But then, not by the cunning of one deceiving, but by the affection of one having compassion, he became to the Jews as a Jew, when he desired so to free them from that error—by which they either were unwilling to believe in Christ, or thought that they could be cleansed from sins and made whole through their old priesthoods and observances of ceremonies—as though he himself were held by that error; loving indeed his neighbor as himself, and doing to others these things which he would wish to be done to himself by others, if he had need of it. And when the Lord had admonished this, He added: 'For this is the Law and the Prophets.' This affection of one having compassion he enjoins in the same letter to the Galatians, saying:
'If a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.' See, he did not say to become like that man, that you may gain him—not indeed that he should deceitfully commit the fault itself, or feign that he had it, but that in another's fault he should attend to what might also happen to himself, and thus mercifully succor another, as he would wish for himself from another; that is, not by the cunning of one deceiving, but by the affection of one having compassion. So to the Jew, so to the Gentile, so to any man whatever set in some error or sin, Paul, not by feigning what he was not, but by having compassion—
because it could have been his own, as one who reflected that he was a man—he became all things to all, that he might gain all. If it please you, I beseech you, look a little at yourself; at yourself, I say, toward me myself; and recall, or, if you have them written down, reread your words in that letter which you sent me, a shorter one, through our brother, now my colleague, Cyprian—with what a truthful, what a genuine, what a full affection of charity, when you had complained that I had committed certain offenses against you, you gravely added: 'In this friendship is wounded, in this the rights of intimacy are violated; lest we seem to contend childishly and to give our partisans, or our detractors on either side, material for strife.'
These words of yours I perceive to have been spoken not only from the heart, but also with a kindly heart, for my good counsel. Finally you add what, even if you did not add it, would be apparent, and you say: 'This I write, because I desire to love you purely and in a Christian manner, and to retain nothing in my mind that differs from my lips.'
O holy man, and dear to me with a truthful heart (as God sees my soul)—this very thing which you have set down in your letter, which I do not doubt you have shown toward me, this very thing I believe that the apostle Paul altogether showed in his letters, not to any one single man, but to the Jews and the Greeks and all the Gentiles, his sons, whom he had begotten in the Gospel and whom he was in travail to bring forth; and thereafter to so many thousands of the faithful Christians of later ages, for whose sake that letter was committed to memory—namely, that he retained nothing in his mind that differed from his lips.
Surely you too became, as it were, like me, not by the cunning of one deceiving, but by the affection of one having compassion, when you reflected that I was no more to be left in that fault into which you supposed me to have slipped, than you would wish yourself to be, if you had slipped in that manner. Whence, giving thanks to your benevolent mind toward me, I at the same time ask that you also not be angry with me because, when certain things in your little works moved me, I intimated my emotion to you—wishing that this be observed toward me by all, which I myself observed toward you: that whatever they think ought to be disapproved in my writings, they neither shut up in a treacherous breast, nor so reprove among others that they keep silent with me—reckoning that friendship is rather wounded hereby, and the rights of intimacy violated.
For I do not know whether those are to be thought Christian friendships in which the common proverb prevails more—'Compliance begets friends, truth begets hatred'—than the ecclesiastical saying: 'More faithful are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.' Accordingly, let us rather teach our dearest ones, who most sincerely favor our labors, with all the insistence we can, that they may know it can come to pass that among the dearest something may be said in mutual speech by way of contradiction, and yet neither charity itself be lessened, nor truth beget the hatred which is owed to friendship—whether that be true which is said in contradiction, or, whatever it be, it be said with a truthful heart, retaining nothing in the mind that differs from the lips.
Let our brothers therefore believe—your intimate friends, to whom you bear witness that they are vessels of Christ—that it was done against my will, and that no small grief over this matter lies in my heart: that my letter came into the hands of many before it could reach you, to whom it was written. But in what way this came about it would be both tedious to relate and, unless I am mistaken, superfluous, since it is enough, if any credit is given me in this, that it was not done with the intent that is supposed, nor was it in any way my will, or arrangement, or consent, or even thought, that it should happen. If they do not believe this, which I speak with God as my witness, I have nothing further that I can do.
Yet far be it from me to believe that they suggested these things to your Holiness with a malicious mind, in order to stir up enmities between us—which may the mercy of the Lord our God turn away from us—but rather that, without any intent to do harm, they easily suspected in a man such human faults. For this it is fair for me to believe of them, if they are vessels of Christ made and set not for dishonor but for honor in a great house by God for good work. But if, after this attestation of mine, should it come to their knowledge, they should still wish to do it, how wrongly they act—you yourself also see.
