For in very truth, if the tranquility of a deceitful prosperity always smiled here, the human soul would not seek that harbor of true and certain security, O lady distinguished and deservedly illustrious and most excellent daughter. Therefore, rendering the due homage of salutation to your excellence, and giving thanks that you bear a most devout care for our salvation, I ask from the Lord for you the rewards of the future life and the solaces of the present, and I commend myself to the love and prayer of you all, in whose hearts Christ dwells through faith. [And in another hand:] May the true and truthful God truly console your heart and protect your welfare, O lady distinguished and deservedly illustrious and most excellent daughter. CXXXII.
TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS LORD AND DESERVEDLY MOST EXCELLENT SON VOLUSIANUS, AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP. Concerning your welfare, which I desire to exist both in this world and in Christ, perhaps I too am not unequal to the wishes of your holy mother. Wherefore, rendering to your merits the homage of salutation, I exhort you, as far as I am able, that it may not weary you to expend care upon the truly and certainly holy letters. For it is a sincere and solid thing, and does not court the mind with painted eloquence, nor with any plastering of tongue rattle forth anything empty and hanging. It moves much one who is greedy not of words but of realities, and terrifies much one who has made himself secure. Above all I exhort you to read the tongues of the apostles; for from these you will be roused to know the prophets, whose testimonies the apostles use.
But if anything of a question arises for you, whether when you read or when you think, in the resolving of which I may seem necessary, write, that I may write back. For perhaps I shall be more able to do this, with the Lord helping, than to speak such things with you in person—not only on account of the various occupations both of mine and of yours (since it does not happen, when I have leisure, that it also happen that you have leisure), but also on account of the intruding presence of those who for the most part are not fit for such business, and delight more in the contentions of the tongue than in the lights of knowledge. But what is held in writing is always at leisure for reading, when the reader has leisure; nor does it become burdensome by its presence, since it is taken up when you will, laid down when you will. CXXXIII.
TO THE EXCELLENT LORD AND DESERVEDLY DISTINGUISHED AND MOST DEAR SON MARCELLINUS, AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP, GREETING IN THE LORD. I have learned that those Circumcellions and clerics of the party of Donatus, whom the care of public discipline had brought from Hippo to judgment for their deeds, were heard by your nobility, and that very many of them confessed concerning the homicide which they committed against Restitutus, a Catholic presbyter, and concerning the assault upon Innocentius, another Catholic presbyter, and concerning his eye that was gouged out and his finger cut off. Whence the greatest anxiety has been struck into me, lest perchance your loftiness should judge that they ought to be punished with such severity of the laws that they should suffer such things as they did.
And therefore by this letter I adjure your faith, which you have in Christ, through the mercy of the same Lord Christ, that you neither do this nor by any means permit it to be done. For although we may pass over the death of those who seem to have been presented for examination not by our accusers but by the official report of those to whose vigilance the guarding of the public peace pertained, nevertheless we do not wish the sufferings of the servants of God to be avenged, as it were by way of retaliation, with equal punishments—not that we would forbid wicked men to be deprived of the license of their crimes, but rather we wish this to suffice: that, alive and maimed in no part of the body, they may either be directed from their insane unrest to the quiet of sanity by the coercion of the laws, or be assigned from their malign works to some useful work.
This too is indeed called a condemnation, yet who would not understand that it should rather be named a benefit than a punishment, where neither is boldness given free rein to rage nor is the medicine of repentance withheld? Fulfil, O Christian judge, the office of a devoted father; be so incensed against iniquity that you remember to have regard for humanity, and do not, amid the atrocities of sinners, indulge the lust of vengeance, but rather bring to the wounds of sinners a will to heal. Do not lose that fatherly diligence which you preserved in the very inquiry, when you drew out the confession of such great crimes not by the rack that stretches, not by claws that furrow, not by burning flames, but by the beating of rods.
This manner of coercion is customarily employed both by teachers of the liberal arts and by parents themselves, and often even in the courts by bishops. Do not therefore avenge more cruelly what you discovered by gentler means. The necessity of investigating is greater than that of punishing; for to this end even the mildest of men diligently and insistently examine a hidden crime, that they may find those whom they may spare. Hence it is often necessary that the inquiry be pressed the more sharply, so that, once the crime is made manifest, there may be room where mercy can appear. For all good works love to be set in the light, not for the sake of human glory, but so that, as the Lord says, men may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
And therefore it does not suffice the Apostle to admonish us to preserve meekness, but that we should also make it known to all: 'Let your meekness,' he says, 'be known to all men,' and in another place: 'Showing meekness toward all men'; so that not even that most illustrious gentleness of holy David—when he mercifully spared an enemy delivered into his hands—would have stood out, had not his power likewise been apparent. Let not, therefore, the power of avenging exasperate you, from whom the necessity of examining did not wring away gentleness. Do not, now that the crime is discovered, seek the executioner, when in the discovering of it you were unwilling to employ the torturer. Finally, you were sent for the good of the Church.
