But just as you distinguish the dissimulation of the apostles from the practice of this present time, so I distinguish the truthful conduct of the apostle Paul then, in all these matters, from the observance of the Jewish ceremonies at this present time, however unfeigned — since then it was to be approved, but now to be detested. Thus, although we have read:
'The Law and the Prophets were until John the Baptist'; and that the Jews sought to kill Christ for this reason, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God; and that 'we have received grace for grace'; and that 'the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ'; and that through Jeremiah it was promised that God would give a new testament to the house of Judah, not according to the testament which he ordained for their fathers — nevertheless I do not think that the Lord himself was circumcised by his parents deceitfully. Or, if on account of his age he by no means forbade that, neither do I think he said deceitfully to the leper, whom certainly not that observance commanded through Moses, but he himself, had cleansed:
'Go and offer for yourself the sacrifice which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them'; nor did he go up deceitfully to the feast day — so far from doing it for the sake of ostentation before men, that he did not go up openly, but secretly. But indeed the same apostle said: 'Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.' Did he then deceive Timothy and make Christ of no profit to him? Or, because this was done deceitfully, did it therefore do no harm? But he himself did not put it thus, nor did he say 'if you be circumcised truly,' just as neither 'deceitfully,' but without any exception he said: 'If you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.'
Therefore, just as you wish here to give room to your opinion, so that you would have 'except deceitfully' understood, so I not shamelessly demand that you also allow us to understand there that it was said, 'if you be circumcised,' to those who wished to be circumcised for this reason: because they supposed that otherwise they could not be saved in Christ. With this mind, then, with this will, with this intention, whoever was then being circumcised, Christ profited him nothing at all — just as he says elsewhere plainly: 'For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died in vain.' This is declared also by what you yourself have quoted: 'You have been made void of Christ, you who are justified by the law; you have fallen from grace.'
He therefore rebukes those who believed themselves to be justified by the law, not those who observed those legal ordinances in honor of him by whom they were commanded, understanding both that they were commanded by way of foreannouncing the truth, and how long they ought to endure. Hence is that which he says: 'You are led by the Spirit; you are no longer under the law' — whence, as you gather, it appears that he who is under the law is so not dispensationally, as you think our elders wished, but truly, as I understand it: that he does not have the Holy Spirit. It seems to me a great question, what it is to be 'under the law' in the way that the apostle blames.
For I do not think that he says this on account of circumcision, or those sacrifices which, then offered by the fathers, are now not offered by Christians, and other things of that kind; but this very thing also which the law says: 'You shall not covet' — which we certainly confess that Christians ought to observe and, with the illumination of the Gospel especially, to proclaim. He calls the law holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Then he adds: 'That which is good, then, was it made death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death to me through what is good, that sin, or the sinner, might become through the commandment sinful beyond measure.' And what he here says — that sin is made through the commandment sinful beyond measure — this he says elsewhere: 'The law entered in, that the offense might abound';
'but where the offense abounded, grace did much more abound.' And elsewhere, when he was speaking above of the dispensation of grace — that it is grace itself that justifies — he says, as though asking a question: 'What then is the law?' And to this question he immediately replied: 'It was placed for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.' These, therefore, he says are damnably 'under the law,' whom the law makes guilty as not fulfilling the law, while, by not understanding the benefit of grace for doing the precepts of God, they presume as it were upon their own powers with proud elation. For the fullness of the law is charity; but the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, not through ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
But to explain this matter as fully as is sufficient, perhaps a lengthy discourse, and one belonging to its own proper volume, is owed. If, then, that which the law says — 'You shall not covet' — if human weakness has not been aided by the grace of God, holds a man guilty under itself and condemns him rather as a transgressor than frees him as a sinner: how much more could those things which were commanded for the sake of signification — circumcision and the rest, which it was necessary should be abolished as the revelation of grace became more widely known — justify no one!
Yet they were not on that account to be shunned as the diabolical sacrileges of the Gentiles, even when the grace itself had already begun to be revealed which had been foreannounced by such shadows; but they were to be permitted a little while, especially to those who had come from that people to whom they were given; but afterward, when they had, as it were, been buried with honor, they were to be irreparably abandoned by all Christians. But this which you say — 'not dispensationally, as our elders wished' — what does it mean, I pray you? For either it is that which I call an officious lie, so that this 'dispensation' is a duty as it were of lying honorably; or, what else it might be, I do not at all see, unless perhaps by adding the name 'dispensation' it comes about that a lie is not a lie.
