文集 第 3 章 第 1/4 段

To the lord most bound to me and by me to be venerated and revered with special affection, brother Lucidus the presbyter, Faustus. Great is the charity that wishes rather, by the grace and help of God, to cure the error of a little-cautious brother, than — as the highest prelates ponder doing — to suspend him from unity. What can I say to you, as you wish, about this opinion, in oneness of mind through letters, when in your presence, with much gentle and humble conversation, I could never draw you to the way of truth? Speaking, therefore, of the grace of God and the obedience of man, we ought by all means to establish this: that, leaning neither to the left nor pressing forward on the right, we may rather walk by the royal road.

But I was astonished that your reverence had said that no one, ever, under a religious profession, has either written or preached against the catholic faith — when very many have believed that their manifold and profane errors ought to be inserted even into the monuments of their writings, who nevertheless gloried in the Christian name. Briefly, then, I will say — as much as I can say to one who is absent — what you ought to hold in agreement with the catholic Church: namely, that you always join to the grace of the Lord the working of the baptized servant, and that you detest, together with the dogma of Pelagius, him who asserts a predestination that excludes the labour of man.

Anathema, then, to him who, among the rest of the impieties of Pelagius, has contended with damnable presumption that man is born without sin and can be saved by labour alone, and who has believed that man can be freed without the grace of God. Likewise anathema to him who has asserted that a man, solemnly baptized with a faithful confession and holding the catholic faith, and afterwards fallen through the diverse allurements and temptations of this world, has perished in Adam and in original sin. Likewise anathema to him who has said that a man is pressed down into death through God's foreknowledge. Likewise anathema to him who has said that the one who perished had not received the means whereby he might be saved (that is, of one baptized, or of a pagan of that age who could and would believe).

Likewise anathema to him who has said that a vessel unto dishonour cannot rise up to become a vessel unto honour. Likewise anathema to him who has said that Christ did not die for all, nor wills all men to be saved. But when you shall have come to us in the name of Christ, or when you shall have been summoned by the holy priests, then, if the Lord commands, we will bring forward the fitting testimonies in their proper places, by which both the things that are catholic may be made manifest and the things contrary to catholics may be destroyed.

But we, through the illumination of Christ, truthfully and confidently assert both that he who perished through fault could have been saved through grace, if he had not denied to grace itself the obedience of his servant-labour; and that he who, through grace, has arrived by attendant service at the goals of a good consummation, can fall through slothfulness and perish through fault. We therefore, walking through the middle way with Christ as our guide, assert, after grace — without which we are nothing — the labour of dutiful service.

But by all means we exclude the arrogance and presumption of labour, so that, while sweating with all our strength lest grace be made void in us, we may pronounce whatever we have received from the hand of the Lord to be a gift, not a reward — knowing that the fruit of the labour itself is a matter of duty, not of merit, since with the Evangelist we say: 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do.' To these things, which have been mentioned briefly for the brevity of a letter, let your unanimity respond by return of discourse, whether you accept or reject them. As for the rest, whoever does not follow this measure of truth — grace going before and endeavour rising up — will be worthy to be barred from the sacred thresholds.

Yet I, holding fast in the way your inseparable goodness with the whole embrace of sincere kindness, desire that you remain within the bosom of Mother Church, this error having been repudiated. If it be quickly rejected, it will seem to have been ignorance; but it will be reckoned blasphemy if it be obstinately defended. For we cast a grievous odium back upon the Author, if we say that he was unwilling to give the possibility of grasping salvation to the one who perished (to him at least who is already able to grasp the liberty of the will), since we can by no means deny that he will condemn the transgressor of the commandment in the scrutiny of his judgment. For he who is not liable for what he received, I know not how he can be guilty for what he lost.

And thus, sinning against God, whose grace we first too incautiously asserted, in the end we shall be seen to assail his justice. But I retain with me a copy of this letter, to be brought forward in the assembly of the holy prelates, if it should so be necessary. If your fraternity should think it ought to be accepted, let it either soon send it back subscribed by your own hand, or reply by subsequent writings that you have altogether disapproved it. But if you should be unwilling to transmit it subscribed, as I said, you will by your very silence prove that you still persist openly in error, and thereupon you will now make it necessary for me to set forth your person before public assemblies.

