'Either the things which the Seventy translated were obscure, or they were plain; if obscure, it must be believed that you too could be deceived in them; if plain, it is evident that they could not be deceived in them.' I answer you with your own words. All the ancient commentators who have gone before us in the Lord, and who have interpreted the Holy Scriptures, interpreted either obscure things or plain. If obscure, how have you dared to discourse after them upon what they could not explain? If plain, it is superfluous that you should have wished to discourse upon what could not have escaped them — especially in the explanation of the Psalms, upon which among the Greeks Origen first commented in many volumes,
second Eusebius of Caesarea, third Theodore of Heraclea, fourth Asterius of Scythopolis, fifth Apollinaris of Laodicea, sixth Didymus of Alexandria. There are also carried about the little works of various men on a few psalms, but now we are speaking of the whole body of the Psalms. Among the Latins, however, Hilary of Poitiers and Eusebius bishop of Vercelli translated Origen and Eusebius, of whom the former our own Ambrose too followed in certain places. Let your prudence answer me: why, after so many and such great interpreters, have you thought differently in the explanation of the Psalms? For if the Psalms are obscure, it must be believed that you too could be deceived in them; if plain, it is not believed that they could be deceived in them.
And by this reasoning, in either way your translation will be superfluous; and by this law, after those before, no one will dare to speak, and whatever one man has taken up, another will not have the liberty of writing about it. Rather it belongs to your humanity that, in the matter wherein you grant pardon to yourself, you should indulge others also. For I have endeavoured to abolish not so much the old things — which, corrected, I have translated for the men of my own tongue from Greek into Latin — as those testimonies which have been passed over by the Jews or corrupted, to bring them into the open, so that our people might know what the Hebrew truth contains. If it does not please anyone to read, no one compels the unwilling.
Let him drink the old wine with pleasure and despise our new must — which has been issued in the exposition of the earlier translators, so that, wherever those are not understood, they may be made clearer from ours. But as to what manner of translation is to be followed in the Holy Scriptures, the book which I wrote on the best manner of translating, and all the little prefaces of the divine volumes which we have prefixed to our edition, explain; and to these I think the prudent reader is to be referred. And if, as you say, you accept me in the emendation of the New Testament, and set forth the reason why you accept it — because very many who have knowledge of the Greek tongue could pass judgement on my work — you ought to have believed the same integrity also in the Old Testament, in that we did not fabricate of our own,
but, as we found among the Hebrews, so we translated the divine things. If anywhere you doubt, ask the Hebrews. You will say: What if the Hebrews either will not answer, or wish to lie? Will the whole throng of the Jews keep silence about my translation? Will no one be able to be found who has knowledge of the Hebrew tongue? Or will they all imitate those Jews whom you say were found in a little town of Africa to have conspired to my calumny? For in your letter you weave a tale of this kind:
'A certain brother of ours, a bishop, when he had appointed your translation to be read in the church over which he presides, came upon a certain passage in the prophet Jonah placed far otherwise by you than it had been fixed in the senses and memory of all and chanted through so many successions of ages. So great a tumult arose among the people — especially with the Greeks reproaching and inflaming the charge of falsification — that the bishop was compelled (for it was the city of Oea) to demand the testimony of the Jews. But whether it was through ignorance or malice, they answered that this was in the Hebrew codices which both the Greeks and the Latins had and asserted. What need of more? The man was compelled, as one wishing to correct an error, after great danger not to remain without a congregation.
'Hence it seems to us also that you too could sometimes have been deceived in some things.' You say that I translated something wrongly in the prophet Jonah, and that, with the people crying out in sedition over the discord of a single word, the bishop nearly lost his priesthood. And what that thing is which I translated wrongly, you withhold, taking from me the occasion of my defence, lest whatever you may say be dissolved by my answering — unless perhaps, as very many years ago, the gourd came into the midst, with Cornelius and Asinius Pollio of that time asserting that I had translated 'ivy' in place of 'gourd.'
