(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.


ST. AUGUSTIN

LETTERS 146-172

From the third division, which consists of letters written after the time
of the conference with the Donatists and the rise of the Pelagian heresy in
Africa; i.e., during the last twenty years of his life (A.D. 411-430).

[Translated by The Rev. J. G. Cunningham, M.A., Vicar of St. Mark's West
Hackney; and sometime clerical secretary of the Bishop of London's Fund.]


LETTER CXLVI. (A.D. 413.)

TO PELAGIUS, MY LORD GREATLY BELOVED, AND BROTHER GREATLY LONGED FOR,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   I thank you very much for your consideration in making me glad by a
letter from you, and informing me of your welfare. May the Lord recompense
you with those blessings by the possession of which you may be good for
ever, and may live eternally with Him who is eternal, my lord greatly
beloved, and brother greatly longed for. Although I do not acknowledge that
anything in me deserves tile eulogies which the letter of your Benevolence
contains concerning me, nevertheless I cannot but be grateful for the
goodwill therein manifested towards one so insignificant, while suggesting
at the same time that you should rather pray for me that I may be made by
the Lord such as you suppose me already to be.

   (In another hand) May you enjoy safety and the Lord's favour, and be
mindful of us!(1)

LETTER CXLVIII. (A.D. 413.)

A LETTER OF INSTRUCTIONS (COMMONITORIUM) TO THE HOLY BROTHER
FORTUNATIANUS.(2)

   CHAP. I. -- 1. I write this to remind you of the request which I made
when I was with you, that you would do me the kindness of visiting our
brother, whom we mentioned in conversation, in order to ask him to forgive
me, if he has construed as a harsh and unfriendly attack upon himself any
statement made by me in a recent letter (which I do not regret having
written), affirming that the eyes of this body cannot see God, and never
shall see Him. I added immediately the reason wily I made this statement.
namely, to prevent men from believing that God Himself is corporeal and
visible, as occupying a place determined by size and by distance from us
(for the eye of this body can see nothing except under these conditions),
and to prevent men from understanding the expression "face to face"(3) as
if God were limited within the members of a body. Therefore I do not regret
having made this statement, as a protest against our forming such unworthy
and profane ideas concerning God as to think that He is not everywhere in
His totality, but susceptible of division, and distributed through
localities in space; for such are the only objects cognizable through these
eyes of ours.

   2. But if, while holding no such opinion as this concerning God, but
believing Him to be a Spirit, unchangeable, incorporeal, present in His
whole Being everywhere, any one thinks that the change on this body of ours
(when from being a natural body it shall become a spiritual body) will be
so great that in such a body it will be possible for us to see a spiritual
substance not susceptible of division according to local distance or
dimension, or even confined within the limits of bodily members, but
everywhere present in its totality, I wish him to instruct me in this
matter, if what he has discovered is true; but if in this opinion he is
mistaken, it is far less objectionable to ascribe to the body something
that does not belong to it, than to take away from God that which belongs
to Him. And even if that opinion be correct, it will not contradict my
words in that letter; for I said that the eyes of this body shall not see
God, meaning that the eyes of this body of ours can see nothing but bodies
which are separated from them by some interval of space, for if there be no
interval, even bodies themselves cannot through the eyes be seen by us.

   3. Moreover, if our bodies shall be changed into something so different
from what they now are as to have eyes by means of which a substance shall
be seen which is not diffused through space or confined within limits,
having one part in one place, another in another, a smaller in a less
space, a greater in a larger, but in its totality spiritually present
everywhere,- these bodies shall be something very different from what they
are at present, and shall no longer be themselves, and shall be not only
freed from mortality, and corruption, and weight, but somehow or other
shall be changed into the quality of the mind itself, if they shall be able
to see in a manner which shall be then granted to the mind, but which is
meanwhile' not granted even to the mind itself. For if, when a man's habits
are changed, we say he is not the man he was, -- if, when our age is
changed, we say that the body is not what it was, how much more may we say
that the body shall not be the same when it shall have undergone so great a
change as not only to have immortal life, but also to have power to see Him
who is invisible? Wherefore, if they shall thus see God, it is not with the
eyes of this body that He shall be seen, because in this also it shall not
be the same body, since it has been changed to so great an extent in
capacity and power; and this opinion is, therefore, not contrary to the
words of my letter. If, however; the body shall be changed only to this
extent, that whereas now it is mortal, then it shall be immortal, and
whereas now it weighs down the soul, then, devoid of weight, it shall be
most ready for every motion, but unchanged in the faculty of seeing objects
which are discerned by their dimensions and distances, it will still be
utterly impossible for it to see a substance that is incorporeal and is in
its totality present everywhere. Whether, therefore, the former or the
latter supposition be correct, in both cases it remains true that the eyes
of this body shall not see God; or if they are to see Him, they shall not
be the eyes of this body, since after so great a change they shall be the
eyes of a body very different from this.

   4. But if this brother is able to propound anything better on this
subject, I am ready to learn either from himself or from his instructor. If
I were saying this ironically, I would also say that I am prepared to learn
concerning God that He has a body having members, and is divisible in
different localities in space; which I do not say, because I am not
speaking ironically, and I am perfectly certain that God is not in any
respect of such a nature; and I wrote that letter to prevent men from
believing Him to be such. In that letter, being carried away by my zeal to
warn against error, and writing more freely because I did not name the
person whose views I assailed, I was too vehement and not sufficiently
guarded, and did not consider as I ought to have done the respect which was
due by one brother and bishop to the office of another: this I do not
defend, but blame; this I condemn rather than excuse, and beg that it may
be forgiven. I entreat him to remember our old friendship, and forget my
recent offence. Let him do that which he is displeased with me for not
having done; let him exhibit in granting pardon the gentleness which I have
failed to show in writing that letter. I thus ask, through your kindly
mediation, what I had resolved to ask of him in person if I had had an
opportunity. I indeed made an effort to obtain an interview with him (a
venerable man, worthy of being honoured by us all, writing to request it in
my name), but he declined to come, suspecting, I suppose, that, as very
often happens among men, some plot was prepared against him. Of my absolute
innocence of such guile, I beg you to do your utmost to assure him, which
by seeing him personally you can more easily do. State to him with what
deep and genuine grief I conversed with you about my having hurt his
feelings. Let him know how far I am from slighting him, how much in him I
fear God, and am mindful of our Head in whose body we are brethren. My
reason for thinking it better not to go to the place in which he resides
was, that we might not make ourselves a laughing-stock to those without the
pale of the Church, thereby bringing grief to our friends and shame to
ourselves. All this may be satisfactorily arranged through the good offices
of your Holiness and Charity; nay, rather, the satisfactory issue is in the
hands of Him who, by the faith which is His gift, dwells in your heart,
whom I am confident that our brother does not refuse to honour in you,
since he knows Christ experimentally as dwelling in himself.

   5. I, at all events, do not know what I could do better in this case
than ask pardon from the brother who has complained that he was wounded by
the harshness of my letter. He will, I hope, do what he knows to be
enjoined on him by Him who, speaking through the apostle, says: "Forgiving
one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as God in Christ
has forgiven you;"(1) "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us."(2) Walking in this love,
let us inquire with oneness of heart, and, if possible, with yet greater
diligence than hitherto, into the nature of the spiritual body which we
shall have after our resurrection. "And if in anything we be diversely
minded, God shall reveal even this unto us,"(3) if we abide in Him. Now he
who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, for "God is love,"(4)--whether as the
fountain of love in its ineffable essence, or as the fountain whence He
freely gives it to us by His Spirit. If, then, it can be shown that love
can at any time become visible to our bodily eyes, then we grant that
possibly God shall be so too; but if love never can become visible, much
less can He who is Himself its Fountain or whatever other figurative name
more excellent or more appropriate can be employed in speaking of One so
great.

