But sometimes the merciful, even in a doubtful case, are unwilling to inflict certain punishments upon a man for uncertain money. To this mercy it is fitting that we too provoke and exhort: for it is better, even if he has it, that you lose it, than that, if he has it not, you either torture or kill him. But for such men it is fitting to intercede rather with those who demand than with those who judge, lest he himself seem to take away who, though he has the power, does not compel restitution — although in compelling he ought to employ such integrity that he does not lose his humanity.
But this I would say most confidently: that he who intervenes on behalf of a man to the end that he may not restore what was wrongfully taken away, and he who does not, as far as he honourably can, compel one who takes refuge with him to make restitution, is a partner in the fraud and the crime. For we more mercifully withdraw our aid from such men than we bestow it; for he does not bring aid who helps toward sinning, and does not rather overturn and crush. But do we therefore either have the power or the duty to exact restitution or to hand a man over to be compelled to it? We act, as far as the episcopal capacity is granted, threatening indeed sometimes even a human judgment, but chiefly and always the divine judgment.
And those who are unwilling to restore, whom we know both to have wrongfully taken away and to have wherewith to make restitution, we reprove, we rebuke, we detest — some secretly, some openly, according as the diversity of persons seems able to admit a different medicine — and lest they be stirred up to a greater madness to the ruin of others; sometimes also, if a matter more needful to be cared for does not stand in the way, we deprive them of the communion of the holy altar. But it often happens that we are deceived, either by their denying that they took anything away, or by their affirming that they have not wherewith to make restitution; often too you are deceived, thinking either that we do not act to make them restore, or that they have wherewith to restore;
and all men, or almost all, love to call or to reckon our suspicions as knowledge, when we are moved by credible signs of things, whereas some credible things are false, just as some incredible things are true. Therefore, in making mention of certain men who 'both desire that the penalty of their crime be relaxed for them, and desire to possess that on account of which the crime was committed,' you added and said: 'For these too your priesthood thinks intervention should be made.' For it may be that you know what I do not know, and that on that account I think intervention should be made for someone — a thing that could deceive me, though it could not deceive you — so that I do not believe him to possess what you know he possesses.
Thus it comes about that, although our opinion concerning the accused is not one and the same, yet it pleases neither of us that another's property is not restored. Concerning the man we judge differently, but in justice itself we are together. In that way too it may happen that what I know someone not to have, this you may hold, not most certainly, that he has, but suspect with plausibility; and on this account I may seem to you to intervene for one who 'both desires that the penalty of his crime be relaxed for him, and desires to possess that on account of which the crime was committed.'
To sum up, then: neither before you, nor before such men — if any be found such as we rejoice you to be — nor before those very men who 'with great zeal seek things that are another's and of no profit, and even many things dangerous and destructive,' nor before my own heart, to which God is witness, would I dare to say, to feel, or to determine that intervention should be made for anyone, so that he might possess through the impunity of his crime what he took away by crime; but rather that, the wrong being remitted, he might restore what he wrongfully took away — if indeed he has either what he took, or something else from which to restore it. Nor indeed is everything that is taken from an unwilling person wrongfully taken away.
For many are unwilling to render to the physician his honorarium, or to the workman his wages; yet those who receive these from the unwilling do not receive them by wrong, seeing that they would rather by wrong not be given. But the judge ought not on that account to sell a just judgment, or the witness true testimony, because the advocate sells his just advocacy and the jurist his true counsel; for the former are brought in between the two parties for examination, the latter stand on one side. But when judgments and testimonies, which ought not to be sold even when just and true, are sold when unjust and false, the money is surely taken far more wickedly, because it is wickedly given even though by willing men.
Yet he who buys a just judgment is wont to demand back the money as though wrongfully taken from him, since it ought not to have been for sale; but he who gave for an unjust judgment would indeed wish to demand it back, did he not either fear or feel ashamed of having bought it. There are other persons of lower rank who not improperly receive from both parties, such as a court official — both from him by whom, and from him to whom, the office is applied; things extorted from these by immoderate wickedness are wont to be demanded back, but things given by tolerable custom are not; and we more blame those who have demanded back such things in an unusual manner than those who took them by custom, since many necessary persons in human affairs are either enticed by advantages of this kind, or held by them.