On this matter we have answered more fully in our commentary on the prophet Jonah, being content now to have said only this: that in the passage where the Seventy translators rendered it 'gourd' and Aquila, together with the rest, 'ivy'—that is, ϰιττός—the Hebrew scroll has written 'ciceion,' which the Syrians commonly call 'ciceia.' It is a kind of shrub having broad leaves like a vine-tendril, and when it has been planted it quickly rises up into a little tree, without any props of reeds or poles such as gourds and ivy require, supporting itself upon its own trunk. Expounding this word word for word, therefore, if I had wished to render it 'ciceion,' no one would understand it; if 'gourd,' I would be saying what is not found in the Hebrew;
I put 'ivy,' so as to agree with the other translators. But if your Jews, as you yourself assert, said out of malice or ignorance that what is contained in the Greek and Latin codices stands thus in the volumes of the Hebrews, it is plain that either they are ignorant of Hebrew letters or, to mock the gourd-champions, were unwilling to lie. I beg, at the end of the letter, that you not compel an old man, resting and long since a veteran, to keep soldiering and again to risk his life. You, who are young and set upon the pontifical summit, teach the peoples, and enrich the Roman roofs with the new fruits of Africa. For me it is enough to whisper in a corner of the monastery with a poor little hearer and reader. LXXVI. To you, Donatists, the Catholic Church says:
O sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after lying? Why have you divided yourselves from the unity of the whole world by the wicked sacrilege of schism? You give heed to falsehoods, which are told you by men either lying or erring, concerning the tradition of the divine codices, so that you may die in a heretical separation; and you do not give heed to what the codices themselves tell you, that you may live in Catholic peace. Why do you open your ears to the speech of men saying what they could never prove, and are deaf against the speech of God, who says: The Lord said to me, You are my Son, this day have I begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.
To Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. It does not say, 'and to seeds,' as of many, but as of one, 'and to your seed,' which is Christ. In your seed, it says, shall all nations be blessed. Lift up the eyes of your heart and consider the whole round of the earth, how in the seed of Abraham all nations are blessed. Then it was believed by one man what was not yet seen; you now see it, and yet you still begrudge it. The Passion of the Lord is the price of the whole world; He redeemed the whole world, and you, with the whole world, do not come into concord for your own gain, but rather to your own loss you litigate over a part, so that you lose the whole. Hear in the psalm at what price we were redeemed:
They pierced, it says, my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones; but they themselves looked and gazed upon me; they divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots. Why do you wish to be dividers of the Lord's garments, and refuse to hold, together with the whole world, that tunic of charity woven from above, which not even His persecutors divided? In that same psalm it is read that the whole world holds it: All the ends of the earth, it says, shall remember and be turned to the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship in His sight. For the kingdom is His, and He shall have dominion over the nations.
Open the ears of your heart and hear, for the God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting; out of Sion is the loveliness of His beauty. If you are unwilling to understand this, hear the Gospel, now with the Lord Himself speaking by His own mouth and saying: That all things must be fulfilled concerning Christ which were written of Him in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, and that penance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. What in the psalm He said, 'He called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting,' this in the Gospel is 'among all nations'; and what in the psalm He said, 'out of Sion is the loveliness of His beauty,' this in the Gospel He said, 'beginning at Jerusalem.'
You pretend that you flee, before the time of harvest, the tares mingled among you, whereas you yourselves are the only tares. For if you were the wheat, you would tolerate the tares mingled with you, and would not divide yourselves from the crop of Christ. Of the tares indeed it was said: Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold; but of the wheat also it was said: He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. Why do you believe that the tares have grown and filled the world, but the wheat has diminished and remained in Africa alone? You call yourselves Christians and contradict Christ. He said: Let both grow until the harvest; He did not say: Let the tares grow, let the wheat diminish. He said: The field is this world; He did not say: The field is Africa. He said:
The harvest is the end of the age; He did not say: The harvest is the time of Donatus. He said: The reapers are the angels; He did not say: The reapers are the chieftains of the Circumcellions. But because in place of tares you accused the wheat, you have shown yourselves to be the tares, and, what is graver, before the time you have separated yourselves from the wheat.