As for the fact that I had written that I had sent no book against you to Rome, I wrote it because I distinguished the name of a book from that letter (whence I altogether do not know what else you had heard, as I had supposed), and because I had sent to Rome not even the letter itself, but had sent it to you, and I did not consider it to be against you, since I knew I had done it in the sincerity of friendship, whether to admonish, or that you might correct me, or I might be corrected by you. But apart from your intimates, I beseech you yourself, by the grace whereby we have been redeemed, that whatever good things of yours—which have been granted you by the Lord's goodness—I set down in my letter, you should not suppose I set down with insidious flattery; and if I have in any way sinned against you, that you would forgive me.
Nor should you draw that remark—which I made about the fate of some poet or other, more foolishly perhaps than learnedly—any further than I said; since I immediately added that I had not said this so that you might recover the eyes of your heart (which, I say, far be it that you should have lost), but so that you might turn to good account those eyes which you keep sound and watchful. Therefore it was solely for the sake of the palinode—that is, if we should write anything that we ought later to retract by a subsequent writing—that I thought that instance worth touching upon, as a thing to be imitated, and not for the sake of Stesichorus's blindness, which I neither ascribed to your heart nor feared for it. And again and again I ask that you correct me confidently, wherever you perceive I have need of this.
For although, according to the titles of honor which the usage of the Church has now established, the episcopate is greater than the presbyterate, yet in many things Augustine is less than Jerome—although correction is not to be shunned or disdained even from anyone lesser. Concerning your translation, you have now persuaded me with what usefulness you wished to render the Scriptures from the Hebrew: namely, that you might bring into the open those things which have been omitted or corrupted by the Jews.
But I ask that you deign to explain: by which Jews? Whether by those very ones who translated before the Lord's coming—and if so, by which, or by which one of them—or by these later ones, who for that reason might be thought to have either withdrawn certain things from the Greek codices or corrupted things in them, lest by those testimonies they should be convicted concerning the Christian faith. But why those earlier ones should have wished to do this, I do not find. Then, I beg, send us your translation of the Septuagint, which I did not know you had published.
I also desire to read your book, of which you made mention, On the Best Method of Translating, and to learn moreover how a translator's skill in languages is to be balanced against the conjectures of those who treat of the Scriptures by expounding them—men who must necessarily, even if they be of a right and single faith, produce various opinions in the obscurity of many passages, although that very variety in no way discords from the unity of the same faith; just as even a single expositor, according to the same faith, can expound one and the same passage now in one way, now in another, because its obscurity permits this. And therefore I long for your translation of the Septuagint.
...so that we may, as far as we can, be free from the great unskillfulness of the Latin translators, whoever they were, who ventured this; and that those who suppose I envy your useful labors may at last, if it can be, at length understand that I am unwilling to have your translation from the Hebrew read in the churches for this reason: lest, by bringing forward as it were something new against the authority of the Septuagint, we should trouble the people of Christ with great scandal—people whose ears and hearts have grown accustomed to hearing that translation, which was also approved by the apostles. Hence, as to that shrub in Jonah, if in the Hebrew it is neither ivy nor gourd but some other thing which, leaning on its own trunk, stands erect needing no supports, I would prefer that 'gourd' still be read in all the Latin copies;
for I do not think the Septuagint put this without reason, save that they knew it to be similar to this. I judge that I have replied enough—indeed perhaps more than enough—to your three letters, two of which I received through Cyprian, one through Firmus. Write back what seems good, for the instruction of ourselves or of others. And I will give more diligent effort, so far as the Lord assists me, that the letters I write to you may reach you before they reach anyone by whom they might be more widely scattered. For I confess that I too do not wish that to be done with your letters to me which you most justly demand not be done with mine to you.
Nevertheless, let there be pleasing to us mutually not only the charity but also the liberty of friendship, so that you may not keep silent with me, nor I with you, about whatever in our writings moves each of us in turn—with that mind, namely, which in brotherly love is not displeasing to the eyes of God. But if you think this cannot take place between us without a ruinous offense to that very love, let it not take place. For that charity which I would wish to have with you is assuredly greater; but this lesser is better than none. LXXXIII. To the most blessed lord, and venerably most dear and most longed-for brother and fellow bishop Alypius, and to the brethren who are with you, Augustine and the brethren who are with me, greeting in the Lord.