I bear witness that this profits the Catholic Church—or, that I may not seem to exceed the measure of my own charge, that it profits the church belonging to the diocese of the people of Hippo Regius—and that this is expedient. If you will not hear a friend who asks, hear a bishop who counsels; though, since I speak to a Christian, I would not say arrogantly, most of all in such a cause, that it befits you to hear a bishop who commands, most excellent lord, deservedly distinguished and dearest son. Hence I know indeed that ecclesiastical cases have been especially entrusted to your Excellency; but because I believe this concern pertains to the most illustrious and honourable proconsul, I have sent letters to him also, which I ask that you would not think it burdensome to deliver to him yourself and, if need be, to plead them.
And I beseech you both not to deem our intercession, or suggestion, or solicitude importunate, nor to disfigure the sufferings of the Catholic servants of God—which ought to be useful to the weak for their spiritual edification—with a retaliatory punishment of the enemies from whom they suffered; but rather, with judicial severity broken off, do not in the least neglect to commend both your faith, because you are sons of the Church, and the meekness of that same Mother. May Almighty God increase your Eminence with all good things, most excellent lord, deservedly distinguished and dearest son. Letter 134. To the distinguished, deservedly exalted, and most excellent lord and son Apringius, from Augustine.
I do not doubt that in this power which God, a man, has given you over men, you consider the divine judgment, where even judges will stand to render account for their own judging. For I know you to be imbued with the Christian faith, whence a greater confidence is granted me toward your Excellency, not only of asking but also of admonishing, for the sake of that Lord in whose household you are reckoned together with us by heavenly right, in whom we alike have the hope of eternal life, and whom on your behalf we invoke in the sacred mysteries.
Accordingly, distinguished lord, deservedly exalted and most excellent son, I first ask that I may not seem to you to rush importunately into your affairs with that solicitude which it especially behoves me to bear for the Church entrusted to me, whose interests I serve, over which I desire not so much to preside as to profit. Then I beseech you that what I admonish or ask, you would not disdain to receive, nor delay to grant. Certain Circumcellions and Donatist clergy were brought to the courts and to the laws, by the care of those who serve the public discipline, once formal charges had been laid beforehand.
When these men were heard by the most illustrious and honourable tribune and notary, your brother, my son Marcellinus, being coerced not by the torments of claws and flames but of rods, they confessed the dreadful crimes perpetrated by themselves against my brothers and fellow-presbyters: namely, that they had cut down one of them who had been caught in an ambush, and that another, dragged from his house, they had mutilated by gouging out his eye and cutting off his finger.
When I had learned that they had confessed these things, and therefore did not in the least doubt that they would come under the jurisdiction of your axe, I hastened this letter to your Nobility, by which I entreat and, through the mercy of Christ, beseech: may we so rejoice in your greater and surer happiness, that no like retribution be paid back to them—although the laws in punishing cannot cut off a finger with blows of stone nor tear out an eye, which these men in their savagery were able to do. Wherefore I am secure concerning those who have confessed that they did this, that they will not receive this recompense in kind;
but lest either they, or those whose murder was brought to light, be punished by a sentence of your power—this I fear, this I ask, as a Christian entreating a judge, and this I admonish, as a bishop admonishing a Christian. Concerning you, indeed, we read that the Apostle said that not without cause do you bear the sword, and are ministers of God, avengers against those who do evil. But one thing is the cause of the province, another the cause of the Church: the administration of the former must be conducted with terror; the meekness of the latter must be commended with clemency.
If my discourse were before a judge who was not a Christian, I would act otherwise; yet even so I would not desert the cause of the Church, and, as far as he would deign to permit, I would press that the sufferings of the Catholic servants of God—which ought to profit as examples of patience—should not be defiled with the blood of their enemies; and if he would not consent, I should suspect that he resisted me with a hostile mind. But now, since the matter is transacted before you, my reasoning is different, my consultation different. We see you indeed a governor of most lofty power, but we also recognize you a son of Christian piety. Let your loftiness be made subject, let your faith be made subject; I treat with you a common cause, but you can do in it what I cannot; confer counsel with us and extend aid.