And therefore, according to these things which have been sent by me, write back whether — all evasions set aside — you acknowledge or reject them. [Auxanius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read again. And I, Faustus, have read again the copy of my letter. And Paulus, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read again. And Eutropius, bishop in the name of Christ; Pragmatius, bishop in the sign of Christ; Patiens, bishop in Christ; Eufronius, I have read again and marvelled at the holy fullness; Megethius, bishop, I have read again; and Eutropius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read again; and Leucadius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read again; and Julianus, bishop in the name of Christ; Lucidus the presbyter.] Likewise in another hand: I, Faustus, have read again and subscribed the copy of my letter. 2.

A copy of the letter of Lucidus the presbyter. To the most blessed lords and, in Christ, most reverend fathers Eufronius, Leontius, Fonteius, Uiuentius, Mamertus, Patiens, Uerianus, Auxanius, Faustus, Paulus, Megethius, Graecus, Eutropius, Leontius, Claudius, Marcellus, Crocus, Basilius, Claudius, Ursicinus, Praetextatus, Pragmatius, Theoplastus, Leucadius, Uiuentius, Iulianus, Amicalis, Ioannes, Opilio, and Licinius, bishops — Lucidus the presbyter. Your correction is the public health, and your sentence is medicine. Wherefore I too count it the highest remedy, that by accusing my past errors I may excuse them, and that by a saving profession I may wash myself clean.

Accordingly, in keeping with the recent decrees of the council to be proclaimed, I condemn together with you that opinion which says that the labour of human obedience is not to be joined to divine grace; which says that after the fall of the first man the free choice of the will was wholly extinguished; which says that Christ, our Lord and Savior, did not undergo death for the salvation of all; which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels man to death, or that those who perish, perish by the will of God; which says that after baptism legitimately received, whosoever transgresses dies in Adam.

Which says that some are appointed to death, others predestined to life; which says that from Adam until Christ none of the Gentiles were saved through the first grace of God — that is, through the law of nature — unto the coming of Christ, on the ground that they had lost free choice, all of them, in the first parent; which says that the patriarchs and prophets, or the very highest of the saints, dwelt in the habitation of paradise even before the times of redemption; which says that fires and the infernal regions do not exist. All these things, as impious and full of sacrileges, I condemn.

But I so assert the grace of God as always to join the striving and endeavour of man to grace, and I pronounce the liberty of the human will to be not extinguished but weakened and enfeebled; and that he who is saved is in peril, and that he who perished could have been saved. I assert also that Christ, our God and Savior, as far as pertains to the riches of his goodness, offered the price of his death for all; and that, since he wills none to perish, being the Savior of all men — especially of the faithful, rich unto all that call upon him. And because in matters so great the conscience must be satisfied, I remember that I said before that Christ had come only for those whom he foreknew would believe, following the Lord's own sentences, in which he says:

'Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many'; and that: 'This is the cup of my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins'; and that of the Apostle: 'As it is appointed once for men to die, so also Christ was once offered to exhaust the sins of many.' But now, with the authority of the sacred testimonies — which are found abundantly throughout the spaces of the divine Scriptures — and the reasoning of the elders' teaching laid open, I gladly confess that Christ came even for the lost, because it was against his will that they perished. For it is not lawful that the immense riches of goodness and the divine benefits be confined to those alone who seem to be saved.

For if we say that Christ brought remedies only to those who have been redeemed, we shall seem to absolve those who are not redeemed — who, it is established, are to be punished for redemption despised. I assert also that, through the reason and order of the ages, some were saved by the law of grace, some by the law of Moses, some by the law of nature which God wrote in the hearts of all, in the hope of the coming of Christ — yet none, from the beginning of the world, absolved from the original bond except by the intercession of the sacred blood. I profess also that eternal fires and infernal flames are prepared for capital deeds, because the divine sentence deservedly follows human faults that persevere unto the end — which those justly incur who have not believed these things with the whole heart.

Pray for me, holy and apostolic fathers, my lords. I, Lucidus the presbyter, have subscribed this letter with my own hand, and the things which are set forth in it I assert, and the things which are condemned I condemn. 3. The letter of Faustus. You ask of me, most reverend of priests, how the Arians are to be answered, who with blasphemous mouth attempt to assert: 'It cannot be,' one says, 'but that the begotten be younger than the unbegotten.' In keeping with which, I will presume — as though commanded — to break all my silence, not so much for the instruction of the matter as for the confession of the faith, observing first of all this: that I not entangle in the zeal of composed speech things obscure in themselves, but that I set forth certain tokens of a poor understanding, which may seem to serve not so much for adornment as for comprehension.

