That you most benevolently received the news that brother Alypius has remained in our fellowship, so that he might be an example to the brethren who desire to flee the cares of this life, I give thanks such as I could explain in no words; may God repay it into your soul. And so the whole company of brethren which has begun to grow together among them is bound to you by so great a favor that, though we are separated only by tracts of earth so far apart, you have taken thought for us as though most present in spirit.
Wherefore we apply ourselves with prayers, as far as we are able, that the Lord may deign together with you to uphold the flock committed to you, and nowhere to forsake you, but to be present as a helper in times of need, working mercy with his church through your priesthood—such mercy as spiritual men, with tears and groans, entreat him to work. Know therefore, most blessed lord and venerable with fullest charity, that we do not despair—nay, we vehemently hope—that our Lord and God, through the authority of the person which you bear (an authority laid, we trust, not upon your flesh but upon your spirit), [will heal] the many carnal foulnesses and sicknesses which the African church suffers in many and groans over in few ............
...that it can be healed by the mighty sword of councils and by your own gravity. For when the Apostle set down in one place, briefly, three kinds of vices to be detested and shunned, out of which there has sprung up a harvest of innumerable sins, one of these—the one, indeed, that he placed second—is most sharply punished in the Church; but the other two, that is, the first and the last, seem to men tolerable, and so little by little it can come about that they are no longer even reckoned as vices. For the vessel of election says: 'Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.'
Of these three, then, chambering and wantonness is reckoned so great a crime that no one who has stained himself with this sin is judged worthy, not only of ecclesiastical ministry, but even of communion in the sacraments themselves. And this is altogether right. But why this alone? For rioting and drunkenness are held to be so permitted and lawful that even in honor of the most blessed martyrs they are celebrated not only on the solemn days—which itself who would not judge a thing to be mourned, if he looks upon these things not with the eyes of the flesh—but even daily. This foulness, were it merely disgraceful and not also sacrilegious, we should think must be borne up with whatever strength of endurance we could muster.
Yet where stands that saying, when the same Apostle, having enumerated many vices, among which he placed drunkards, so concluded as to say: 'with such not even to eat bread'? But let us bear these things in luxury and household disgrace and in those banquets which are contained within private walls, and let us receive the body of Christ together with those with whom we are forbidden even to eat bread: at least let so great a dishonor be kept away from the tombs of the holy bodies, at least from the places of the sacraments, from the houses of prayer. For who dares to forbid privately that which, when it is frequented in holy places, is called an honoring of the martyrs? If Africa were the first to attempt to remove these things, she ought to be worthy of imitation by all other lands;
but since throughout the greater part of Italy and in all, or nearly all, the churches beyond the sea, these things—partly because they were never done, partly because, whether newly sprung up or grown inveterate, they have been extinguished and abolished by the diligence and correction of holy bishops who truly took thought for the life to come—how can we doubt in what manner we might amend so great a corruption of morals, when we have so broad an example set before us? And we indeed have as bishop a man from those regions, for which we render great thanks to God.
Yet such is his modesty and gentleness, and finally such his prudence and solicitude in the Lord, that, even if he were an African, he would quickly be persuaded from the Scriptures that what a licentious and ill-conceived freedom of custom has inflicted as a wound must be cured. But so great is the pestilence of this evil that, as it seems to me, it cannot be healed at all except by the authority of a council; or, if the remedy is to be begun by one church, then, just as it seems audacious to attempt to change what the church of Carthage holds, so it is a mark of great impudence to wish to preserve what the church of Carthage has corrected. And for this business what other bishop could be wished for than one who, as a deacon, abhorred these things?
But what was then to be lamented must now be removed, not harshly, but, as it is written, 'in the spirit of gentleness and meekness.' For your letters, tokens of a most genuine charity, give me the confidence to venture to converse with you as with myself. Therefore, as I judge, these things are to be taken away not harshly, not roughly, not in an imperious manner, but rather by teaching than by commanding, rather by admonishing than by threatening. For thus must one deal with the multitude; but severity is to be exercised against the sins of the few. And if we threaten anything, let it be done with sorrow, threatening from the Scriptures the punishment to come, that not we ourselves in our own power, but God in our word may be feared.
