For my part, I should not doubt that even the angels are local — they who, it is certain, are now contained in the heavenly places, now borne through the void of the air, now dismissed to earthly things; whom the divine word describes in the patriarch's vision as ascending and descending; who assuredly, if they were not local and were everywhere, could not by ascent and descent be present and depart. That most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before the Lord, when he announced that the Lord of heaven was to be infused into the womb of Mary, and when he stood before the eyes of the Lord's mother, was without doubt absent from heaven; he did not fly above Mary, he did not fill the empty and diffused expanse of the vast air, but occupied only that place in which he was present.
Since this is so, whatever occupies a place is a body; and I know not how he should not be held by the law of place, who is sent from place to place and, like a body, is transferred by motion and approach — descends by mass, runs about by mobility, goes, returns, absents himself, ascends. Or is that one, I suppose, local, who is not in heaven from the moment he was cast out of heaven; and he proved himself not to be local alone, who, thrust down from on high, dragged away with himself a third part of the stars. Tell me: if he has no body, what fell in that casting-down? Why do you deny corporeal nature to him whose downfall you dare not deny? And if, as you say, he has no body, he will not burn. But where shall he feel that fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels, save in a body?
Now I think it superfluous to say that from his sojourn in this air he has drawn a certain grossness from the condensing of the elements. Tell me: if he had no body, where in the air was there a condensing, where could this — I know not what — grossness gather itself together, if he brought nothing corporeal with him down from that heavenly citadel? He will carry, as I see, an alien body to his torments. Recognize therefore, even from your own assertion, that it is a body. It is a body which is stained, which is defiled, which is corrupted by any addition coming upon it from without.
This one, then, once the firstborn of the angels, has now been made the prince of darkness — and as though corporeal, once fair, now degenerate; once conspicuous with heavenly splendor, now befouled with the loathsome horror of infernal sin. It is a body, I say, which is driven from its dwelling, is circumscribed by quantity, is changed in quality, is worn down by pain. Since these things are so, let those who call the soul incorporeal see into how deep a fault they plunge themselves.
Now first of all, since God the Author of the universe is said to have made all things in number and weight, therefore the soul is believed to have been taken out from the matter of the whole creation. Now if it is not corporeal, neither is it local; if it is not contained by place, then it is diffused everywhere; it is said to enter, to fill, and to be present everywhere; and thus, if the creature were made a partner of its Creator, and frailty were joined to its Author, it would be reckoned no longer a thing of God, but a part of God. See whither a lapse into deep error leads its own supporters. Indeed to us those things which are above you are invisible; but all things to Him — as they are comprehensible, so also are they corporeal — who made all things out of nothing, and, as He established them by His work, so also embodied them with matter, and with all things.
Among these the soul too is reckoned; and just as He distributed weight, number, and measure, so also He appointed quantity. Amid these things, if perhaps, as has been said, someone should think it must be asserted that, by reason of the subtlety of its angelic nature, a certain contagion gathered by admixture of this air will be found liable to the flames — then in the air alone, as he says (if it be airy that shall burn), not in it but outside it will the punishment rage. But without doubt there is nothing other than the substance of a body where the force of pain shall be able to hold sway.
See whither an imprudent and unskilled persuasion tends, which, when it speaks of the incorporeal, also confesses it to be incomprehensible, and thus ascribes to the created work what befits the Creator alone, and shares with created things the privileges of majesty, and extends a power not owed to the creature even to the injury of the Maker. If we inquire well to what issue of things you refer the soul, this credulity in particular is what rolled the devil down from that station of the blessed seat, and on this account lost him the dignity of an angel, while he presumes to have the nature of God.
One God, therefore, is incorporeal, because He is both incomprehensible and everywhere diffused; for He took the beginning of His being from the matter of no corporeal creation; and therefore the Son is coeternal with the Father, because, founded from no work and circumscribed by no beginnings, above all things which He has wrought as comprehensible and corporeal within the body of the world for His Fashioner, He is diffused in incorporeal majesty — begotten from the Unbegotten, that is, from the Father, yet ever with the Father — and He holds dominion over those things which He has called forth from nothing, in the undivided fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen. IV. TO HIS LORD AND FATHER AND LIKEWISE HIS PATRON, POPE FAUSTUS: FROM PAULINUS.
