講道與書信 第 221 章

1. But now that the weak annotation both of Quesnel and of Harduin has been snatched away, and once those things have been rejected by which the praised profession of faith with its subjoined chapters, or anathematisms, was wrongly adjudged to others than to Leo and the bishops of Spain, it still remains to discourse concerning the writings of Augustine, among which Quesnel alone contends that the document of which we treat holds a place, indeed in an enlarged form. He says that it is cited by the Master of the Sentences, in book III, distinction 21, near the end, in these words: 「according to which reasoning (he says) Augustine says, If anyone shall have said, and believed, that the Son of God is a passible God, let him be anathema.」 The passage (says the same Parisian editor) is noted in Augustine's margin by a rather recent hand, as I think:

「A sermon on Faith, which is the third for Thursday in the Lord's Supper (Maundy Thursday).」 In truth, in the tenth volume of his Works there exists sermon 129 「on the season,」 entitled 「on right Faith,」 which the doctors of Louvain did not reject into the appendix, and therefore judged to be a genuine offspring of Augustine. Thus far Quesnel, who, so carried away by zeal for his own party, brings forward into the midst various conjectures—but very slight, and mutually conflicting, and contributing nothing to the point—so that he seems to contend or to play with mere trifles and words, as will be plain to readers. In explaining this matter, we should certainly have to be unavenged, if we should wish to note down, and then to reject, one by one, the things that he there contrives. But we deem it better to reduce the question to certain particular

heads, so that from thence we may clearly understand how far he has departed from the truth. 2. And first indeed Augustine, in the year 393, when he was still a presbyter, on the occasion of the general council of Africa at Hippo then held in the sacristy of the Basilica of Peace, disputing against the Manichaeans, so discoursed concerning the divine Persons that he employs not a single formula of speech akin to the words of the praised profession, nor does he hint at, assail, or refute a single one of those errors, or of the sources of errors, which the praised profession indicates and expresses.

Nay rather, if we carefully consider those things which were there said concerning the Holy Spirit, cultivators of the truth will judge that the doctrine of the African Church was then very far removed from the institutions of the Apostolic See. For at that time this dogma had not yet been so copiously disputed by learned and great masters of divine things; and therefore, when they preached that He is the gift of God, yet they did not preach Him as a Son begotten of the Father, nor as produced from the Son like a grandson of the Father, nor that there are two first principles of all things, as the Manichaeans wrongly opined.

「But concerning the Holy Spirit (he says) it has not yet been so copiously and diligently disputed by learned and great treaters of the divine Scriptures, that it can easily be understood also His own property by which it comes about, as His own, that we can call Him neither Son nor Father, but only the Holy Spirit—except that they preach Him to be the gift of God, so that we may believe God to give a gift not inferior to Himself. Yet they hold that they do not preach the Holy Spirit as begotten like a Son of the Father, for there is one only Christ.」

「Nor from the Son as a grandson of the most high Father; nor yet that which is His, is to owe to none, but to the Father from whom are all things—lest we constitute two principles without principle, which is most false, and most absurd, and proper not to the Catholic faith, but to certain heretics.」 Since therefore in Augustine's age the question concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit was among the Africans too obscure, the Fathers, learned in the sacred Scriptures, called Him God only, gift, love—not Son, not the Father's grandson. But they never preached Him as proceeding from the Father and the Son as from one single principle.

By what reasoning, therefore, can these things cohere with the doctrine of the Apostolic See, sufficiently expressed in that profession, which is filled with far other, clearer and more congruent formulas and phrases of speaking? Surely, if the phrases of speaking of the Apostolic See had also come into use among the Africans, it would have most befitted Augustine to use them in the exposition of the faith and of the Creed. Since he did not employ them, since concerning the Holy Spirit it had not yet been so copiously and diligently disputed by learned and great treaters of the divine Scriptures, this is surely a proof that the praised profession of faith cannot savor of Augustine's age, style, or doctrine. 3.

