I have indeed also written to the praiseworthy count, which letter it will be at your discretion whether you wish to be delivered; for as to the one through whom it may be delivered, I do not doubt that, with the Lord's help, there can be no lack — whether a bishop, or a presbyter, or anyone whatever. Letter 245. To Possidius, most beloved and venerable lord, brother and fellow-priest, and to the brethren who are with you, Augustine and the brethren who are with me, greeting in the Lord. It is more to be considered what you are to do with those who are unwilling to comply, than in what way you may show them that what they do is not permitted. But now the letter of your holiness has both found me most occupied and the very swift return of the bearer has permitted me neither not to write back to you nor to answer, as I ought, the things you have consulted me about.
Nevertheless, I do not wish you to hold a too hasty opinion in forbidding ornaments of gold or of clothing, except in the case of those who, being neither married nor desirous of marrying, ought to think how they may please God. But those others think of the things of the world, how they may please, whether the men their wives or the women their husbands — save that for women to bare their hair, whom the Apostle even commands to veil the head (1 Cor 11:5-6), does not become even married women; but to paint themselves with pigments, so as to appear either ruddier or fairer, is an adulterous deception, by which I do not doubt that even their own husbands are unwilling to be deceived, to whom alone the women are to be permitted to adorn themselves, by permission not by command.
For the true adornment, especially of Christian men and women, is not only no lying paint, indeed not even the pomp of gold and clothing, but good morals. But the superstition of amulets is to be execrated, among which even the earrings of men, hung on the tops of the ears from one side, are reckoned: they are employed not to please men but to serve demons. But who could find in the Scriptures special prohibitions of nefarious superstitions, when the Apostle says generally: 'I do not wish you to become associates of demons' (1 Cor 10:20), and again: 'For what concord has Christ with Belial?' (2 Cor 6:15)
unless perhaps, because he named Belial and forbade the general fellowship of demons, it is permitted to Christians to sacrifice to Neptune, since we read nothing forbidden specifically concerning Neptune? Let the wretched meanwhile be admonished that, if they are unwilling to comply with more wholesome precepts, they should at least not defend their sacrileges, lest they entangle themselves in a greater crime. But what care ought to be taken with them, if they fear to loose their earrings and yet do not fear to receive the body of Christ with the sign of the devil? But concerning the ordaining of one who was baptized in the party of Donatus, I cannot be your adviser: for it is one thing to do it, if you are compelled, another to counsel that you do it. Letter 246. To Lampadius, Augustine.
Concerning the question of fate and fortune, by which I perceived your mind to be not lightly moved — both when I was present, I noticed it, and now by your letter I have come to know it more gratefully and more surely — I owe you a reply of no small volume, which the Lord will grant that I so unfold it in the manner He knows to be suited to you and to the welfare of your faith. For it is no small evil, by perverse opinions, not only to be led to commit sin by the allurement of pleasure, but even to be turned away from the medicine of confession toward defending sin. But this indeed you may know the sooner and more briefly: all laws and all institutions of discipline, praises, blame, exhortations, terrors, rewards.
...punishments and all the other means by which the human race is administered and governed would be utterly shaken and overturned, and no justice at all would remain in them, unless the will were the cause of sinning. How much more freely, then, and more justly do we condemn the errors of the astrologers than we are compelled to condemn and cast aside the divine laws or even the management of our own households — which not even the astrologers themselves do! For when one of them has sold his silly fates to men of means, the moment he turns his eye from the ivory tablets to the ordering and care of his own house, he corrects his wife not only with words but even with blows, not, I say, if he catches her jesting too playfully, but if he observes her gazing too immoderately out of the window. Yet if she should say to him:
'Why do you strike me? Strike Venus, if you can, by whom I am compelled to do this' — then indeed he takes no thought how empty are the words he composes for deceiving strangers, but how just are the blows he lays on to correct his own people. Whenever, therefore, anyone who has begun to be reproved turns the cause over to fate, and on that account refuses to be blamed — because he says he was compelled by fate to do what is charged against him — let him return to his own self. Let him keep this doctrine within his own house: let him not chastise a thieving slave, let him not complain of an insolent son, let him not threaten a wicked neighbour. For which of these does he do justly, if all those from whom he suffers wrongs are driven to act not by their own fault but by fate? But if by his own right and by the diligence of a head of household...