But if that is absurd, why then do you not openly say that an officious lie is to be defended? Unless perhaps the name moves you, because the word 'officium' (duty) is not so customary in ecclesiastical books — a word which our Ambrose did not fear, who chose to entitle certain of his books, full of useful instructions, 'On Duties (De Officiis).' Or, if anyone lies officiously, is he to be blamed, but if dispensationally, to be approved? I ask you. Let him lie, where he has read it, who thinks this — for this too is a great question, whether it is ever right for a good man, indeed a Christian man, to lie; to such it has been said, 'Let your speech be Yes, yes; No, no'; and who hear with faith: 'You will destroy all who speak a lie.'
但如我所說，這也是另一個大問題——讓那持此看法的人自行選擇他所願的、可在何處說謊之處吧，只要人不可動搖地相信並持守：在聖經的執筆者、作者、尤其正典的作者身上，謊言全然不存在；免得基督的管家（論到他們曾有話說：「所求於管家的，是要他有忠心」）竟彷彿為自己忠心地學會了什麼大事——就是為「真理的施行」而說謊；然而在拉丁文中，「信實」（fides）之所以如此得名，正因所說的必成就（fit quod dicitur）。但凡所說的既已成就之處，就斷無說謊的餘地了。
But, as I have said, this too is another and a great question — let him who thinks thus choose what he wishes, as to where he may lie, provided only that it be unshakably believed and defended that from the writers, the authors of the holy Scriptures, and especially the canonical ones, a lie is altogether absent; lest the dispensers of Christ, of whom it is said, 'Here now it is required among dispensers, that a man be found faithful,' should seem to have learned faithfully some great thing for themselves — namely, to lie for the dispensation of truth; whereas faith itself is said in the Latin tongue to be so named because that is done which is said (fit quod dicitur). But where that is done which is said, there is certainly no place for lying.
The faithful dispenser, therefore, the apostle Paul, beyond doubt exhibits to us fidelity in his writing, because he was a dispenser of truth, not of falsehood. And through this he wrote truly that he had seen Peter not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel, and had withstood him to his face, because he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize. But Peter himself accepted what Paul did profitably, out of the liberty of charity, with the devotion of holy and kindly piety and humility; and thus he furnished to posterity a rarer and holier example than Paul — namely, that they should not disdain to be corrected even by their juniors, if perchance they had left the path of rectitude — while Paul furnished the example that inferiors might confidently dare, for the defense of Gospel truth and with fraternal charity preserved, to resist even their superiors.
For while it is better not to turn aside from the path one holds, whether in anything or in nothing, yet it is far more admirable and praiseworthy to accept willingly one who corrects, than boldly to correct one who goes astray. The praise, therefore, of just liberty in Paul, and of holy humility in Peter, ought — as far as it seems to me according to my small measure — rather to have been defended against the slandering Porphyry, than that a greater occasion of disparagement should be given to him, whereby he might far more bitingly accuse Christians of either deceitfully writing their own letters or deceitfully bearing the sacraments of their God.
You demand of me that I show at least some one person whose opinion I have followed in this matter, since you have named so many who preceded you in what you assert — asking that, if I reprove you as erring in this, I should suffer you to err with such men, of whom, I confess, I have read none; but, since there are about six or seven of them, of these you yourself also undermine the authority of four. For the Laodicean, whose name you keep silent, you say has lately gone out from the church; Alexander, moreover, you call an ancient heretic; and Origen and Didymus I read reproved by you in your more recent works, and that not moderately, nor on moderate questions — although you had wonderfully praised Origen before.
With these men, then, I think it better to err — for you yourself will not endure to be separated from them — although this is said as if they had not erred on this very point. For who is there who would wish to err in company with just anyone at all? Three, therefore, remain: Eusebius of Emesa, Theodore of Heraclea, and the one whom you mention a little later, John, who not long ago governed the church of Constantinople in the episcopal rank.
Furthermore, if you were to inquire or recall what our Ambrose thought on this matter, and likewise what our Cyprian thought, you would perhaps find that we too are not without those whom we might follow in what we affirm — although, as I said a little before, I owe this free servitude to the canonical Scriptures alone, so as to follow them alone in such a way that I do not doubt that their authors erred in nothing whatever in them, and set down nothing deceitfully. And so, when I seek a third, in order that I too may set three against three, I could indeed, as I think, easily find one, had I read widely. Yet in place of all these — nay, above all these — the Apostle Paul himself comes to my aid.
