful, nothing double, nothing accidental, nothing variable, nothing diverse; but the seasons did not change him as he abode in the state of his virtues in an even order, nor did the diverse blasts of the winds turn him this way and that, as is the manner of sea-waves. So too let the anxious servant of God, founded on the unshaken mass of faith, be changed in this alone by Christ working within him, that he be ever clothed with new virtues. Before all else, insofar as by God's help we can, let us storm within us those five enticements of the senses.

For whatever grows beautiful to sight, whatever flatters the smell, whatever softens to the touch, whatever grows sweet to taste, whatever caresses the hearing—all these things, if we misuse them, roll down our intention from spiritual to earthly things. And therefore, just as Abraham the father of faith conquered those five kings with three hundred and eighteen, a mystery lying hidden within the letter, so let us too fight against these principal leaders of the vices in the name of Jesus and by the sign of the cross—for this is what both those numerals express—that we may be worthy to hear from the Lord: 'To him that conquers I will give the crown of life,' and: 'He that overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death,' and: 'For the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away.'

For the soul will do violence to itself, that it may subject the carnal affections to the spirit, that it may prefer the cross to delights, that it may set vigils before sweet sleep, that it may conquer the adversary in its own members, that from being one it may become another, made fit for that precept of the Lord: 'If any man,' he says, 'will come after me, let him deny his very self.' If from being irascible one becomes patient, from being lustful continent, from being blood-stained placid, from being envious kind, from being covetous generous—so often do we deny ourselves as we turn ourselves to better things. And therefore, that we may rise to what we ought to be, let us first strive to hate what we were. It behooves that he first be changed here unto life who desires to be changed there unto glory. VII.

TO THE HOLY LORD AND MOST DEVOTED IN CHRIST, MY BROTHER, THE GREEK DEACON, FROM FAUSTUS. Honored by your office, honored by your judgment, provoked by affection, I will speak with you in sincere humility, in kindly frankness, in unfeigned charity, in the word of truth.

And although you could have imposed on me a reason for keeping silent, since with a kindly and too credulous mind you grant to me almost as much skill and learning as to yourself, nevertheless through the solicitude of your questioning you have imposed on me the necessity of replying; and I judge that I must converse, not without trepidation, with one who is absent, because concerning matters so profound and exceeding both my powers and yours, it is no less perilous to reply than to commit vast mysteries to an unpolished pen. And therefore I ought rather, by keeping silent, to have chastised my dear one in those things which he has too rashly brought forward.

But in the deliberation of so great a matter, in which you have far forsaken the royal road, you ought to have questioned certain men of proven knowledge, older in learning and in age, whom you could more easily trust, according to that prophetic word: 'Ask thy father, and he will declare to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.' But without doubt, whoever seeks any guide at all desires to avoid error. Furthermore, in those things which we do or which we say, and finally which we presume to commit to writing, we ought to expect fruit and profit from the work.

But in this little writing which you have deigned to direct to me, there appears no eloquence, no knowledge, no reasoning, no edification of any ordered or contrite discourse; but the testimonies, most confusedly heaped together for ease of memory, accuse the rashness of an incautious heart. The Lord knows that, astonished, I speak these things out of zeal for your salvation; may it profit toward the common good that both you have questioned and I have replied.

In the writings of the holy pontiff Augustine, even if anything is thought to be suspect among the most learned men, from those things which you have judged to be condemned, know that nothing has been censured; but the sense of the faith, especially concerning the two substances or natures of God and of the man our Lord and Redeemer, know that in the Catholic Church it has been not only received by the authority of the Fathers but even consecrated by the apostolic oracles. Accordingly, this 'word' which you say was made to you after the manner of a prophet, is—as is certain—not by the Spirit of God, and is greatly damnable both before God and before men, unless you yourself first condemn it.

Therefore, that—leaving other matters aside—I may constrain in a brief discourse, insofar as being absent I can, this twofold error which is both born of heresy and dragging one into the perils of heresy—whereas your holy sincerity would need the presence of many masters, not such as I am—in the first place it is, ignorantly and quite perilously, I will not say written but conceived, that it ought not to be accepted that man is the mother of God. Know that this descends from the impiety of the Nestorian heresy, which with profane audacity did not fear to dispute that blessed Mary was only the mother of the man, not also of God, and therefore for this he was condemned by the strictness of the Catholic Church throughout the whole world. 'It ought not,' he says, 'to be accepted that man is the mother of God.'