   CHAP. II.- 6. Some men of great gifts, and very learned in the Holy
Scriptures, who have, when an opportunity presented itself, done much by
their writings to benefit the Church and promote the instruction of
believers, have said that the invisible God is seen in an invisible manner,
that is, by that nature which in us also is invisible, namely, a pure mind
or heart. The holy Ambrose, when speaking of Christ as the Word, says:
"Jesus is seen not by the bodily, but by the spiritual eyes;" and shortly
after he adds: "The Jews saw Him not, for their foolish heart was
blinded,"(5) showing in this way how Christ is seen. Also, when he was
speaking of the Holy Spirit, he introduced the words of the Lord, saying:
"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He
may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth; whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him;"(1) and
adds: "With good reason, therefore, did He show Himself in the body, since
in the substance of His Godhead He is not seen. We have seen the Spirit,
but in a bodily form: let us see the Father also; but since we cannot see
Him, let us hear Him." A little after he says: "Let us hear the Father,
then, for the Father is invisible; but the Son also is invisible as regards
His Godhead, for 'no man hath seen God at any time;'(2) and since the Son
is God, He is certainly not seen in that in which He is God."(3)

   7. The holy Jerome also says: "The eye of man cannot see God as He is
in His own nature; and this is true not of man only; neither angels, nor
thrones, nor powers, nor principalities, nor any name which is named can
see God, for no creature can see its Creator." By these words this very
learned man sufficiently shows what his opinion was on this subject in
regard not only to the present life, but also to that which is to come. For
however much the eyes of our body may be changed for the better, they shall
only be made equal to the eyes of the angels. Here, however, Jerome has
affirmed that the nature of the Creator is invisible even to the angels,
and to every creature without exception in heaven. If, however, a question
arise on this point, and a doubt is expressed whether we shall not be
superior to the angels, the mind of the Lord Himself is plain from the
words which He uses in speaking of those who shall rise again to the
kingdom: "They shall be equal unto the angels." (4) Whence the same holy
Jerome thus expresses himself in another passage: "Man, therefore, cannot
see the face of God but the angels of the least in the Church do always
behold the face of God.(5) And now we see as in a mirror darkly, in a
riddle, but then face to face;(6) when from being men we shall advance to
the rank of angels, and shall be able to say with the apostle, 'We all,
with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of
the Lord;'(7) although no creature can see the face of God, according to
the essential properties of His nature, and He is, in these cases, seen by
the mind, since He is believed to be invisible."(8). In these words of this
man of God there are many things deserving our consideration: first, that
in accordance with the very clear declaration of the Lord, he also is of
opinion that we shall then see the face of God when we shall have advanced
to the rank of angels, that ,is, shall be made equal to the angels, which
doubtless shall be at the resurrection of the dead. Next, he has
sufficiently explained by the testimony of the apostle, that the face is to
be understood not of the outward but of the inward man, when it is said we
shall "see face to face;" for the apostle was speaking of the face of the
heart when he used the words quoted in this connection by Jerome: "We, with
unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed
into the same image."(9) If any one doubt this, let him examine the passage
again, and notice of what the apostle was speaking, namely, of the veil,
which remains on the heart of every one in reading the Old Testament, until
he pass over to Christ, that the veil may be removed. For he there says:
"We also, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord,''--which face had not been unveiled in the Jews, of whom he says,
"the veil is upon their heart," --in order to show that the face unveiled
in us when the veil is taken away is the face of the heart. In fine, lest
any one, looking on these things with too little care and therefore failing
to discern their meaning, should believe that God now is or shall hereafter
be visible either to angels or to men, when they shall have been made equal
to the angels, he has most plainly expressed his opinion by affirming that
"no creature can see the face of God according to the essential properties
of His nature," and that "He is, in these cases, seen by the mind, since He
is believed to be invisible." From these statements he sufficiently showed
that when God has been seen by men through the eyes of the body as if He
had a body, He has not been seen as to the essential properties of his
nature, in which He is seen by the mind, since He is believed to be
invisible-invisible, that is to say, to the bodily perception even of
celestial beings, as Jerome had said above, of angels, and powers, and
principalities. How much more, then, is He invisible to terrestrial beings
!

   9. Wherefore, in another place, Jerome says in i still plainer terms,
it is true not only of the divinity of the Father but equally of that of
the Son md of that of the Holy Spirit, forming one nature in the Trinity,
that it cannot be seen by the eyes of the flesh, but by the eyes of the
mind, of which the Saviour Himself says: "Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God." (10) What could be more clear than this statement?
For if he had merely said that it is impossible for the divinity of the
Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit, to be seen by the eyes of the
flesh, and had not added the words, "but only by the eyes of the mind," it
might perhaps have been said, that when the body shall have become
spiritual it can no longer be called "flesh;" but by adding the words, "but
only by the eyes of the mind," he has excluded the vision of God from every
sort of body. Lest, however, any one should suppose that he was speaking
only of the present state of being, observe that he has subjoined also a
testimony of the Lord, quoted with the design of defining the eyes of the
mind of which he had spoken; in which testimony a promise is given not of
present, but of future vision: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God."

   10. The very blessed Athanasius, also, Bishop of Alexandria, when
contending against tile Arians, who affirm that the Father alone is
invisible, but suppose the Son and the Holy Spirit to be visible, asserted
the equal invisibility of all the Persons of the Trinity, proving it by
testimonies from Holy Scripture, and arguing with all his wonted care in
controversy, labouring earnestly to convince his opponents that God has
never been seen, except through His assuming the form of a creature; and
that in His essential Deity God is invisible, that is, that the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit are invisible, except in so far as the Divine
Persons can be known by the mind and the spirit. Gregory, also, a holy
Eastern bishop, very plainly says that God, by nature invisible, had, on
those occasions on which He was seen by the fathers (as by Moses, with whom
He talked face to face), made it possible for Himself to be seen by
assuming the form of something material and discernible.(1) Our Ambrose
says the same: "That the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, when
visible, are seen under forms assumed by choice, not prescribed by the
nature of Deity;"(2) thus clearing the truth of the saying, "No man hath
seen God at any time,"(3) which is the word of the Lord Christ Himself, and
of that other saying, "Whom no man hath seen, nor can see," (4) which is
the word of the apostle, yea, rather, of Christ by His apostle; as well as!
vindicating the consistency of those passages of' Scripture in which God is
related to have been seen, because He is both invisible in the essential
nature of His Deity, and able to become visible when He pleases, by
assuming such created form as shall seem good to Him.

   CHAP. III.--11. Moreover, if invisibility is a property of the divine
nature, as incorruptibility is, that nature shall assuredly not undergo
such a change in the future world as to cease to be invisible and become
visible; because it shall never be possible for it to cease to be
incorruptible and become corruptible, for it is in both attributes alike
immutable. The apostle assuredly declared the excellence of the divine
nature when he placed these two together, saying, "Now, unto the King of
ages, invisible, incorruptible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever
and ever."(5) Wherefore I dare not make such a distinction as to say
incorruptible, indeed, for ever and ever, but invisible- not for ever and
ever, but only in this world. At the same time, since the testimonies which
we are next to quote cannot be false,--"Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God,"(6) and, "We know that, when He shall appear, we shall
be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is "(7) --we cannot deny that the
sons of God shall see God; but they shall see Him as invisible things are
seen, in the manner in which He who appeared in the flesh, visible to men,
promised that He would manifest Himself to men, when, speaking in tile
presence of the disciples and seen by their eyes, He said: "I will love
him, and will manifest myself to him." In what other manner are invisible
things seen than by the eyes of the mind, concerning which, as the
instruments of our vision of God, I have shortly before quoted the opinion
of Jerome ?

   12. Hence, also, the statement of the Bishop of Milan, whom I have
quoted before, who says that even in the resurrection it is not easy for
any but those who have a pure heart to see God, and therefore it is
written, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "How
many," he says, "had He already enumerated as blessed, and yet to them He
had not promised the power of seeing God;" and he adds this inference, "If,
therefore, the pure in heart shall see God, it is obvious that others shall
not see Him;" and to prevent our understanding him to refer to those others
of whom the Lord had said, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek," he
immediately subjoined, "For those that are unworthy shall not see God,"
intending it to be understood that the unworthy are those who, although
they shall rise again, shall not be able to see God, since they shall rise
to condemnation, because they refused to purify their hearts through that
true faith which "worketh by love."(8) For this reason he goes on to say,
"Whosoever has been unwilling to see God cannot see Him." Then, since it
occurred to him that, in a sense, even all wicked men have a desire to see
God, he immediately explains that he used the words, "Whosoever has been
unwilling to see God," because the fact that the wicked do not desire to
purify the heart, by which alone God can be seen, shows that they do not
desire to see God, and follows up this statement with the words: "God is
not seen in space, but in the pure heart; nor is He sought out by the eyes
of the body; nor is He defined in form by our faculty of sight; nor grasped
by the touch; His voice does not fall on the ear; nor are His goings
perceived by the senses."(1) By these words the blessed Ambrose desired to
teach the preparation which men ought to make if they wish to see God, viz.
to purify the heart by the faith which worketh by love, through the gift of
the Holy Spirit, from whom we have received the earnest by which we are
taught to desire that vision.(2)

   CHAP. IV. -- 13. For as to the members of God which the Scripture
frequently mentions, lest any one should suppose that we resemble God as to
the form and figure of the body, the same Scripture speaks of God as having
also wings, which we certainly have not. As then, when we hear of the
"wings" of God, we understand the divine protection, so by the "hands" of
God we ought to understand His working, -- by His "feet," His. presence, --
by His "eyes," His power of seeing and knowing all things, -- by His face,
that whereby He reveals Himself to our knowledge; and I believe that any
other such expression used in Scripture is to be spiritually understood. In
this opinion I am not singular, nor am I the first who has stated it, It is
the opinion of all who by any spiritual interpretation of such language in
Scripture resist those who are called Anthropomorphites. Not to occupy too
much time by quoting largely from the writings of these men, I introduce
here one extract from the pious Jerome, in order that our brother may know
that, if anything moves him to maintain an opposite opinion, he is bound to
carry on the debate with those who preceded me not less than with myself.

