Nor in this am I a debtor to you, that with the same advance of benevolence I should believe and speak good things about you which you yourself still recognize to be lacking in you; but that with a mind indeed so benevolent I should nevertheless speak those good things of yours — the gifts of God — of which I am sure in you. And this I do not fail to do, not lest I be deceived in them, but lest you, praised by me, seem to have praised yourself; and on account of that rule of justice, because I do not wish it to be done to me. But if it ought to be done, I choose to be a debtor so long as I think it ought not to be done; but if it ought not to be done, neither am I a debtor. But I know what you can reply to me: 'You speak thus, as though I had desired your prolix letter about my praises.' Far be it that I should believe this of you;
but your letter — I will not say how full of true, or how full of untrue, yet nevertheless full of my praises — demanded, even against your will, that I should repay this of myself. For if you wished me to write anything else, you desired me a bestower, not a repayer. Furthermore the order of justice so holds, that we first repay the debt, and then afterward, to him to whom we repay, if it so please, bestow something in addition. Although even such things as you desired me to write, if we consider the Lord's precepts more diligently, we repay rather than bestow, if nothing is to be owed to anyone save that we love one another. For that very love exacts a debt, that, serving brotherly charity, we should aid, in what we can, him who rightly wishes to be aided.
But, my brother — and you too, I believe, know how many things are in my hands, against the cares which the necessity of our servitude entails, from which scarcely the very fewest drops of time are distilled for me, which, if I expend on other matters, I seem to myself to act against my duty. For as to your wishing that I write you a prolix letter, this too indeed I owe, I confess; I owe it entirely to your so sweet, so sincere, so pure will. But because you are a good lover of justice, from that very source I admonish you, that concerning her whom you love you may hear this from me the more willingly. You discern that what I owe both to you and to others is prior to what I owe to you alone; and time does not suffice me for all things, since it does not suffice even for those which are prior.
Whence all my dearest and most intimate friends — among whom, in the name of Christ, you are for me among the foremost — will do the work of their duty if they not only do not themselves impose other things upon me to be written, but even prohibit the rest, with as much authority and holy kindness as they can, lest I seem hard when I do not give what is asked by individuals, while I would rather repay those things which I owe to all. Finally, when, as we hope and hold by promise, your venerability shall have come to us, you will know with what works of letters and how much I am occupied, and you will more insistently do what I have asked: that you also demolish from me those others whom you can, who wish to enjoin upon me something else to be written.
May the Lord our God fill the so great and so holy bosom of your heart, which He Himself made. Most blessed lord. (CXI.) TO THE MOST BELOVED AND MOST LONGED-FOR LORD, BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER VICTORIANUS, AUGUSTINE, GREETING IN THE LORD. Your letter has filled our heart with great grief, wherein you asked that I answer certain things with a prolix work — whereas for such evils prolix groans and weeping are owed rather than prolix books. For the whole world is afflicted with such great disasters that there is almost no part of the earth where such things as you have written are not committed and lamented.
For a little while ago, even in those solitudes of Egypt, where monasteries, separated from all clamour, were dwelling as if secure, brethren were slain by barbarians. Now indeed what wicked deeds have lately been perpetrated in the regions of Italy, what in the Gauls, I do not think are hidden even from you; and of the Spanish provinces too, so many, which for a long time seemed untouched by these evils, such things have now begun to be reported. But why do we go far afield? Behold, in our own region of Hippo, since the barbarians have not reached it, the brigandage of the Donatist clergy and the Circumcellions so lays waste the churches that perhaps the deeds of the barbarians would be milder.
For what barbarian could have devised what these men do — that they throw lime and vinegar into the eyes of our clergy, whose other limbs too they have wounded with dreadful blows and injuries? They also plunder some houses and burn them, they carry off the dry crops and pour out the moist ones, and by threatening the rest with such things they even compel many to be rebaptized. The day before I dictated these things to you, from one place, through terrors of this kind, forty-eight souls were reported to me as rebaptized. These things are to be lamented, not wondered at; and we must cry out to God, that not according to our merits but according to His mercy He may deliver us from such great evils.