It was carefully brought about that the enemies of the Church—who are wont to stir up the minds of the ignorant with the empty talk of seduction, boasting as it were of the persecution they claim to endure—should confess the dreadful crimes perpetrated by them against Catholic clergy, and be entangled by their own words. The proceedings ought to be read for the healing of souls whom they have poisoned by pestilent persuasion. Does it please you, then, that in reading through to the end of the proceedings we should be afraid, if it will contain the bloody punishment of these men, where we set down our very conscience as well, lest those who suffered should seem to have rendered evil for evil?
If therefore nothing else were established for curbing the malice of the lost, perhaps the utmost necessity would press that such men be killed; although, as far as concerns us, if nothing gentler could be done to them, we would rather that they be set free than that the sufferings of our brothers be avenged by the shedding of their blood. But now, since something can be done whereby both the Church may be commended as gentle and the boldness of the merciless may be restrained, why do you not bend your sentence toward the more provident and gentler side—which judges are permitted to do even in cases that are not the Church's? Fear, then, together with us the judgment of God the Father, and commend the meekness of the Mother. For when you do it, the Church does it, for whose sake you do it and whose son you are in doing it. Strive with the wicked in goodness.
They by monstrous crime tore off limbs from a living body; do you by a work of mercy bring it about that those very limbs which they exercised in unspeakable deeds may, whole and entire, serve some useful work. They did not spare God's servants who preached correction to them; do you spare the arrested, spare the led away, spare the convicted. They by impious steel shed Christian blood; do you, for Christ's sake, hold back even the juridical sword from their blood. They, having slain a minister of the Church, wrested from him the span of living; do you grant to the living enemies of the Church a span for repenting. Such ought you to be, a Christian judge in the cause of the Church, while we ask, admonish, and intercede.
Men are wont, when their convicted enemies are dealt with more gently, to appeal against the milder sentence; but we so love our enemies that, unless we presumed upon your Christian obedience, we would appeal against your severe sentence. May Almighty God preserve your Excellency more increased and more happy, distinguished lord, deservedly exalted and most excellent son. Letter 135. To the truly holy and deservedly venerable father, Bishop Augustine, from Volusianus. You ask me, O proof of probity and justice, that I inquire into certain matters to be learned from the ambiguities of skilled reading.
I embrace the favour of the task enjoined, and willingly offer myself to your instruction, following the authority of an ancient maxim which holds that no age is too full to go on learning. Nor without reason did the wise man enclose the pursuits of prudence within no bounds nor end, since virtue, remote in its very beginnings, is never so unlocked to those approaching that it should at once lie wholly open to recognition, truly holy lord and deservedly venerable father. It is worth the trouble to make known a conversation lately held among us. We were present at certain gatherings of friends, and there opinions were frequently put forward according to men's talents and studies. Yet the discourse was a rhetorical division of parts. I speak before one who knows; these very things too you taught a little while ago.
It was set forth what was the keenness of invention, how great the labour of arrangement, what the grace of metaphor, what the beauty of figures, and, suited to the talent and nature of the subject-matter, the faculty of speaking as well. Others in turn were exalting poetry with their favour; nor do you leave even this part of eloquence silent or unhonoured, so that a poet might fittingly have said: 'Among the victorious laurels may the ivy creep for you.' It was said, therefore, how great was the ornament of composition, what the charm of metaphors, how great the sublimity in comparison; and now the smooth and unknotted verses, and, so to speak, the modulated variation of the caesuras. Then the discourse turned aside to your familiar philosophy, which you yourself, after the manner of Aristotle, had been accustomed to cherish as it were esoteric.