If these men change the way of their life, or ascend to a more excellent degree of sanctity, they more easily bestow upon the poor, as their own, the things they acquired in this manner, than they restore them, as another's, to those from whom they received them. But he who, contrary to the custom of human society, has taken away by thefts, robberies, calumnies, oppressions, and invasions — such things we judge ought rather to be restored than given away, after the Gospel example of Zacchaeus the publican, who, when he had received the Lord as his guest, being suddenly changed unto a holy life, said: The half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man, I restore fourfold. Yet nevertheless, if justice be more sincerely consulted, it is more justly said to the advocate:
Restore what you received, when you stood against the truth, abetted iniquity, deceived the judge, oppressed a just cause, prevailed by falsehood — which you see many most honourable and most eloquent men think it is not only with impunity but even gloriously permitted them to do — more than may be said to anyone serving in whatever office: Restore what you received, when, at the judge's command, you held a man needful to any cause lest he resist, bound him lest he flee, shut him up, and at last either produced him while the suit continued or dismissed him when it was ended. But why this may not be said to the advocate
is plain: namely, because a man is unwilling to demand back what he gave to his patron in order that he might win his case wrongfully, just as he is unwilling to restore what he received from his adversary when he had won wrongfully. What advocate, in short, or what man made most excellent out of an advocate, is easily found who would say to his client: Take back what you gave me when I badly assisted you, and restore to your adversary what, by my agency, you wrongfully took away?
And yet he who most rightly repents of his former, not upright, life ought even to do this: that, if the one who litigated unjustly is unwilling, when admonished, to correct his iniquity, this man should at least be unwilling to keep the wages of that iniquity — unless perhaps what is secretly taken away by theft must be restored, while what is obtained in the very forum, where sins are punished, by deceiving the judge and circumventing the laws, need not be restored. What shall I say of usury, which even the laws themselves and the judges order to be paid back? Is he more cruel who takes away or snatches something from a rich man, than he who slaughters a poor man by usury? These and suchlike things are surely possessed wickedly, and I would that they were restored; but there is no judge before whom they can be demanded back.
But now, if we prudently consider what is written: The whole world of riches belongs to the faithful man, but to the unfaithful not even a farthing — do we not convict all those who seem to themselves to rejoice in things lawfully acquired, and yet know not how to use them, of possessing what is another's? For that is certainly not another's which is possessed by right, and it is possessed by right which is possessed justly, and justly which is possessed well. Everything, therefore, that is possessed wickedly is another's, and he possesses wickedly who uses wickedly. You see, then, how many there are who ought to restore what is another's, or how few there are to whom restitution may be made; who nevertheless, wherever they be, so much the more despise these things, the more justly they could have possessed them. For justice indeed no one possesses wickedly, and he who has not loved it does not possess it.
But money is both wickedly held by the wicked, and by the good it is held so much the better, the less it is loved. But amid these things the iniquity of those who hold wickedly is tolerated, and certain rights are established among them which are called civil — not that from this it comes to pass that they use well, but that those who use ill may be less troublesome — until the faithful and the pious, to whose right all things belong (who either come to be from among those wicked, or, living for a while among them, are not bound up in their evils but are exercised by them), arrive at that City where the inheritance is eternity, where none but the just has a place, none but the wise has rule, where all who shall be there will possess truly their own.
But nevertheless, even here we do not intercede that, according to earthly morals and laws, another's property be not restored — although we would have you placable toward the wicked, not that the wicked may be pleased or may remain wicked, but because it is from among them that all become good, whoever do become good, and by the sacrifice of mercy God is appeased, whom, unless the wicked had Him propitious, none would be good. It is long since, by speaking, I seem burdensome to your occupations, though the thing you asked could quickly have been resolved for you, a keen and learned man. And I ought long ago to have made an end, if I had thought that you alone would be reading what you demanded that I write in reply. Live happily in Christ, dearest son. 154. TO THE LORD DESERVEDLY VENERABLE AND TRULY TO BE RECEIVED, FATHER AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP, MACEDONIUS.
In a wonderful way am I affected by your wisdom, both in those things which you have published, and in these which, interceding on behalf of the anxious, you do not find it burdensome to send. For the former have so much of keenness, of knowledge, of holiness, that nothing can surpass them; and the latter have so much of modesty, that unless I do what you bid, the fault must remain with me — not that I am to sit in judgment upon the affair, O lord deservedly venerable and father to be received. For you do not press, as most men of that station do, so as to extort whatever an anxious petitioner may wish; but what has seemed to you fit to be sought from a judge bound by so many cares, you counsel with a subservient modesty, which is the greatest efficacy in difficult matters among good men. Accordingly, I at once granted the fulfilment of the desire of those you commended;
for I had before opened up a way of hoping. I have unrolled your books; for they were not so languid or listless as to suffer me to attend to anything other than themselves; they laid hold of me and, snatching me away, bound me in their own bonds of anxieties torn from others — so may God be gracious to me — that I am in doubt what in them I should more admire: the perfection of the priesthood, the doctrines of philosophy, the full knowledge of history, or the pleasantness of eloquence, which can so allure even the unskilled that, until they finish, they do not desist, and, when they have finished, they still seek for more.