For what indeed was to be hoped for the human race, when these things were foretold so long beforehand both in the prophets and in the Gospel? We ought not therefore to be so contrary to our own selves as to believe when they are read and to complain when they are fulfilled; but rather even those who had been unbelieving, when they read or heard these things written in the sacred books, ought now at least to believe, when they see them already being fulfilled — so that, from these so great pressures, as though in the winepress of the Lord our God, just as the lees of the unbelieving who murmur and blaspheme flow off, so also the oil of the faithful who confess and pray may not cease to be pressed out and clarified.
For to those who do not cease to hurl impious complaints against the Christian faith, saying that before this teaching was preached throughout the world the human race did not suffer such great evils, it is easy to reply from the Gospel; for the Lord says: 'The servant who does not know his master's will and does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes, but the servant who knows his master's will and does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with many stripes.' What wonder is it, then, if in Christian times this world, like a servant who now knows his master's will and does things worthy of stripes, is beaten with many stripes? They observe with what speed the Gospel is preached, and they do not observe with what perversity it is despised.
But the servants of God, humble and holy, who suffer temporal evils in a twofold way—since they suffer both from the impious themselves and together with them—have their own consolations and the hope of the age to come, whence the Apostle says: 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that shall be revealed in us.' Therefore, dearest one, even to those whose words you say you cannot bear, since they say: 'If we sinners have deserved these things, why have even the servants of God been slain by the sword of the barbarians, and the handmaids of God led away captive?'—reply humbly and truthfully and piously:
For however much righteousness we may keep, however much obedience we may render to the Lord, can we possibly be better than those three men who were cast into the furnace of blazing fire for the sake of preserving God's law? And yet read what Azarias says there: one of the three, opening his mouth in the midst of the fire, said:
'Blessed art Thou, O Lord God of our fathers, and worthy of praise and glorious is Thy name for ever; for Thou art righteous in all that Thou hast done to us, and all Thy works are true and Thy ways right, and all Thy judgements truth. In truth Thou hast executed judgements in all that Thou hast brought upon us and upon the holy city of our fathers, Jerusalem; for in truth and judgement Thou hast brought all these things upon us because of our sins. For we have sinned and have not kept the law, and have not obeyed Thy commandments, that it might be well with us; and all that Thou hast brought upon us Thou hast brought by a true judgement, and hast delivered us into the hands of the wicked, our most hateful enemies, of apostates, and of an unjust and most wicked king beyond all the earth.'
'And now we cannot open our mouth; we have become a shame and reproach to Thy servants and to those who worship Thee. Do not deliver us up for ever, O Lord, for Thy name's sake, and do not annul Thy covenant, and do not take away Thy mercy from us, for the sake of Abraham who is beloved of Thee, and for the sake of Isaac Thy servant, and Israel Thy holy one, to whom Thou didst speak, promising to multiply their seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea; for, O Lord, we are made least of all nations, and are humbled this day in all the earth because of our sins.'
You surely see, brother, what men these were, how holy, how brave in the midst of tribulation—where nevertheless they were spared and the very flame feared to burn them—that they confessed their sins, for which they knew they were worthily and justly humbled, nor did they keep silent. Can we possibly be better than Daniel himself, of whom the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel to the prince of Tyre: 'Are you wiser than Daniel?'—and who is set as one among the three righteous men whom God says He alone will deliver, showing indeed in them three certain types of the righteous, whom He says He will so deliver that they shall not deliver even their own sons along with them, but they alone shall be delivered: Noah, Daniel, and Job?
Read nevertheless also the prayer of Daniel, and see how, placed in captivity, he confesses not only the sins of his people but also his own, and says on account of these that he came to that punishment of captivity and to reproach through the righteousness of God. For thus it is written: 'And I set my face toward the Lord God, to seek prayers and supplications in fastings and sackcloth; and I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed, and said:
'O Lord, the great and wonderful God, who keepest Thy covenant and mercy to them that love Thee and keep Thy commandments: we have sinned, we have done against the law, we have acted impiously and have departed and turned aside from Thy precepts and from Thy judgements, and we have not hearkened to Thy servants the prophets, who spoke in Thy name to our kings and to all the people of the land. To Thee, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us confusion of face, as at this day: to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far off in every land whither Thou hast scattered them, because of their obstinacy, in that they have rebelled against Thee, O Lord.'