   14. In the exposition which that most learned student of Scripture has
given of the psalm in which occur the words, "Understand, ye brutish among
the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear,
shall he not hear? or He that formed the eye, doth He not behold ?" (3) he
says, among other things: "This passage furnishes a strong argument against
those who are Anthropomorphites, and say that God has members such as we
have. For example, God is said by them to have eyes, because ' the eyes of
the Lord behold all things :' in the same , literal manner they take the
statements that the i hand of the Lord doeth all things, and that n Adam '
heard the sound of the feet of the Lord walking in the garden,' and thus
they ascribe the ' infirmities of men to the majesty of God. But I affirm
that God is all eye, all hand, all foot: alI eye, because He sees all
things; all hand, because He worketh all things; all foot, because He is
everywhere present. See, therefore, what the Psalmist saith: ' He that
planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, doth He not
behold ?' He doth not say: ' He that planted the ear, has He not an ear?
and He that formed the eye, has He not an eye ?' But what does he say? ' He
that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, doth He
not behold ?' The Psalmist has ascribed to God the powers of seeing and
hearing, but has not assigned members to Him." (4)

   15. I have thought it my duty to quote all these passages from the
writings of both Latin and Greek authors who, being in the Catholic Church
before our time, have written commentaries on the divine oracles, in order
that our brother, if he hold any different opinion from theirs, may know
that it becomes him, laying aside all bitterness of controversy, and
preserving or reviving fully the gentleness of brotherly love, to
investigate with diligent and calm consideration either what he must learn
from others, or what others must learn from him. For the reasonings of any
men whatsoever, even though they be Catholics, and of high reputation, are
not to be treated by us in the same way as the canonical Scriptures are
treated. We are at liberty, without doing any violence to the respect which
these men deserve, to condemn and reject anything in their writings, if
perchance we shall find that they have entertained opinions differing from
that which others or we ourselves have, by the divine help, discovered to
be the truth. I deal thus with the writings of others, and I wish my
intelligent readers to deal thus with mine. In fine, I do by the help of
the Lord most stedfastly believe, and, in so far as He enables me, I
understand what is taught in all the statements which I have now quoted
from the works of the holy and learned Ambrose, Jerome, Athanasius,
Gregory, and in any other similar statements in other writers which I have
read, but have for the sake of brevity forborne from quoting, namely, that
God is not a body, that He has not the members of the human frame, that He
is not divisible through space, and that He is unchangeably invisible, and
appeared not in His essential nature and substance, but in such visible
form as He pleased to those to whom he appeared on the occasions on which
Scripture records that He was seen by holy persons with the eyes of the
body.

   CHAP. V. -- 16. As to the spiritual body which we shall have in the
resurrection, how great a change for the better it is to undergo, --
whether it shall become pure spirit, so that the whole man shall then be a
spirit, or shall (as I rather think, but do not yet confidently maintain)
become a spiritual body in such a way as to be called spiritual because of
a certain ineffable facility in its movements, but at the same time to
retain its material substance, which cannot live and feel by itself, but
only through the spirit which uses it (for in our present state, in like
manner, although the body is spoken of as animated [animal], the nature of
the animating principle is different from that of the body),and whether, if
the properties of the body then immortal and incorruptible shall remain
unchanged, it shall then in some degree aid the spirit to see visible, i,e.
material things, as at present we are unable to see anything of that kind
except through the eyes of the body, or our spirit shall then be able, even
in its higher state, to know material things without the instrumentality of
the body (for God Himself does not know these things through bodily
senses),on these and on many other things which may perplex us in the
discussion of this subject, I confess that I have not yet read anywhere
anything which I would esteem sufficiently established to deserve to be
either learned or taught by men.

   17. And for this reason, if our brother will J bear patiently any
degree whatever of hesitation I on my part, let us in the meantime, because
of] that which is written, "We shall see Him as, He is," prepare, so far as
with the help of God, Himself we are enabled, hearts purified for that
vision. Let us at the same time inquire more calmly and carefully
concerning the spiritual body, for it may be that God, if He know this to
be useful to us, may condescend to show us some definite and clear view on
the subject, in accordance with His written word. For if a more careful
investigation shall result in the discovery that the change on the body
shall be so great that it shall be able to see things that are invisible,
such power imparted to the body will not, I think, deprive the mind of the
power of seeing, and thus give the outward man a vision of God which is
denied to the inward man; as if, in contradiction of the plain words of'
Scripture, "that God may be all and in all,"(1) God were only beside the
man --without him, and not in the man, in his inner being; or as if He, who
is everywhere present in his entirety, unlimited in space, is so within man
that He can be seen outside only by the outward man, but cannot be seen
inside by the inward man. If such opinions are palpably absurd,- for, on
the contrary, the saints shall be full of God; they shall not, remaining
empty within, be surrounded outside by Him; nor shall they, through being
blind within, fail to see Him of whom they are full, and, having eyes only
for that which is outside of themselves, behold Him by whom they shall be
surrounded,--if, I say, these things are absurd, it remains for us to rest
meanwhile certainly assured as to the vision of God by the inward man. But
if, by some wondrous change, the. body shall be endowed with this power,
another new faculty shall be added; the faculty formerly possessed shall
not be taken away.

   18. It is better, then, that we affirm that concerning which we have no
doubt,--that God shall be seen by the inward man, which alone is able, in
our present state, to see that love in commendation of which the apostle
says, "God is love;"(2) the inward man, which alone is able to see "peace
and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."(3) For no fleshly
eye now sees love, peace, and holiness, and such things; yet all of them
are seen, so far as they can be seen, by the eye of the mind, and the purer
it is the more clearly it sees; so that we may, without hesitation, believe
that we shall see God, whether we succeed or fail in our investigations as
to the nature of our future body--although, at the same time, we hold it to
be certain that the body shall rise again, immortal and incorruptible,
because on this we have the plainest and strongest testimony of Holy
Scripture: If, however, our brother affirm now that he has arrived at
certain knowledge as to that spiritual body, in regard to which I am only
inquiring, he will have just cause to be displeased with me if I shall
refuse to listen calmly to his instructions, provided only that he also
listen calmly to my questions. Now, however, I entreat you, for Christ's
sake, to obtain his forgiveness for me for that harshness in my letter, by
which, as I have learned, he was, not without cause, offended; and may you,
by God's help, cheer my spirit by your answer.

LETTER CL. (A.D. 413.)