...over whatever men he has for the time being in his power, he exhorts to good, deters from evil, gives commands that they obey his will, honours those who are obedient to his nod, takes vengeance on those who despise him, repays kindness for good services, and hates the ungrateful — shall I wait for him to argue against fate, when I catch him proclaiming, not in words but in deeds, so great a doctrine that he seems almost with his own hands to break all the astrologers' little pebbles over their heads? If, then, your eagerness is not content with these few remarks, and you desire some book on this matter which you may read at greater length, you must patiently await my seasons of leisure, and God must be entreated, who may deign to grant both leisure and the means to satisfy your mind on this subject.
Yet I shall be the more eager if you do not grudge often to remind me by your letters of your charity, and if by writing back you make known to me what you think of this letter. Letter 247. To his most beloved lord and son Romulus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Truth is both sweet and bitter: when it is sweet, it spares; when it is bitter, it heals. If you do not refuse to drink what I offer you in this letter, you will prove what I have said. Would that, just as whatever insults you heap upon me do me no harm, so too they might do you no harm; and would that the iniquity which you commit against the wretched and the poor might harm you as much as it harms those very people to whom you do it! For they labour for a time, but you — consider:
what treasure you are storing up for yourself against the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgement of God, who will render to each according to his works. I implore His mercy, that He may correct you here, in the way He Himself knows, rather than reserve you for that day, when there will no longer be any place for correction — so that He who has given you His fear, on account of which I do not despair of you, may open your understanding, that you may see what you do, and shudder at it, and amend it. For those things seem to you small and as it were nothing which are so great evils, that, when tamed desire allows you to consider them, you would water the ground with tears, that God might have mercy on you.
Or if I am the unjust one for pressing this matter with you — lest wretched and needy men should pay twice what they owe, since the tenants have already paid to your agent, obeying the deputy set over them and giving orders, nor could he deny that he received it — if, then, I am the unjust one, because it seems to me unjust that those who can scarcely manage to pay once should be dunned twice, do what you will; but if you yourself see that it is unjust, do what is fitting. Let there be done what God commands and what I ask. It is not so much for their sake — He whom I fear knows this — but for your own sake that I entreat you yourself, that, as it is written, you may have mercy on your own soul, pleasing God. And indeed for now you are not to be entreated but rebuked; for this too is written: 'Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten.'
Yet I, if you were to be entreated on my behalf, would perhaps not entreat you; but because you are to be entreated for your own sake, I entreat you though you are angry — that you may spare yourself, that you may be pleased with yourself, that He whom you entreat may be pleased with you. I sent to you on the Sabbath day, while you were still dining, that you should not set out until you had seen me. You sent word back that you would do so. You rose on the Lord's day and, as I heard, you came into the church and prayed, and set out, and were unwilling to see me. May God forgive you. For what else shall I say to you, except that — which He Himself knows — I long for you? But I know that unless you correct yourself, He is just. Now when you spare yourself, you spare me too; for I am not so wretched and so estranged from the bowels of Christ that my heart is not smitten with a most grievous wound
when those whom I have begotten in His Gospel act so. Again you will say: 'I did not order them to give to Ponticanus.' You are answered: 'But you did order them to serve Ponticanus; and they could not distinguish how far they were to serve and how far not' — especially since he was demanding those very things which they knew they owed. But they ought to have had your letters, which they might produce to the agent, if he was exacting payment against your will, and read out to him that they were not obliged to pay unless they had received your letters.
For if at some time you ordered by word of mouth that they should give nothing to the agent, it is much to ask that they should remember, and much to ask that you yourself should remember, whether you truly gave such an order, and whether you gave it to these very men or to others or to all — especially because even now you have heard that money was paid to another agent, and that the money itself was safe, and it did not displease you that they paid. But when I had said: 'What if this man too had embezzled it? It would have had to be exacted from them again' —
— it again began to displease you that they had paid; and although you had often told me that you had never delegated your authority either to Valerius or to Aginesis, suddenly, when the matter of the wine came up — because they ought to have shown it, if it had begun to turn sour, and it was said to you that you were absent — I believe it slipped your memory what you had told me so often, and you said that Aginesis was authorized to show it and to act according to his own judgement. There, when I had said: 'Surely you are not accustomed to delegate your authority to these men,' you replied: 'But Aginesis had my letters' — as though those to whom you delegate anything always recite your letters to country folk, that they may believe you gave the order.