We were inquiring what the teacher from the Lyceum had accomplished, what the Academy's manifold and continual hesitation, what that disputant from the Porch, what the expertise of the natural philosophers, what the pleasure of the Epicureans, what among all of them the boundless craving for disputation—and then the truth all the more unknown, after it had been presumed that it could be known. While our conversation lingered on these matters, one out of the many said: 'And who is there, imbued to perfection with the wisdom of Christianity, who could open the ambiguities in which I am stuck, and confirm my doubtful assents with a true or at least a probable credence?' We stand amazed, keeping silence. Then he burst forth of his own accord into these words:
'I wonder whether the Lord and ruler of the world filled the body of an inviolate woman; whether the mother endured those long ten months' loathings, and yet a virgin gave birth in the solemn manner of childbearing, and after this her virginity is deemed intact.' To these he adds other things: 'He lies hid within the little body of a wailing infancy, He to whom the universe is scarcely thought equal; He suffers the years of boyhood, grows up, is made firm in youth; so long is that Ruler absent from His seats, and the care of the whole world is transferred to one little body; then He is dissolved into sleep, is nourished by food, feels all the affections of mortals, nor do the tokens of so great a majesty shine forth with any fitting signs;
that spectral cleansing, the cures of the feeble, life restored to the dead—these, if you consider others as well, are but small things for a God.' As he was inquiring further, we intervened, and put off the concluded gathering to the merits of superior expertise, lest, while secret things were too rashly profaned, an innocent error might swerve into fault. You have received, O man capable of every glory, a confession of inexperience. What is desired from your quarter, you recognize. It concerns your reputation that we should know what has been asked. Somehow or other, without detriment to divine worship, ignorance is tolerated in other priests; but when one comes to Augustine the bishop, whatever happens to be unknown is a defect in the law. May the supreme Godhead guard your veneration unharmed, truly holy lord and deservedly venerable father.
Letter 136. To the exceedingly venerable lord, and by all my services uniquely to be reverenced, father Augustine, from Marcellinus. The illustrious Volusianus read me the letter of your Blessedness—indeed, at my urging, he read it many times over—which, although all things said by you are truly to be admired, I admired throughout. For the grace of divine discourse, swelling with humility, easily earned the pleasing that it might please. For this pleased most of all, that you strive to steady and make firm the somewhat faltering steps of a man by the exhortation of a good purpose.
For we have with him a daily disputation, according to our strength and the poverty of our talent; for indeed, compelled by the entreaty of his holy mother, I make it my care to greet him rather frequently, though he himself also deigns to return the courtesy in this respect. But on receiving the letter of your Venerableness, a man who is recalled from the stability of the true faith by the persuasion of the many—of whom there is a plenty in this city—was so moved that, if, as he himself affirms, he had not in the least dreaded the length of a letter, he would have imparted to your Blessedness every doubt he can hold. Yet, as you yourself will deign to approve, he asked that some points be resolved for him at leisure, in polished and careful speech and with the clear brilliance of Roman eloquence.
This question indeed has been everywhere worn threadbare, and the cunning of those on this point is well enough known, who defame the dispensation of the Lord's incarnation. Yet even I in this matter—because I trust that whatever you write back will profit very many—would approach as a suppliant, that you would deign to answer the more vigilantly to those points in which they falsely claim that the Lord did nothing more than other men were able to do, since they bring forward against us their Apollonius and Apuleius and other men of the magic art, whose miracles they contend to have been greater.
Moreover, the illustrious man mentioned above himself said, with several persons present, that there are many questions which can not undeservedly be joined to this one—as I said before—if the considered brevity of a letter had not been an obstacle on his part. Which questions, however, although he was unwilling to write, he did not allow to be passed over in silence. For he said that, even if the reason of the Lord's incarnation were rendered to him today, it could scarcely be rendered to full clarity why this God—who is also affirmed to be the God of the Old Testament—having spurned the old sacrifices, was delighted with new ones. For he asserted that nothing can be corrected except what was not rightly done before, or that what was once rightly done ought by no means to be changed.
For he said that rightly done things cannot be changed except unjustly, chiefly because this vanity of inconstancy could convict God; and then, further, that His preaching and teaching agree in no part with the manners of the commonwealth—inasmuch as, so it is said by many, His is this precept: that we ought to render evil for evil to no one, and to offer the other cheek to one striking us, and to give our cloak to one persisting in taking away our tunic, and to go a doubled length of journey with him who would wish to press us into service; all of which he asserts to be contrary to the manners of the commonwealth. For who would allow anything to be taken from him by an enemy, or would not wish to repay evils by the law of war upon a plunderer of a Roman province?
And the rest of the things which your Venerableness understands can be said in reply to the others. All these things, then, he judges can be joined to that question, to the extent that—through Christian emperors preserving the Christian religion for the greatest part—so great evils, even if he himself keeps silent about this point, have manifestly befallen the commonwealth.