To write to you fear holds me back on the one hand, and affection compels me on the other, and between the two my uncertain mind is so tossed, as when a rash sailor commits his sails to doubtful fortune. But I, who have in you a sure harbor, often take upon myself the outcome of an uncertain course; yet I have chosen rather to incur weariness than guilt. For I have very well perceived that my lord Faustus receives my letters without disdain. But because my lord Marinus the hermit, a holy man and, by his exceeding strictness, one to be feared, has laid upon me so great a fear with grievous severity, I come to you as an inquirer.
I am entangled in carnal sins; whatever a guilty man can do, I practice. When I shall have fulfilled the day of the human lot, I have obtained a sudden repentance: whether it shuts out sin in part or altogether, I desire to know; or whether those who believe in the one Trinity, yet sinning in the body with carnal vices, are to be tormented with everlasting punishments and torments, with flames and all bodily torments, though not sinning in spirit. This is my opinion: that if a Christian should receive all these things, he could receive nothing more. Or whether the Arian... or whether the soul, when parted from the bond of the body, is delivered over to some custody, or is held shut up in a prison, or is tossed uncertain among the breezes.
And because I know that in that hour every thought perishes, if you permit, I respectfully ask: whether both good and evil thought descend from the soul, which is proved to be immortal, or whether some sense and understanding is preserved, or whether it feels anything of honorable affection.
And because we know that all things are granted to the good, so that they can bestow yet greater things upon the living after death — as for the evil, what is either given or taken away, and whether the soul is harmed better as corporeal or as incorporeal, let me be taught; and, because the flesh is weak but the spirit is willing, what fellowship in sin the soul contracts for a bodily fault, I, being ignorant, long to know; or how that which is immortal is tormented for mortal vices; likewise, whether the soul and the spirit are the same, or how they are distinguished — let me learn.
For the aforesaid man has so terrified me, even with the interposition of an oath, that one who succumbs to bodily vices can merit no pardon, but is kept in these same torments even at the resurrection, and cannot be expiated by the torments of hell of that which, compacted with bodily vices, he had contracted in life. Yet, most wretched as I am, I believe that he who, never conscious to himself of evil, nor a crafty falsifier, has once broken the sign of the divine name received and the mark of our Lord fixed upon his brow — that man, having lightly undergone torments for the expiation of his fault, brings forth a pure airy sense and the fire of a simple soul, once the appointed day is consumed.
For if we sinners are to receive all these things which my lord Marinus threatens, I know not what greater thing the impious may deserve. Grant me pardon, that I stir up an injury against your piety, while I, one day to be a new disciple, long to be taught by a veteran master. V. TO PAULINUS, DISTINGUISHED LORD AND ONE TO BE HONORED BY ME WITH THE HIGHEST AND MOST ESPECIAL REVERENCE, HIS SON: FAUSTUS. The ever-admirable page of your letters has now shone forth more abundantly with the twin light of eloquence and of faith, while it inquires about the state of the soul and, with anxious fear, sighs after the judgments to come. The divine word says in a certain place: 'wisdom shall be reckoned to him who inquires rightly.' For it is a certain portion of knowledge to know what you do not know, and prudently to inquire into those things which through ignorance you do not understand.
In the first place you thought it should be inquired whether, when the straits of extreme necessity are pressing upon one, a momentary repentance can consume capital offenses. He deceives himself with a hostile persuasion, who thinks that stains contracted over a long life are to be abolished by sudden and now useless groanings. At the time when confession can exist, satisfaction cannot exist. For, because God is not mocked, he has deceived himself who has lived for death for many seasons, and, already half-dead, rises up to seek life, so that he then appears dutiful when all the services of body and soul are withdrawn from the Lord's service. As regards the accomplishing of the health of the inner man, not the mere will to receive, but the profit of doing, is looked for. For thus we read:
'If a sinner,' He says, 'shall have done repentance for his sins' (He said 'shall have done,' not merely 'shall have said' or 'shall have received'), 'he shall live in his own righteousness which he has wrought.' You observe that a medicine of this kind, just as it is to be asked with the mouth, so must it be accomplished by work. He seems to insult God who, at that time when he was able, was unwilling to come to the physician, and now begins to be willing at that time when he cannot. There is need, therefore, that as great as was, in sinning, the intention of a mind broken away and vigorous toward evil, so great may be the devotion in the healing of the wounds. In the second place you asked whether faith alone and the knowledge of the one Trinity suffice for salvation. In divine matters not only the manner of believing is required, but of pleasing.