But because they see such matters being delegated to them by you, they do not, of course, rashly believe that those men dare to presume anything unless power has been given by you. And therefore, amid these uncertainties, it does not appear what you command, and they cannot hold anything as settled unless they have your letters, which they may produce to all and obey only when your letters have been produced, whenever something is to be paid. But what need is there to argue with you so long, and to burden your occupations with words, so that perhaps, when you grow angry at my words, you may wish to vent your rage on wretched men? It will be reckoned to them as a good merit that, for the sake of your salvation — on account of which I say such things to you — they endure your anger;
but to you I am unwilling to say anything more severe, lest you think that I speak such things not out of fear but out of ill-wishing. Fear God, if you do not wish to be deceived; I call Him Himself as witness upon my soul, that when I say these things I fear more for you than for those on whose behalf I seem to intercede with you. If you believe this, thanks be to God; but if you do not believe it, I am consoled by what the Lord says: 'Say: Peace be to this house; and if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him; but if not, it shall return to you.' May God's mercy protect you, most beloved lord and son. Letter 248. To his holy and longed-for lord, and to his most sweet brother in the honour of Christ, Sebastian, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.
Although the sweet bond of charity in no way allows you to be separated from our heart, and we ceaselessly recall your holy character and your conversation, nevertheless you have done well, and we give thanks, that by sending us notes announcing your bodily health also, you have greatly gladdened us. But I perceived in your letter that weariness had held you back on account of the sinners who forsake the law of God; for you live by that Spirit whereby it was said: 'I saw the foolish and I wasted away.'
This is a godly sorrow, and, if it may be so said, a blessed misery: to be troubled by others' vices without being entangled in them, to grieve without cleaving, to be drawn together by pain without being drawn along by love. This is the persecution which all suffer who wish to live godly in Christ, according to the biting and truthful saying of the apostle. For what so persecutes the life of the good as the life of the wicked? Not when it forces one to imitate what displeases, but when it forces one to grieve at what one sees; since a man living impiously in the presence of a godly man, even if he does not bind the one who consents, yet tortures the one who feels it. For often and for a long while the bodies of the impious are spared by the secular powers and by the vexations of any persons whatever; but the hearts of the godly are never spared from the evil ways of men, even to the end of this world.
Thus, then, is rather fulfilled what I recalled the apostle to have said: that all who wish to live godly in Christ suffer persecution, and so much the more bitterly as it is more inward, until the flood pass over, where the ark contains both the raven and the dove. But cleave, brother, to Him from whom you have heard: 'He who shall have endured to the end, he shall be saved'; join yourself to the Lord, that your life may increase in the last days. For I know that consolation of heart from good brethren is not lacking. Add to this the promises of God — faithful, great, sure, everlasting — and the imperturbable and ineffable reward of His very forbearance, and see how truly you sing to the Lord: 'According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy consolations have gladdened my soul.'
Send our letter to brother Firmus. Your holiness, and the household of God which is governed by your ministry, the brothers and sisters who are with us, salute you in return in the Lord. [And in another hand:] May you pray for us in safety, most beloved and holy brothers. I, Alypius, most heartily salute your sincerity and all who are joined to you in the Lord, and I ask that you count this letter as though it were my own; for although I could have sent another of my own, I preferred rather to subscribe to this one, that even a single page might bear witness to our unanimity. Letter 249. To his most longed-for lord, and dearest with honourable sincerity, his brother and fellow-deacon Restitutus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.
The most faithful brother Deogratias — who is, as you know, a sharer of them — has made known to me the fervours that betoken the godly flame of your heart. Read, then, Tyconius, whom you know well, though not indeed intending to approve everything; for you know well what is to be guarded against in him. Yet this question — how, in the Church of God, if perchance we are unable to correct or extinguish certain perverse or even wicked things, they are to be tolerated with the bond of unity preserved — he seems to me to have handled and resolved strenuously.
Although, in his writings, with only the intention corrected, we ought to recur to the very fountains of the divine Scriptures, that we may there see how few testimonies of pronouncements or examples of deeds he has set down concerning this matter, and how no one could set down them all, save one who should wish to transcribe almost all the pages of the sacred books into his own writings.