Thus first the spiritual will be moved, or those nearest to the spiritual, by whose authority and by admonitions most gentle indeed yet most insistent the rest of the multitude may be broken. But since these drunken revels in the cemeteries and luxurious banquets are wont to be believed by the carnal and unlearned common folk to be not only honors of the martyrs but also consolations of the dead, it seems to me that this foulness and baseness can more easily be dissuaded from them if it is both forbidden from the Scriptures and if the offerings for the spirits of those who sleep—which we must indeed believe to be of some help—be not costly upon the memorials themselves, and be offered without pride and with cheerfulness to all who ask, and not be sold;
but if anyone wishes to offer some money for religion's sake, let him at once distribute it to the poor. Thus they will not seem to abandon the memorials of their own dead—a thing which can beget no slight grief of heart—and that will be celebrated in the church which is celebrated piously and honorably. Let these things be said meanwhile concerning rioting and drunkenness. But as to strife and envy, why does it concern me to speak, when these vices are graver not among the common folk but among our own number? And the mother of these diseases is pride and greed for human praise, which often begets hypocrisy as well.
This is not resisted unless, by frequent testimonies of the divine books, the fear and love of God be struck into the heart—provided, however, that he who does this presents himself as an example of patience and humility, by taking to himself less than is offered, yet accepting from those who honor him neither all nor nothing; and that whatever of praise or honor is accepted be accepted not for his own sake—who ought to be wholly before God and to despise human things—but for the sake of those whom he cannot benefit if he becomes worthless through excessive self-abasement. For to this pertains what was said: 'Let no one despise thy youth,' since he said this who in another place says: 'If I wished to please men, I should not be a servant of Christ.'
It is a great thing not to rejoice in honors and the praises of men, but also to cut off all empty pomp, and, if anything necessary is retained from it, to devote it wholly to the profit of those who give the honor and to their salvation. For not in vain was it said: 'God will break in pieces the bones of those who wish to please men.' For what is more feeble, what so without stability and strength—which the bones signify—than a man whom the tongue of evil speakers enfeebles, though he know that what is said is false? The grief of which thing would in no way rend the inward parts of the soul, if the love of its own praise did not break its bones. I presume upon the strength of your mind; and so these things which I share with you, I say to myself; yet you deign, I believe, to consider with me how weighty, how difficult they are.
For no one feels the strength of this enemy except him who has declared war upon it; because, even if it is easy for anyone to lack praise while it is denied, it is difficult not to be delighted by it when it is offered. And yet the mind's suspension toward God ought to be so great that, if we are praised undeservedly, we correct those whom we can, lest they suppose either that there is in us what is not, or that what is God's is ours, or that they praise things which, although not lacking to us or even overabounding, are nevertheless in no way praiseworthy—such as are all the goods which we have in common either with the beasts or with impious men.
But if we are praised deservedly on account of God, let us rejoice with those who are pleased by the true good—yet not in ourselves, because we please men, but only if before God we are such as they believe us to be; and let it not be attributed to us but to God, whose gifts are all things that are truly and deservedly praised. These things I sing to myself daily, or rather He does whose saving precepts they are—whatever are found either in the divine readings or are suggested inwardly to the soul. And yet, striving vehemently with the adversary, I often receive wounds from him, since I cannot take away from myself the delight of praise offered.
I have written these things for this reason: that, even if they are no longer necessary to your holiness—whether because you yourself ponder more and more useful things of this kind, or because your holiness has no need of this medicine—nevertheless my own evils may be known to you, and that you may know from what you might deign, for my infirmity, to entreat God. And that you may do this most earnestly, I beg you by the humanity of Him who gave the precept that we should 'bear one another's burdens.' There are many things which I would bewail concerning our life and manner of living, which I would not wish to come to you by letters, but that between my heart and yours there might be no intermediaries save my mouth and your ears.
But if the aged Saturninus—venerable to us and most dear to all of us in all sincerity, whose truly brotherly kindness and zeal toward you I discerned when I was present—should deign, when he sees it opportune, to come to us, then whatever we shall have been able to converse with his holiness and spiritual affection will differ either not at all or not much from as if we were doing it with your worthiness. And that you would deign to ask and obtain this from him together with us, I beg with as many prayers as no words can suffice. For the people of Hippo dread my absence, so long and so exceedingly, and in no way are they willing to trust me as I trust you.
