is accomplished, or the year of the sun returning through its own tracks is fulfilled; and while they increase and while they decrease, and things to come succeed to the lapse of things past, the same and yet other seasons are changed about. Whence also the moon, framed by the most wise craftsmanship of God and changing the varieties of its shapes, tends toward fullness and hastens toward diminution, so that whatever it had gained by increasing, it loses and lets go by decreasing, and stands not in the same state, but, ascending and descending by certain degrees, passes from poverty to riches and from riches returns to poverty, showing by the very diversity of its shapes that it is mutable and created.
But who could express in worthy speech the course of the sun and the cycle of the year, agreeing with the monthly reckoning, while it is rolled through the four seasons and ever returns into itself, and by the same measure ascends and descends and glides by an eternal order, so that what the lunar span fills in thirty days and nights, this the course of the sun accomplishes in the spans of the revolving year? And when it has come to the equality of day and night, and has stood a little while in the balance of its just course, it hastens to inequality, forsaking that which it had reached. Which I think Ecclesiastes—lest we draw our own things from alien springs—says in his volume:
'Wheeling around it goes, the spirit, and into its own circuits the spirit returns'—signifying the annual course of the sun, which by the same wheel of the seasons returns into itself, coming back to those points whence it had set out. But the holy and heavenly solemnity, sending forth to us the rays of its own splendor, is bounded by no intervals; and when the contests of the saints and the labor of the present age shall have received their end, there will succeed perpetual joy and eternal festivity. Wherefore perfect men, separating their souls from all the mist of errors, even now sing the festal chant: 'Let us enter His gates in confession, His courts in hymns,' proclaiming the Savior's advent with glad voices.
For when wickedness reigned in the whole world, and the demons had poured darkness over human eyes, and none could help them—according to that which is written: 'I looked, and there was none to give aid; I considered, and there was no one who might take it up'—so that impiety might at last have an end and the fraud of idolatry be destroyed, the living Word of God, leaving nothing of our likeness apart from sin alone, which has no substance, deigned to come to us in a new manner, that He might become the Son of Man and remain the Son of God.
Being born of a Virgin, this alone was believed by foolish minds—that which the eyes demonstrated; but from His works and the greatness of His signs the invisible God was discerned by the prudent, and Him whom His face showed to be man, His mighty deeds signified to be God, covered over with the vileness of the servile form. For although the Jews delivered Him up and with impious voices clamored that He should be crucified, blaspheming God by the slaying of His body—nay rather, by the killing of the Lord's flesh made servants of impiety—yet, going undaunted to death, that He might furnish us an example of virtue, the Lord of glory was shown forth in the very Passion, remaining in the majesty of His impassible divinity and passible in the flesh, according to the saying of blessed Peter.
And therefore, suffering for us, He did not flee death, lest we, out of fear of His death, while warring for piety, should lose the victory. For if He had feared the cross, bearing Himself contrary to the things He had taught, which of His disciples would have willingly fought for religion? He is therefore mocked by the foolish and unbelieving—He who subjected the whole world to His faith and bestowed upon the saints the dignity of the Christian name. And though the greatness of His virtues is clear to all, they cease not to blaspheme.
But he who is mocked, namely God, has been shown by his works to overthrow the temples of demons and to convict the crafty impiety of the Origenists, whose author, Origen, so deceived the ears of the simple and the frivolous by his persuasion, just as flood-tides coming from the deep are wont to dash upon the shores and to break themselves against their own foaming mass. Let us therefore, stirred by zeal for the faith, speak against him who dared to write that bodies were fashioned by the fall of rational creatures: 'If impiety of this kind pleases you, how is it that Paul the apostle writes, 'I would that the young women marry and bear children'?
Did he therefore enjoin marriage in order that the bodies born of women might prepare prisons for the angels falling from heaven and, according to you, turned into souls; or that the marriage union, serving the decree of God, might preserve the human race? For if he wills that young women marry and bear children, through whom human bodies come to birth, but wandering souls are clothed with bodies for the sake of penalties and torments, then no one can doubt that the bonds of wedlock are given to young women for the punishment of souls and not for the order of generation.' But far be it from us to believe that it is so, or to believe that the covenants of husband and wife are joined not for a blessing but for sin.