Faith, therefore, bare of merits, is empty and void, as the Apostle says: 'What does it profit, if a man say he has faith, but have not works? Can faith save him?' For he goes on and says: 'Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself.' 'But someone will say: You have faith, and I have works; show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by works.' According to these things, belief by itself alone is not proved to suffice. For even the devil is found to know and believe God, as the same Apostle says: 'You believe that there is one God; you do well: the demons also believe, and tremble.' 'But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?'
Was not Abraham our father justified by works? And lest we place our hope in the part of faith alone, he thus concluded: 'For as the body without the spirit is dead, so also is faith without works dead' — without which he said that man is empty. Many similar testimonies we omit for the sake of brevity. The Apostle Paul, out of whose breast the Lord spoke as if from His own temple, did he judge that faith alone could avail him for overcoming the evils of the world, saying thus: 'I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway'?
Behold, he fears to become a castaway through the vices of the body; already he who has become a vessel of election dreads to become, through the deadly contagions of carnal passions, a vessel of dishonor. Let us see whether faith alone defends the man prodigal of his own life, and whether the baptized, as you say, can now no longer perish. I recognize how carnal evils make a man estranged from God, the bondslave of obscene pleasures. To the Galatians the Apostle says: 'The works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, luxury, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and the like; for they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God'; or, to the Ephesians:
'Every fornicator, or unclean person, or covetous man, which is the service of idols, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.' 'Serving idols,' he says: for when anything is loved with that desire wherewith God ought to be loved, an affection of this kind is likened to idols. Such a one, without doubt, shut out from the kingdom, is delivered over to hell and to death; but it is manifest that many baptized persons, with faith preserved, perish eternally in diverse kinds. The divine word rebukes not the transgressors of faith, not the violators of baptism, but those who have neglected to be merciful, saying: 'Judgment without mercy to him who has not shown mercy'; and again:
'I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not take me in; naked, and you did not clothe me.' If this number of the flock on the left hand had been ignorant of the gift of baptism, He would have first cast upon them infidelity and impiety; but though baptized, yet void of good works, He assigns them to death and abandons them to the perennial flames, and thus concludes the severity of the sentence: 'Depart,' He says, 'from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels'; and again: 'He will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire'; likewise: 'These,' He says, 'shall go into life eternal, but those into eternal fire.'
Amid these things let each man beware, lest he charge God with lying concerning the promise of reward, who doubts concerning the eternity of punishment. It is not so; for He who knows how to honor merits knows also how to punish sins. These three capital things, therefore — sacrilege, adultery, murder — unless they be expiated here by the remedies of perfect repentance, shall there be consumed with everlasting fires. These unmerciful ones, then, we do not read to have turned aside from faith and baptism, but we recognize by divine authority that they have merited perpetual death. And this too disquiets your mind with foresightful care for the future: whether souls stripped of the body do not strip off the vigor of perceiving and understanding, and their affection.
Let us question that rich man in the Gospel — not wandering among the breezes, as the ravings of the poets assert, but in the prison of hell, from the number of those who, shut up, await their punishment, set amid the flames of conscience before the day of judgment, anxious for the amendment of his brethren who were still placed in this world, mingling colloquies with Abraham across the vast interposed chaos by earnest entreaty, and, smitten with a lively recollection of his kinsmen, thus interceding for the living: 'I beg you, father Abraham, that you send Lazarus into my father's house; for I have five brethren, that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torments; and if someone from the dead shall go to them, they will do penance.'
Behold, imprisoned in the workhouse of hell, having now no remedy for himself, he yet keeps his ancient affection toward his own; and while, though damned, he pleads for sinners, he shows that there is great care among the righteous who breathe again within the groves of paradise for the welfare of their loved ones. But as to what you ask, what is either given or taken away from the wicked after the end — from the iniquitous, of whom it is read: 'the desire of sinners shall perish' — with the desire of earthly things and the ambition of honors removed, the burden alone of the account to be rendered and the fear of an intolerable examination shall press upon them; nor shall their senses be taken away, but they shall be rendered the more unencumbered and eager for the contemplation of the other age.