For the shamelessly obstinate have indeed been refuted, since worse things have befallen, on account of the obscurity of the nature of things, even from those good ages which they recall; and all of them have been shown to be deceived by a certain sweetness smeared over their prosperities, through which they were led not to blessedness but to the brink of ruin. But these our precepts and the mysteries of the one true and truthful God, apart from the eternal life which they promise to the purest virtues, mitigate even these worldly things which must inevitably come to pass upon us because of the condition into which we are born. And you have used the most powerful example of a recent calamity, by which, although you have fortified your case most firmly, yet, had either course been permitted, I would not have wished this to be your support.
But when from that source there had arisen a complaint of folly that needed to be refuted, it became necessary to fetch from that same source the arguments of truth. Meanwhile, occupied with other cares which, though vain when we consider the outcome of things, are nonetheless as it were necessary owing to the condition of our birth, I have written back thus. If there be leisure and life remaining, I shall write back also concerning Italy, that so great a work of learning may be requited with services that are owed, even if they do not measure up to it. May God almighty guard your health and blessed holiness through the most ample span of years, my lord deservedly venerable and truly to be embraced as a father. 155. AUGUSTINE THE BISHOP, SERVANT OF CHRIST AND OF HIS HOUSEHOLD, TO HIS BELOVED SON MACEDONIUS, GREETING IN THE LORD. Although the wisdom which you attribute to me I do not recognize in myself,
yet for your so great and so sincere goodwill toward me I give and owe most abundant thanks, and I am delighted that the labours of my studies have pleased so great and so eminent a man; but far more am I delighted because I perceive your soul, in the love of eternity and of truth, and by the very affection of that love, panting after that divine and heavenly commonwealth whose ruler is Christ, and in which alone life is ever to be lived blessedly, if here it be lived rightly and piously; I see it drawing near, and I embrace it burning to possess it. For thence indeed flows also true friendship, which is not to be weighed by temporal advantages but to be drunk in by a freely given love. For no one can truly be the friend of a man unless he has first been the friend of Truth itself;
and if this does not come about freely, it can come about in no way at all. Concerning this matter the philosophers too have said much; but among them true piety, that is, the truthful worship of the true God, from which all the duties of right living ought to be derived, is not found, for no other reason, as far as I understand, than that they wished in a certain manner to fashion the blessed life for themselves, and thought it a thing to be achieved rather than to be obtained by prayer, whereas its giver is none but God. For He alone makes man blessed who made man. For He who so lavishes such great goods of His creation upon the good and the evil alike, that they should exist, that they should be men, that they should be vigorous in their senses, strong in their powers, abounding in resources, will give His very self to the good, that they may be blessed, since this too is His gift, that they be good.
But those who, in this toilsome life, in these dying members, under this burden of corruptible flesh, wished to be the authors and as it were the founders of their own blessed life, seeking it as though by their own virtues and now retaining it, not seeking and hoping for it from that fountain of virtues—these could by no means perceive God resisting their pride. Whence they have fallen into a most absurd error, so that, while they assert that the wise man is blessed even in the bull of Phalaris, they are compelled to confess that the blessed life must sometimes be fled. For when the evils of the body are exaggerated they yield, and amid its gravest afflictions they decree that one must depart from this life. Here I do not wish to say
how great a wickedness it is for a man to kill his own innocent self, since he ought by no means to kill even a guilty one—concerning which, in the first of those three books which you have most kindly and diligently read through, I have already said much. But surely let it be considered, and judged not proudly but soberly, in what manner that life can be blessed which the wise man does not retain and enjoy, but is compelled to be rid of by laying hands upon himself. There is in Cicero, as you know, in the last part of the fifth book of the Tusculans, a passage which, on account of what I am saying, is worthy of notice. For when he was treating of blindness of the body, and affirming that even a blind man can be a wise man and blessed, he said many things which one would rejoice to perceive by the ears; and likewise, if one were deaf, those things by which one would be delighted he transferred to the eyes;
but if one were to be deprived of both senses and become blind and deaf, he did not dare to pronounce sentence hence and call such a man blessed, but he added also the gravest pains of the body, which, if they do not slay him, let him slay himself and, delivered by this virtue, reach the harbour of not feeling. Therefore the wise man yields to the most monstrous disasters and succumbs to such a degree that by them he is compelled even to perpetrate murder upon his own self. Whom, then, will he spare, in order to be rid of those evils, when he does not spare his very self? Surely he is always blessed, surely the blessed life, established within his own power, he can lose by no force of any calamity!