Nor did God, in fashioning Adam and Eve, join them with a blessing on account of souls sent down from heaven as minds and on account of the fall of rational creatures, when he said, 'Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.' For if souls were sent to the earth to be bound to bodies on account of sins committed beforehand in the heavens, then Paul lies when he writes, 'Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled.' But in no way does he lie; therefore bodies are not fashioned on account of the ruin of souls, but that the world may compensate its losses by the succession of those born and dying, and may overcome the brevity of human life by perpetual succession. For if minds bound to bodies are blessed by God, they will be of a better condition after they have taken up bodies;
But if they are cast down precisely in order to receive bodies as vengeance for their sins, how are they blessed in the bodies to which they came because of sins? For of two things one must be true: either that before the fall they were in blessedness, or that after the fall, bound to bodies, they cannot in any way be blessed. For if a blessing follows that former life, it abandons this one; if it is transferred to this one, it is proved not to have existed in that one. But if, before they fell and while they were not yet clothed with human bodies, they were in blessedness, and when fallen and possessing bodies they were blessed again, then the earlier life and the later will be alike as regards the condition of blessing—which is by no means consistent, since sinful souls deserve punishments, and it is the non-sinning that deserve a blessing.
Whichever of the two they answer to be true, they will be subject to fault, being unwilling to keep the rule of the Church's doctrine. For if souls, falling from heaven on account of their sins, were bound to bodies as to a prison and chains, let them answer how Adam and Eve, male and female, living in bodies, were blessed—for it is not, according to their ravings, bare souls that are called man and woman, but bodies, which distinguish the two sexes;
Or if before taking bodies they dwelt in the heavens, and their manner of life was then blessed and worthy of a blessing apart from bodies, on what ground were they either blessed before they fell, or, after they fell and were coupled to gross bodies as the penalty of their fall, are again endowed with a blessing? For blessing and punishment are not the same thing—things that stand far apart both in name and in deed, and can in no way be joined to one another, since so great an opposition divides them. But how also is a multitude of children promised to the righteous as a blessing, the prophet saying, 'He that is least shall become a thousand, and he that is last, a great nation'?
Therefore, those who wish to celebrate the feasts of the Lord should despise the idols of Origen and overcome the shamefulness of his dogmas by reason. For just as the most impious of the heathen prefer error and custom to truth, fashioning idols in the likeness of men and blaspheming the invisible God, while they feign that form, members, and generative organs exist in him, confessing him now male, now female, 'and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man' and of various shapes—so Origen, by the readiness and impiety of those who believed, left behind the records of his treatises as though they were shrines of idols, which, overthrowing them by the authority of the Scriptures and by zeal for the faith, let us employ that comparison.
For just as masons wishing to build a square house measure out walls equal on every side, and directing them by the plumb-line and level, raise up in the work what they had pictured in their mind, and join the four sides of equal measure into corners in a square, preserving the equality they began little by little through successive increments both upward and downward, so that the beauty of the work may unite the diversity of the material and the skilled construction may guard the angular lines—so the teachers of the Church, having the sure testimonies of the Scriptures, lay the foundations of doctrine and remain undaunted, offering their works to Christ and saying, 'Confirm me in thy words.' For he it is of whom it is written:
'The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner,' uniting us and those who are on high in one solemn festival; and, sailing toward it with swift course, let us in no way dread that the fury of the heretics' waves against us is to be swiftly dissolved.
For just as the pilots of great ships, when they see an immense flood-tide coming from the deep, receive the foaming waves like hunters facing a most ferocious beast, and sustain them by opposing the prow, turning the rudders in different directions and, as the blast of the winds and necessity command, tightening or slackening the ropes; and when the wave has subsided, they release from either side of the ship the straining bonds of the fastenings, that resting a little they may be made ready for the coming surge, which when it comes again, they tighten the heads of the fastenings and spread the oar-blades, so that, the blasts being split this way and that, the labor of both sides may be equal, and what could not be borne all at once may, when divided, become more tolerable—so those who take care of their own soul imitate the likeness of the example, and using, as it were, the dispensation of the divine words as a rudder, they meet the tempest of the heretics and, keeping the law of God as their art amid the waves, they act so that those who had fallen may be raised up, those who stand may continue with firm step, and all in common may be preserved by the help of doctrine.