We learned of the field given to the brethren through your provision and generosity, even before your letter, through our holy brother and fellow-servant Parthenius, from whom we heard many other things that we desired to hear. The Lord will grant that the rest also, which we still desire, may be fulfilled. XXIII. TO HIS MOST BELOVED AND HONORABLE BROTHER MAXIMINUS, AUGUSTINE, PRESBYTER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, GREETING IN THE LORD. Before I come to the matter of which I wished to write to your benevolence, let me briefly render the reason for the title of this letter, lest it move either you or anyone else. I wrote 'lord' because it is written: 'You have been called unto liberty, brethren; only give not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by charity serve one another.'
Since, then, by this very service of a letter I serve you through charity, not absurdly do I call you 'lord' on account of the one and true Lord of us both, who has commanded us these things. But as to my having written 'most beloved,' God knows that I not only love you, but love you as myself—seeing that I am well conscious to myself that I wish for you the good things I wish for myself. As to my having added 'honorable,' I did not add it to honor your episcopate; for to me you are not a bishop. Nor take this as said with insult, but from the heart, in which 'yea, yea; nay, nay' ought to be in our mouth. For neither are you ignorant, nor is any man who knows you both, that you are not my bishop nor I your presbyter.
Therefore I gladly call you honorable by that rule, whereby I know you to be a man, and know man to have been made to the image and likeness of God, and set in honor by the very order and law of nature—provided, however, that by understanding the things that ought to be understood, he preserve his honor. For thus is it written: 'Man being set in honor did not understand; he is compared to the senseless beasts, and is made like unto them.' Why then should I not call you honorable, in as much as you are a man, especially since I dare not despair of your salvation and correction, so long as you are in this life? But that I should call you 'brother,' it does not escape you that we have been divinely commanded to say even to those who deny that they are our brethren:
'You are our brethren'—and this is of great force to the cause on account of which I wished to write to your fraternity. Now, then, having rendered the reason why I made such a doorway for the letter, hear most calmly what follows. When I, in this region, was detesting in whatever words I could the custom of men to be mourned and bewailed—men who, though they glory in the Christian name, do not hesitate to rebaptize Christians—there was no lack of those who praised you, who told me that you do not do these things. I confess, at first I did not believe it.
Then, considering that it could come to pass that the fear of God might invade a human soul pondering the life to come, so that it might restrain itself from a most manifest crime, I rejoiced and believed that by such a resolve you were unwilling to be too alien from the Catholic Church. I was indeed seeking an occasion of speaking with you, so that, if it could be done, that small dissension which remained between us might be removed—when behold, a few days ago it was announced that you had rebaptized our deacon of Mutugenna. I grieved vehemently both at his pitiable fall and at your unlooked-for crime, brother. For I know what the Catholic Church is. The nations are the inheritance of Christ, and the ends of the earth are the possession of Christ. You also know this, or, if you do not know it, take heed;
it can most easily be known by those who are willing. To rebaptize, therefore, a heretic who has received these signs of holiness which Christian discipline has handed down, is altogether a sin; but to rebaptize a Catholic is a most monstrous crime. Yet, not quite believing it, because I held a good persuasion concerning you, I myself went on to Mutugenna, and him indeed, wretched man, I was not able to see; but from his parents I heard that he has now even been made a deacon of yours. And yet I still think so well of your heart that I do not believe he was rebaptized.
Wherefore I beseech you, most beloved brother, by the divinity and humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you would deign to write back to me what was done, and so to write back that you may know I wish to read out your letter in the church to our brethren. This I wrote for this reason: lest, when I should afterward do what you did not expect me to do, I should offend charity, and you should lodge a just complaint about me before our common friends. What then should hinder you from writing back, I do not see. For if you rebaptize, there is nothing that you should dread from men of your own college, since you will have written back that you do what they would command you to do even if you were unwilling.
But when you shall have defended, with as many proofs as you could, that it ought to be done, they will not only not be angry, but will even applaud. If, however, you do not rebaptize, seize Christian liberty, brother Maximinus, seize it, I beg you; do not, in contemplation of Christ, either fear the rebuke of any man or shrink from his power. The honor of this world passes away, ambition passes away. In the future judgment of Christ, neither tiered apses nor veiled cathedrae nor flocks of nuns running to meet and singing will be brought forward for defense, where conscience shall begin to accuse and the Arbiter of consciences to judge. The things which here bestow honor, there burden; the things which here relieve, there weigh down.
