IX. THE LETTER OF SECUNDINUS THE MANICHAEAN TO SAINT AUGUSTINE. To Augustine, deservedly honourable and praiseworthy and uniquely to be revered, Secundinus. I hold and render thanks to the ineffable and most sacred Majesty and to His firstborn, the king of all lights, Jesus Christ; I hold thanks and as a suppliant offer them to the Holy Spirit, because they have granted and afforded me the occasion whereby I might securely greet your excellent and saintly holiness, O lord deservedly praiseworthy and uniquely to be revered. And no wonder;
for they are most fit and most powerful both to bestow all good things and to ward off all evils, by whom they may defend your goodwill with their bulwarks and snatch it from that evil—not that which is nothing, nor that which is begotten by the contriving and suffering of mortals, but that which is prepared so that it may come. Woe, however, to him who shall have offered himself an occasion to that same evil.
For you are worthy to obtain such gifts from these same powers, and that they should become the nourishers of your truth—truly a lamp which the right hand of truth has set on the lampstand of your heart, lest at the coming of a thief the patrimony of your treasure be squandered; and that they should bid that house remain without falling, which you have established not upon the sand of error but upon the rock of knowledge; and that they should drive away from us that savage spirit who instils fear and faithlessness into men, so as to turn souls away from the narrow path of the Saviour: whose every assault is poured forth through those princes against whom the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, confesses that he has entered into combat.
For he says that he does not have his combat against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the spiritual forces of wickedness which are in the heavenly places. And rightly so. For who would take up arms against arms, and not rather against the armed man who is set in motion? For as the bodies of men are the weapons of sin, so the saving precepts are the weapons of righteousness. This Paul attests, this Manichaeus himself attests. The fight, therefore, is not of arms, but of the spirits who use those same arms; and they fight for the sake of souls. In the midst of these is set the soul, to which from the beginning its own nature gave the victory. If it shall have made this victory together with the spirit of virtues, it will have with it eternal life and will possess that kingdom to which our Lord invites;
but if it begins to be drawn by the spirit of vices, and consents, and after consenting feels remorse, it will have a fount of pardon for these defilements. For it is led by the commingling of the flesh, not by its own will. But if, when it has come to know itself, it consents to evil and does not arm itself against the enemy, it has sinned by its own will. Yet if it is again ashamed to have erred, it will find ready the Author of mercies. For it is not punished because it sinned, but because it did not grieve over its sin.
But if it departs unpardoned, still bound to that same sin, then it shall be shut out; then it shall be likened to the foolish virgin; then it shall be heir of the left hand; then it shall be driven by the Lord from the wedding banquet because of its black garments, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; and it shall go with the devil to the fire of his own origin: which fire your wondrous prudence either records as made from an archangel, or admits to be nothing. Why then shall the righteous reign? Why shall the apostles and martyrs be crowned? All this, forsooth, because they have conquered—nothing? Oh, how the power of the conqueror is brought to nought, when the adversary is proclaimed to be of no strength at all!