But where then is that word, whether prophetic or evangelical: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted: God with us,' and likewise in the Gospel: 'That which shall be born holy, shall be called the Son of God'? Where is also that word which the received authority of the Fathers throughout all islands and churches marks, speaking against Nestorius: 'Cursed,' he says, 'is he who does not confess that the Son of God, true God, was but lately born of Mary for our salvation'? It followed that you should say that of God and man there is one nature, in this way that there is one substance of God. You would have said rightly, if you had said it of the Trinity alone, where there is one and the same nature under the distinction of three persons.

But when one comes to the incarnation of the assumed man, just as we confess that of man and of God there is one person, so we know that there is a twofold substance. But whoever asserts that the Lord Redeemer is of one nature has either denied the man in the divinity or God in the body, since our redemption is perfected not from one or the other, but from both. In this place, however, to say that there is one nature—of our God alone, without the other's peril of error (if you say 'of God')—if you say there is one nature of God alone, then in the substance of his majesty the divinity has been crucified; if you say one nature of God alone, then in his own substance the majesty has died or been buried. All of which God received not in himself, but in the nature of the assumed man.

For God felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one compassionating; he felt nothing according to the diversity of substance, but felt according to the unity of person. ** he joined in unity, and consequently added: we understand one and the same true man and true God, and he repeated: we in no way doubt that a true man and true God is to be confessed. Receive also, in the hymn of the holy prelate and confessor Ambrose, which the Catholic Church resounds throughout all the regions of Italy and Gaul on the Lord's Nativity: 'Come forth from thy chamber, thou giant of twin substance.' Flee therefore, holy brother, amid these things, the error of either party.

If you say the nature of God only, you have imposed on God the condition of passion and death; but if you say the nature of man only, you have withdrawn from God the glory of redemption, you have withdrawn from the Author the power of the Restorer. Hear how the sacred oracles unfold both substances through one person. According to the divine nature he speaks: 'I and the Father are one'; according to the human substance he confesses: 'because the Father is greater than I'; according to the heavenly nature he pronounces: 'All things that the Father has are mine'; according to the infirmity of the earthly nature he says: 'But the Son of man has not where to lay his head.' As man he declared: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; as God he attested:

'I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.' According to the nature of the flesh he hung on the cross; according to the substance of the divinity he bestowed paradise and the heavenly kingdom. The Arians, not seeing this at all with darkened heart—because presumption and pride suffuse the mind's gaze—referred to God the things that were the man's, believing that the divinity spoke as lesser where only the weakness of the man was being shown. Setting no distinction between the heavenly and the earthly, while they are unwilling to receive two natures in God and man, they divided the substance of God; and while they look to the words of the man alone, they lost, in the light of understanding, God who is the fullness of glory.

And thus, he who denies that the Son of man is to be believed God is stained with the impiety of Nestorius; he who does not believe two substances in the Redeemer is entangled, deceived by the snare of Arius. But let us, my dearest brother, so believe in Christ the Lord with a perfect and inseparable distinction, that we may acknowledge one simple person and a twofold substance of God and man. As soul and body make man, so divinity and humanity are one Christ.

But you, who, forestalled by a twofold error, thought it should be written that under the meeting of two natures it ought not to be accepted that God is the father of a man, that man is the mother of God—we, faithfully and salutarily asserting the one person of God and man in him who was in the beginning and who in the time of our redemption was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that is, in the truth of man and the likeness of a sinner—we, I say, thus testify that God is the father of a man under the unity of person, just as under the embrace of the same unity we confess that man is the mother of God, according to the authority of the creed, to pass over other things, in which we say: 'I believe also in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.'

But if it is such an error to have believed one and simple substance in the Lord Savior, of what sort is the error to have asserted a twofold person? For if in the fellowship of the assumed flesh, which God put on as the form of a servant, there were not two substances, then God was not in the man, and the person of the man was separate from God; and thus, under such a notion, you will suddenly see a fourth person accrue from I know not where, and by consequence the understanding be hurled headlong into depravity, so that it is now necessary to confess no longer a Trinity. Hear rather how the blessed Isaiah, with distinct order and joined discrimination, arranges the nativity of our Lord and Redeemer: 'A little child,' he says, 'is born to us, a son is given to us.'

