Letters (CSEL) 1 part 32/85

'It makes no difference, O good judges, whether I bind my adversary awake or asleep, save that it is easier to fasten chains upon one who rests than upon one who resists. If the Apostle enrolled into the clergy not catechumens but the faithful, and if he who is ordained bishop is one of the faithful, then the faults of the catechumen shall not be imputed to the faithful man.' Such darts I kept hurling, and I directed my quivering spears against the lethargic fellow. He only yawned, and, as through a drunkenness of mind, belching and retching, spewed forth: 'The Apostle said it, Paul taught these things.' The Apostle's epistles are therefore produced, one to Timothy, the other to Titus. In the first it was written: If any man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, but modest, not contentious, not covetous, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity — but if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? — not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. To Titus, at the very beginning, these commands are set down:

For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain presbyters in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; but hospitable, benevolent, prudent, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

In each epistle, whether of bishops or of presbyters — although among the ancients bishops and presbyters were the same, since the one name is of dignity, the other of age — men who are married but once are commanded to be enrolled into the clergy. Certainly the Apostle's discourse is about the baptized — no one doubts it: if therefore all the things that are required in the ordination of a bishop do not prejudice the man to be ordained, even though he did not possess them before baptism — for the question is what he is, not what he was — why should the mere name of 'wife' be a hindrance, seeing that it alone was no sin? You say: 'Because it was no sin, therefore it was not remitted in baptism.' A strange thing I hear: because it was no sin, it shall be reckoned as sin.

All harlotries, the filth of public defilement, impiety against God, parricide and incest against parents, and nature perverted into monstrous pleasures of either sex — all are purged by the fount of Christ: yet shall the stains of a wife cling fast, and brothels be preferred to marriage-beds? I do not impute to you armies of prostitutes, herds of catamites, the shedding of blood, and, like a sow, wallowings in every mire of lusts: and do you drag out against me from the grave a poor little wife long since dead, whom I took for this very reason, that I might not do what you have done? Let the heathen hear, the harvest of the Church, with whom our granaries are daily filled;

let the catechumens hear, who are the candidates of the faith, that they may not take wives before baptism, nor join honourable marriages, but after the manner of the Scots and Attacotti and the Republic of Plato hold wives in common and children in common; nay rather, let them beware of every kind of name of spouse, lest, after they have believed in Christ, it harm them that once they had — not concubines nor harlots — but wives! Let each one recall his own conscience and bewail the wounds of his whole life, and when he has shown himself a truthful judge of his former offences, let him hear Jesus rebuking: Hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Truly, like the scribes and Pharisees, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, we tithe mint and anise and pass over the judgment of God. What likeness is there between a wife and a harlot? Is the misfortune of a dead spouse imputed, while harlot-lust is crowned? That man, if his former wife were living, would not have another; but you, who joined dog-like nuptials on every side, what excuse can you make? He desired children in a wife; you have destroyed your offspring in a harlot; the secret chambers covered him as he served nature and the blessing of the Lord — Increase and multiply and replenish the earth — while you, rutting toward coition, the public gaze abhorred;

he, with modest shame, concealed what was lawful; you, shamelessly, thrust before all men's eyes what was unlawful; to him it is written: Marriage is honourable, and the bed undefiled; to you it is read: But whoremongers and adulterers God will judge, and: If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. 'All our crimes,' he says, 'were pardoned us in baptism' — nor after the Judge's indulgence is severity to be feared, since the Apostle says: And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God — pardoned well and faithfully. But I ask: how is it that your filth is washed, and my cleanness besmirched? 'I do not say so.'

You say they were not besmirched, but remained in the same state in which they had been; for if they had been filth, they would surely have been washed, as mine were. I ask, what is this evasion and subtlety blunter than any pestle: because it is not a sin, it is a sin; because it is not filthy, it is filthy? The Lord did not remit it, because He had nothing to remit; and because He did not remit it, therefore that which was not remains? How great is the power of baptism and the grace of water sanctified in Christ, I will show a little later; meanwhile, according to the common proverb, for a bad knot of a tree a bad wedge must be sought. This phrase 'the husband of one wife' can also be expounded otherwise. The Apostle was of the Jews, the first church of Christ was gathered out of the remnant of Israel.