Wherefore, as your Blessedness deigns to acknowledge along with me, to all these things—since the longed-for reply of your Sanctity will without doubt be passed through the hands of many—a full and elaborated splendour of solution ought to be displayed, especially because, when these things were being transacted, the eminent possessor and lord of the region of Hippo was present, who both praised your Sanctity with the flattery of irony and contended that, when he inquired about these matters, he had by no means been satisfied. But I indeed, not unmindful of the promise concerning all these things, but rather as one exacting it, beg that books be composed—destined to profit the Church incredibly, especially at this time. Letter 137. To the illustrious, deservedly distinguished, and most excellent lord and son Volusianus, from Augustine, greeting in the Lord.
I have read your letter, in which I saw a specimen of some great dialogue, comprehended with praiseworthy brevity. I ought therefore to reply, and not to put forward any excuse for delay. For it happened opportunely that I had a little leisure free from other business. But that leisure which I had determined to spend in dictating other things, I put off a little, judging it by no means just that I should defer one asking, whom I myself had exhorted to ask.
But which of us who, as we can, minister the grace of Christ, when he has read your words, would wish you to be so instructed in Christian doctrine that it should suffice you only for the salvation not of this life—which the divine word has taken care to admonish is most like a vapour, appearing for a brief moment and forthwith vanishing and perishing—but for that salvation for the obtaining and eternally holding of which we are Christians? It is too little for us, then, that you be so instructed as to be sufficient for your being set free.
For your talent and eloquence, so excellent and so brilliant, ought to profit others also, against whose slowness or perversity there must most fittingly be defended the dispensation of so great a grace—which proud little souls count as nothing, souls who over-affect to be able to do very much, and toward healing or even curbing their own vices can do nothing. You ask, then, whether the Lord and ruler of the world filled the body of an inviolate woman, whether the mother endured those long ten months' loathings, and yet a virgin gave birth in the solemn manner of childbearing, and after this her virginity remained inviolate;
whether He lay hid within the little body of a wailing infancy, He to whom the universe is scarcely thought equal; whether He suffered the years of boyhood, grew up, was made firm in youth; whether so long that Ruler was absent from His seats, and the care of the whole world was transferred into one little body; then whether He was dissolved into sleep, was nourished by food, felt all the affections of mortals, and the tokens of so great a majesty shone forth with no fitting signs—since that spectral cleansing, the cures of the feeble, life restored to the dead, if we consider others as well, are but small things for a God.
You write that this question was brought forward, in a certain gathering of friends, by one out of the many who were present, but that you intervened as he inquired further, and put off the concluded gathering to the merits of superior expertise, lest, while secret things were too rashly profaned, an innocent error might swerve into fault. Then you direct the intent of your letter to me, and after this confession of inexperience you admonish me to recognize what is desired from our quarter. You add also that it concerns my reputation that you should know what has been asked, since somehow or other, without detriment to divine worship, ignorance is tolerated in other priests, but when one comes to me the bishop, whatever happens to be unknown is a defect in the law.
First, therefore, I ask that you lay down this opinion of me, so easily presumed, and that you loosen and strip off that mind of yours—however most kindly disposed toward me—and that you believe me about myself rather than any other, if you render me the return of love.
For so great is the profundity of the Christian Scriptures that in them I would daily make progress, if I strove to learn them alone, from my earliest boyhood to decrepit old age, with the greatest leisure, the utmost study, and better talent—not because those things which are necessary to salvation are reached in them with such difficulty, but because, when anyone has held there the faith without which one does not live piously and rightly, there remain so many things, overshadowed by so manifold shadows of mysteries, to be understood by those making progress, and there lies hid so great a depth of wisdom, not only in the words in which they are thus spoken, but also in the things which are to be understood, that it befalls the most aged, the most acute, the most ardent with the desire of learning, what the same Scripture has in a certain place:
'When a man has finished, then he begins.' But what more on this? We must rather come to the matter which you seek. Here first I wish you to know that Christian doctrine does not hold this, that God was so infused into flesh—by which He would be born of a virgin—that He either deserted or lost the care of governing the universe, or transferred it, as though contracted and gathered together, to that little body.
This is the notion of men able to think of nothing but bodies—whether those grosser ones, such as moisture and earth, or subtler ones such as those of air and light—but bodies nonetheless, of which none can be whole everywhere, since it must needs have one part in one place and another elsewhere through its innumerable parts; and however great a body be, or however tiny a little body, it occupies a space of place and so fills that same place that in no part of it is it whole. And through this, to be condensed and rarefied, to be contracted and dilated, to be worn down into minute particles and to swell into a mass, belongs to bodies only. Far otherwise is the nature of the soul than of the body—how much more of God, who is the creator both of soul and of body!