To him I flee for refuge; to him, from all who think otherwise, I appeal against the expositors of his letters; questioning him, I entreat and inquire of him concerning what he wrote to the Galatians — that he had seen Peter not walking uprightly toward the truth of the gospel, and had for that reason withstood him to his face, because by that pretense he was compelling the Gentiles to Judaize — whether he wrote the truth, or perhaps lied by some accommodating falsehood. And I hear him, a little above, at the very opening of that same narrative, crying out to me with a devout voice: «Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.» Let any who think otherwise grant me pardon;
I put more trust in so great an apostle, who swears in and for his own letters, than in any most learned man disputing about another's letters. Nor am I afraid to say that Paul is thus defended — that he did not feign the error of the Jews, but was truly not in error — since he was not feigning error, who by apostolic liberty, as befitted that time, commended those ancient sacraments by performing them where there was need, ordained prophetically not by Satan's cunning to deceive men, but by God's providence to foretell things to come; nor was he truly in the error of the Jews, who not only knew, but also urgently and sharply preached, that those men erred who thought these things must be imposed upon the Gentiles or were necessary for the justification of any of the faithful.
But as to my having said that he became to the Jews as a Jew and to the Gentiles as a Gentile, not by the craft of one who lies, but by the affection of one who suffers-with — in what sense I meant it, you seem to me to have paid too little attention; or rather, perhaps I was not able to explain this sufficiently. For I did not say this in the sense that he mercifully pretended those things, but that he did not pretend those which he did in likeness to the Jews, just as neither did he pretend those which he did in likeness to the Gentiles — which you also mentioned, and in that point helped me, which I not ungratefully acknowledge.
For when I had asked you in my letter how he could be thought to have become to the Jews as a Jew because he deceitfully undertook the sacraments of the Jews, whereas he also became to the Gentiles as a Gentile and yet did not deceitfully undertake the sacrifices of the Gentiles, you replied that he became to the Gentiles as a Gentile in this: that he received the uncircumcised, that he indifferently permitted men to eat of foods which the Jews condemn. Whereupon I ask whether he did even this feignedly; and if that is most absurd and most false, then so also were those things in which he conformed to the custom of the Jews done by a prudent liberty, not by a servile necessity, nor — what is more unworthy — by a deceitful dispensation rather than a faithful one.
For to the faithful, and to those who have known the truth, as he himself testifies — unless perhaps here too he deceives — every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving. Therefore, even to Paul himself — who was not only a man, but also a most faithful dispenser; not only one who knew, but also a teacher of the truth — every creature of God in foods was assuredly good, not feignedly, but truly. Why then, by undertaking nothing feignedly of the sacred rites and ceremonies of the Gentiles, but by thinking and teaching the truth concerning foods and circumcision, did he nevertheless become as a Gentile to the Gentiles — and yet could not become as a Jew to the Jews except by deceitfully undertaking the sacraments of the Jews?
Why, when the wild olive was grafted in, did he preserve the truthful fidelity of the dispensation, yet to the natural branches — set not outside but within the tree — did he hold out some veil, I know not what, of a dispensatory pretense? Why, having become as a Gentile to the Gentiles, does he teach what he thinks and think what he does; but, having become as a Jew to the Jews, does he shut up one thing in his breast and bring forth another in his words, in his deeds, in his writings? But far be it to think so. For to both he owed love out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
And by this he became all things to all men, that he might gain all — not by the craft of one who lies, but by the affection of one who suffers-with; that is, not by deceitfully doing all the evils of men, but by tending, with the diligence of a compassionate physician, to all the evils of all others as though they were his own. Therefore, since he by no means refused that those sacraments of the Old Testament should be performed even by himself, he was not mercifully deceiving, but not deceiving at all; and in this way, commending that they had been commanded by the Lord God for a dispensation up to a certain time, he distinguished them from the sacrilegious sacred rites of the Gentiles.
But at that time, not by the craft of one who lies but by the affection of one who suffers-with, he became to the Jews as a Jew, when he desired to free them from that error by which they either refused to believe in Christ, or supposed that through their ancient priesthoods and the observances of ceremonies they could be cleansed from sins and made saved — freeing them as though he himself were held by that error; loving indeed his neighbor as himself, and doing to others these things which he would wish to be done to him by others, if he had need of it. And when the Lord had admonished this, he added: «For this is the law and the prophets.» This affection of one who suffers-with, in the same letter to the Galatians, he enjoins, saying:
«If a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted.» See whether he did not say to become as that man, in order that you may gain him — not indeed that one should deceitfully commit the very fault, or feign that he has it, but that in another's fault he should consider what might also befall himself, and so mercifully come to the aid of another as he would wish another to come to his own aid — that is, not by the craft of one who lies, but by the affection of one who suffers-with.