He knew that it was permitted by the Law, and familiar to the people by the example of the patriarchs and of Moses, to scatter children among many wives, and that this liberty lay open to the priests themselves at their discretion: he therefore commands that the priests of the Church should not claim the same liberty for themselves, that they should not obtain double and triple marriages together, but should have single wives at one time. You may cry that what we have said is contentious; receive then another explanation also, lest to you alone it be permitted to join not your will to the law, but the law to your will.

Some, under constraint, interpret that 'wives' ought to be taken for churches, and 'husbands' for bishops — and that this too was decreed by the Fathers in the Council of Nicaea, that a bishop should not be transferred from one church to another, lest, despising the fellowship of a poor virgin, he should seek the embraces of a richer adulteress — and that, just as the fault and vice of children is taken in λογισμοῑς, that is, in thoughts, and the management of the house is referred to soul and body, so the wives of pontiffs are said to be churches. Of whom it is written in Isaiah: Ye women that come from the spectacle, come; for it is a people without understanding; and again: Ye rich women, rise up and hear my voice; and in Proverbs: Who shall find a virtuous woman?

She that is such is more precious than costly stones; the heart of her husband trusts in her; and in the same volume: Wise women have built a house, but the foolish hath pulled it down with her hands. Nor, they say, let this seem unworthy of bishops, since of God also it is written: As a wife despiseth her husband, so hath the house of Israel despised me; and in the Apostle: For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ; and that 'woman,' that is γυναῑϰα, according to the ambiguity of the Greek tongue, is in all these testimonies to be understood rather as 'wife.' 'That interpretation,' you say, 'is violent and quite harsh too.' Restore then to Scripture its own simplicity, lest we contend against you with your own laws. And I will ask yet another thing:

if a man had a concubine before baptism, and, after she died, was baptized and took a wife, ought he to become a clergyman or not? You will answer that he can, because he had a concubine, not a wife; therefore it is the marriage-tablets and the rights of dowry, not the coition, that the Apostle condemns. We see many, on account of excessive poverty, decline the burden of wives and keep their maidservants in place of wives, and cherish the children born of them as their own; if perchance, enriched by the emperor, they earn robes of honour for them, straightway he will submit his neck to the Apostle and unwillingly be compelled to receive them among wives; but if the same slenderness of means cannot obtain the imperial rescript, then together with the Roman laws the decrees of the Church will be changed. See whether that which is said,

'the husband of one wife,' whether it might be understood as 'of one woman,' so that it refers rather to coition than to the dowry-tablets. All these things we bring forward, not that we resist the true and simple understanding, but that we may teach you so to understand the Holy Scriptures as they are written, and not to make void the baptism of the Saviour and render null the whole sacrament of the gibbet. Let us return to what we promised a little before, and from the school of the rhetoricians proclaim the praises of the waters and of baptism. The rude world, when as yet the sun did not glow red, nor the moon grow pale, nor the stars twinkle, oppressed the unordered and invisible matter with the vastness of the deep and with shapeless darkness.

Only the Spirit of God, after the manner of a charioteer, was borne over the waters and, in the figure of baptism, was bringing to birth the new-born world. Between heaven and earth a firmament is reared in the midst, and according to the etymology of the Hebrew tongue heaven, that is 'samaim,' takes its name from the waters, and the waters which are above the heaven are set apart unto the praises of the Lord. Whence also in Ezekiel a crystal is seen stretched out above the cherubim, that is, compacted and denser waters. First, out of the waters, that which lives goes forth, and it lifts the winged faithful from earth to heaven. Man is fashioned out of clay, and between the hands of God the sacraments of the waters are handled. A paradise is planted in Eden, and one

fountain is divided into four heads, which afterwards, going forth from the temple and flowing toward the sunrising, gives life to the bitter and dead waters. The world sins, and without a deluge of waters it is not purged. And straightway the dove of the Holy Spirit, after the foulest bird had been driven forth, flies down to Noah as to Christ in the Jordan, and with a bough of refreshment and light announces peace to the world. Pharaoh with his army, unwilling that the people of God should go out of Egypt, is drowned in a type of baptism. And in the Psalms it is written of his destruction: Thou hast established the sea in thy strength, thou hast broken the heads of the dragons in the waters, thou hast crushed the head of the great dragon.