For what the rudder is to the pilot, the law of God is to the soul; keeping the Lord's Pascha in it, let us prefer nothing else in the world to the love of God and neighbor, nor change our resolve according to the variety of human fortunes, which turn now this way, now that; lest those whom lately, for the sake of power, we served with base flattery, if perchance the winds should blow the other way and riches be changed into poverty, loftiness into lowliness, glory into disgrace, we should suddenly turn into their enemies, resisting to the face those whom we had deemed worthy of veneration, weighing our attachment by the times and not by good faith—nay, revealing at the moment of need the enmities we had hidden, and coming forth like serpents from their holes, so that we are not only ungrateful toward those
by whose benefits we were joyfully sustained, so long as we might reckon ourselves among the number of their clients—but persecute them like public enemies even to blood, trampling upon them once cast down and prostrate, those whom lately for their riches we looked up to, now proclaiming them the worst of all men after they exchanged their wealth for poverty; praising power and slandering misfortune, and honoring or despising a man not according to the nature of things but according to the variety of chances; so that those whom before we called lords and patrons, these same we now call whipping-boys and worthless slaves, and on every side our iniquity appears, while we either praise the unworthy or persecute the worthy with disparagement, imitating that which they spoke reproaching blessed Job:
'For the few sins you committed, you have been scourged.' Let us therefore by no means love uncertain riches, but the most steadfast virtue. Let not the hardness of poverty humble us, nor let riches exalt us—riches which are wont to abase and to lift up the most foolish of men—but let us govern both according to the honorableness of things, bearing both sad and glad with an even mind. The care of riches interrupts the sweetest sleep, contrives calumnies against the innocent, and when it has heaped up boundless wealth, it prepares fuel for the eternal fires. But after the insatiable frenzy has settled upon acquired wealth, avarice is not filled, but despises the laws, scorns the flames of Gehenna, and holds the tribunal of the future judgment as nothing.
Adversaries do not fight against their foes so much as riches fight against virtues, unless they are tempered by reason and by mercy toward one's neighbors. These are preferred to nobility in the cities; these bestow an ancient lineage upon new men. Never can the desire of riches be sated by any riches; he who is greedy is always in want; he knows no measure who lacks as much of what he has as of what he does not have. Hell is not filled with the dead, but the more it receives, the more it desires; avarice therefore imitates it and cannot be sated, but the more it has, the more it seeks.
It thinks everything it possesses to be less than what it covets, always boundless, always immoderate, not quenching the burning of the breast by the greatness of wealth; at banquets not devouring food but injustice; in lawsuits stirring up quarrels and discords, it brings forth envy, through which one comes to murder; it is not of sound mind, but tosses as though drunk, having one single measure—always to seek beyond measure. The sea is enclosed by shores; the harbors, whether man-made or by nature most firm, keep off the waves coming from the deep and the fury of the swelling floods; but the greed of riches, unless bridled by reason, neither counsel tempers, nor can law mitigate, nor does any abundance satisfy.
It does not blush, it does not fear the judgment to come, but by the desire of having more—as the wanton and those given to pleasures are wont to exult in embraces and to rage after lust—so it fills cities and hamlets and farmsteads with calumnies and dissensions. Islands, seas, lands, shores, roads, and thoroughfares—the pursuits of avarice possess them, while by the desire of having more it exchanges goods here and there through commerce, and by frauds and perjuries it lays the insatiable foundations of riches. Therefore, despising a frenzy of this kind, let us seek the worship of God and the most steadfast possessions—the holiness of chastity—adoring the one divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit;
believing the resurrection of the dead to be incorruptible and perpetually enduring. For it cannot happen that death should overcome it, since it has been made firm by the passion of Christ, who raises up the incorruptible and eternally abiding temple of his body.
Let us pray for the most pious emperors, and by the observance of the law of God let us adorn the precepts of fasting; for virtue, without any compulsion, guards its followers and lifts the mind, tossing amid various thoughts, from earthly things to the heights, contemplating in no way the beauty of bodies but the order of one's manner of life and conduct, showing it the choirs of rejoicing angels in heaven and teaching it the flashings of resplendent disciplines, so that in the present age, like a most valiant athlete, it may endure the blows inflicted and look for the glory to come in return for them, in no way subject to vices, but raising up the inner man by longing for itself toward eternal things, and restraining by reason all the assaults of pleasure, so that it may ponder what it is to become, and, as far as human frailty can bear, may withdraw from the care of bodily things, preferring spiritual things to carnal, so that, despising even the body itself and the pursuits of present pleasures, it may persuade one to enter upon a harder but better life, so that he who lately served lust may in good liberty serve chastity, and, drawn back from the precipices, may take up the gentle reins of fasting.