Receive the Son of God, begotten in the last part of the ages from an unwedded mother—nature not knowing it and faith wedding it—humbled by his own will, with the Holy Spirit coming upon the Virgin, man wondrously filled with God, and God mercifully changed into man, yet not emptying out the greatness of his glory, but through the assumed condition of a servant showing the loving-kindness of the Lord. 'A little child is born to us, a son is given to us.' To us was born he who existed for himself. Given, therefore, from divinity, born of the Virgin: born, who would feel a setting; given, who would know no beginning; born, who was younger even than his mother; given, than whom not even the Father was more ancient; born, who would die; given, through whom life would be reborn.

There he reigns, here he is humbled; for himself he is king, and for me he is a soldier. 'A little child is born to us, a son is given to us, and the principality is made upon his shoulder.' The shoulder shows the manifest man; the principality speaks the hidden God. Recognize the twofold substance under the unity of person. Of ours is what he weighed out, of his own is what he gave; of ours he had whereby he might fall, of his own whereby he might rise again; of ours whereby he might be held, of his own whereby he might have mercy; of ours he had whereby he might pay for us, of his own whereby he might appear utterly a debtor in nothing; of ours whereby he might be crucified, of his own whereby he might be glorified; of ours he gave the victim of sin, of his own he bestowed the grace of indulgence.

And so, of ours is the humiliation, of his own is proved to be the ascension; of ours he offered the sacrifice, of his own he conferred the reward. Therefore man, capable of two natures, is recognized by his infirmities, God is approved by his powers. It irks me to prolong a discourse with the assertion of a matter so manifest. I know that even these very things, briefly and tersely recorded, I rashly commit either to my letters or to your understanding. But since with anxious humility you submit yourself to the wholesomeness of questioning, you promise me much regarding the remedy of this error.

Recall, I beg, your foot from this precipice, before you are swept into the irrevocable depth by the torrent of pride; and rather chastise with the occupation of labor your right sense of mind, which does not sustain the weight of much reading nor knows how to dispense the treasure of knowledge. Temper the immoderate rigor of abstinence, which even generates infirmity for the mind—an infirmity which I think is born from the same source as the presumption of writing. Return to the royal road; flee that solicitude which is the nurse of pride. And because we read: 'To eat much honey is not good'—for knowledge inflates a poorly-founded understanding more than it edifies—so beware of excessive reading, lest, to a heart of little capacity, you stir up a perilous drunkenness, as of wine taken too immoderately.

Never trust your own thoughts, but rather read things to be imitated than write down things to be read, and in your mind speak to the Lord: 'In my heart have I hidden thy words, that I may not sin against thee.' And if you desire to escape perils, not those assailing from without but those conceived within, know nothing more useful to you than to fortify your life under some most approved abbot and to hand over your own wills to the laws of an elder, and, that you may overcome the ambushes of the adversary, to fear yourself. I have thought that the little writing itself should be retained—nay rather suppressed—lest it come further into the hand and conscience of some other Catholic who might love you less.

From this, moreover, you will be able to recognize that the inmost parts of your heart are sound, if you still, as though free, listen carefully and gladly to me, your cultivator, humbly and lovingly admonishing you. Before the questioning, the persuasion will seem to have been incautious; after the reply, the intention will appear inexcusable. But if amid these things you should believe that anything is to be imputed to me—who desire your soul to be healed by austere rather than by sweet means—remember that the wounds of charity are to be preferred to the evilly flattering kisses. VIII. TO THE MOST PIOUS LORD, TO BE HONORED WITH THE HIGHEST HONOR IN CHRIST SINGULARLY BY ME, MY SON RURICIUS, FROM FAUSTUS.

Although it is pleasant to me to converse with any person whatsoever, with an undivided heart, in the very accents of charity, and to embrace you with the diligent eagerness of dutiful service, yet now, the more fittingly the more eagerly, I have taken up this pledge of your affection through the service of the bearer of my household, concerning whose worth the report you sent assigned less than my own acquaintance has proved. And for this reason I have rejoiced that increase has come to your credit, because in him a better life has abolished the condition of his first birth, and in him the manumission of religion has wiped away the blemish of his stock, and by faith it has emancipated and transferred the person of a slave into the adoption of Christ.

But as to how we ought to conduct ourselves toward his—or toward the rest of the brothers'—milk-white sincerity, you set forth the Apostle's most ample dispensation in ready discourse; and although the most learned page declares them to be less learned, we nevertheless marveled at the purified character in them, at the fullness of the reading, through the gift of gentleness and humility. For the bounty of grace surpasses the maxims of learning. For even though within a short time there entered into their bright hearts and clear inner chambers a shining purity of sense and a splendid simplicity, through which the mirror of the divine image gleams forth in the brightness of the inner man—of the divine image, I say, for thus we read of the Lord: pure, simple, subtle.