TO PROBA(4) AND JULIANA, LADLES MOST WORTHY OF HONOUR, DAUGHTERS JUSTLY
FAMOUS AND MOST DISTINGUISHED, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   You have filled our heart with a joy singularly pleasant, because of
the love we bear to you, and singularly acceptable, because of the
promptitude with which the tidings came to us. For while the consecration
of the daughter of your house to a life of virginity is being published by
most busy fame in all places where you are known, and that is everywhere,
you have outstripped its flight by more sure and reliable information in a
letter from yourselves, and have made us rejoice' in certain knowledge
before we had time to be questioning the truth of any report concerning an
event so blessed and remarkable. Who can declare in words, or expound with
adequate praises, how incomparably greater is the glory and advantage
gained by your family in giving to Christ women consecrated to His service,
than in giving to the world men called to the honours of the consulship?
For if it be a great and noble thing to leave the mark of an honoured name
upon the revolving ages of this world, how much greater and nobler is it to
rise above it by unsullied chastity both of heart and of body! Let this
maiden, therefore, illustrious in her pedigree, yet more illustrious in her
piety, find greater joy in obtaining, through espousals to her divine Lord,
a pre-eminent glory in heaven, than she could have had in becoming, through
espousal to a human consort, the mother of a line of illustrious men. This
daughter of the house of Anicius has acted the more magnanimous part, in
choosing rather to bring a blessing on that noble family by forbearing from
marriage, than to increase the number of its descendants, preferring to be
already, in the purity of her body, I like unto the angels, rather than to
increase by the fruit of her body the number of mortals. For this is a
richer and more fruitful condition of blessedness, not to have a pregnant
womb, but to develop the soul's lofty capacities; not to have the breasts
flowing with milk, but to have the heart pure as snow; to travail not with
the earthly in the pangs of labour, but with the heavenly in persevering
prayer. May it be yours, my daughters, most worthy of the honour due to
your rank, to enjoy in her that which was lacking to yourselves; may she be
stedfast to the end, abiding in the conjugal union that has no end. May
many handmaidens follow the example of their mistress; may those who are of
humble rank imitate this high-born lady, and may those who possess eminence
in this uncertain world aspire to that worthier eminence which humility has
given to her. Let the virgins who covet the glory of the Anician family be
ambitious rather to emulate its piety; for the former lies beyond their
reach, however eagerly they may desire it, but the latter shall be at once
in their possession if they seek it with full desire. May the right hand of
the Most High protect you, giving you safety and greater happiness, ladies
most worthy of honour, and most excellent daughters! In the love of the
Lord, and with all becoming respect, we salute the children of your
Holiness, and above all the one who is above the rest in holiness. We have
received with very great pleasure the gift sent as a souvenir of her taking
the veil.(1)

LETTER CLI. (A.D. 413 OR 414.)

TO CAECILIANUS,(2) MY LORD JUSTLY RENOWNED, AND SON MOST WORTHY OF THE
HONOUR DUE BY ME TO HIS RANK, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. The remonstrance which you have addressed to me in your letter is
gratifying to me in proportion to the love which it manifests. If,
therefore,! attempt to clear myself from blame in regard to my silence, the
thing which I must attempt is to show that you had no just cause for being
displeased with me. But since nothing gives me greater pleasure than that
you condescended to take offence at my silence, which I had supposed to be
a matter of no moment in the midst of your many cares, I will be pleading
against myself if I endeavour thus to clear myself from blame. For if you
were wrong in being displeased at me for not writing to you, this must be
because of your having such a poor opinion of me that you are absolutely
indifferent whether I speak or remain silent. Nay, the displeasure which
arises from your being distressed by my silence is not displeasure. I
therefore feel not so much grief at my withhold-rag, as joy at your
desiring a communication from me. For it is an honour, not a vexation, to
me, that I should have a place in the remembrance of an old friend, and a
man who is (though you may not say it, yet it is our duty to acknowledge
it) of such eminent worth and greatness, holding a position in a foreign
country, and burdened with public responsibilities. Pardon me, then, for
expressing my gratitude that you did not regard me as a person whose
silence it was beneath you to resent. For now I am persuaded, through that
benevolence which distinguishes you more even than your high rank, that in
the midst of your numerous and important occupations, not of a private
nature, but public, involving the interests of all, a letter from me may be
esteemed by you not burdensome, but welcome.

   2. For when I had received the letter of the holy father Innocentius,
venerable for his eminent merits, which was sent to me by the brethren, and
which was, by manifest tokens, shown to have been forwarded to me from your
Excellency, I formed the opinion that the reason why no letter from you
accompanied it was that, being engrossed with more important affairs, you
were unwilling to be embarrassed by the trouble of correspondence. For it
seemed certainly not unreasonable to expect, that when you con-descended to
send me the writings of a holy man, I should receive along with them some
writings of your own. I had therefore made up my mind not to trouble you
with a letter from me unless it was necessary for the purpose of commending
to you some one to whom I could not refuse the service of my intercession,
a favour which it is our custom to grant to all, -- a custom which, though
involving much trouble, is not to be altogether condemned. I accordingly
did this recommending to your kindness a friend of mine, from whom I have
now received a letter, expressing his thanks, to which I add my own, for
your service.

   3. If, however, I had formed any unfavourable impression concerning
you, especially in regard to the matter of which, though it was not
expressly named, a subtle odour, so to speak, pervaded your whole letter,
far would it have been from me to write to you any such note in order to
ask any favour for myself or another. In that case I would either have been
silent, waiting for a time when I would have an opportunity of seeing you
personally; or if I considered it my duty to write on the subject, I would
have given it the first place in my letter, and would have treated it in
such a way as to make it almost impossible for you to show displeasure. For
when, notwithstanding remonstrances which, under an anxiety shared by you
with us, we addressed to him,- beseeching him vehemently, but in vain, to
forbear from piercing our hearts with so great sorrow, and mortally
wounding his own conscience by such grievous sin, -- he(1) perpetrated his
impious, savage, and perfidious crime, I left Carthage immediately and
secretly, for this reason, lest the numerous and influential persons who in
terror sought refuge from his sword within the church should, imagining
that my presence could be of use to them, detain me by their passionate
weeping and groaning, so that I would be compelled, in order to secure the
preservation of their bodies, to supplicate a favour from one whom it was
impossible for me to rebuke in order to the welfare of his soul, with the
severity which his crime deserved. As for their personal safety, I knew
that the walls of the church sufficed for their protection. But for myself
[if I remained to intercede with him on their behalf], it could only be in
circumstances painfully embarrassing, for he would not have tolerated my
acting towards him as I was bound to do, and I would have been compelled,
moreover, to act in a way which would have been unbecoming in me. At the
same time, I was truly sorry for the misfortune of my venerable co-bishop,
the ruler of such an important church, who was expected to regard it as his
duty, even after this man had been guilty of such infamous treachery, to
treat him with submissive deference, in order that the lives of others
might be spared. I confess the reason of my departure: it was that I would
have been unable to meet with the necessary fortitude so great a calamity.

   4. The same considerations which made me then depart would have been
the cause of my remaining silent to you, if I believed you to have used
your influence with him to avenge such wicked injuries. This is believed in
regard to you only by those who do not know how, and how frequently, and in
what terms, you expressed your mind to us, when we were with anxious
solicitude doing our utmost to secure that, because he was so intimate with
you, and you were so !constantly visiting him, and so often conversing
alone with him, he should all the more carefully guard your good name, and
save you from being supposed to have used no endeavour to prevent him from
inflicting that mode of death on persons said to be your enemies. This,
indeed, is not believed of you by me, nor by my brethren who heard you in
conversation, and who saw, both in your words and in every gesture, the
evidences of your heart's good-will to those who were put to death. But, I
beseech you, forgive those by whom it is believed; for they are men, and in
the minds of men there are such lurking places and such depths that,
although all suspicious persons deserved to be blamed, they think
themselves that they even deserve praise for their prudence. There existed
reasons for the conduct imputed to you: we knew that you had suffered very
grievous injury from one of those whom he had suddenly ordered to be
arrested. His brother, also, in whose person especially he persecuted the
Church, was said to have answered you in terms implying as it were some
harsh accusation. Both were thought to be looked upon by you with
suspicion. When they, after being summoned, had gone away, you still
remained in the place, and were engaged, it was said, in conversation of a
more private kind than usual with him [Marinas], and then they were
suddenly ordered to be detained. Men talked much of your friendship with
him as not recent, but of long standing. The closeness of your intimacy,
and the frequency of your private conversations with him, confirmed this
report. His power was at that time great. The ease with which false
accusations could be made against any one was notorious. It was not a
difficult thing to find some person who would upon the promise of his own
safety make any statements which he might order to be made. All things at
that time made it easy for any man to be brought to death without any
examination on the part of him who ordered the execution, if even one
witness brought forward what seemed to be an odious and, at the same time,
credible accusation.