Behold, in blindness and deafness and the most atrocious torments of the body he has either lost the blessed life, or, if even in these afflictions it is still blessed, then it comes to pass, through the disputations of such most learned men, that there is sometimes a blessed life which the wise man cannot bear, or—what is more absurd—which the wise man ought not to bear, and which he flees, breaks off, and casts away, and from which he withdraws himself even by the sword or by poison or by any other voluntary death, so that in the harbour of not feeling there be either nothing at all. This the Epicureans, and any others who held it in like folly, supposed to be even therefore blessed, because one has been delivered from that blessed life as though from some pestilence. O too proud a boasting!
If the blessed life is in the torments of the body, why does the wise man not remain in it, to enjoy it? But if it is wretched, what, I beseech you, but conceited swelling hinders him from confessing this, from praying to God, from making supplication to the just and merciful One, who is able either to avert or to mitigate the evils of this life, or to arm one with fortitude for bearing them, or to deliver one from them in every way, and after these things to give that truly blessed life, wherein no evil shall be admitted and where the supreme Good shall never be lost?
This is the reward of the pious, in the hope of obtaining which we lead this temporal and mortal life not so much delightfully as tolerably, and its evils we then bear bravely, by good counsel and divine gift, when we rejoice in God's faithful promise of eternal goods and in our own faithful expectation. Exhorting us to this, the Apostle says: Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation; for he shows why we should be patient in tribulation, by prefixing 'rejoicing in hope.' To this hope I exhort you through our Lord Christ. For this God Himself, our Master—the majesty of His Godhead lying hidden and the weakness of His flesh appearing—taught not only by the oracle of His word but also by the example of His own passion and resurrection;
for in the one He showed what things we must endure, in the other what things we must hope for. Whose grace even those men might have merited, had they not, lifted up and puffed up with pride, vainly striven to make that blessed life for themselves—which God alone has truthfully promised that He will bestow upon His worshippers after this life. Sounder indeed is that saying of the same Cicero, where he says: 'For this life at least is death, which I could lament, if it pleased me.' How then, if he rightly laments it, is it proved blessed, and not rather, since he rightly laments it, convicted of being wretched? Wherefore accustom yourself, I beseech you, good man, to be blessed meanwhile in hope, that you may be so also in reality, when to your most persevering piety the reward of eternal felicity shall be rendered.
If by a long letter I am burdensome to you, 'you cooked this up for yourself,' who called me wise. For hence I dared to speak these things to you, so as to display to you wisdom—not such as is in me, but to show you such as it ought to be. Now this, in the present age, is the true worship of the true God, that of it there may be in the age to come a sure and entire fruit; here the most steadfast piety, there everlasting felicity. Of that wisdom, which alone is true, if I have anything, I have taken it from God, I have not presumed it of myself; and I faithfully hope that by Him it will be perfected in me, by whom I humbly rejoice that it has been begun—neither unbelieving concerning what He has not yet granted, nor ungrateful concerning what He has already granted.
For it is not by my own talent or merit, but by His gift, that I am whatever laudable thing I am. For certain most acute and most excellent talents have gone into the greater errors the more presumptuously they ran as though by their own powers, and did not humbly and truthfully ask God to show them the way. But what are the merits of any men whatsoever, since He who came not with a wage that was owed but with freely given grace found all to be sinners, He alone free from sins and the liberator from sins? If therefore true virtue delights us, let us say to Him what we read in His sacred writings:
I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength; and, if we truly wish to be blessed—which we cannot but wish—let us with faithful heart hold fast that which we have learned in those same writings: Blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not regarded vanities and lying follies. But how great a vanity, how great a madness, and how great a lie it is, that mortal man, leading a toilsome life with changeable spirit and flesh, laden with so many sins, subject to so many temptations, liable to so many corruptions, and destined to most just penalties, should trust in himself that he may be blessed—when not even that which he has as the chief thing in the dignity of his nature, that is, mind and reason, can he vindicate from errors unless God be present, the light of minds!