The sorrow of the church of Thiave does not allow my heart to rest, until I hear that they, together with you, have been restored to their former disposition—which must be done quickly. For if the Apostle busied himself over one man only, saying: 'Lest such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow,' where he also says: 'That we be not taken advantage of by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his devices'—how much more ought we to act watchfully, lest we lament this over the whole flock, and especially over those who have now come to the catholic peace and whom I can in no way abandon.
But because the shortness of time did not allow us together there to strain out a carefully deliberated opinion, let your Holiness receive what has pleased me after long thought since our parting; and, if it pleases you also, let the letter which I wrote to them in our common name now be sent without delay. You said that they should have half, and that the other half should be provided them by me from wherever possible. But I think that, if the whole were taken from them, there would be occasion for us to be said to have labored so greatly not about money but about justice. Whereas, if we grant them half, and in that way make peace with them at some point, it will sufficiently appear that our concern was nothing other than pecuniary—and you see what ruin follows.
For to them too we shall seem to have carried off half of another's property; and they will seem to us to have unjustly and iniquitously suffered wrong, in that they were helped out of the half which had wholly belonged to the poor. For as to what you said—'Care must be taken, lest, when we wish a doubtful matter to be amended, we inflict greater wounds'—that will hold equally, if half be granted them. For on account of that very half, those very men whose conversion we wish to look after, so that this may be done with them by this example, will be sure to defer the sale of their goods by those excusatory delays. Then it is a wonder if the matter is doubtful, when there is so great a scandal to the whole people, since they think their bishops, whom they hold in high esteem, stained with sordid greed, while a malicious appearance is not avoided.
For when anyone is converted to the monastic life, if he is converted with a true heart, he does not think of that at all—being especially warned how great an evil it is. But if he is deceitful and seeks his own things, not those of Jesus Christ, he assuredly does not have charity; and what does it profit him, if he distributes all his goods to the poor and delivers up his body to be burned? To this it must be added that this matter, as we have already discussed together, can henceforth be avoided, and dealings can be had with the one who is converted—if he cannot be admitted to the fellowship of the brethren until he has stripped himself of all those encumbrances, and is drawn from leisure once his property has already ceased to be his.
But this death of the weak, and so great a hindrance to the salvation of those for whom we labor so greatly, that we may gain them for the catholic peace, cannot otherwise be avoided, except that they most clearly understand that we in no way busy ourselves about money in such cases—which they will in no way understand, unless we leave to their use that property which they always supposed to belong to the presbyters, since, even if it was not his, they ought to have known this from the beginning. It therefore seems to me that this rule is to be retained in matters of this kind: that whatever, by that right by which such things are possessed, belonged to him who is somewhere ordained a cleric, should pertain to that church in which he is ordained.
But that which is at issue belongs to the presbyter Honoratus by that same right to such a degree that, not only if he had been ordained elsewhere, but even while still established in the monastery at Tagaste, if he were to die without his property being sold or transferred to anyone by manifest donation, none but his heirs would succeed to it—just as brother Aemilianus succeeded brother Privatus in those thirty solidi. These things therefore must be guarded against beforehand; but if they have not been guarded against, we must preserve for them those rights which have been instituted for the having or not-having of such things according to civil society, so that we may abstain, as far as we can, from all not only wicked reality but even appearance, and may guard the good name so very necessary to our stewardship.
But how malicious an appearance it is, let your holy prudence take note. Apart from that sorrow of theirs, which we have experienced, lest perchance I myself should be deceived—as is wont to happen, while I err too inclined toward my own opinion—I related the case to our brother and colleague Samsucius, not yet saying what now seems to me right, but rather adding that other thing which seemed good to us both. When we resisted them, he was vehemently horrified, and marveled that this had seemed good to us, moved by nothing else than the very foul appearance—an appearance most unworthy not of our life but of anyone's life and morals. Accordingly I beseech you not to defer sending, once you have signed it, the letter which I wrote to them in our common name.
And if perchance you there most keenly perceive that just course, let the weak not be compelled to learn only what I do not yet understand, so that this may be observed toward them in this cause which the Lord says: 'I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.' Indeed, sparing such weakness, He also said, concerning the paying of tribute: 'Therefore the sons are free; but lest we scandalize them,' and the rest, when He sent Peter to pay the didrachmas which were then exacted. For He knew another right, by which He owed no such thing; but by that right He was paying tribute to him, by which right we have said the heir of the presbyter Honoratus would have succeeded, if, before he either gave away or sold his property, he had died.