For indeed, if the weak nature of bodies is without a ruler and master, and will not obey the commanding mind, it stirs up countless shipwrecks both for itself and for its ruler, and drags him down to the most shameful lusts and to the abyss of pleasures, so that in no way does he consider honorable things, but, fleeing what is good, wallows in mire and filth.
But virtue, when it has ruled the mind after the manner of a charioteer, and, as though standing in a chariot, has restrained its impulses and various appetites with the reins of doctrine, lifts it up from lowly things to the heights, and showing it invisible and eternal things in place of visible ones, prepares for it a dwelling in the heavens and makes its friends those who, serving in the ministry of God, enjoy spiritual delights, so that what one here beheld in an image, one may there perceive in truth, and may see a brightness greater than the rays of the sun, which descends to us here in part, whence we may press on from lesser things to greater and, as it were, by letters and syllables advance toward reading, since both need these and these need those. When we shall be there, joined to the fellowship of the blessed, we shall hear: 'Well
good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many; enter into the joy of your Lord.' Let us begin the fasts of the holy fortieth (Lent) from the eleventh day of the month Phamenoth, and let us end the fasts of the week of the Lord's passion on the sixteenth day of the month Pharmuthi, in the evening of the Sabbath, the twenty-first day of the same month Pharmuthi; and on the following Lord's day let us celebrate the Pascha, on the twenty-second day of the same month.
After these let us add the seven weeks of holy Pentecost, mindful of the poor, loving God and neighbor, praying for our enemies, showing kindness to our persecutors, relieving the falls of the weak with consolation and mercy, so that the tongue may ever resound in the praises of God, so that the just judgments of the Church may in no way be destroyed by irrational leniency, nor human whims be preferred to the law of God; whose friendship if we desire, we shall obtain heavenly glory in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom to God the Father be glory and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The brethren who are with me greet you.
And you ought to know this too, that in place of the deceased bishops there have been appointed in their several sees: in the city of Niciu, in place of Theopemptus, Theodosius; in Terenuthis, Arsintheus; in the town of Geras, in place of Eudaemon, Pisozus; in Achaeus, in place of Apollo, Museus; in Athribis, in place of Isidore, Athanasius; in Cleopatris, Offellius; in the town of Latopolis, in place of Timotheus, Apelles. Write therefore to these, and receive ecclesiastical letters from them according to custom. CI. LETTER OF AUGUSTINE TO JEROME. To his most dear and most longed-for lord, and brother and fellow-presbyter to be honored in Christ, Jerome, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. I have heard that my letter has come into your hands; but that I have not yet deserved a reply, I would by no means impute to your affection;
There was undoubtedly some hindrance. Hence I recognize that the Lord is rather to be entreated by me, that he may grant your will the means of sending what you shall have written back; for the means of writing back he has already given, since, whenever you will, you can most easily do it. This too has certainly been reported to me, though whether I should believe it I doubted; yet from this also I ought not to doubt whether I should write something to you. But this it is, briefly: it has been suggested to your Charity, being told me by I know not what brethren, that I have written a book against you and sent it to Rome. Know that this is false.
I call our God to witness that I have not done this; but if perchance in some of my writings certain things are found in which I am found to have thought otherwise than you, I think you ought to recognize—or, if it cannot be recognized, to believe—that it was not written against you, but that I have written what seemed to me. And so indeed I would say this: that I am not only most ready, if anything in my writings should disturb you, to receive in brotherly fashion what you think to the contrary, rejoicing either at my correction or at your very goodwill; but I even ask and demand this of you. O that it had been permitted, if not to dwell together, at least to enjoy you as a neighbor in the Lord for frequent and sweet converse!