For your forefathers, in whose sacrilegious cutting-off you persevere—some of them, by municipal acts, handed over the holy codices and the instruments of the Church to the persecutors; others, confessing this, released them and communicated with them; and both parties gathered at Carthage in a raging faction, and concerning the crime of surrender, on which they themselves had already agreed among themselves, they condemned men unheard, ordained bishop against bishop, and raised altar against altar. Afterward they sent letters to the Emperor Constantine, that bishops from across the sea should judge among the Africans; and when judges had been given whom they had demanded, and these were judging at Rome, they did not obey them; they accused the bishops before the emperor, as though they had judged badly;
they appealed again, to other bishops sent to Arles, and then to the emperor himself; having been heard by him and found to be slanderers, they persisted in the same wickedness. Awake unto salvation, love peace, return to unity. All these things, in what manner they were done, we recite to you whenever you wish. He communicates with the wicked who consents to the deeds of the wicked, not he who tolerates the tares in the Lord's field until the harvest, or the chaff until the last winnowing. If you hate the wicked, change yourselves from the wickedness of schism; if you feared the mingling of the wicked, you would not for so many years retain among you Optatus, living in the most open iniquity.
And since you now call him a martyr, it remains only for you to call Him, for whom he died, Christ. Finally, how has the Christian world offended you, from which you cut yourselves off in wicked fury? And what have the Maximianists deserved of you, whom, though condemned by you and driven out from the basilicas by public judgments, you have received back again into their own honor? How has the peace of Christ offended you, against which you divide yourselves from those whom you defame? And what has the peace of Donatus deserved of you, for the sake of which you take back those whom you condemn? Felicianus of Musti is now with you. We have read that he was first condemned in your council, and afterward accused by you before the tribunal of the proconsul, and assailed by municipal acts in the city of Musti.
If the surrender of the codices is a wicked crime, because God avenged with a warrior's death upon the king who burned the book of Jeremiah, how much more wicked is the sacrilege of schism, whose authors—to whom you have compared the Maximianists—the earth opened and swallowed alive! In what manner, then, do you cast in our teeth the crime of surrender, which you do not prove, while you both condemn and accept your own schismatics? If you are just for this reason, because you suffered persecution through the emperors, more just than you are the very Maximianists, whom you yourselves persecuted through judges sent by the Catholic emperors.
If you alone have baptism, what is the baptism of the Maximianists doing among you, in those whom the condemned Felicianus baptized, with whom he was afterward recalled to you? Or let your bishops answer these things to you laymen, if they are unwilling to speak with us; and consider, for your own salvation, of what sort this very thing is, that they are unwilling to speak with us. If the wolves have held a council, that they should not answer the shepherds, why have the sheep lost their sense, so as to approach the caves of the wolves? LXXVII. To his most beloved lords, and deservedly to be honored, his brothers Felix and Hilarinus, Augustine, in the Lord, greeting. I do not wonder that Satan disturbs the souls of the faithful.
Resist him, remaining steadfast in the hope of God's promises, who cannot deceive, who has deigned to promise eternal rewards not only to us who believe and hope in Him and persevere in His charity unto the end, but has also foretold that temporal scandals would not be lacking, by which our faith should be exercised and proved. For He says: Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold; but immediately He added: But he who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.
What wonder, then, if men disparage the servants of God and, because they cannot pervert their life, attempt to blacken their reputation, when they cease not daily to blaspheme God Himself and their Lord, since whatever He does by His just and hidden judgment against their will displeases them? Wherefore I exhort your prudence, most beloved lords and deservedly to be honored brothers, that against the slanderous idle talk of men and their rash suspicions you consider, with a most Christian heart, the Scripture of God, who foretold to us all these things to come and forewarned us that we ought to be firm against them.
Briefly, therefore, I say to your charity that the presbyter Bonifatius was detected before me in no crime, and that I have by no means believed, nor do I believe, any such thing about him. In what manner, then, could I order his name to be removed from the number of the presbyters, while the Gospel most vehemently terrifies me, where the Lord says: With what judgment you shall judge, you shall be judged? For since the case that arose between him and Spes hangs under divine examination, according to the agreement of those men—which can be recited to you, if you wish—who am I, that I should dare to anticipate the sentence of God?
In deleting or suppressing the name of one about whom, as a bishop, I ought not rashly to suspect anything evil, nor, as a man, could I clearly judge concerning the hidden things of men—since even in secular cases themselves, when the arbitration of judging is referred to a higher power, with all things remaining as they were, that sentence is awaited from which it is no longer permitted to appeal, lest an injury be done to the higher examiner, if, while his judgment is pending, anything should be altered. And assuredly there is a great difference between the divine power and any human power, however most exalted. May the mercy of the Lord our God never desert you, most beloved and honorable brothers. LXXVIII.