Change, I beg you, your opinion; lay aside the faithlessness of the Punic race, and turn back your retreat to the truth—a retreat made through fear—and do not excuse yourself with these lies. For my own meagre talent, such as it is, of a Roman man, has read some of the writings of your revered worthiness, in which you so rage against the truth as Hortensius raged against philosophy. And so, when with suspended mind and keen eye I had gone over these again and again, I found everywhere a supreme orator and almost the god of all eloquence, but nowhere did I discover a Christian; armed indeed against all things, but affirming nothing—whereas you ought rather to have shown yourself skilled in knowledge, not in speech. But this I cannot keep silent to your most patient holiness;
for it has seemed to me—and assuredly it is so—that you never were a Manichaean, and that you could not know the unknown mysteries of its secret, and that under the name of Manichaeus you persecute yourself like a Hannibal and a Mithridates. For I confess that the marbles of the Anician house do not gleam with such diligence and so great industry as your writings shine forth with eloquence. Had you been willing to bring this eloquence into accord with the truth, it would surely have stood as a great ornament for us. Do not, I pray, come against your own nature; do not be the scales of error, by which the side of the Saviour is struck. For you see Him crucified both in the whole world and in every soul—which soul never had a nature of taking offence. And you therefore,
you who are of that very soul, dismiss now, I beg, these empty accusations, and leave aside these superfluous controversies. For so long a time, set in the midst of darkness together with your parent, you never sneered; yet when found in the midst of the sun and moon, you became an accuser. Who then will be your advocate before the just tribunal of the Judge, when both in word and in deed you begin to be convicted by your own testimony? The Persian, whom you have accused, will not be present. This excepted, who will console you weeping? Who will save the Punic man? Or has it been corrected in the Gospel, that the broad way does not lead down to destruction? Or is it false in Paul, that each one shall have to render an account of his own works?
Oh, would that, withdrawing from Manichaeus, you had sought the Academy, or had interpreted the wars of the Romans, who conquered all things! How great, how excellent the things you would have found there, and you—a man assuredly chaste, of all modesty and poverty—would not have gone over to the nations of the Jews, barbarous in their morals. Together with the precepts you insert fables, and you bring in a wife who is a harlot, and: "You shall beget the children of a harlot," and: "In committing fornication the land shall commit fornication against the Lord," and: "You shall not wash your hands after intercourse with your spouse," and: "Put your hand under my thigh," and: "Kill and eat," and: "Increase and multiply." Or did the lions in the den please you, because there were no cages? Or did the barrenness of Sarah grieve you, whose husband, the betrayer of her chastity, had come forward feigning her to be his sister?
But perhaps, after the contest of Dares and Entellus, you had wished to await the wrestling-match of Jacob and his own struggle? Or had you set out to behold the number of the Amorites, or the medley of fruits in Noah's ark? I know that you have always held these things in hatred; I know that you have always loved great things—things that forsake the earth, that seek the heavens, that mortify bodies, that quicken souls. Who then is he who has so suddenly changed you? Although it is too absurd to say these things to your holiness. For you yourself are not ignorant how very wicked and how malignant he is, who even with such great craftiness wages war against the faithful and the loftiest of men, so that he both compelled Peter in a single night thrice to deny the Lord, and did not permit Thomas to believe Him when He rose again:
wounds which nevertheless were healed by the medicine of pardon. But how boldly did he contrive this—that, while the Lord was sowing the best seed, that one should mingle in the tares, and should snatch Iscariot from so great a Shepherd; and that, when it came at last to the punishment of the cross, he should kindle the scribes and Pharisees to His ruin, so that they cried out that Barabbas should be released and Jesus crucified. We have escaped, therefore, because we have followed a spiritual Saviour. For so far did his boldness break forth that, if our Lord had been carnal, all our hope would have been cut off. And yet not even with the very shame of the cross could he be sated: nay rather, raging, on the one side he forced Him to be crowned with thorns, on the other to be put to death with vinegar;
on the one side to be struck by the soldier's lance, on the other to be blasphemed by the mouth of the thief on the left. But afterwards his iniquity grew so great that, when both He and His apostles had ascended thither, he framed diverse controversies under their name—what is worse—dividing the dignity of the catholic title among all the superstitious. For I pass over how he armed each of the disciples against their masters, how he deceived Hymenaeus, how Alexander, what things he committed at Antioch, what at Smyrna, what at Iconium: I now add those things which the present multitude is busy about, from which virtue is as far removed as it is shut off from the people—for there is no virtue to which the crowd attains, and a crowd, above all, of women.