Hence also the basilisks and scorpions seek out dry places, and after they have come to the waters, they make men hydrophobic and frenzied. Marah is changed by the sacrament of the cross, and the seventy palms of the apostles are watered by the sweetened floods of the law. Abraham and Isaac dig wells; the Philistines strive against them. And Beersheba is the city of the oath, and the kingdom of Solomon takes its name from fountains. Rebecca is found at the well. Rachel because of the waters is greeted with the kiss of Jacob who supplanted his brother. Moses defends the daughters of the priest of Midian from injury when the well was opened. The forerunner of the Lord, in the waters of the fountains near Salim, which is interpreted 'peace' or 'perfection,' prepares a people for Christ.

The Saviour Himself, after His baptism and the sanctifying of the waters of Jordan by His own laver, begins to preach the kingdom of heaven. His first sign He works out of waters; the Samaritan woman is called to the well; the thirsty are invited to drink. Nicodemus learns in secret: Except a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Because He had begun from the waters, He ended in the waters: His side is pierced with a spear, and the sacraments of baptism and of martyrdom are poured forth together. After the resurrection He sends the apostles to the nations, and commands them to baptize them in the mystery of the Trinity. The people of the Jews repent of their deed, and are straightway sent by Peter to baptism. Before she travailed, Zion brought forth, and a nation was born at once.

Paul, the persecutor of the Church and the ravening wolf of Benjamin, submits his head to Ananias the sheep, nor does he recover his sight before he cures his blindness with baptism. The eunuch of Candace the queen is prepared for the baptism of Christ by reading the prophet; the Ethiopian changes his skin against nature, and the leopard his spots. Those who had received the baptism of John, because they knew not the Holy Spirit, are baptized again, lest anyone should suppose that for those of the nations or of the Jews the waters, without the Holy Spirit, could suffice unto salvation. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters, the Lord is upon many waters, the Lord maketh the flood to dwell. His teeth are as a flock of sheep newly shorn, which came up from the washing, all bearing twins, and there is none barren among them.

If none is barren nor sterile, all have breasts dewy with milk, who can say with the Apostle: My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, and: I have fed you with milk, not with meat. Micah prophesies of the grace of baptism: He will turn again, and have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities, and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. How are all sins drowned in the laver, if one wife floats on top? Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin. I think that we too may add something to this canticle: 'Blessed is he to whom the Lord hath not imputed a wife.'

Let us hear also Ezekiel, the son of man, how he declares of the power of Him who is to be the Son of man: I will take you from among the heathen, and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be cleansed from all your uncleannesses; and a new heart and a new spirit will I give you. 'From all your filth,' he says, 'I will cleanse you.' In 'all' nothing is passed over. Filth is cleansed away: how much more is cleanness not defiled? A new heart and a new spirit I will give: for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. Whence also we sing a new song, and, the old man being put off, we walk not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit.

This is the new stone, on which a new name is inscribed, which no man knows how to read save he who has received it. For as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death; we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So often we read of newness, and yet the blemished name of a wife cannot be blotted out by any newness? We are buried with Christ in baptism, and are risen again through the faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead.

And when we were dead in offences and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, He hath quickened us together with Him, forgiving us all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us; and He took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. All our things died with Christ, all the sins of the old handwriting are blotted out: does the name alone of a wife live on? The day would fail me, if I should wish to marshal out of the Holy Scriptures all that pertains to the power of baptism, and to set forth the sacraments of the second birth — nay rather, the first in Christ.

Before I make an end of dictating — for now I perceive that I am exceeding the measure of a letter — I wish briefly to expound the foregoing chapters, in which the life of the future bishop is described, that we may receive the Apostle as the teacher of the nations not in the single title of 'the husband of one wife,' but in all the things which he commands. At the same time I beseech that no one may think I have written what I have written in disparagement of the priests of this present age, but for the profit of the Church.