   5. Meanwhile, as it was rumored that the power of the Church might
deliver them, we were mocked with false promises, so that not only with the
consent, but, as it seemed, at the urgent desire of Marinus, a bishop was
sent to the Imperial Court to intercede for them, the promise having been
brought to the ear of the bishops that, until some pleading should be heard
there on behalf of the prisoners, no examination of their case would be
proceeded with. At last, on the day before they were put to death, your
Excellency came to us; you gave us encouragement such as you had never
before given, that he might grant their lives as a favour to you before
your departure [for Rome], because you had solemnly and prudently said to
him that all his condescension in admitting you so constantly to familiar
and private conversation would bring to you disgrace rather than
distinction, and would have the effect, after the death of these men had
been a subject of conversation and consultation between you, of making
every one i say that there could be no doubt what was to be the issue of
these conferences. When you informed us that you had said these things to
him, you stretched out your hand as you spoke towards the place at which
the sacraments of believers are celebrated, and while we listened in
amazement, you confirmed the statement that you had used these words with
an oath so solemn, that not only then, but even now after the dreadful and
unexpected death of the prisoners, it seems to me, recalling to memory your
whole demeanour, that it would be an aggravated insult if I were to believe
any evil concerning you. You said, moreover, that he was so moved by these
words of yours, that he purposed to give the lives of these men to you as a
present, in token of friendship, before you set out on your journey.

   6. Wherefore, I solemnly assure your Grace, that when on the following
day (the day on which the infamous crime thus conceived was consummated)
tidings were unexpectedly brought to us that they had been led forth from
prison to stand before him as their judge, although we were in some alarm,
nevertheless, after reflecting on what you had said to us on the preceding
day, and on the fact that the day following was the anniversary of the
blessed Cyprian, I supposed that he had even purposely selected a day on
which he might not only grant your request, but also might aspire, by
giving sudden joy to the whole Church of Christ, to emulate the virtue of
so great a martyr, proving himself truly greater in using clemency in
sparing life than in possessing power to inflict death. Such were my
thoughts, when lo! a messenger burst into our presence, from whom, before
we could ask him how their trial was being conducted, we learned that they
had been beheaded. For care had been taken to arrange, as the scene of
execution, a place immediately adjoining, not appointed for the punishment
of criminals, but used for the recreation of the citizens, on which spot he
had ordered some to be executed a few days previously, with the design (as
is with good reason believed) of avoiding the odium of applying it to this
purpose for the first time in the case of these men, whom he hoped to be
able to snatch secretly from the Church interposing on their behalf, by
thus not only ordering their immediate execution, but also ordering it to
take place on the nearest available spot. He therefore made it sufficiently
manifest that he did not fear to cause cruel pain to that Mother whose
intervention he feared, namely, to the holy Church, among whose faithful
children, baptized in her bosom, we knew that he himself was reckoned.
Therefore, after the issue of so great a plot, in which so much care had
been used in negotiating with us that we were made, even by you also,
though unwittingly, almost free from solicitude, and almost sure of their
safety on the preceding day, who, judging of the circumstances in the way
in which ordinary men would judge of them, could avoid regarding it as
beyond question that by you also words were given to us and life taken from
them? Pardon, then, as I have said, those who believe these things against
you, although we do not believe them, O excellent man.

   7. Far be it, however, from my heart and from my practice, however
defective in many things, to intercede with you for any one, or ask a
favour from you for any one, if I believed you to be responsible for this
monstrous wrong, this villanous cruelty. But I frankly confess to you, that
if you continue, even after that event, to be on the same footing of
intimate friendship with him as you were formerly, you must excuse my
claiming freedom to be grieved; for by this you would compel us to believe
much which we would rather disbelieve. It is, however, fitting that, as I
do not believe you guilty of the other things laid by some to your charge,
I should not believe this either. This friend of yours has, in the
unexpected triumph of sudden accession to power, done violence not less to
your reputation than to these men's lives. Nor is it my design in this
statement to kindle hatred in your mind; in so doing I would belie my own
feelings and profession. But I exhort you to a more faithful exercise of
love towards him. For the man who so deals with the wicked as to make them
repent of their evil doings, is one who knows how to be angry with them,
and yet consult for their good; for as bad companions hinder men's welfare
by compliance, so good friends help them by opposition to their evil ways.
The same weapon with which, in the proud abuse of power, he took away the
lives of others, inflicted a much deeper and more serious wound on his own
soul; and if he do not remedy this by repentance, using wisely the long-
suffering of God, he will be compelled to find it out and feel it when this
life is ended. Often, moreover, God in His wisdom permits the life of good
men in this world to be taken from them by the wicked, that He may prevent
men from believing that to suffer such things is in their case a calamity.
For what harm can result from the death of the body to men who are destined
to die some time? Or what do those who fear death accomplish by their care
but a short postponement of the time at which they die? All the evil to
which mortal men are liable comes not from death but from life; and if in
dying they have the soul sustained by Christian grace, death is to them not
the night of darkness in which a good life ends, but the dawn in which a
better life begins.(1)

   8. The life and conversation of the eider of the two brothers appeared
indeed more conformed to this world than to Christ, although he also had
after his marriage corrected to a great extent the faults of his early
irreligious years. It may, nevertheless, have been not otherwise than in
mercy that our merciful God appointed him to be the companion of his
brother in death. But as to that younger brother, he lived religiously, and
was eminent as a Christian both in heart and in practice. The report that
he would approve himself such when commissioned to serve the Church(2) came
before him to Africa, and this good report followed him still when he had
come. In his conduct, what innocence! in his friendship, what constancy! in
his study of Christian truth, what zeal! in his religion, what sincerity!
in his domestic life, what purity! in his official duties, what integrity!
What patience be showed to enemies, what affability to friends, what
humility to the pious, what charity to all men! How great his promptitude
in granting, and his bashfulness in asking a favour! How genuine his
satisfaction in the good deeds, and his sorrow over the faults of men! What
spotless honour, noble grace, and scrupulous piety shone in him! In
rendering assistance, how compassionate he was! in forgiving injuries, how
generous! in prayer, how confiding! When well informed on any subject, with
what modesty he was wont to communicate useful knowledge! when conscious of
ignorance, with what diligence did he endeavour by investigation to
overcome the disadvantage! How singular was his contempt for the things of
time! how ardent his hope and his desires in regard to the blessings that
are eternal! He would have relinquished all secular business and girded
himself with the insignia of the Christian warfare, had he not been
prevented by his having entered into the married state; for he had not
begun to desire better things before the time when, being already involved
in these bonds, it would have been, notwithstanding their inferiority, an
unlawful thing for him to rend them asunder.

   9. One day when they were confined in prison together, his brother said
to him: "If I suffer these things as the just punishment of my sins, what
ill desert has brought you to the same fate, for we know that your life was
most strictly and earnestly Christian ?" He replied: "Supposing even that
your testimony as to my life were true, do you think that God is bestowing
a small favour upon me in appointing that my sins be punished in these
sufferings, even though they should end in death, instead of being reserved
to meet me in the judgment which is to come?" These words might perhaps
lead some to suppose that he was conscious of some secret immoralities. I
shall therefore mention what it pleased the Lord God to appoint that I
should hear from his lips, and know assuredly, to my own great consolation.
Being anxious about this very thing, as human nature is liable to fall into
such wickedness, I asked him, when I was alone with him after he was
confined in prison, if there was no sin for which he ought to seek
reconciliation with God(3) by some more severe and special penance. With
characteristic modesty he blushed at the mere mention of my suspicion,
groundless though it was, but thanked me most warmly for the warning, and
with a grave, modest smile he seized with both hands my right hand, and
said: "I swear by the sacraments which are dispensed to me by this hand,
that I have neither before nor since my marriage been guilty of immoral
self-indulgence."(1)

   10. What evil, then, was brought to him by death? Nay, rather, was it
not the occasion of the greatest possible good to him, because, in the
possession of these gifts, he departed from this life to Christ, in whom
alone they are really possessed? I would not mention these things in
addressing you if I believed that you would be offended by my praising him.
But assuredly, as I do not believe this, neither do I believe that his
being put to death was even according to your desire or wish, much less
that it was done at your request. You, therefore, with a sincerity
proportioned to your innocence in this matter, entertain, doubtless, along
with us, the opinion that the man who put him to death inflicted more cruel
wrong on his own soul than on the sufferer's body, when, in despite of us,
in despite of his own promises, in despite of so many supplications and
warnings from you, and finally, in despite of the Church of Christ (and in
her of Christ Himself), he consummated his base machinations by putting
this man to death. Is the high position of the one worthy to be compared
with the lot of the other, prisoner though he was, when the man of power
was maddened by anger, while the sufferer in his prison was filled with
joy? There is nothing in all the dungeons of this world, nay, not even in
hell itself, to surpass the dreadful doom of darkness to which a villian is
consigned by remorse of conscience. Even to yourself, what evil did he do?
He did not destroy your innocence, although he grievously injured your
reputation; which, nevertheless, remains uninjured, both in the estimation
of those who know you better than we do, and in our estimation, in whose
presence the anxiety which, like us, you felt for the prevention of such a
monstrous crime, was expressed with so much visible agitation that we could
almost see  with our eyes the invisible workings of your heart. Whatever
harm, therefore, he has done, he has: done to himself alone; he has pierced
through his own soul, his own life, his own conscience ;] in fine, he has
by that blind deed of cruelty destroyed even his own good name, a thing
which the very worst of men are usually fain to preserve. For to all good
men he is odious in proportion to his efforts to obtain, or his
satisfaction in receiving, the approbation of the wicked.