Those things which are for a time displayed to our honor for the Church's benefit will perhaps be defended by a good conscience, but they will not be able to defend a bad one. Therefore, what you do with so pious and so religious a mind—if indeed you do it—namely, that you do not repeat the baptism of the Catholic Church, but rather approve it, as of the one most true mother who offers her bosom to all nations to be regenerated and pours out her breasts to the regenerated, as of the one possession of Christ extending itself to the very ends of the earth—if you truly do this, why do you not burst forth into an exulting and free voice? Why do you press down the so useful splendor of your lamp under a bushel?
Why, casting off and throwing away the old skins of timid servitude, do you not rather come forth clothed in Christian confidence and say: 'I know one baptism, consecrated and sealed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; where I find this form, I must needs approve it; I do not destroy what I acknowledge to be the Lord's, I do not blow away the standard of my King'? Even those who divided the garment of Christ did not violate it; and they had as yet believed that Christ would not rise again, but saw Him dying. If by persecutors the garment of Him hanging on the cross was not torn, why by Christians is the sacrament of Him seated in heaven destroyed?
If in the times of the old people I were a Jew, when I could be nothing better, I would certainly have received circumcision. That seal of the righteousness of faith availed so much only in that time, before it was made void by the coming of the Lord, that an angel would have strangled the infant son of Moses, had not his mother, seizing a stone, circumcised the boy and by this sacrament driven away the impending destruction. This sacrament also curbed the river Jordan and led it back to its source. This sacrament the Lord Himself, though when crucified He made it void, yet when born received. For those seals were not condemned, but gave way as more opportune ones succeeded. For as the Lord's first coming took away circumcision, so His second coming will take away baptism.
For just as now, after the liberty of faith has come and the yoke of servitude has been removed, no Christian is circumcised in the flesh, so then, when the just reign with the Lord and the impious are condemned, no one will be baptized; but that which these things prefigure—that is, the circumcision of the heart and the cleansing of conscience—will remain forever. If, then, at that time I were a Jew, and a Samaritan came to me and wished, forsaking that error which even the Lord reproved when He said, 'You worship what you know not;'
'we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews'—if, then, the Samaritan, whom the Samaritans had circumcised, wished to become a Jew, the audacity of repetition would certainly be idle, and we should be compelled not to repeat but to approve that which had been done among a heresy, which God had commanded. But if in the flesh of a circumcised man I found no place where I might repeat circumcision—because that member is one—much less is a place found in one heart where the baptism of Christ might be repeated. Therefore you who wish to double baptism must needs seek out double hearts. Cry out, then, that you do rightly, if you do not rebaptize, and write back to me thereupon not only without trepidation but even with joy.
Let no councils of your own party terrify you, brother. For if this displeases them, they are not worthy to have you; but if it pleases them, we trust in the mercy of the Lord—who never forsakes those who fear to displease Him and strive to please Him—that peace between you and us will soon come, lest, on account of our honors, of which burden a perilous account is rendered, the wretched peoples believing in Christ should have common food in their houses and yet be unable to have the common table of Christ. Do we not groan that husband and wife, in order faithfully to join their bodies, most often swear to one another by Christ, and yet rend the very body of Christ by their divided communion?
If so great a scandal, so great a triumph of the devil, so great a destruction of souls, be through your modesty and prudence and love—which we owe to Him who shed His blood for us—taken out of the midst in these regions, who could unfold in words what a palm the Lord prepares for you, so that, for the healing of the other members which lie miserably wasting away throughout all Africa, so imitable a document of medicine might proceed from you? How I fear, since you cannot see my heart, lest I seem to speak to you with insult rather than with love! But surely, what more I might do I do not find, save that I offer my discourse for your inspection, and my mind to God.