So to the Jew, so to the Gentile, so to any man whatever set in some error or sin, Paul — not by feigning what he was not, but by suffering-with, because it could have been so, as one who reflected that he too was a man — became all things to all men, that he might gain all. Look, I beg you, if you please, for a little while upon yourself — yourself, I say, toward me; and recall, or, if you have them written down, read again your words in that letter which you sent me, the shorter one, through our brother Cyprian, now my colleague — how truthful, how genuine, how full of the affection of charity they were, when, having complained that I had committed certain things against you, you gravely added: «In this friendship is wounded, in this the rights of intimacy are violated;»
«lest we seem to contend childishly, and to give to our supporters or detractors on either side material for strife.» These words I perceive to have been spoken by you not only from the heart, but also with a kindly disposition toward giving me counsel. Then you add what, even if you had not added it, would have been evident, and you say: «I write these things because I desire to love you purely and in a Christian way, and to retain nothing in my mind which is at variance with my lips.»
O holy man, and — as God sees my soul — beloved by me with a truthful heart: this very thing which you set down in your letter, which I do not doubt you displayed toward me, this very same thing I believe the Apostle Paul altogether displayed in his letters, not to any single man, but to Jews and Greeks and all the nations, his sons, whom he had begotten in the gospel and whom he was in travail to bring forth; and then to so many thousands of the faithful Christians of after times, for whose sake that letter was committed to memory — that he might retain nothing in his mind which was at variance with his lips.
Surely you too became as it were myself, not by the craft of one who lies, but by the affection of one who suffers-with, when you considered that I must no more be left in that fault into which you supposed I had fallen, than you would wish yourself to be, if you had fallen in that way. Wherefore, giving thanks to your kindly mind toward me, I at the same time ask that you also not be angry with me because, when certain things in your little works disturbed me, I made my disturbance known to you — wishing this to be preserved toward me by all men, which I myself preserved toward you: that whatever they think reprehensible in my writings, they should neither shut up in a treacherous breast nor so reprove it among others that they keep silence with me — judging that friendship is thereby rather wounded, and the rights of intimacy violated.
For I do not know whether those are to be reckoned Christian friendships in which the common proverb prevails more — «compliance begets friends, truth begets hatred» — than the ecclesiastical one: «more faithful are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.» Accordingly, let us rather teach our dearest ones, who most sincerely favor our labors — with as much insistence as we can — so that they may know it can happen that among the dearest something may be said in contradiction by one side or the other, and yet charity itself not be diminished, nor truth beget hatred, which is owed to friendship; whether what is said in contradiction be true, or whether, whatever it be, it is said with a truthful heart, not retaining in the mind what is at variance with the lips.
Let our brethren then believe — your intimates, to whom you bear witness that they are vessels of Christ — that I was made vexed, and that no slight grief lies in my heart over this, that my letter came into the hands of many before it could reach you, to whom it was written. But in what way this came about, it is both long to relate and, unless I am mistaken, superfluous, since it suffices, if any credit be given me in this, that it was not done with the disposition which is supposed, nor was it at all of my will or arrangement or consent or even so much as my thought that it should happen. If they do not believe this — which, with God as my witness, I declare — I have nothing further that I can do.
Yet far be it from me to believe that they suggest these things to your holiness with a malicious mind, to stir up enmities between us — which may the mercy of the Lord our God turn away from us! — but rather that, without any intention of harm, they easily suspect human vices in a man. For this it is fair for me to believe of them, if they are vessels of Christ made and appointed not unto dishonor but unto honor in a great house, by God unto a good work. But if, after this testimony of mine — should it come to their notice — they should wish to do so, how wrongly they would act, you too can see.
As for my having written that I had sent no book against you to Rome — I wrote thus because I distinguished the name of a «book» from that letter (whence I had supposed that you had heard of something else altogether, I know not what); and to Rome I had sent not even that letter, but had sent it to you; and I did not judge it to be against you, since I knew I had written it in the sincerity of friendship, whether to admonish you, or that you or I might be corrected by you. But, your intimates apart, I entreat you yourself, by the grace whereby we have been redeemed, that whatever good things of yours — granted you by the Lord's goodness — I have set down in my letters, you do not suppose I have set them down by insidious flattery; and if I have sinned against you in anything, that you forgive me.