   11. Could anything prove more clearly that he was not under the
necessity which he pretended- alleging that he did this evil action as a
good man who had no alternative- than the fact that the proceeding was
disapproved of by the person whose orders he dared to plead as his excuse?
The pious deacon by whose hand we send this was himself associated with the
bishop whom we had sent to intercede for them; let him, therefore, relate
to your Excellency how it seemed good to the Emperor not even to give a
formal pardon, lest by this the stigma of a crime should be in some degree
attached to them, but a mere notice commanding them to be immediately set
at liberty from all further annoyance. By a purely gratuitous act of
cruelty, and under no pressure of necessity (although, perchance, there may
have been other causes which we suspect, but which it is unnecessary to
state in writing), he did outrageously vex the Church, -- the Church to
whose sheltering bosom his brother once, in fear of death, had fled, to be
requited for protecting his life by finding him active in counselling the
perpetration of this crime, -- the Church in which he himself had once,
when under the displeasure of an offended patron, sought an asylum which
could not be denied to him. If you love this man, show your detestation of
his crime; if you do not wish him to come into everlasting punishment,
shrink with horror from his society. You are bound to take measures of this
kind, both for your own good name and for his life; for he who loves in
this man what God hates, is, in truth, hating not only this man but also
his own soul.

   12. These things being so, I know your benevolence too well to believe
that you were the author of this crime, or an accomplice in its commission,
or that with malicious cruelty you deceived us: far be such conduct from
your life and conversation! At the same time, I would not wish your
friendship to be of such a character as tends to make him, to his own
destruction, glory in his crime, and to confirm the suspicions naturally
cherished by men concerning you; but rather let it be such as to move him
to penitence, and to penitence corresponding in quality and in measure to
the remedy demanded for the healing of such dreadful wounds. For the more
you are an enemy to his crimes, the more really will you be a friend to the
man himself. It will be interesting to us to learn, by your Excellency's
reply to this letter, where you were on the day on which the crime was
committed, how you received the tidings, and what you did thereafter, and
what you said to him and heard from him when you next saw him; for I have
not been able to hear anything of you in connection with this affair since
my sudden departure on the succeeding day.

   13. As to the remark in your letter that you are now compelled to
believe that I refuse to visit Carthage for fear lest you should be seen
there by me, you rather compel me by these words to state explicitly the
reasons of my absence. One reason is, that the labour which I am obliged to
undergo in that city, and which I could not describe without adding as much
again to the length of this letter, is more than I am able now to bear,
since, in addition to my infirmities peculiar to myself, which are known to
all my more intimate friends, I am .burdened with an infirmity common to
the human family, namely, the weakness of old age. The other reason is,
that, in so far as leisure is granted me from the work imperatively
demanded by the Church, which my office specially binds me to serve, I have
resolved to devote the time entirely, if the Lord will, to the labour of
studies pertaining to ecclesiastical learning; in doing which I think that
I may, if it please the mercy of God, be of some service even to future
generations.

   14. There is, indeed, one thing in you, since you wish to hear the
truth, which causes me very great distress: it is that, although qualified
by age, as well as by life and character, to do otherwise, you still prefer
to be a catechumen; as if it were not possible for believers, by making
progress in Christian faith and well-doing, to become so much the more
faithful and useful in the administration of public business. For surely
the promotion of the welfare of men is the one great end of all your great
cares and labours. And, indeed, if this were not to be the issue of your
public services, it would be better for you even to sleep both day and
night than to sacrifice your rest in order to do work which can contribute
nothing to the advantage of your fellow-men. Nor do I entertain the
slightest doubt that your Excellency...

(The rest is missing.)

LETTER CLVIII. (A.D. 414.)

TO MY LORD AUGUSTIN, MY BROTHER PARTNER IN THE SACERDOTAL OFFICE, MOST
SINCERELY LOVED, WITH PROFOUND RESPECT, AND TO THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH
HIM, EVODIUS(1) AND THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM SEND GREETING IN THE
LORD.

   1. I urgently beg you to send the reply due to my last letter. Indeed,
I would have preferred first to learn what I then asked, and afterwards to
put the questions which I now submit to you. Give me your attention while I
relate an event in which you will kindly take an interest, and which has
made me impatient to lose no time in acquiring, if possible in this life,
the knowledge which I desired. I had a certain youth as a clerk, a son of
presbyter Armenus of Melonita, whom, by my humble instrumentality, God
rescued when he was becoming already immersed in secular affairs, for he
was employed as a shorthand writer by the proconsul's solicitor.(2) He was
then, indeed, as boys usually are, prompt and somewhat restless, but as he
grew older (for his death occurred in his twenty-second year) a gravity of
deportment and circumspect probity of life so adorned him that it is a
pleasure to dwell upon his memory. He was, moreover, a clever stenographer,
(3) and indefatigable in writing: he had begun also to be earnest in
reading, so that he even urged me to do more than my indolence would have
chosen, in order to spend hours of the night in reading, for he read aloud
to me for a time every night after all was still; and in reading, he would
not pass over any sentence unless he understood it, and would ?go over it a
third or even a fourth time, and not leave it until what he wished to know
was made clear. I had begun to regard him not as a mere boy and clerk, but
as a comparatively intimate and pleasant friend, for his conversation gave
me much delight.

   2. He desired also to "depart and to be with Christ,"(4) a desire which
has been fulfilled. For he was ill for sixteen days in his father's house,
and by strength of memory he continually repeated portions of Scripture
throughout almost the whole time of his illness. But when he was very near
to the end of his life, he sang(5) so as to be heard by all, "My soul
longeth for and hastens unto the courts of the Lord,''(6) after which he
sang again, "Thou hast anointed my head with oil, and beautiful is Thy cup,
overpowering my senses with delight!"(7) In these things he was wholly
occupied; in the consolation yielded by them he found satisfaction. At the
last, when dissolution was just coming upon him, he began to make the sign
of the cross on his forehead, and in finishing this his hand was moving
down to his mouth, which also he wished to mark with the same sign, but the
inward man (which had been truly renewed day by day)(8) had, ere this was
done, forsaken the tabernacle of clay. To myself there has been given so
great an ecstasy of joy, that I think that after leaving his own body he
has entered into my spirit, and is there imparting to me a certain fulness
of light from his presence, for I am conscious of a joy beyond all measure
through his deliverance and safety -- indeed it is ineffable. For I felt no
small anxiety on his account, being afraid of the dangers peculiar to his
years. For I was at pains to inquire of himself whether perchance he had
been defiled by intercourse with woman; he solemnly assured us that he was
free from this stain, by which declaration our joy was still more
increased. So he died. We honored his memory by suitable obsequies, such as
were due to one so excellent, for we continued during three days to praise
the Lord with hymns at his grave, and on the third day we offered the
sacraments of redemption.(1)

   3. Behold, however, two days thereafter, a certain respectable widow
from Figentes, an handmaid from God, who said that she had been twelve
years in widowhood saw the following vision in a dream. She saw a certain
deacon, who had died four years ago, preparing a palace, I with the
assistance of servants and handmaids of God (virgins and widows). It was
being so much adorned that the place was refulgent with splendor, and
appeared to be wholly made of silver. On her inquiring eagerly for whom
this palace was being prepared, the, deacon aforesaid answered, "For the
young man, the son of the t presbyter, who was cut off yesterday." There
appeared in the same palace an old man robed in white, who grave orders to
two others, also dressed in white, to go, and having raised the body from
the grave, to carry it up with them to heaven. And she added, that so soon
as the body had been taken up from the grave and carried to heaven, there
sprang from the same sepulchre branches of the rose, called from its folded
blossoms the virgin rose.