But as to what you request to be taught concerning the soul itself — whether it is corporeal or incorporeal — know then that this alone is incorporeal which is not included within times nor confined within the bounds of places, which befits God alone. As one of the eminent teachers, discoursing to a certain inquirer who asked where God was, thus replied: 'God is not somewhere; what is somewhere is contained by place; what is contained by place is a body.' Since these things are so, all flesh is a body, but not every body is also flesh; and because not only the soul, but even the invisible and heavenly substance of the angels, is contained as it were by local spaces, so it is proved to be corporeal and comprehensible to its Author.
For what is that, save something corporeal, which, thrust down from the heavenly seats, gave place? What is it that felt a downfall? What is it that, liable to the eternal flame, is prepared for punishment? But blessed Lazarus himself too, after the tongues of the fawning dogs, was received into the hands of the angels — of whom we read: 'it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom' — and taught that his soul was corporeal, in that it is borne by angelic ministrations into Abraham's bosom, that is, into a remote and blessed retreat. And concerning his own soul the holy prophet declares: 'Bring my soul out of prison, O Lord' — that is, out of the straits of its bodily lodging.
Whence, on account of that creation of His — which is either wounded by the darts of sins or advanced, changed through qualities, even to the honor of the divine image — the soul is evidently shown to be corporeal both to God and to the angels, by whom it can be comprehended and transferred. But amid these things it must be inquired what that is: that whereas both man — that is, soul and body — while yet in the region of paradise, sinned at the devil's persuasion, the flesh alone, through the condition of death, received the punishment of the great transgression, and the guilt, common to both, remained fixed upon the punishment of the one. It must therefore be known that death did not reach the soul for this reason: because the Lord placed His own image and likeness in it.
For as God is immortal, merciful, just, and patient, so He pours the gifts of these virtues into the face of our inner man, so that, the more anyone should be more patient, more just, more merciful, the more he should appear endowed with the gift of participation in the divine — as the Apostle says: 'that Christ dwells in the inner man through faith.' You ask also why the soul has anything in common with its flesh on account of a bodily fault. Just as original sin embraces both, by reason of the unity of the bodily lodging, and both — man — are in like manner bound together in the fellowship of sins, so for them there is one cause in the participation of crimes, as in the reward of virtues there is equal glory.
For the exterior man would never fall into the pit of luxury, unless the interior man gave his consent to it. Let us question our very selves, and within ourselves we shall be able to recognize that the mind, as mistress, wields command, and the flesh, subjoined, wields service: the one furnishes ministry, the other counsel. Obedience on the part of the servant would cease, unless the will on the part of the commander went before. And of necessity they must recognize a like condition in damnation, who on the contrary will rejoice together in retribution. You still say: that which is immortal, how is it tormented for mortal vices? The evils indeed are mortal, but the torment of the wicked will be immortal, and the crosses of transgressions shall remain, though the vices fail.
Thus the lower matter, by the judgment, will hand over the better matter along with itself, just as the admixture of lead compels gold to be smelted. Man therefore, being about to die for his mortal evils, is to die to God and to live to hell. This will be death there: that it is not permitted to die amid pain. In this too you extend your anxious inquiry, whether soul and spirit are the same thing, or in what way they are distinguished. Let us acknowledge that there are only two substances in man, namely of soul and of body. The spirit, however, is now proved to be natural, now found to be an accident. For sometimes 'spirit' is put for the soul, and sometimes it is understood as the appetite for virtue and a spiritual disposition. In this manner one and the same man is now carnal, now animal, and now even spiritual.
Carnal are those of whom the Lord says: 'My spirit shall not remain in these men, for they are flesh,' and the Apostle: 'They that are in the flesh cannot please God.' He is carnal who has enslaved himself to belly and gullet through an excess of eating and drinking, and has set the good of life in the greed and voracity of the throat. But one becomes animal when, still thinking little of God, according to the soul he is moved by worldly prudence toward the provision of certain matters; when he takes delight either in investigating, out of curious vanity, the causes of hidden things, or in philosophical studies. Whence the Apostle discourses: 'The animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God.'