Let us take out of the midst the empty objections which unskilled parties are wont to hurl against one another; neither do you object the times of Macarius, nor I the savagery of the Circumcellions. If this does not pertain to you, neither does that pertain to me. The Lord's threshing-floor is not yet winnowed; it cannot be without chaff. Let us pray and act, as much as we can, that we may be the wheat. I cannot be silent about the rebaptizing of our deacon; for I know how ruinous silence would be for me. For I do not think to pass windy times in ecclesiastical honors, but I think that I shall render to the Prince of all shepherds an account of the sheep committed to me. If perhaps you would not wish that I should write these things to you, you ought, brother, to pardon my fear;
for I greatly fear lest, while I keep silent and dissemble, others also should be rebaptized by you. I have determined, therefore, as much as the Lord deigns to afford strength and means, so to conduct this cause that, by our peaceful conferences, all who commune with us may know how far the Catholic Church stands apart from heresies or schisms, and how much the destruction is to be guarded against, whether of the tares or of the branches cut off from the Lord's vine. If you undertake this conference with me with a willing mind, so that, we being in accord, the letters of us both may be read to the peoples, I shall exult with unspeakable gladness.
But if you do not accept this with an even mind, what shall I do, brother, save that, even against your will, I read our letters to the Catholic people, that they may be the better instructed? And if you do not deign to write back, I have determined to read even my own letters alone, that at least, your diffidence being made known, they may blush to be rebaptized. Nor will I do this while the soldier is present, lest any of you suppose that I wished to act more tumultuously than the reasoning of peace desires; but after the soldier's departure, so that all who hear us may understand that it is not my purpose that men should be compelled unwillingly to anyone's communion, but that the truth may become known to those who seek most quietly. On our side the terror of temporal powers shall cease;
let there cease also on your side the terror of the assembled Circumcellions. Let us act by the matter itself, let us act by reason, let us act by the authorities of the divine Scriptures; quiet and tranquil, as much as we can, let us ask, let us seek, let us knock, that we may receive and find and it may be opened to us—lest perhaps it may come to pass that, with the Lord helping our concordant endeavors and prayers, so great a deformity and impiety of the African regions may begin to be abolished from our lands. If you do not believe that after the departure of the soldiers I wish to act, then after the departure of the soldiers write back. For if I wished to read my letters to the people while the soldier is present, my letter, once produced, will show me to be a violator of faith.
May the mercy of the Lord turn this away from my character and my resolve, which He has deigned to inspire in me through His yoke. Your benevolence's bishop would perhaps rather have sent a letter, had he been present, or I would have written at his bidding or with his permission. But in his absence, since the deacon's rebaptism is recent, or is said to be, I have not suffered the action itself to grow cold by delay, being stirred by the sharpest stings of grief over a brotherly and true death. This my grief, with the help of the mercy and providence of the Lord of peace, will perhaps be soothed by compensation. May God and our Lord deign to inspire in you a pacified mind, most beloved lord brother. XXIV.
TO THE LORD DESERVEDLY HONORABLE AND MOST BLESSED FATHER ALYPIUS, PAULINUS AND THERASIA, SINNERS. This is true charity, this the perfect love, which you have shown to be in you toward our lowliness, O lord truly holy and deservedly most blessed and desirable. For we received, through our man Julian returning from Carthage, letters bringing to us so great a light of your holiness that we seemed not to recognize but to re-recognize your charity, because plainly this charity flowed from Him who from the origin of the world predestined us to Himself, in whom we were made before we were born, because He made us and not we ourselves—He who made the things that are to come.
By His foreknowledge, therefore, and His work, we have been formed into a likeness of wills and a unity of faith, or rather, joined together by a charity that anticipates the knowledge of the unity of faith, so that we might know one another before bodily sight, the Spirit revealing it. We give thanks, therefore, and glory in the Lord, who, one and the same everywhere in the earth, works in His own His own love by the Holy Spirit, whom He has poured out upon all flesh, gladdening His city by the onrush of the river, among whose citizens He has deservedly placed you as chief, with the princes of His people, in an apostolic see, and has willed that we also—whom, cast down, He raised up, and, needy, He lifted from the earth—should be numbered in your lot.
But rather do we rejoice in that gift of the Lord whereby He has established us in the dwelling of your breast, and has deigned so to insinuate us into your inmost affections that we claim for ourselves a special confidence in your charity, provoked by these offices and gifts, so that it is not permitted us to love you either diffidently or lightly. For we have received the distinguished and pre-eminent work of your love and solicitude—the work of the holy and perfect man in the Lord Christ, our brother Augustine—composed in five books, which we so admire and look up to that we believe the words to have been dictated divinely.