To his most beloved brothers, the clergy, the elders, and the whole people of the Church of Hippo, which I serve, in the love of Christ, Augustine, in the Lord, greeting. Would that, attending with anxious mind to the Scriptures of God, you had no need of the help of our discourse in any scandals whatsoever, and that He rather might console you, who consoles us also—He who foretold not only the good things which He is about to render to His saints and faithful, but also the evils with which this world was to abound; who took care that these be written down beforehand, so that we might await, more assured, the good things to follow after the end of the age, and might feel, likewise foretold, the evils preceding before the end of the age. Whence the Apostle also says:
For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through the patience and consolation of the Scriptures we might have hope toward God. But what need was there that the Lord Jesus Himself should say not only, Then shall the just shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father—which is to be after the end of the age—but should also cry out, Woe to the world because of scandals, except that we should not flatter ourselves that we can come to the seats of eternal happiness unless, exercised by temporal evils, we do not fail? What need was there that He should say, Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold, except for the sake of those of whom, speaking immediately, He went on to add:
He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved—that, when with this abundance of iniquity they should see charity growing cold, they might not be disturbed, might not be terrified, might not, as though saddened by unhoped-for and unexpected events, fail; but rather, seeing come to pass what was foretold to be before the end, might patiently persevere unto the end, so that, secure, they might be worthy to reign after the end in that life which has no end? Accordingly, dearly beloved, in this scandal, by which some are disturbed concerning the presbyter Bonifatius, I do not tell you not to grieve—for those who grieve not at these things, in them is not the charity of Christ;
but those who even rejoice over such things—in them the malignity of the devil abounds—not because anything appeared in the aforesaid presbyter that might be judged worthy of condemnation, but because two men of our house have such a case that, without doubt, one of them is held to be lost, and the reputation of the other is, among some, evil, among some, doubtful, even though his conscience be not stained.
Grieve at these things, since they are to be grieved for—yet not in such a way that by that grief your charity grows cold from living well, but rather is kindled to entreat the Lord, so that, if your presbyter is innocent—which I rather believe, since, when he had perceived the shameless and unclean impulse of the other, he would neither consent nor keep silent—He may quickly present him, made manifest by His divine sentence, to his own ministry; but if he was evil in his own conscience—which I dare not suspect—and wished to injure the other's reputation, when he could not defile his chastity (as the man with whom he has the case says), may He not permit him to hide his own wickedness, so that what men cannot find out may, by divine judgment, be made public concerning whichever of them.
For when this case had long tormented me, and I could not find in what manner one of the two might be convicted—although I had rather believed the presbyter—I had at first thought to leave them both thus to God, until in one of them, the one who was suspect to me, something should arise whereby, not without just and manifest cause, he might be cast out from our dwelling. But when he was striving most vehemently to be promoted in the clerical office, whether there through me or elsewhere through my letters, and I could by no means be induced to lay the hands of ordination upon a man of whom I thought so much evil, or by my commendation to introduce him surreptitiously to any brother of mine, he began to act more turbulently, so that, if he himself were not
In this provocation of his, when I saw that Bonifatius was unwilling that a scandal should be made, for any weak persons prone to suspicion, out of a doubt about his life, and that he was prepared to suffer the loss of his honor among men rather than, in that contention in which he could not demonstrate his conscience to the ignorant and doubting, or to those more prone to suspecting evil, to advance vainly even to the disturbance of the Church—I chose a certain middle course: that by a definite agreement both should bind themselves to go to a holy place, where the more terrible works of God might far more easily lay open the unsound conscience of each and compel him, by punishment or by fear, to confession.
神確實無所不在，祂——創造萬有的主——不被任何地方所容納或圍限，並且真正敬拜祂的人必須用心靈和誠實敬拜祂，好叫祂在隱密中垂聽，也在隱密中稱義並加冠冕。然而，至於那些在人面前有形可見地顯明之事，誰能查究祂的旨意——為何在某些地方行這些神蹟，在另一些地方卻不行呢？因為許多人都極熟知那安放蒙福的諾拉的斐理斯（Felix of Nola）遺體之地的神聖，我願他們前往那裡，因為從那裡更容易、更可靠地能將他們二人中無論哪一個蒙神彰顯之事寫信告訴我們。
Everywhere indeed is God, and He is contained or enclosed in no place, who created all things, and He must be worshipped by true worshippers in spirit and in truth, so that, hearing in secret, He may also in secret justify and crown. Yet, as to those things which are visibly made known to men, who can search out His counsel—why in some places these miracles are wrought, and in others not? For to many is most well known the sanctity of the place where the body of blessed Felix of Nola is laid, whither I wished them to go, because from there it can more easily and more faithfully be written to us whatever, in either of them, may divinely be brought to light.