Thus there is hardly any page which does not admonish us that, within the very fellowship of the sacraments by which we are steeped for eternal life, we ought to be peacemakers with those who hate peace, until, by our groaning, our long pilgrimage pass away, and we enjoy in fullest security the peace of Jerusalem our eternal mother in her strength, and in her towers an abundance of true brethren, whose fewness we now bewail amid the many false. And what is the strength of that city, save its God, our God? You see, therefore, in whom alone peace is made both for individual men, who without Him wage war within themselves and with no scandal arising from without, and for all together, who, although in this life they love one another and are held by the bonds of faithful friendship,
yet neither by the presence of the body nor by the consent of the mind are they most highly and perfectly united. May your heart be strengthened in the Lord, mindful of us. Letter 250. To his most beloved and venerable lord, brother and fellow-priest Auxilius, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. The distinguished man, our son Count Classicianus, has gravely complained to me in a letter that he has suffered the injury of an anathema from your holiness. He relates that he came to the church accompanied by a retinue of a few men befitting his rank, and treated with you, that you should not favour, against his welfare, those who by swearing false oaths upon the Gospels were seeking, in the very house of faith, aid for violating their pledged faith; and yet, considering what evil they had done,
he says that they were not violently dragged out thence, but departed of their own accord; and that hence your reverence was so incensed against him that, by the drawing up of ecclesiastical records, he together with his whole household was struck with the sentence of anathema.
When I had read his letter, being no little troubled and tossed with a great tempest of thoughts in my heart, I could not keep silent before your charity, so that, if you have on this matter an opinion tested by sure reasons or by the testimonies of the Scriptures, you may deign to instruct us also, how a son can rightly be anathematized for his father's sin, or a wife for her husband's, or a slave for his master's, or anyone in the household not even yet born, if at the very time when the whole house is bound by the anathema he should be born, and it should not be possible to succour him by the laver of regeneration in the peril of death.
For this is not that bodily penalty, whereby we read that certain despisers of God were slain together with all their own, who had not been sharers of the same impiety. For then mortal bodies, destined in any case one day to die, were destroyed for the terror of the living; but the spiritual penalty, whereby is effected what is written — 'Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven' — binds souls, of which it is said: 'The soul of the father is Mine, and the soul of the son is Mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die.' You have perhaps heard that certain priests of great name anathematized someone, together with his household, of the sinners; but perhaps, if they were questioned, they would be found competent to render an account of it;
but I, since — if anyone asks of me whether it is rightly done — I find nothing to answer him, have never dared to do this, even when I was most gravely moved by the crimes of certain persons monstrously perpetrated against the Church. But if perchance the Lord has revealed to you how justly it is done, I by no means despise in you your youth and the rudiments of your ecclesiastical honour. Behold, here I am, an old man ready most willingly to learn from a young man, and a bishop of so many years from a colleague not yet a year old, how we may render a just account either to God or to men, if we punish innocent souls with a spiritual penalty for another's crime — from which they do not draw original sin, as they draw it from Adam, in whom all have sinned.
For even though Classicianus's son did draw from his father the guilt of the first man, to be expiated by the sacred font of baptism, yet whatever sin his father committed afterwards, once he had begotten him — in which the son himself had no part — who doubts that it does not pertain to him? What shall I say of the wife? What of so many souls in the whole household? Wherefore, if a single soul, through that severity by which this whole house is anathematized, should perish by departing from the body without baptism, the death of innumerable bodies — if innocent men were violently dragged out of the church and slain — could not be compared to this loss. If, therefore, you can render an account of this matter, would that you might furnish it to us also by writing back, that we too may be able to;
but if you cannot, why should you do, through an ill-considered agitation of mind, that of which — if you were questioned — you would not be able to find a right answer? Yet these things I have said even though our son Classicianus did commit something which might most justly seem to you to deserve punishment by anathema. But, for the rest, if he sent me a true letter, he ought not to have been coerced by this correction alone in his own house. Yet on this point I do nothing with your holiness, but only ask that you pardon him who prays for forgiveness, if he has acknowledged his fault;
but if you prudently recognize that he has committed no sin — since he was justly urging, in the house of faith, that faith ought to be kept, lest it be broken there where it is taught — then do what a holy man ought to do: that, if it has befallen you, as a man, that which the man of God assuredly says in the psalm — 'My eye is troubled because of anger' — you may cry out to the Lord, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak,' that He may stretch out to you His right hand, and restrain your wrath, and calm your mind for the seeing and doing of justice. For, as it is written, the wrath of man worketh not the justice of God.
And do not suppose that unjust agitation cannot creep upon us because we are bishops, but rather let us reflect that we live most perilously amid the snares of temptations, because we are men. Take away, therefore, the ecclesiastical proceedings, which perhaps you drew up in too disturbed a state, and let the charity return between you which you had with him even as a catechumen; take away the quarrel and recall peace, lest a friend and man be lost to you, and the devil, an enemy, rejoice over you. But mighty is the mercy of our God, who may both hear me as I pray — that my sorrow over you may not be increased, but rather that what has arisen may be healed — and may govern you by His grace, and gladden your youth, which does not despise my old age. Letter 250 A.