But since that has not been granted, I ask that you strive to preserve, and to increase and perfect, this very thing—that in Christ we may be, as far as we can, together—and that you not spurn replies, however rare. Greet with my obedience the holy brother Firmianus and all the brethren who rejoice with you and concerning you in the Lord. Mindful of us, may you be heard by the Lord in every holy desire of yours, my dearest and most longed-for lord, and brother deservedly to be honored. CII. TO AUGUSTINE. To the truly holy and most blessed pope Augustine, Jerome sends greeting in the Lord. At the very moment of the departure of our holy son Asterius the subdeacon, the letters of your Beatitude reached me, in which you make satisfaction that you did not send a book against my littleness to Rome.
I had not heard even that this was done, but copies of a certain letter, as though written to me, reached here through our brother Sisinnius the deacon, in which you exhort me to sing a palinode concerning a certain chapter of the Apostle, and to imitate Stesichorus, wavering between blame and praise of Helen, so that he who by detracting had lost his eyes, might by praising recover them. I frankly confess to your dignity that, although the style and your arguments seemed to me to be yours, nevertheless I thought I ought not rashly to trust copies of letters, lest perchance, upon my replying, you being justly aggrieved might expostulate that I ought first to have proved the discourse to be yours and so to reply. There was added to the delay the long illness of the holy and venerable Paula.
For while we sat by her, languishing for a long time, we almost forgot your letter or that of him who had written under your name, mindful of that little verse: 'Music in mourning is an unseasonable tale.' And so, if the letter is yours, write openly, or send more genuine copies, that without any rancor of stomach we may occupy ourselves in the discussion of the Scriptures, and may either amend our own error or teach that another has found fault in vain. But far be it from me that I should dare to touch anything of the books of your Beatitude. For it suffices me to prove my own things and not to carp at those of others.
For the rest, your prudence knows well that each abounds in his own opinion, and that it is childish boastfulness—which of old young men were wont to do—to seek fame for one's own name by accusing illustrious men. Nor am I so foolish as to think myself injured by the diversity of your expositions, since neither are you injured if we have thought contrary things. But this is true reproof among friends, if, not seeing our own wallet, we consider, according to Persius, the pack of others. It remains that you love one who loves you, and that, a young man in the field of the Scriptures, you do not challenge an old man. We have had our own times and have run as far as we could;
now, while you run and traverse long stretches, rest is owed to us; and at the same time—that I may say it with your leave and honor, lest you should seem to be the only one to have put something from the poets before me—remember Dares and Entellus, and the common proverb, that 'the tired ox plants his foot the more firmly.' We have dictated these things in sadness; would that we might deserve your embraces and, by mutual conference, either teach something or learn! Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, sent me his revilings with his usual rashness, which I have learned by his zeal have reached even to Africa. To these I have briefly replied in part, and I have sent you copies of his little book, intending to send a fuller work at the first opportunity, when it shall be seasonable;
in which I took care of this: that I should not injure any man's Christian reputation, but only that I might refute the lie and madness of a raving ignoramus. Remember me, holy and venerable pope. See how much I love you, that I have been unwilling to reply even when provoked, and do not believe that to be yours which perchance I might reprove in another. Brother Communis humbly greets you. CIII. TO AUGUSTINE. To the truly holy and most blessed pope Augustine, Jerome sends greeting in Christ. Last year I had sent, through our brother Asterius the subdeacon, a letter to your dignity, rendering the ready office of greeting, which I suppose was delivered to you.
Now too, through my holy brother Praesidius the deacon, I beseech, first, that you remember me; then, that you hold the bearer of these letters commended, and know him to be most truly my own, and that, in whatever necessity may require, you cherish and support him—not that he lacks anything, Christ granting it, but that he most eagerly seeks the friendships of good men and reckons it the greatest benefit to have obtained in joining these to himself. But why he has sailed to the West, you will be able to learn from his own telling. We, established in the monastery, are tossed by various waves from every side, and endure the troubles of pilgrimage. But we trust in him who said:
'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,' so that, by his granting and presidency, we may obtain the victory against our enemy the devil. I beseech you to greet, with my obeisance, our holy and venerable brother pope Alypius. The holy brethren who hasten to serve the Lord with us in the monastery greet you exceedingly. May Christ our God, the almighty, keep you safe and mindful of me, truly holy lord and pope to be received. CIV. LETTER OF AUGUSTINE TO JEROME. To the venerable and desirable, holy brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. From the time I began to write to you and to long for your writings, never has a better occasion presented itself to me than that my letter should be brought to you by a servant and most faithful minister of God, most dear to me, such as is our son Cyprian the deacon.