Let us therefore cast away, I beseech you, the vanities and lying follies of the false philosophers, since neither will there be virtue for us unless He be present by whom we are helped, nor blessedness unless He be present whom we may enjoy; and let Him absorb the whole of our changeable and corruptible being—which of itself is feeble and a kind of matter of miseries—by the gift of immortality and incorruption. But since we know you to be a lover of the commonwealth, see how clear it is in those sacred writings that man is not blessed from one source and the city from another. For a certain man in them, full of the Holy Spirit, speaks these words in prayer: Rescue me from the hand of the sons of strangers, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity;
whose sons are like new plants established in their youth; their daughters adorned and arrayed like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that; their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings-forth; their oxen fat. There is no breach of the wall, nor passage, nor outcry in their streets. They have called blessed the people that has these things; blessed is the people whose God is the Lord Himself. You see that, by an exaggeration of earthly felicity, the people is not called blessed except by the sons of strangers, that is, by those who do not belong to the regeneration by which we are made sons of God; from whose hand this man prays to be rescued, lest by them he be dragged into this opinion and into impious sins.
For by speaking vanity they called blessed the people that has these things which he mentioned above, the things in which consists that felicity which the lovers of this world alone seek after. And therefore their right hand is a right hand of iniquity, because they have set before as things to be preferred those which ought to have been set behind—just as the right hand is preferred to the left. For if such things are possessed, the blessed life is not to be placed in them; they ought to be subordinate, not set in front; following, not leading. But to this man, who prayed thus and desired to be rescued and set apart from the sons of strangers who called blessed the people that has these things, we say as it were: You yourself, what do you hold? Which people do you call blessed? He does not say: Blessed is the people whose virtue is the virtue of its own soul.
For had he said this, he would indeed have distinguished this people also from that one which places the blessed life in this visible and bodily felicity, but he would not yet have transcended all vanities and lying follies. For cursed, as elsewhere those same writings teach, is everyone who places his hope in man; therefore no one ought to place it even in himself, since he too is a man. Accordingly, that he might pass beyond the bounds of all vanities and lying follies and place the blessed life there where it truly is, he says: Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord Himself. You discern, therefore, whence must be sought that which all, learned and unlearned, desire, and which many, erring and being proud, know not whence it is to be sought and where it is to be received.
But both are reproved together in a certain divine psalm: both those who trust in their own strength and those who glory in the abundance of their riches—that is, both the philosophers of this world and those who shrink even from such philosophy and yet call blessed the people to which earthly opulence is supplied. And therefore let us seek from the Lord our God, by whom we were made, both the virtue by which we may overcome the evils of this life, and the blessed life by which, after this life, we may fully enjoy Him in His eternity, so that both in virtue and in the reward of virtue, as the Apostle says, he that glories may glory in the Lord. This let us wish for ourselves; this for the city whose citizens we are;
for a city is not blessed from one source and a man from another, since a city is nothing other than a concordant multitude of men. And so, if all your prudence, by which you strive to take counsel for human affairs; if all your fortitude, by which you are terrified by no man's iniquity opposing you; if all your temperance, by which amid so great a ruin of the most wicked custom of men you abstain from corruptions; if all your justice, by which by judging rightly you distribute to each his own—if all this labours,
and strives, that those whom you wish well may be safe in body and, secure from all wickedness of anyone, may in peace have sons like new plants established, daughters adorned like the likeness of a temple, storehouses full and overflowing from this into that, fruitful sheep, fat oxen, and that no ruin of a wall may disfigure their estate nor the outcry of litigants resound in their streets—then your virtues will no more be true virtues than is the blessedness of those people. For here that modesty of mine, which in your letter you praised with kindly speech, ought not to hinder me from speaking the truth. If, I say, whatever
administration of yours, equipped with those virtues which I have mentioned, is bounded by this end of intention—that men according to the flesh may suffer no unjust troubles—and you do not think it pertains to you to what end they should refer that quiet which you strive to furnish, that is (not to beat about the bush with words), in what manner they should worship the true God, wherein is all the fruit of a quiet life, then so great a labour profits you nothing toward the truly blessed life. I seem to say this too immodestly and, as it were, having forgotten the custom of my intercessions. But if modesty is nothing other than a certain fear of displeasing, in this cause I do not fear by fearing. For I fear lest I displease, first God, then that very friendship which you have deigned to enter into with me,