Although even in the Church's own law the apostle Paul spares the weak and does not exact the stipend that is due, being certain in conscience that he would most rightly exact it, yet avoiding nothing other than the suspicion that disturbs the good odor of Christ, and abstaining from that malicious appearance in those regions where he knew this was fitting—and perhaps before he had experienced the sorrow of men. But let us, who are slower, or who have already had the experience, correct what we ought to have foreseen.
Finally, since I fear everything and remember what you proposed at our parting—namely, that the brethren of Tagaste hold me as debtor for half of that price—if you clearly perceive this to be just, I do not refuse it, at least on this condition: that, when I have it, I repay; that is, when something so considerable comes to the monastery of Hippo that this can be done without hardship, so that, so great a sum being deducted there, a share no less than equal in proportion to the number of those dwelling together may come to our people. LXXXIV. To the most blessed lord, and venerable and desirable brother and fellow priest Novatus, and to the brethren who are with you, Augustine and the brethren who are with me, greeting in the Lord.
I too feel how harsh I must seem, and I can scarcely bear myself, that I neither send nor permit to your Holiness my son the deacon Lucillus, your own brother. But when you yourself also begin to concede to the necessities of churches situated far from you some of those very dear and sweet ones reared under your care, then you will feel with what goads of longing I am pierced, because certain men joined to me by the greatest and sweetest intimacy are not even bodily with me. For, to say nothing of your kinship—however much the brotherhood of your blood may avail—it does not surpass the bond of friendship by which brother Severus and I cleave to one another; and yet you know how rarely it falls to me to see him.
And this was brought about not indeed by any will, either mine or his, but because we set the necessities of mother Church—on account of the future age, in which we shall live together inseparably—before the necessities of our own time. How much more fairly, then, ought you to endure, for the benefit of that same mother Church, the absence of his brother, with whom you do not so long ruminate the Lord's food, as I do with my most sweet fellow citizen Severus—who nevertheless now scarcely, and only at intervals, speaks to me through tiny scraps of paper, and those indeed stuffed more with other cares and businesses than carrying anything of our meadows in the sweetness of Christ! Here perhaps you may say: 'Why then?
Will not my brother among us also be useful to the Church, or do I desire to have him with me on account of something else?' Clearly, if his presence would seem there as useful to me as here for gaining or governing the sheep of the Lord, no one would rightly blame not, I say, my harshness, but my iniquity. But since the Latin tongue—for lack of which the evangelical dispensation labors much in our regions—is there, however, in altogether common use: do you then think we ought so to look after the salvation of the Lord's peoples, that we should send this capacity thither and take it away from here, where we require it with great fervor of heart?
Grant me pardon, therefore, that I act not only against your desire but even against my own feeling—which the care of our burden constrains me to do. The Lord, in whom you have set your heart, will grant you that your labors may be such that for this benefit you may be rewarded; for thus you rather conceded the deacon Lucillus to the most burning thirst of our regions. Nor indeed will you provide little, when you burden me no further with any petition concerning this matter, lest I should appear as nothing other than too harsh to your benevolence, venerable and holy to me. LXXXV. To the sincerely most beloved lord, and to be blessed with all vows, brother and fellow priest Paul, Augustine, greeting in the Lord. You would not call me so inexorable, unless you also thought me a liar.
For what else do you believe of my mind, when you write such things to me, except that I hold against you the blemish of discord and detestable hatred—as though in a manifest matter I do not take care lest, preaching to others, I myself be found reprobate; or as though I wished to cast the straw out of your eye in such a way as to nourish a beam in my own? It is not as you suppose. Behold, I say again and call God to witness, that if you wished for yourself the things which I wish for you, you would long since be living secure in Christ, and in the glory of His name would gladden His whole Church. Behold, I have already written that you are not only my brother but even my colleague; for it cannot be that any bishop of the catholic Church, of whatever sort he be, should not be my colleague, so long as he is condemned by no ecclesiastical judgment.
But that I should not commune with you, there is no cause, except that I cannot flatter you. For to you especially do I owe it, because in Christ Jesus through the gospel I begot you, by truthfully rebuking with the wholesome sharpness of charity. And so I rejoice that many, with the Lord's help, have been gathered into the catholic Church through you—so that I ought not to bewail more being scattered thence. For you have so wounded the church of Hippo that, unless the Lord recall you—freed from all secular cares and burdens—to the true episcopal life and sustenance, such a wound cannot be healed.