But that divine simplicity signifies something far different, since in us there is a twofold substance, in spirit and in flesh. What we have, we have received; the diverse graces of the virtues have been added to us, not born in us. Without doubt, that is added on which can be taken away. That we are good, we have on loan from the goodness of the Author. From Him indeed we live, but we are not life, as He is. We can be just, we cannot be justice. He is simple for this reason, that nothing has been conferred on Him from any accruing bounty. He who subsists of Himself has taken nothing from elsewhere. God is both living and equally is life, good and goodness, merciful and mercy. In the glory of His virtues He Himself is that which He possesses.

In word only is man gilded, but God is gold itself. What in man is grace, in God is nature; and therefore, because nothing has accrued to Him from without, nothing can be taken from Him. He suffers no loss, because He knows no increase. He is Author both to Himself and to the Son, for the source of the fountain and of the stream is one. Among those things which are without beginning there is communion, but not transfusion. And because we read of the Son: He is the brightness of the glory of God, just as God was never without His brightness, so the Father was never without the majesty of the Son. And just as the names of both are coeval—for unless the one were begotten, that other would not be called Father—so the eternity of one paternity holds them together without separation.

He is from Him, yet He is not later than Him, just as the face is born from the head yet is not found to be younger than its own head. And thus our God is neither commingled in His proper persons nor divided—one power, neither divided in authority nor in time. As in subsistence He is threefold, because each subsists to Himself, so in substance He is simple, because the one God, knowing not how to precede Himself, admits neither a later nor an earlier. Hence we too have received from this simplicity, if in us there be nothing discordant, nothing changeable, nothing diverse, if we always strive to be the same by approved pursuits and by minds grounded in Christ, so that, unchangeable in good, we may be changed only by new advances day by day.

But concerning that which a certain man, out of love of putting the matter forward, has consulted about: it is a saving and perfect deliberation to relieve the cares of the soul by dividing the management of earthly property among several people, and thereafter to weigh by a threefold deliberation which is better—to lease, or to administer, or to sell one's own portion. The first would truly be good: that Christ's servant, wholly poor, should strive to walk the ways of the poor Christ, if it were permitted to seek out the perfect school of some great monastery, or at least the island soldiery of an angelic congregation. For to bring forth the eremitic way of life in the midst of the world—as great as is the magnanimity it requires, so great is the difficulty.

To lay the weight of one's stewardship upon one's own people is the second course, a saving expedient for the relief of the soul; but it must be carefully considered whether any of the sons might be equal to so arduous a service, lest perchance the authority of a father's command should turn against the father... The best thing, in the second degree, is to remain under a harmless administrator with due benefits, if either the will suffices or the means fulfill the necessity of an annual pension. The third is, through the chosen supports of faithful servants, under one's own and lesser solicitude, to govern by the duties of an imposed management the amount of a reserved estate, and to direct one's course along the royal road with entire moderation. And when I counsel this, I seem to have in mind either our own advantage or that of the poor.

In this arrangement there is no small gain, if, the use being reserved, the property itself is sold off. And so, briefly indicating what is first, what second, and what third, we have reserved the choice to the judgment or the possibility of the one consulting. Which is more fitting, which can be more readily fulfilled, let Him deign to make known, for whose fear and love the very deliberation is undertaken. May the Lord our God multiply His benefits in you with a happy longevity pleasing to Himself, most pious lord, and son to be singularly honored by me with the highest honor in Christ. IX. TO THE LORD MOST DEVOTED AND TO BE SINGULARLY HONORED WITH ALL THE VIRTUE OF PIETY, BROTHER RURICIUS, FROM FAUSTUS.

By the favor of the Divinity we are established in a fitting seclusion of religion and in most tranquil silence, wherein the Lord has applied to the rust contracted by long security the file of saving chastisement—in this great quiet, I say, granted, if we recognize it, as a vacation, while we acquire new citizens through the commerce of charity, while we rejoice over the salvation of those acquired, set amid these good things we make sport of our present exile and recognize that we have not lost our homeland but exchanged it. For while the faithful servants of God exercise the goodness of their devotion in our necessities, we are possessors without a home of our own, rich without possession—nay, we enrich those who take fruit from our consolation.