'To us belongs confusion of face, and to our kings and our princes and our fathers, who have sinned. To Thee, the Lord our God, belong mercies and forgivenesses, for we have departed and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the precepts of His law, which He set before us by the hand of His servants the prophets.'
'And all Israel have sinned against Thy law and have turned aside, that they should not hear Thy voice; and there has come upon us the curse and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned. And He has confirmed His words which He spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, to bring upon us great evils, such as were never done under all heaven according to those things that were done in Jerusalem; as it is written in the law of Moses, all these evils are come upon us, and we have not entreated the Lord our God, that He might turn away our transgressions from us and that we might understand all Thy truth.'
'And the Lord God has watched over all His holy work, and has brought upon us those things which He did, for the Lord our God is righteous in all His world which He made, and we have not hearkened to His voice. And now, O Lord our God, who didst bring Thy people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and didst make Thyself a name, as at this day, we have committed transgressions against Thy law. O Lord, according to all Thy mercy, let Thy fury and Thine anger be turned away from Thy city Jerusalem and from Thy holy mountain. For because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Thy people are become a reproach to all who are round about us.'
'And now, O God, hear the prayers of Thy servant and his supplication, and show us Thy face for the sake of Thy sanctuary which is desolate. For Thine own sake, O Lord my God, incline Thine ear and hear; open Thine eyes and behold our desolation and that of Thy city Jerusalem, upon which Thy name is called; for we do not present our prayer before Thee on the ground of our own righteousness, but appealing to Thy mercy, which is great. Hear, O Lord; be merciful, O Lord; hearken, O Lord, and do not delay, for Thine own sake, O my God, for Thy name is called upon Thy city and Thy people.' And while I was yet speaking and praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people—.
See how he first told his own sins and afterward those of his people. And he commends this righteousness of God and speaks this praise of God, that not unjustly but for their sins He scourges even His own holy ones. If then those men say such things, who by their most excellent holiness had the fires and the lions harmless about them, what ought we to say in our humility, who are so far unequal to them, however much righteousness we may seem to keep?
But lest anyone suppose that those servants of God whom you say were killed by the barbarians ought thus to have escaped that death, in the way that those three men were delivered from the fires and Daniel from the lions, let them know that those miracles were done for this reason: that the kings by whom they were delivered up to those punishments might come to believe that they should worship the true God. For this lay in the hidden judgement and mercy of God, that He might in that way take counsel for the salvation of those kings. But to King Antiochus, who destroyed the Maccabees with cruel punishments, He was unwilling to take counsel in this way, but by their most glorious sufferings He punished the heart of the hard king with sharper severity. Read, nevertheless, what even one of them who was suffering in the sixth place says; for thus it is written:
'And after him they brought forward the sixth. When he, tortured with torments, was about to die, he said: "Do not deceive yourself; it is on our own account that we suffer these things, having sinned against our God, and these things have befallen us worthily. But do not think that you will go unpunished, you who have willed to fight with your laws against God and His law."' You see also how humbly and truthfully these men are minded, who confess that they are scourged by the Lord for their own sins—of whom it is written: 'For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth; and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.' Whence the Apostle also says: 'For if we judged ourselves, we should not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened, that we be not condemned with the world.'
Read these things faithfully, preach them faithfully, and as much as you can, sing them and teach that they must be guarded against, lest amid these temptations and tribulations there be murmuring against God. You say that good and faithful and holy servants of God were slain by the sword of the barbarians. But what does it matter whether a fever or the sword released them from the body? God attends not to the occasion by which they go forth, but to what kind of men they go forth to Him among His servants—except that a lingering weakness has a greater penalty than a most swift departure; and yet we read of even that lingering and horrible weakness, such as that Job suffered, to whose righteousness God Himself, who cannot be deceived, bears such testimony.
Very grievous indeed and much to be lamented is that captivity of chaste and holy women; but their God is not captive, nor does He desert His captive ones, if He knows them as His own. For those holy ones too, whose sufferings and confessions I have recalled from the holy Scriptures, when led away by their enemies and placed in captivity, said those things which we might read as recorded, and might learn that captive servants of God are not deserted by their Lord. And whence do we know what marvels of His the omnipotent and merciful God may also will to work through these women in that barbarian land itself?