For just as orators and philosophers, in describing what kind of perfect orator and philosopher they would wish to be, do no injury to Demosthenes and Plato, but define the matters themselves apart from persons, so in the description of a bishop and in the exposition of the things which are written, a mirror as it were of the priesthood is set forth. Now it lies in the power and conscience of each to see what manner of men they behold themselves there, so that they may either grieve at their deformity, or rejoice at their beauty. If any man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work: a work, not a dignity; a labour, not delights; a work by which he may decrease through humility, not swell with eminence. A bishop then must be blameless: this is the same as to Titus:

If any man be blameless — he comprehends all the virtues in one word, and demands almost a thing contrary to nature. For if every sin, even in an idle word, is worthy of reproof, who is he that lives in the world without sin, that is, without reproof? But the future pastor of the Church is chosen to be such that, in comparison with him, the rest may rightly be named a flock. The rhetoricians define the orator: 'a good man, skilled in speaking.' First in life, so in tongue, blamelessness is sought, that he may be worthily received. For he loses the authority to teach whose speech is undone by his deeds. The husband of one wife: of this we have spoken above.

Now we only admonish that, if the husband of one wife is required even before baptism, we should require also the other things which are commanded, before baptism. For it is not fitting to understand all the rest as after baptism, and this one command alone as before baptism. Sober, or watchful — for the word signifies both — prudent, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach: the priests who minister in the temple of God are forbidden to drink wine and strong drink, lest their hearts be weighed down in surfeiting and drunkenness, and that the sense, discharging its office to God, may ever flourish and be keen. But in adding 'prudent,' he excludes those who under the name of simplicity excuse the folly of priests. For unless the brain be sound, all the members will be at fault.

'Of good behaviour' too is an epithet of the former word, that is, of 'blameless.' He who has no vices is called blameless; he who abounds in virtues is of good behaviour. We can also understand something else from this word, according to that saying of Tully: 'The chief thing in art is that what you do should be becoming.' For there are certain men, ignorant of their own measure, and of such great stolidity and folly, that both in movement and in gait and in bearing and in common speech they afford laughter to the beholders; and, as though understanding what good behaviour is, they deck themselves in garments and bodily elegances, and prepare the feasts of a daintier table, whereas every ornament and cultivation of this sort is fouler than filth.

But that learning is required of priests, both the precepts of the old law show, and to Titus it is more fully written. For an innocent conversation, and one without speech, profits as much by its example as it harms by its silence; and by the barking of dogs and the shepherd's staff the rage of wolves must be frightened off. Not given to wine, no striker: to vices he has opposed virtues. We have learned what manner of men priests ought to be; let us learn what manner of men they ought not to be. Wine-bibbing belongs to buffoons and revellers, and a belly seething with unmixed wine soon foams over into lusts. In wine is riot, in riot is pleasure, in pleasure is unchastity. He who is riotous, living, is dead: therefore he who is drunken is both dead and buried.

Noah, in the drunkenness of a single hour, bares his thighs, which through six hundred years he had covered with sobriety. Lot, through drunkenness unknowingly mingles incest with lust, and him whom Sodom had not conquered, wine conquered. But that a bishop be no striker, He condemns who gave His back to the scourges, and being cursed, cursed not again. But modest: to two evils he has opposed one good, that both drunkenness and anger may be restrained by modesty. Not contentious, not covetous: for nothing is more overbearing than the arrogance of boors, who count garrulity for authority, and, ever ready for quarrels, thunder with swelling speeches upon the flock subject to them.