But I fear to make their secret doings public, lest the crimes begun by others should be doubled. Although it belongs to the wise to bear both, to laugh at both, and to strive only after that which procures blessedness, which brings life to birth. And yet again and again, as a suppliant, I implore, I pray, yea again and again I beseech you: first, that you deign to grant pardon, if by any word your golden breast has been tickled; for I have done this out of too great an ardour, because I do not wish you to be torn away from our flock—from which I myself, straying, had almost perished, had I not quickly withdrawn myself from the iniquitous nature of that communion. Then, that you may reconcile yourself to her who has in nothing wronged you: return to her who, if you return, will not be angry with you on account of your fault.
For she knows not only to forgive seven times: nay rather, she has the power both of binding and of loosing. Do not feign to flatter yourself. You who lately saw, do not wish to learn, you who are able to teach. Dismiss the glory of men, if you wish to please Christ. In our times renew Paul, who, though he was a teacher of the Jewish Law, having obtained from the Lord the grace of the apostolate, counted as dung the things he had thought advantageous, that he might gain Christ. Come to the aid of your soul, so luminous, for you do not know at what hour the thief is to come. Do not adorn the dead, for you are the adornment of the living. Do not be a companion of the broad road, for the Amorite awaits there, but hasten to the narrow way, that you may attain eternal life.
Cease, I beg, to shut up Christ in a womb, lest you yourself be again enclosed in a womb; cease to make of two natures one, for the judgment of the Lord draws near. Woe to those who shall receive it, who turn what is sweet into bitterness! But if you are in doubt about the beginning, if you waver about the origin of the conflict, an account may be rendered by a daylong discussion and a peaceable conversation. Yet this I make known to your most sagacious goodness, that there are certain matters which cannot be expounded in such a way that they be understood; for the divine reason surpasses the breasts of mortals.
Take, for instance, this very point: how there are two natures, or why He who could suffer nothing waged war; and likewise concerning the new age which he too mentions, namely that, when the great upheavals of that earth have been cut off, this age is built up. But who would admit that there is any cutting-off among divine things—unless, that is, you make it a figure of the interpreter addressed to his hearer, since by the latter the words are cut short and in the former they are composed? And although the expounder may have said many things which the hearer holds within himself, yet they have not departed from the expounder: unless you think likewise concerning that age too, and what is said is foolish enough and inept. So also concerning the conflict, which unless you first conjecture—
For God is wholly justice, and the utmost crime is to invade what belongs to another; and the contrary nature came forward to this very end. He indeed could suffer nothing, because He was foreknowing; He would have seemed to have consented to the crime had He not fought: and therefore He set a great power against the one that came, so that His justice might be defiled by no consent to sacrilege. For He was so defined as just by Him that He neither ever sins nor ever consents to a sinner. This too, because God was mighty in His own kingdom in nature, as omnipotent and judge. These things, if indeed they have been thus stated, were stated not as He was made, but as I have been unable to attain. As yet they do not give sufficient satisfaction to perfidy.
Neither has the sun risen for the blind, nor has a voice been heard by the deaf, nor are feasts prepared for the dead. But the fact that places cannot be assigned to natures—this is what the human condition calls unutterable and ineffable. The Saviour, however, for whom all things are easy, calls these two things 'right' and 'left,' 'within' and 'without,' 'come' and 'withdraw.' But you make a thing reversed and set your foot, just as there is a sphere, life, salvation, light, law, order, power; if you say a vowel and a mute, you call the long a short. Things that by their natures do not sound thus, nevertheless surely signify two things, separated from one another.
But when such things are set forth by me before your wondrous and lofty wisdom, it is just as if the Jordan should lend water to the ocean, or a lamp give light to the sun, or the people bestow holiness upon the bishop. Wherefore you must bear with whatever this letter contains. For I too, did I not know your divine patience, which readily pardons every man, would never have written in such a manner—though you may see that I have touched the most excellent matters only in summary and have taken the greatest care not to seem long-winded to you. Therefore let these things find favour with your holiness, and the manner of our salvation; otherwise from this you could generate thousands of volumes, O lord deservedly praiseworthy and uniquely to be honoured. Farewell.