I answer, then, as disciples are wont to answer masters who question them. And so I speak at the bidding of your beatitude, that I may be examined; I attest my inexperience, that I may be taught. For with one most learned, if I keep silent, I can scarcely know what I do not know. About to speak of the unbegotten, we ought to know that the substances of things are one thing, the names of things another — as, for example, when you say 'gold' and 'silver,' you have brought forth not the metal itself immediately, but the names of the metal. For gold is one thing in the property of its kind, another in the appellation of the word; it is one thing when we name it, another when we hold it. 'Begotten' and 'unbegotten' is a signification of the deity, not the deity itself; it is an appellation of the nature, not the nature.

The naming of the unbegotten and the begotten avails to this end: that you may understand from whom each subsists, and may recognize not the Father to be from the Son, but the Son to be from the Father. Principle from principle is both one and lacks a beginning — as if you should say: God from God, yet not two Gods, but one God. Begotten, therefore, unbegotten, and proceeding from both, indicate persons, not natures. For the majesty, which is undivided from the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit, can be distinguished by names, but cannot be ordered by degrees. At this point you must, with foreknowledge, apply the attention of your mind. You will say, perhaps: because he is from him, he is later than he. Come, let us nourish our understanding of these things by certain comparisons.

Let us see whether some thing may exist from another and yet not be later in age than that from which it exists. For example, this very name of 'son' is believed to be derived from the name of 'father,' and yet it is not found to be later — because, unless the one were born, the other would not be called 'father.' Behold a name which is absolutely coeval with that from which it is; and, though the son be from the father, the son makes the name for the father. The person of the one being born acquires for the begetter the appellation of fatherhood. Since this is from that, this is proven neither later nor the other more ancient. And since the son is named 'arm' from the powers of his works, behold, the arm proceeds from the body, and yet the age of the arm does not precede that of the body.

A word is brought forth from the voice, and yet, though it be born from the mouth, it is not proven to be later than the voice. There is an undivided fellowship of fire and heat, but although the heat is undoubtedly understood to be from the fire, yet the fire is by no means discerned to be prior to its own heat. Behold a thing which is seen to exist from another, and yet is joined to that from which it exists without any intervention of time. But when we come to God, this is 'begotten' which is 'just' and 'justice,' 'wise' and 'wisdom,' 'merciful' and 'mercy.' Absolutely, from the just and wise God, according to the Apostle, we understand justice and wisdom to arise.

And just as there was never a just one without justice, never a wise one without wisdom, so the Son is from the Father, but the Father could never be without the Son. Beyond doubt the Arians do not dare to deny our Savior, but, while they call him lesser, they cannot assert him to be God. For God by nature subsists in the dignity of fullness, and their impiety, in its first confession, testifies that it worships one God. But because they make him younger, through him who is thought older they make two, and cut through the solidity of the unity. For the very name of 'lesser' shows another who is greater than he. Who is more ancient than he, who pronounces of himself: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last' — who, when he was asked by the Jews who he was, answered thus:

'The Beginning, who also speak to you' — who confirms it by the truthful voice through the prophet: 'Before me there was no God, and after me there shall be none'? If the Father says this, he confirms that no inferior one began after him; if the Son, he pronounces that (the Father) in no wise existed before him. Of this the prophetic word plainly suggests: 'This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside him'; and after this: 'He was seen among men and conversed with men.'

According to these things, then, between the begotten and the unbegotten there is no order, because he is one; no time intervenes, because he is first; he is not to be set later, because he is alone; he is not to be called lesser, because he is full. Therefore God alone is of a perfect and simple nature, inestimable and impassible — even though we truthfully and salutarily confess that according to the flesh he suffered for us. After these things, in the next place, you ask of me how, concerning the substance of God, it was written in a certain letter: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but he felt with the affection of one suffering-together (compassion).'