That covetousness is to be shunned in a priest, both Samuel teaches, proving before the people that he had taken nothing from anyone, and the poverty of the apostles, who received refreshments of provisions from the brethren, and gloried that besides food and clothing they had nothing else, nor wished to have. This which to Timothy is called covetousness, to Titus he most openly marks as the desire of filthy lucre. Ruling his own house well: not that he may increase his wealth, not that he may prepare kingly feasts, not that he may pile up chased platters and cook Phasian birds over slow steams, that they may reach to the bone and by an artful tempering not dissolve the surface of the flesh, but that what is to be preached to the people he may first require of his own household. Having his children in subjection with all chastity:

namely, that they may not imitate the sons of Eli, who slept with women in the porch of the temple and, counting religion as spoil, turned whatever was best among the sacrifices to their own delights. Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil: I cannot marvel enough what so great a blindness of men this is, to dispute about wives before baptism and to drag into calumny a thing dead in baptism — nay rather, made alive with Christ — when no one keeps a precept so open and evident. Yesterday a catechumen, today a pontiff; yesterday in the amphitheatre, today in the church; in the evening at the circus, in the morning at the altar; a little while ago a patron of stage-players, now a consecrator of virgins:

Did the Apostle not know our evasions, and was he ignorant of the ineptitudes of our arguments? He who said: the husband of one wife, the same commanded him to be blameless, sober, prudent, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, modest, not given to wine, no striker, not contentious, not covetous, not a novice. To all these we close our eyes; we see only morals. But as to what he says: lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the judgment of the devil, who does not prove it true by example? The momentary priest is ignorant of the humility and meekness of country-folk, ignorant of Christian gentleness; he knows not to despise himself; he is transferred from dignity to dignity;

he has not fasted, has not wept, has not often reproved his own morals and corrected them by constant meditation, has not distributed his substance to the poor: from the chair, as the saying is, to the chair, that is, from pride to pride. But the judgment and ruin of the devil, none doubts, is arrogance. Into it fall those who in the point of an hour, not yet disciples, are already masters. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without: such as the beginning, such also the conclusion. He who is blameless is praised with a harmonious voice not only by his own household, but even by strangers. Strangers and those outside the Church are the Jews, the heretics, and the Gentiles.

Let the pontiff of Christ therefore be such, that those who detract from religion may not dare to detract from his life. But now we behold very many either buying the favour of the people, after the manner of charioteers, with a price, or living in such great hatred of all men, that they do not extort with money what mimes obtain with gestures. These things, my son Oceanus, they will have to seek out with anxious fear; these things rather they will have to guard for the Church, to observe the canons in the choosing of priests, and not to interpret their own hatreds and private feuds, and the envy that ever carps at its own author, as the law of Christ. See how great is the testimony of this man whom they accuse of being twice-married, against whom, besides the bond of marriage — and that before baptism — nothing else can be alleged by his rivals.

He who commanded that you shall not commit adultery, He also said: You shall not kill. If we do not commit adultery but do kill, we are transgressors of the law. Whoever keeps the whole law, yet offends in one point, becomes guilty of all. And so, when they cast a wife in our teeth from before baptism, let us demand from them all the things that were enjoined after baptism. They pass over what is not permitted, and object to what has been allowed. LETTER 70. TO MAGNUS, ORATOR OF THE CITY OF ROME. That our Sebesius has profited by your admonitions we have learned not so much from your letter as from his own repentance. And in a wonderful way, he pleased us more once corrected than he had wounded us while erring.

There was a contest between a father's indulgence and a son's dutiful love, the one forgetting things past, the other pledging his services even for the future. Whence both you and we have cause to rejoice together, since we have recovered a son, and you have proved a disciple. But as to what you ask at the close of your letter, why in our little works we sometimes set down examples from secular literature and defile the whiteness of the Church with the filth of the heathen, take this brief answer: you would never have raised this question had not Cicero possessed you entirely; if you read the holy Scriptures, if you unrolled their interpreters, laying Volcatius aside.

For who does not know that in the volumes of Moses and the prophets some things are taken from the books of the Gentiles, and that Solomon both put certain questions to the philosophers of Tyre and gave answers to some? Whence in the opening of the Proverbs he admonishes us to understand the words of prudence and the subtleties of speech, parables and dark sayings, the utterances of the wise and their enigmas — which properly belong to the dialecticians and philosophers. But Paul the apostle too made use of a line of the poet Epimenides, writing to Titus: The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And a half-line of this heroic verse Callimachus afterward appropriated.