For my part, on account of those who, for the sin of one soul, bind a whole household — that is, very many souls — with an anathema, and above all lest anyone should depart from the body there without baptism; and as to whether those too are not to be expelled from the church who take refuge there in order to break faith with their sureties — I desire, with the Lord's help, both to treat of it in our council and, if need be, to write to the Apostolic See, that it may be established and confirmed by the concordant authority of all what we ought to follow in these cases. This, plainly, I would not say rashly: that if any of the faithful is anathematized unjustly, it will rather harm him who does it than him who suffers this injury.
For the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the saints, by whom each is bound or loosed, brings undeserved punishment upon no one; for through Him is charity poured forth in our hearts, which does not behave wrongfully. Letter 251. To his most beloved lord and deservedly honourable son Pancarius, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Since, before your reverence came, the presbyter Secundinus was not displeasing to the people of Germaniciana, I do not know how it has now come about that they are prepared, as you wrote, to accuse him even of I know not what crimes, most beloved lord and deservedly honourable son. Nevertheless, we can in no way despise what they seem to charge against the presbyter — provided only that those who bring the charge are Catholics;
for the accusations of heretics against a Catholic presbyter we neither can nor ought to admit. Accordingly, let your prudence first see to this: that there be no heretics where none existed before your coming; and we shall hear the presbyter's case, as it ought to be heard. This, indeed, I advise — since you think it worthy, and since both your welfare and your good repute are most dear to us, and the people of Germaniciana themselves belong to the care of our humility — that those things which you have obtained from the most glorious emperors, and those which you have transacted before the competent judges, you would deign confidently to allege, so that it may appear to all that you do nothing out of order, lest again, in your case — you who are contending over a possession — those wretched people themselves be wearied and, more grievously afflicted, come to ruin.
At the same time I also commend this: that the house of the same presbyter be not plundered or laid waste; for it has been reported to us concerning his church that certain persons wish to demolish it; but I do not think that this could in any way be permitted by your reverence. Letter 252. To his most beloved lord, deservedly honourable and to be preferred, brother Felix, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Your reverence knows most excellently what care the Church, or the bishops, owe to the protection of all men, but especially of orphans. Wherefore, having received your letters and a copy of the letters of the distinguished man our brother, I neither could nor ought to entrust the girl to just anyone anywhere, especially because he commended her to the Church, most beloved lord, deservedly honourable and to be preferred brother.
Accordingly, I await his coming, so that, if anything ought to be done, I may deliberate in his presence and do what the Lord shall have inspired ought to be done. Letter 253. To his most blessed and venerable and longed-for lord and brother Benenatus, and to the brothers who are with you, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Through him by whom I salute your holiness, we rejoice at his faith and at his good zeal toward the Church. Now he wished to come to your kindness with my letters, most beloved and venerable lord and brother. And since I have heard that you are thinking of settling that business — if it is true, at which I marvel, if it is true — you know how you ought, with episcopal fatherliness, to provide for the Catholic Church,
so that you may not transact it with just anyone — if, however, as I said, what I have heard is true — but rather with a Catholic household, from which the Church may have not only no adversity but even faithful assistance. Letter 254. To his most blessed and venerable and longed-for lord, brother and fellow-priest Benenatus, and to the brothers who are with you, Augustine and the brothers who are with me send greeting in the Lord. The girl, concerning whom your holiness wrote to me, is of such a will that, if her age were already mature, she would consent to marriage with no one. But she is of such an age that, if she had the will to marry, she ought not yet to be given or promised to anyone.
To this is added that God so protects her in the church that He protects her against wicked men — not so that she may be handed over to whomever I wish, but so that she may not be seized by one to whom she ought not to be given, most beloved and venerable lord and brother Benenatus. The match, therefore, which you have deigned to propose does not displease me, if she is to marry; but whether she is to marry — even though we rather prefer that which she has on her lips — we nevertheless now do not know, because she is of those years in which even what she says, that she wishes to be a nun, is rather the jest of a chattering child than the pledge of one making profession. Then she has an aunt, whose husband, our honourable brother Felix — when I had conferred with him on this matter, for I neither could nor ought to do otherwise —