Only do not cease to groan to God for them and to inquire, as much as you can and as much as He Himself permits, when He has given the time and opportunity, what has become of them, or what consolations you may be able to have. For not many years ago, at Sitifis, a niece of Bishop Severus, a nun, was led away by the barbarians and by the marvellous mercy of God was restored to her parents with great honour. For that house of the barbarians into which she entered as a captive began to be shaken by a sudden sickness of its masters, so that all those barbarians themselves—three brothers, unless I am mistaken, or more—were labouring under a most dangerous illness.
Their mother took notice of the maiden dedicated to God, and believed that by her prayers her sons might be delivered from the peril of now imminent death; she asked that she would pray for them, promising that, if they were made whole, they would restore her to her parents. She fasted and prayed, and was immediately heard; for it had been done for this very end, as the outcome showed. And so they, marvelling at so sudden a benefit of God when health was received, and honouring what their mother had promised, fulfilled it. Pray therefore to the Lord for them, and ask that He would also teach these women to say such things as the holy Azarias mentioned above poured out to God among other things in his prayer and confession.
For those women are in the land of their captivity just as those men were in that land where they could not offer sacrifice to the Lord according to their custom—just as these women cannot either bring an oblation to the altar of God, or find there a priest through whom they might offer to God. May the Lord therefore grant them to say to Him what Azarias said in what follows in his prayers: 'There is not at this time prince or prophet or leader, no burnt offering nor oblation nor supplications nor place to sacrifice before Thee and to find mercy; but in a contrite soul and a spirit of humility may we be accepted.'
'As in whole burnt offerings of rams and bulls, and in a multitude of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in Thy sight this day, and let us wholly follow after Thee; for there shall be no confusion to those who trust in Thee. And now we follow Thee with our whole heart, and fear Thee, and seek Thy face. Do not put us to shame, but deal with us according to Thy gentleness and according to the multitude of Thy mercy; and deliver us according to Thy wonders, and give glory to Thy name, O Lord. And let all who show evils to Thy servants be ashamed, and let them be confounded, deprived of all their power, and let their strength be crushed; and let them know that Thou art the Lord, the only God, and glorious over the whole circle of the earth.'
When these women say these things and groan to God, He who is wont to be present with His own will assuredly be present with His own, and either will permit nothing to be perpetrated by hostile lust upon their most chaste members, or, if He permits it, then—since their mind is stained by no defilement of consent—He defends even their flesh from crime; and whatever the lust of the one suffering has neither committed nor permitted upon it will be the fault of the doer alone, and all that violence will be reckoned not as the shame of corruption but as the wound of suffering. For so great is the power of integrity of chastity in the mind, that while it remains inviolate, chastity cannot be violated even in the body whose members could be overpowered.
May this letter suffice for your love—brief for your desire, yet very lengthy considering my occupations, and too much hastened on account of the bearer's haste. The Lord will console you far more abundantly if you read His Scriptures most attentively. CXII. To his excellent lord, honourable in most sincere love, his brother Donatus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. That, greatly desiring to see you while you were administering your office, I could not do so even when you had come to Thibilis, I believe came about for this reason: that I might rather enjoy you with your mind freed from public cares, than that that greeting, with me at leisure and you occupied, should temper for neither of us, so far as would be enough, the desire.
Indeed, recalling the honesty and probity of your disposition from your earliest age, I judge your breast abundantly fit, into which Christ may most bountifully pour Himself, so that you may bring forth to Him fruits more worthy of eternal and heavenly glory than of temporal and earthly renown. For from many—nay rather, from absolutely all whom I was able either to question or even to hear proclaiming it of their own accord—all constantly praising and preferring the chastity and virtue of your administration, I received it without any scruple of dissonant variety, and the more certainly because your praisers did not know our close bond, and were utterly ignorant whether I knew you even slightly, so that I might not believe them to have given themselves to my ears rather than to be spreading true things about you.
For there is praise removed from vanity where even blame is secure from offence. Yet nevertheless, O excellent brother, honourable in most sincere love, you are not now to be taught, but perhaps to be admonished, that all this glory and popular fame is to be rejoiced in not in the mouth of the crowd but in the things themselves, which, even if they displease the crowd, are nevertheless precious by their own splendour and weight, not by the commendation of the unskilled; and he who disapproves of such things is more to be pitied than the one who is disapproved of on account of such things is to be judged wretched.