For we ourselves also have known, at Milan, at the memorial-shrine of the saints, where marvelously and terribly the demons make confession, that a certain thief, who had come to that place to deceive by swearing falsely, was compelled to confess the theft and to restore what he had taken away. Is not Africa also full of the bodies of the holy martyrs? And yet nowhere here do we know such things to be done. For just as, what the Apostle says, not all the saints have the gifts of healings, nor all have the discerning of spirits, so neither in all the memorials of the saints did He will these things to be done, who divides His own to each one, as He wills.
Wherefore, since I had been unwilling to bring this most grievous grief of my heart into your knowledge, lest I should trouble you by saddening you cruelly and vainly, perhaps for that reason God was unwilling that it should be hidden from you, so that you might, together with us, apply yourselves in prayers, that what He Himself knows in this case, but which we cannot know, He may deign to make manifest even to us. But the name of the presbyter I did not, on that account, dare either to suppress or to delete from the number of his colleagues, lest I should seem to do an injury to the divine power, under whose examination the case still hangs, if I should wish to anticipate His judgment by my prejudgment.
which not even judges do in secular affairs, when the doubt of a case is referred to a higher power, that, while the report is pending, they should dare to change anything. And in the council of bishops it was established that no cleric who has not yet been convicted ought to be suspended from communion, unless he has not presented himself for the examination of his case. Bonifatius, nevertheless, undertook this humility: that he would not even accept letters by which, on his pilgrimage, he might seek his own honor, so that in that place, where both are unknown, equality between the two might be preserved.
And now, if it please you that his name not be recited, lest, as the Apostle says, we give occasion to those seeking an occasion who are unwilling to approach the Church, this deed shall not be ours but theirs, for whose sake it shall have been done. For what does it harm a man, that human ignorance is unwilling that he be recited from that tablet, if an iniquitous conscience does not delete him from the book of the living? Accordingly, my brothers, who fear God, remember what the Apostle Peter says: For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. Whom he cannot devour by seducing him to wickedness, his reputation he attempts to defile, that, if it can be done,
he may fail through the reproaches of men and the disparagement of evil tongues, and thus rush into his jaws. But if he cannot even stain the reputation of the innocent, he tries to persuade him of this: that through malevolent suspicions he should judge concerning his brother, and thus, entangled by him, be swallowed up. And who could suffice either to comprehend or to enumerate all his snares and circumventions? Against these three things, nevertheless, which pertain to the present case: first, lest by imitating evil examples you be seduced to wickedness, God thus addresses you through the Apostle: Be not yoked, drawing with unbelievers; for what participation has justice with iniquity, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Likewise in another place: Be not, He says, seduced:
evil conversations corrupt good manners. Be sober, just, and sin not. But that you may not fail before the tongues of the disparagers, He thus speaks through the prophet: Hearken to me, you who know judgment, my people, in whose heart is my law. Fear not the reproaches of men, and be not overcome by their disparagement, nor count it a great thing that they spurn you. For like a garment they shall be consumed by time, and like wool they shall be eaten by the moth; but my justice remains forever. And now, that you may not perish by suspecting false things, with a malevolent mind, concerning the servants of God, recall that apostolic saying, where he says: Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come and illuminate the hidden things of darkness;
and He will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then shall each one have praise from God. And likewise that which is written: The things that are manifest are for you; but the things that are hidden are for the Lord your God. It is indeed manifest that these things do not befall the Church without grave sadness of the saints and the faithful; yet let Him console us who foretold all things, and who admonished us that, through the abundance of iniquity, we should not grow cold, but should persevere unto the end, so that we may be able to be saved. For as far as concerns me, if there is in me any charity of Christ, however small: who among you is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I do not burn?