First, this — which not even the philosophers failed to perceive — is most readily to be known: that in man there are diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, benevolence, piety, which are accruing things and therefore are called 'affects.' But God is not affected by these passibly, because they are discerned to be in him continually and by nature. Therefore what in man is affect and grace, in God is virtue and nature. For as to what was said — 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but he felt with the affection of one suffering-together' — why should anyone not presume to say it in that sense which even the prophetic word recalls: 'Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, neither chasten me in your fury'; and: 'The Lord has sworn and will not repent'; and again:

'The Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance.' And likewise with a differing affection he is described to have loved Jacob and to have held Esau in hatred. He is said to be grieved at our sins and to rejoice in his own works; and, subject to affections, he says of himself: 'It repents me that I made man.' And from the highest seat of heaven he pronounces: 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' For he seems also to show the affection of one suffering-together, when he says: 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink,' and the rest of this kind, which come abundantly to memory.

How, then — just as if some priest endowed with a manifold knowledge of tongues and placed in the midst of diverse nations, about to instruct a Hebrew for a Hebrew, a Greek for a Greek, a Roman for a Roman, should shape his words according to the understanding of each and adapt the address of his mouth to the sense of every one, and dispense the utterances of one heart and (sinner's) breast to various hearings — so too God, about to speak with man, deigns to assume the tongue of man, being also about to take up the human form: through the sounds of our understandings he attests the affections of his own ordinances. For while, describing the offices of the five human senses, he thus says: 'The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears unto their prayers'; and again:

'The mouth of the Lord has spoken'; likewise: 'And he smelled the odor of sweetness'; and: 'My hand made all these things. Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet' — he insinuates to our hearts the efficacies of things by the signification of his own members. Whence, on account of his ineffable condescension toward the human race — which does not disdain to name and to address servants as friends and sons — man converses with him in turn with human mouth and manner. But otherwise, the anger of God is his justice; the fury of God is the vigor of his severity; for God to have sworn is to have determined; for God to have repented is a sentence nevertheless often changed; and when he says that he is injured by someone persecuting, he shows the crime of the one injuring.

The ministry of prayer, and every faculty by which God is either understood or proclaimed, is cut off from us altogether, if these exchanges of human speech are withdrawn. Why, then, among these things, can it not be said: 'But he felt with the affection of one suffering-together'? If, then, a simple and open answer has satisfied the master who is examining, let us pass on to the third question, to which you bid me respond: which things in human affairs are to be regarded as corporeal, and which as incorporeal.

On these matters I shall set forth certain things not from any presumption of my own understanding, but according to the opinion of the holy elders, especially since these things cannot wound the soul but can nourish it unto faith, and can arm and equip us against the Arian depravities up to that point where the Son may appear equal to the Father. Therefore, when the discussion concerns a loftier subject, both the understanding and the mind must be prepared for a more subtle apprehension. Some of the most learned among the Fathers assert that some things are invisible, but others incorporeal. Whatever has been created they define to be visible as matter, and to be comprehensible and corporeal to its Maker; for they assert that the nature both of souls and of angels is corporeal, in that from the beginning it is circumscribed and bounded by space.

For as we read in a certain treatise of holy Jerome: 'They suppose,' he says, 'that the orbs of the stars are ensouled spirits'; and again: 'If the angels,' he says, 'and even the heavenly bodies are said to be unclean in comparison with God, what do you think man ought to be reckoned?' But amid all this you deny that the soul is corporeal, because, according to the opinion of certain men, it is neither local nor subsists in quality or quantity — which, it is manifest, ought to be believed of the majesty of God alone. For we read in a certain most highly regarded treatise of the Fathers:

'To enter and to fill all things,' he says, 'is possible for the Trinity alone, which so becomes the penetrator of every intellectual nature that it can not only encompass and surround it, but even glide into it and, as though incorporeal, be poured into a body.' For although we may declare that certain natures are spiritual — such as the angels, archangels, and the other Powers, and our very soul too, or at least this subtle air — nevertheless they are by no means to be reckoned incorporeal. For they have according to themselves a body by which they subsist, though one far and incomparably more tenuous than are our bodies, according to the saying of the Apostle: 'there are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.'

From these things it is gathered as manifest that nothing is incorporeal save God alone, and that therefore He alone can penetrate all spiritual and intellectual substances. Since this is so, you object to me that the soul is not corporeal for this reason: because, as has been said, it is neither local nor subsists in quality or quantity. What peril there is in so believing shall be shown in what follows. But now the state of our discussion will hang upon this examination: that if the soul is neither local nor subject to quantity, we grant without doubt that it is incorporeal; but if I shall demonstrate that it is determined by quantity or enclosed by place, consequently do not you yourself any longer doubt that it is also contained by a body.