   4. I have narrated the event: listen now, if you please, to my
question, and teach me what I ask, for the departure of that young man's
soul forces such questions from me. While we are in the body, we have an
inward faculty of perception which is alert in proportion to the activity
of our attention, and is more wakeful and eager the more earnestly
attentive we become: and it seems to us probable that even in its highest
activity it is retarded by the encumbrance of the body, for who can fully
describe all that the mind suffers through the body! In the midst of the
perturbation and annoyance which come from the suggestions, temptations,
necessities, and varied afflictions of which the body is the cause, the
mind does not surrender its strength, it resists and conquers. Sometimes J
it is defeated; nevertheless, mindful of what is its own nature, it
becomes, under the stimulating influence of such labours, more active and
more wary, and breaks through the meshes of wickedness, and so makes its
way to better! things. Your Holiness will kindly understand what I mean to
say. Therefore, while we are in this life, we are hindered by such
deficiencies, and are nevertheless, as it is written, "more than conquerors
through Him that loved us."(2) When we go forth from this body, and escape
from every burden, and from sin, with its incessant activity, what are we ?

   5. In the first place, I ask whether there may not be some kind of body
(formed, perchance, of one of the four elements, either air or ether) which
does not depart from the incorporeal principle, that is, the substance
properly called the soul, when it forsakes this earthly body. For as the
soul is in its nature incorporeal, if it be absolutely disembodied by death
there is now one soul of all that have left this world. And in that case
where would the rich man, who was clothed in purple, and Lazarus, who was
full of sores, now be? How, moreover, could they be distinguished according
to their respective deserts, so that the one should have suffering and the
other have joy, if there were only a single soul made by the combination of
all disembodied souls, unless, of course, these things are to be understood
in a figurative sense? Be that as it may, there is no question that souls
which are held in definite places (as that rich man was in the flame, and
that poor man was in Abraham's bosom) are held in bodies. If there are
distinct places, there are bodies, and in these bodies the souls reside;
and even although the punishments and rewards are experienced in the
conscience, the soul which experiences them is nevertheless in a body.
Whatever is the nature of that one soul made hp of many souls, it must be
possible for it in its unbroken unity to be both grieved and made glad at
the same moment, if it is to approve itself to be really a substance
consisting of many souls gathered into one. If, however, this soul is
called one only in the same way as the incorporeal mind is called one,
although it has in it memory, and will, and intellect, and if it be alleged
that all these are separate incorporeal causes or powers and have their
several distinctive offices and work without one impeding another in any
way, I think this might be in some measure answered by saying that it must
be also possible for some of the souls to be under punishment and some of
the sours to enjoy rewards simultaneously in this one substance consisting
of many souls gathered into One.

   6. Or if this be not so [that is, if there be no such body remaining
still in union with the incorporeal principle after it quits this earthly
body], what is there to hinder each soul from having, when separated from
the solid body which it here inhabits, another body, so that the soul
always I animates a body of some kind? or in what body does it pass to any
region, if such there be, to which necessity compels it to go? For the
angels themselves, if they were not numbered by bodies of some kind which
they have, could not be called many, as they are by the Truth Himself when
He said in the gospel, "I could pray the Father, and He will presently give
me twelve legions of angels."(1) Again it is certain that Samuel was seen
in the body when he was raised at the request of Saul;(2) and as to Moses,
whose body was buried, it is plain from the gospel narrative that he came
in the body to the Lord on the mountain to which He and His disciples had
retired.(3) In the Apocrypha, and in the Mysteries of Moses, a writing
which is wholly devoid of authority, it is indeed said that, at the time
when he ascended the mount to die, through the power which his body
possessed, there was one body which was committed to the earth, and another
which was joined to the angel who accompanied him; but I do not feel myself
called upon to give to a sentence in apocryphal writings a preference over
the definite statements quoted above. We must therefore give attention to
this, and search out, by the help either of the authority of revelation or
of the light o reason, the matter about which we are inquiring. But it is
alleged that the future resurrection of the body is a proof that the soul
was after death absolutely without a body. This is not, however, an
unanswerable objection, for the angels, who are like our souls invisible,
have at times desired to appear in bodily forms and be seen, and (whatever
might be the form of body worthy to be assumed by these spirits) they have
appeared, for example, to Abraham(4) and to Tobias.(5) Therefore it is
quite possible that the resurrection of the body may, as we assuredly
believe, take place, and yet that the soul may be reunited to it without
its being found to have been at any moment wholly devoid of some kind of
body. Now the body which the soul here occupies consists of the four
elements, of which one, namely heat, seems to depart from this body at the
same moment as the soul. For there remains after death that which is made
of earth, moisture also is not wanting to the body, nor is the element of
cold matter gone; heat alone has fled, which perhaps the soul takes along
with it if it migrates from place to place. This is all that I say
meanwhile concerning the body.

   7. It seems to me also, that if the soul while occupying the living
body is capable, as I have said, of strenuous mental application, how much
more unencumbered, active, vigorous, earnest, resolute, and persevering
will it be, how much enlarged in capacity and improved in character, if it
has while in this body learned to relish virtue! For after laying aside
this body, or rather, after having this cloud swept away, the soul will
have come to be free from all disturbing influences, enjoying tranquillity
and exempt from temptation, seeing whatever it has longed for, and
embracing what it has loved. Then, also, it will be capable of remembering
and recognising friends, both those who went before it from this world, and
those whom it left here below. Perhaps this may be true. I know not, but I
desire to learn. But it would greatly distress me to think that the soul
after death passes into a state of torpor, being as it were buried, just as
it is during sleep while it is in the body, living only in hope, but having
nothing and knowing nothing, especially if in its sleep it be not even
stirred by any dreams. This notion causes me very great horror, and seems
to indicate that the life of the soul is extinguished at death.

   8. This also I would ask: Supposing that the soul be discovered to have
such a body as we speak of, does that body lack any of the senses? Of
course, if there cannot be imposed upon it any necessity for smelling,
tasting, or touching, as I suppose will be the case, these senses will be
wanting; but I hesitate as to the senses of sight and hearing. For are not
devils said to hear (not, indeed, in all the persons whom they harass, for
in regard to these there is a question), even when they appear in bodies of
their own? And as to the faculty of sight, how can they pass from one place
to another if they have a body but are void of the power of seeing, so as
to guide its motions? Do you think that this is not the case with human
souls when they go forth from the body,--that they have still a body of
some kind, and are not deprived of some at least of the senses proper to
this body? Else how can we explain the fact that very many dead persons
have been observed by day, or by persons awake and walking abroad during
the I night, to pass into houses just as they were wont to do in their
lifetime? This I have heard not once, but often; and I have also heard it
said that in places in which dead bodies are interred, and especially in
churches, there are commotions and prayers which are heard for the most
part at a certain time of the night. This I remember hearing from more than
one: for a certain holy presbyter was an eye-witness of such an apparition,
having observed a multitude of such phantoms issuing from the baptistery in
bodies full of light, after which he heard their prayers in the midst of
the church itself. All such things are either true, and therefore helpful
to the inquiry which we are now making, or are mere fables, in which case
the fact of their invention is wonderful; nevertheless I would desire to
get some information from the fact that they come and visit men, and are
seen otherwise than in dreams.