But he begins to be spiritual when he desires things honorable, holy, and spiritual; when by the vigor of his heart he ascends to the worship of divine fear; when through purity of body and the guarding of chastity he invites the Holy Spirit to himself, so that of him that apostolic word may be said: 'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.' These things are not implanted in man by nature, but are so joined to him by grace that they can be separated when sloth intervenes through fault. Whence the same Apostle says: 'But whoever violates the temple of God, him God will destroy.' Behold, one baptized through faith is seen to be not only baptized but also the temple of God, and yet through diverse crimes he shall be destroyed by the severity of God.
In this place let us recognize that the word 'perdition' means the eternal destruction of the lost soul. Without doubt they are counted in the number of the baptized who are said to be members of Christ; and see how they are compared to the lost, how by the working of crime they degenerate from the nobility of sons, the Apostle saying: 'Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot?' And those too had most manifestly received the gifts of the second birth, who even abounded in a diversity of charisms, of whom the Lord says in the Gospel: 'Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out demons, and in thy name done many mighty works?'
'And then I will confess to them: I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity.' Who would not understand that those are cut off from salvation who are commanded to withdraw from the sight of the Father? Death will without doubt receive into its own lot those whom Life, which is Christ, has not known. Do you doubt that the baptized are handed over to perdition for their iniquities, when you recognize that baptism itself perishes through manifold crimes? But as for what your discourse, as the page contains, supposed—borrowing from the poet the fire of the simple soul—this is fittingly said only of the substance of the Godhead, to which nothing is added, nothing conferred from a higher source, nothing is joined.
He is at once just and justice, living and life, wise and wisdom, virtue and the source of virtues. For in his principal goods he himself is that very thing which he possesses. But man can be understood as twofold: he can be called living and just and wise, but he cannot be called life and justice and wisdom, because he is so clothed with these that sometimes he is stripped of them. What has been given to man has been implanted in God. Man, so to speak, is gilded; God is the gold, in whom power and grace are the very thing that nature is. For as to what you have subtly pointed out:
'If all these things which lord Marinus threatens await sinners, I do not know what greater thing the impious deserve'—they too have their degrees of torment under everlasting evils, so that one liable to grave sins is tormented with punishments infinite yet somehow bearable, while the impious man is tormented with unheard-of torments. But the grace of baptism could then rescue a man from eternal death, if in some its integrity and dignity did not perish. It is a grave crime which the heretic has refused to receive; but no less grave is that which the Christian both received and lost.
For that man too, who by trusting in his baptism had burst into the nuptial banquet as a profaner of the sacred assembly, having lost the splendor of purity, is cast out from the illustrious gathering of the just and thrust into the outer darkness. Is he to be believed to possess the snow-white brightness of holy regeneration—he who is incestuous, a poisoner, and blood-stained, or who, cutting short his life by a fall or by hanging, passes over into the portion of the impious? We read that inextinguishable flames are prepared for capital deeds, but we do not read that a man living in his evils is saved by baptism alone. Perilously does a hostile complacency promise itself what heavenly Scripture does not say; far more perilously does it disbelieve those things which Truth threatens.
Certain things, as you say, the most blessed man Marinus discoursed with a threat; but just as that which the Lord promised to those who love him, even by the testimony of the Apostle, has not ascended into the heart of man because of the greatness of the thing, so the immensity of the torments to come exceeds the narrow limits of the human mind—evils which the shadow of a momentary repentance does not remove, which faith without works does not repel, and for which the course of the passing ages shall be unable to set a term amid the inextinguishable flames; among which unspent vapors the soul, though slow, shall both feel itself and see itself corporeal. And therefore let us anticipate the last day by just, pious, and chaste works, and by fearing here those things which it will profit nothing to fear there, let us turn them aside.
Here let us put an end to endless contritions, and by now salutarily pondering the intolerable conflagrations, let us procure for ourselves from those very fires an eternal refreshment. But I am confident of your faith, that the saving testimonies of sincere truth will be more acceptable to you than the ornamented, composed brilliance of speech. My son Eminentius, our sweet honor, we cherish with fatherly affection. May our Lord fill your admirable Magnificence with present goods and render it worthy of the eternal ones. VI. TO THE MOST PIOUS LORD, TO BE HONORED WITH SPECIAL OFFICES, AS I TRUST FOREVER MY BROTHER AND IN ALL THINGS MY LORD FELIX, FROM FAUSTUS.