But since you cease not more and more to entangle yourself, so that even in matters which you have renounced you have, after your renunciation, involved yourself—which cannot in any way be defended even under human laws themselves—and are said to live in a profession for which the frugality of your church cannot suffice: why do you seek my communion, when you have never been willing to hear my admonition? Or is it so that, whatever you do, men may impute it to me—men whose complaints I cannot endure? But you suspect in vain that those are your detractors who have always opposed you, even in your former life. It is not so; nor is it a wonder that many things lie hidden from you.
But even if this were true, they ought to have found nothing in your morals which they might rightly reprehend and whereby they might blaspheme the Church. Perhaps you still think that I say these things for this reason: because I have not received your satisfaction. Nay, I say it for this reason: lest I myself should be unable to make sufficient satisfaction to God for my own sins, if I keep silent these things toward you. I know that you have a heart; but even a slow heart is safe when it is in heaven, and a keen heart is nothing when it is on earth. The episcopate is not a craft for passing a deceitful life. The Lord God will teach you what I say—He who has closed to you all the ways for which you wished to use it, that He may direct you, if you understand, into that way for the walking of which so holy a burden has been laid upon you. LXXXVI.
To the excellent lord, and in the charity of Christ truly and deservedly honorable and to be looked up to, son Caecilianus, Augustine the bishop, greeting in the Lord. The chastity of your administration and the fame of your virtues, the praiseworthy diligence also of your Christian piety and its faithful sincerity—which divine gifts you rejoice to have bestowed on you by Him who bestows them, from whom you hope for greater things as He promises—have stirred me, that your Excellency might share by this epistolary address in the heat of my causes.
For as greatly as we rejoice that you have, with wonderful efficacy, looked after catholic unity throughout other lands of Africa, so greatly do we grieve that the region of the Hippo-Regians and the parts of Numidia bordering upon it have not yet deserved to be helped by the vigor of your presidial edict—O excellent lord, and in the charity of Christ truly and deservedly honorable and to be looked up to, son. Lest this rather be imputed to my own negligence, who bear the episcopal burden at Hippo, I thought it should not be kept silent from your Magnificence.
How greatly, moreover, heretical audacity presumes in the field of Hippo, if you deign to hear it either from my brothers and colleagues who could relate these things to your Sublimity, or from the presbyter whom I have sent with this letter, then, with the help of the Lord our God, you will without doubt provide that the tumor of sacrilegious vanity be healed rather by frightening than cut away by avenging. LXXXVII. To the desirable and beloved brother Emeritus, Augustine.
When I hear that anyone endowed with good natural talent and trained in the liberal disciplines—although the salvation of the soul is not established therein—nevertheless in a most easy question thinks otherwise than the truth requires, the more I marvel, the more I am inflamed to know the man and to converse with him, or, if I cannot do that, at least by letters, which fly very far, to reach his mind and in turn to be reached by him. Such a man I hear you to be, and I grieve that you are torn away and shut off from the catholic Church, which, as was foretold by the Holy Spirit, is spread throughout the whole world. For what cause, I do not know.
For it is certain that to a great part of the Roman world—not to say even to the barbarian nations, to whom too the Apostle called himself a debtor, and with whose communion in the Christian faith our own is interwoven—the party of Donatus is unknown, nor do they at all know either when or for what causes that dissension arose. All of these, whom you assuredly call Christians (Christians from those very ones), unless you confess them innocent regarding those things which you charge against the Africans, you are compelled to say are liable to all evil deeds—since among you the lost, to put it more mildly, lie hidden. You are all polluted. For you do not expel anyone from your communion, or you do not expel him then for the first time when he first commits that for which he must be expelled. Or do you not condemn one who has lain hidden for some time and afterward been betrayed and convicted?
I ask therefore whether he contaminated you during the time in which he lay hidden. You will answer: 'By no means.' Therefore at no time would he contaminate, even if he always lay hidden; for even the many deeds of the dead are often disclosed, yet it is no injury to the Christians who communicated with them while they were living. Why, then, have you cut yourselves off, by so rash and sacrilegious a severance, from the communion of innumerable eastern churches, from which what is said to have been done in Africa has always lain hidden and still lies hidden—whether you teach it or feign it? For it is another question whether you speak the truth in those things which we indeed convict of being false by far more probable documents, and which we declare to have then been proved among your own people rather, those very things which you charge.