But when they please, and are also popularly proclaimed with the praise due to them, not even so do they themselves become greater or better by another's judgement, since they are made whole by inmost truth and are made solid by the strength of conscience alone. Whence something of felicity accrues rather to the men who judge rightly than to him of whom the crowd thinks well. Since you know these things most excellently, good man, look, as you have begun, with the strongest keenness of heart, upon our Lord Jesus Christ; and, entirely subsiding from all empty pride, rise up to Him who does not windily lift up those converted to Him, but places those who lean and ascend by the sure steps of faith upon the everlasting summit of heavenly and angelic dignity.
Through Him I beseech you to write back to me, and to exhort all your people whom you have in Sinitum or in Hippo, courteously and kindly, to the communion of the catholic Church. In whose bosom I have learned that even your father, a praiseworthy and outstanding man, by whom you were begotten, was born. I ask that you greet him with the office due to his merits on my behalf, and do not think it burdensome to visit us; which I not without modesty request should be done for the sake of your property too, which you have here, that it may be made better in God's sight. May the mercy of God embrace you and preserve you from all iniquity. CXIII. To his most beloved lord, deservedly honourable and to be esteemed, his brother Cresconius, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.
If I should turn a blind eye to this cause, about which behold I write again to your Reverence, not only your Excellency but also the very man himself, whoever he is, in whose cause Faventius was thus seized, will justly find fault with me and rightly reprove me, judging assuredly that, if he too had fled to the aid of the Church, if something similar had happened to him, I would likewise have turned a blind eye to his necessity and tribulation. Furthermore, if the esteem of men is to be despised, what shall I say to the Lord our God Himself, and what account shall I render, if, as much as I can, I do not act for the safety of one who committed himself to the protection and help of the Church which I serve, most beloved lord and venerable son?
I therefore ask your kindness—since it is difficult and incredible that you do not already know, or cannot know, in what cause he is detained—that meanwhile, with the officer who holds him, you would deign to assist my petition, that he may do what is prescribed by the emperor's law: that he cause him to be interrogated before the municipal records whether he wishes thirty days to be granted him, during which he may act under moderate custody in that city in which he is detained, so as to set his affairs in order and provide for expenses. Within the space of which days, if with your goodwill assisting us we can settle his cause by a friendly discussion, we shall rejoice;
but if we cannot, the outcome of the judgements will find him such as shall please God according to the merit of the cause itself or the will of the most omnipotent Lord. CXIV. To his most beloved lord, his son Florentinus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. By whose authority's command you have seized Faventius, you yourself must see to; but this I know, that every power established under a government serves the laws of its emperor.
Although therefore I have already sent, through my brother and fellow-presbyter Caelestinus, the law which indeed even before I sent it you certainly ought not to have been ignorant of—by which it is granted to those who are ordered by any power to be produced before the courts, that they be brought before the municipal proceedings and there be interrogated whether they wish to spend thirty days in that city where they are held, under moderate custody, to procure for themselves their produce or to set their affairs in order, as shall be necessary—which law, as the aforesaid presbyter reported to me, was read aloud to your Reverence, nevertheless even now I have sent it again with this letter, not terrifying but asking, and, for the sake of a man, interceding with humane and episcopal mercy, so far as humanity and piety themselves permit, that you would deign to grant this both to your own reputation and to my petition, lord son, and that you would not think it burdensome to do, with my intervention and entreaty also acceding, what the emperor's law commands, for whose commonwealth you serve as a soldier.
CXV. To his most blessed lord and reverently most beloved brother and fellow-priest Fortunatus, and to the brethren who are with you, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Your Holiness well knows Faventius, who was the lessee of the Paratianensian estate. When he feared something for himself from the lord of that same possession, he fled to the church of Hippo and was there, as fugitives are wont to be, waiting to see how through our intercession he might settle his affairs. He, as often happens, day by day less and less anxious and as though secure now that his adversary had ceased, when he was leaving supper from a friend of his, was suddenly seized by a certain Florentinus, an official of the count, as they say, through a band of armed men, as many as seemed to them sufficient for this deed.