But neither do those things supply firm arguments for Quesnel's opinion which Augustine, already assumed to the episcopate, answered to the consultation of Orosius; nor those which are found to be read in his other Works, and chiefly in the book On Heresies, composed in the year 428. For Augustine's Works of this kind have nothing from which it can be conjectured that the profession of faith of which we treat is a genuine offspring of the same. In the first place, therefore, as regards the book against the Priscillianists and Origenists inscribed to Orosius, those who have surveyed this work with their own eyes will judge that there is contained in it nothing at all similar or consonant to this profession of faith.

For in the opening he confesses that he does not wish to run through all the things expressed in Orosius's memorandum; 「For in certain of our little works (he says)…」 5. But in what manner that barbarian incursion and invasion had come about, I think is sufficiently clear to all the learned. For there is no one who is ignorant that they, joined by treaty with Attalus as friends and auxiliaries, were at first received into the bosom of the Aquitanians; but suddenly, Attalus being spurned, they, made ministers of divine vengeance, turned themselves in safety to plunderings and burnings—as Paulinus the consular also narrated in his poem the Eucharisticus. But this Paulinus, sprung from the noble consular Ausonian family, sets forth two things concerning himself, of which I judge the latter to pertain marvelously to our matter.

He confesses first that he dissented from Attalus, who had created him count and curator of the largesses, since he already knew that this office could subsist with no sense at all. For then indeed Paulinus, having spurned the party of the tyrant Attalus, followed the Gothic side. But the other, and worse thing—which, wrongly done, he bewailed with bitter penitence—was this, says Baronius: that, being a Christian man, he had turned aside to reprobated dogmas of the faith; but that he clung to wicked dogmas for the whole space of fifteen years, the following verses not obscurely reveal, in which he records himself restored to Catholic communion:

Afterward, when the fifth three-year period had now run its course, and at the appointed time Easter duly came round again, returning to your holy altars, O Christ God, and rejoicing—by your mercy—I received your sacraments. But with what bonds of heresy Paulinus remained so long fettered, Baronius inquires, and judges it probable that he was defiled and entangled by the shameful errors of the Priscillianists. For by the testimony of Sulpicius Severus and others we have already seen that in that province most illustrious men and women were seduced by Priscillian and his followers as they set out for Rome; whom divine vengeance deservedly pursued, since to abolish the lewdness of that heresy neither sacred, nor ecclesiastical, nor civil laws had obtained any force.

And indeed the very emperors of the Christian world, in order best to provide for the affairs of the catholic faith, a little before the Vandals, Goths, Alans, and other Barbarians ravaged the Gauls and the Spains, enacted various laws out of hatred for this Priscillianist heresy. For Honorius Augustus passed a law against these same men in the West, whereby he commands Senator, the praetorian prefect, diligently to inquire into the Manichees and the Phrygians (that is, the Priscillianists), and to restrain them by various kinds of penalties. But so that they too might be destroyed in the parts of the East, the emperor Theodosius Augustus applied his zeal;

namely when, by two rescripts issued to Autherius the praetorian prefect, he decreed against the Montanists, Priscillianists, and Eunomians every punishment short of death. But what came of it? Since through the sloth, wickedness, avarice, or false religion of the imperial ministers the obedience to those laws had been neglected, by the working of divine vengeance the Roman empire was utterly destroyed in those regions, and the peoples themselves, deprived of their goods, their liberty, and even their life, paid the due penalties of heresy and of their own lewdness.

Since therefore such and so great disturbances vexed the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the kingdoms of the Spains and Gallaecia, those Innocentian decrees could in no way be carried into execution, especially because the peoples of Spain and Gallaecia were then compelled to obey not one prince alone but two, both defiled with the stain of the Arians. For in the Spains Athaulf, in the year of Christ 414, was the first to reign of the Gothic nation. But scarcely had one year of his reign been completed when he was slain by a certain Goth; and Segeric, succeeding him, is himself likewise killed after six months. To these fourteen other Arian kings of the same stock succeeded, down to the year 568.

But in Gallaecia and Lusitania princes of the Suevic stock reigned, of whom the first was Hermeric, who, departing after 32 years of rule, in the year 440 had Rechila as his successor. He, however, having spent but seven years in power, left the reins of the kingdom to Recared, who, instructed in the catholic religion, permitted ecclesiastical affairs to be set in order without difficulty by holy bishops.