How is that not local which, inserted into the limbs and bound within the entrails, is held enclosed by the movements alone proper to the condition of its wandering substance? But if you think it must be asserted that the soul is not local because it roves abroad through diverse senses and is dispersed among its thoughts, first it must be understood that the state of the soul is one thing, and the disposition of thought which is born from the soul is another. Wherefore this rather must be considered: that whenever the soul imagines something to itself, it is the more occupied with its own movements within itself; and if there is anything else which it seems to behold, it is the more delineated for it in the mirror of remembrance. For when it thinks upon a dear one who is absent, has it now satisfied its longings as though he were beheld in person?

Or when it depicts within the secret places of the mind, for example, the likeness of Peter or Paul, has it straightway penetrated the innermost dwellings of paradise where we know them to be? Or when it has set before itself in its heart, from its reading, the losses of that rich man, has it now descended to the places of his torments and to the depths of hell inaccessible to the living? All these things without doubt it either fashions within itself, within the secret places of the breast, by means of various likenesses, or else, if the unsteady thought, agitated by a slippery motion, runs about outside the seat of the soul, this very thing it does locally. And whether it think upon a city or upon any region whatsoever, it is fixed there only, with its perception tarrying there whither it is snatched by the intention of the mind. It can imagine to itself certain things; it cannot embrace all things at once.

When therefore the soul has thought upon Alexandria or Jerusalem, if it truly was present there with its whole self, as you suppose, let it report to us the situation of the places, the faces of the men, the movements and doings of the peoples. But this very thing — that we now mingle mutual exchanges of speech among ourselves by the action of the spirit — I perceive within my own consciousness that I am speaking with you, yet I do not perceive that I have come to you. For if the soul is truly believed to be carried along with its senses, then it is present of itself by its own thoughts to those things which it recalls. Behold, through these present moments of time I think upon you, and with recollecting mind I see you; yet of you whom I recollect I am in every way ignorant what you may be doing, and whether you are at leisure for rest, or for reading, or for prayer.

But this happens for the reason that I come to you by the affection of the heart, not by the very reality of my substance. For the nature of our soul does not consist in its movements, which we perceive now to be excellent, now to be very bad. For if it must be believed to subsist through its thoughts, why, when these sometimes vanish and perish, does the soul itself endure in its own vigor and alertness? How many, then, of the most frequent thoughts and cares within us die even wholesomely, and rather work for the freedom of the interior life! If the soul consisted in these very things, then without doubt, when they perished, it could not survive.

Whence this reason rather speaks to our consciences: that each and every soul either brings forth manifold thoughts conceived within itself from the causes of things, or disperses its senses, like certain offices or ministries, to be occupied with diverse necessities, while it itself rests in the inner chamber of its body, once destined to depart from it but once. Wherefore, that we may again bring forward a sufficient example that the soul is local: was not the soul of Lazarus within his body while life remained, but, when life withdrew, was it not banished from the dwelling of the body, and again, poured back within the lifeless body, did it not return, summoned back thither from whence it had gone away?

Do you then contend that that soul is not local, which you see driven out from the dwelling of its lodging and again restored within the lodging from whence it had gone away? But why do I speak of these things concerning corruptible man, when He whose flesh saw no corruption possessed indeed an immaculate soul, yet a local one — the soul which He held within Himself when He was affixed to the gibbet, He without doubt sent forth from Himself when He lay in the sepulchre? How is that not local which the flesh contains, which life joins, which death separates? But if, as you say, the nature of souls does not admit the necessity of place, then there are not lacking, even from the region of paradise, those souls which are shut up in the prison of hell.

Tell me, I pray, if they are not local, how does that vast chaos separate the sinners from the assemblies and fellowships of the righteous by its sorrowful interposition, so that they can neither pass from here to there nor cross over from there to here? Now this too is most manifest: that those things are circumscribed by quantity which are contained within spaces. If you have acknowledged that the soul is local, grant that it is corporeal. Tell me: did not the soul itself of our glorious Redeemer leave the world when it ascended to heaven?