Nor should you draw to yourself, further than I meant, that which was mentioned by me concerning the fate of some poet or other — mentioned perhaps more ineptly than learnedly — since I immediately subjoined that I did not say this to the end that you should recover the eyes of your heart (which, I say, far be it that you should have lost), but that you might advert to how sound and vigilant those eyes were which you possess. It was therefore solely on account of the palinode — that is, if we should write anything which we ought to demolish by a later writing, that it should be imitated — and not on account of the blindness of Stesichorus, which I neither attributed to your heart nor feared, that I thought that matter should be touched upon. And again and again I ask that you correct me confidently, wherever you shall perceive that I have need of this.
For although, according to the titles of honors which the usage of the church has now obtained, the episcopate is greater than the presbyterate, yet in many matters Augustine is less than Jerome — although correction is not to be shunned nor disdained even from any lesser man whatever. Concerning your translation, you have now persuaded me by what usefulness you wished to render the Scriptures out of the Hebrew: namely, that those things which have been passed over or corrupted by the Jews you might bring into the open.
But I beg you deign to make known: by which Jews? Whether by those very ones who, before the Lord's coming, translated — and, if it be so, which of them, or which one — or by these later ones, who for that reason may be thought either to have taken away something from the Greek codices or to have corrupted something in them, lest they be refuted by those testimonies concerning the Christian faith. As for why those earlier ones would have wished to do this, I do not find. Then send us, I beg, your translation of the Septuagint, which I did not know you had published.
I also desire to read your book, of which you made mention, «On the Best Method of Translating,» and further to learn how the translator's skill in languages is to be balanced against the conjectures of those who, by discussing, thoroughly treat the Scriptures — men who must needs, even if they be of a right and single faith, produce various opinions in the obscurity of many passages, although that very variety in no way discords from the unity of the selfsame faith; just as also one and the same expositor can, according to the same faith, expound one and the same passage in one way and another, because its obscurity allows of this.
For this reason, moreover, I long for your translation of the Septuagint: both that we may, as far as we can, be freed from the ignorance of so many Latin translators — who, whatever their quality, have dared this — and that those who think I envy your useful labors may at length at last, if it can be, understand that this is why I am unwilling that your translation from the Hebrew be read in the churches: lest, by bringing forth as it were something new against the authority of the Septuagint, we disturb with great scandal the peoples of Christ, whose ears and hearts have grown accustomed to hearing that translation which was approved even by the apostles.
Whence that little plant in Jonah — if in the Hebrew it is neither ivy nor gourd, but I know not what other thing which, resting on its own trunk, rises up needing no props to sustain it — I should now prefer that «gourd» be read in all the Latin copies. For I do not think the Seventy set this down without reason, unless because they knew it to be like this too. I think I have replied to your three letters — enough, or perhaps more than enough — two of which I received through Cyprian, one through Firmus. Write back what shall seem good, for the instructing of us or of others. And I will give more diligent effort, as far as the Lord helps me, that the letters which I write to you may reach you before they reach anyone by whom they may be more widely dispersed.
For I confess that I too do not wish that to happen to me concerning your letters to me, which you most justly complain has been done concerning mine to you. Yet let there please us mutually not only the charity, but also the liberty of friendship, that you may not keep silence with me, nor I with you, concerning what in our letters moves us in turn — with that disposition, of course, which in fraternal love does not displease the eyes of God. But if you think this cannot be done between us without a pernicious offense to that very love, let it not be done. For that charity which I would wish to have with you is assuredly greater; but better is this lesser one than none at all. CXVII. TO A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER DWELLING IN GAUL.
A certain brother from Gaul reported to me that he had a virgin sister and a widowed mother, who dwelt in the same city in separate little cells, and who — whether for the loneliness of their lodging, or to guard their small possessions — had taken to themselves certain clerics as protectors, so that they were joined to strangers with greater disgrace than they had been separated from one another. And when I groaned and signified far more by silence than by speech, «I beg you,» he said, «rebuke them with your letter and recall them to concord, so that the mother may acknowledge her daughter, the daughter her mother.» To whom I said:
«You lay upon me an excellent province,» I said, «that I, a stranger, should reconcile those whom a son and a brother could not — as if I held an episcopal chair, and were not shut in a cell and removed far from the crowds, either bewailing past vices or striving to avoid present ones. But it is also unfitting to lie hidden in body and to roam through the world with the tongue.» And he: «You are too fearful,» he says; «where is that former constancy in which, rubbing down the city with much salt, you brought forth something Lucilian?» «This is the very thing,» I say, «that puts me to flight and does not suffer me to part my lips.