   9. These dreams suggest another question. I do not at this moment
concern myself about the mere creations of fancy, which are formed by the
emotions of the uneducated. I speak of visitations in sleep, such as the
apparition to Joseph(1) in a dream, in the manner experienced in most cases
of the kind. In the same manner, therefore, our own friends also who have
departed this life before us sometimes come and appear to us in dreams, and
speak to us. For I myself remember that Profuturus, and Privatus, and
Servilius, holy men who within my recollection were removed by death from
our monastery, spoke to me, and that the events of which they spoke came to
pass according to their words. Or if it be some other higher spirit that
assumes their form and visits our minds, I leave this to the all-seeing eye
of Him before whom everything from the highest to the lowest is uncovered.
If, therefore, the Lord be pleased to speak through reason to your Holiness
on all these questions, I beg you to be so kind as make me partaker of the
knowledge which you have received. There is another thing which I have
resolved not to omit mentioning, for perhaps it bears upon the matter now
under investigation:

   10. This same youth, in connection with whom these questions are
brought forward, departed tiffs life after having received what may be
called a summons(2) at the time when he was dying. For one who had been a
companion of his as a student, and reader, and shorthand writer to my
dictation, who had died eight months before, was seen by a person in a
dream coming towards him. When he was asked by the person who then
distinctly saw him why he had come, he said, "I have come to take this
friend away;" and so it proved. For in the house itself, also, there
appeared to a certain old man, who was almost awake, a man bearing in his
hand a laurel branch on which something was written. Nay, more, when this
one was seen, it is further reported that after the death of the young man,
his father the presbyter had begun to reside along with the aged Theasius
in the monastery, in order to find consolation there, but lo! on the third
day after his death, the young man is seen entering the monastery, and is
asked by one of the brethren in a dream of some kind whether he knew
himself to be dead. He replied that he knew he was. The other asked whether
he had been welcomed by God. This also he answered with great expressions
of joy. And when questioned as to the reason why he had come, he answered,
"I have been sent to summon my father." The person to whom these things
were shown awakes, and relates what had passed. It comes to the ear of
Bishop Theasius. He, being alarmed, sharply admonished the person who told
him, lest the matter should come, as it might easily do, to the ear of the
presbyter himself, and he should be disturbed by such tidings. But why
prolong the narration? Within about four days from this visitation he was
saying (for he had suffered from a moderate feverishness) that he was now
out of danger, and that the physician had given up attending him, having
assured him that there was no cause whatever for anxiety; but that very day
this presbyter expired after he had lain down on his couch. Nor should I
forbear mentioning, that on the same day on which the youth died, he asked
his father three times to forgive him anything in which he might have
offended, and every time that he kissed his father he said to him, "Let us
give thanks to God, father," and insisted upon his father saying the words
along with him, as if he were exhorting one who was to be his companion in
going forth from this world. And in fact only seven days elapsed between
the two deaths. What shall we say of things so wonderful? Who shall be a
thoroughly reliable teacher as to these mysterious dispensations? To you in
the hour of perplexity my agitated heart unburdens itself. The divine
appointment of the death of the young man and of his father is beyond all
doubt, for two sparrows shall not fall to the ground without the will of
our heavenly Father. (3)

   11. That the soul cannot exist in absolute separation from a body of
some kind is proved in my opinion by the fact that to exist without body
belongs to God alone. But I think that the laying aside of so great a
burden as the body, in the act of passing from this world, proves that the
soul will then be very much more wakeful than it is meanwhile; for then the
soul appears, as I think, far more noble when no longer encumbered by so
great a hindrance, both in action and in knowledge, and that entire
spiritual rest proves it to be free from all causes of disturbance and
error, but does not make it languid, and as it were slow, torpid, and
embarrassed, inasmuch as it is enough for the soul to enjoy in its fulness
the liberty to which it has attained in being freed from the world and the
body; for, as you have wisely said, the intellect is satisfied with food,
and applies the lips of the spirit to the fountain of life in that
condition in which it is happy and blest in the undisputed lordship of its
own faculties. For before I quitted the monastery I saw brother Servilius
in a dream after his decease, and he said that we were labouring to attain
by the exercise of reason to an understanding of truth, whereas he and
those who were in the same state as he were always resting in the pure joy
of contemplation.

   12. I also beg you to explain to me in how many ways the word wisdom is
used; as God is wisdom, and a wise mind is wisdom (in which way it is said
to be as light); as we read also of the wisdom of Bezaleel, who made the
tabernacle or the ointment, and the wisdom of Solomon, or any other wisdom,
if there be such, and wherein they differ from each other; and whether the
one eternal Wisdom which is with the Father is to be understood as spoken
of in these different degrees, as they are called diverse gifts of the Holy
Spirit, who divideth to every one severally according as He will. Or, with
the exception of that Wisdom alone which was not created, were these
created, and have they a distinct existence of their own? or are they
effects, and have they received their name from the definition of their
work P I am asking a great many questions. May the Lord grant you grace to
discover the truth sought, and wisdom sufficient to commit it to writing,
and to communicate it without delay to me. I have written in much
ignorance, and in a homely style; but since you think it worth while to
know that about which I am inquiring, I beseech you in the name of Christ
the Lord to correct me where I am mistaken, and teach me what you know that
I am desirous to learn.

LETTER CLIX. (A.D. 415.)

TO EVODIUS, MY LORD MOST BLESSED, MY VENERABLE AND BELOVED BROTHER AND
PARTNER IN THE PRIESTLY OFFICE, AND TO THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM,
AUGUSTIN AND THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM SEND GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. Our brother Barbarus, the bearer of this letter, is a servant of
God, who has now for a long time been settled at Hippo, and has been an
eager and diligent hearer of the word of God. He requested from us this
letter to your Holiness, whereby we commend him to you in the Lord, and
convey to you through him the salutations which it is our duty to offer. To
reply to those letters of your Holiness, in which you have interwoven
questions of great difficulty, would be a most laborious task, even for men
who are at leisure, and who are endowed with much greater ability in
discussing and acuteness in apprehending any subject than we possess. One,
indeed, of the two letters in which you ask many great questions has gone
amissing, I know not how, and though long sought for cannot be found; the
other, which has been found, contains a very pleasing account of a servant
of God, a good and chaste young man, stating how he departed from this
life, and by what testimonies, communicated through visions of the
brethren, his merits were, as you state, made known to you. Taking occasion
from this young man's case, you propose and discuss an extremely obscure
question concerning the soul, --whether it is associated when it goes forth
from this body with some other kind of body, by means of which it can be
carried to or confined in places having material boundaries? The
investigation of this question, if indeed it admits of satisfactory
investigation by beings such as we are, demands the most diligent care and
labour, and therefore a mind absolutely at leisure from such occupations as
engross my time. My opinion, however, if you are willing to hear it, summed
up in a sentence, is, that I by no means believe that the soul in departing
from the body is accompanied by another body of any kind.

   2. As to the question how these visions and predictions of future
events are produced, let him attempt to explain them who understands by
what power we are to account for the great wonders which are wrought in the
mind of every man when his thoughts are busy. For we see, and we plainly
perceive, that within the mind innumerable images of many objects
discernible by the eye or by our other senses are produced, --whether they
are produced in regular order or in confusion matters not to us at present:
all that we say is, that since such images are beyond all dispute produced,
the man who is found able to state by what power and in what way these
phenomena of daily and perpetual experience are to be accounted for is the
only man who may warrantably venture to conjecture or propound any
explanation of these visions, which are of exceedingly rare occurrence. For
my part, as I discover more plainly my inability to account for the
ordinary facts of our experience, when awake or asleep, throughout the
whole course of our lives, the more do I shrink from venturing to explain
what is extraordinary. For while I have been dictating this epistle to you,
I have been contemplating your person in my mind,--you being, of course,
absent all the while, and knowing nothing of my thoughts, -- and I have
been imagining from my knowledge of what is in you how you will be affected
by my words; and I have been unable to apprehend, either by observation or
by inquiry, how this process was accomplished in my mind. Of one thing,
however, I am certain, that although the mental image was very like
something material, it was not produced either by masses of matter or by
qualities of matter. Accept this in the meantime from one writing under
pressure of other duties, and in haste. In the twelfth of the books which I
have written on Genesis this question is discussed with great care, and
that dissertation is enriched with a forest of examples from actual
experience or from trustworthy report. How far I have been competent to
handle the question, and what I have accomplished in it, you will judge
when you have read that work; if indeed the Lord shall be pleased m His
kindness to permit me now to publish those books systematically corrected
to the best of my ability, and thus to meet the expectation of many
brethren, instead of deferring their hope by continuing further the
discussion of a subject which has already engaged me for a long time.

   3. I will narrate briefly, however, one fact which I commend to your
meditation. You know our brother Gennadius, a physician, known to almost
every one, and very dear to us, who now lives at Carthage, and was in other
years eminent as a medical practitioner at Rome. You know him as a man of
religious character and of very great benevolence, actively compassionate
and promptly liberal in his care of the poor. Nevertheless, even he, when
still a young man, and most zealous in these charitable acts, had
sometimes, as he himself told me, doubts as to whether there was any life
after death. Forasmuch, therefore, as God would in no wise forsake a man so
merciful in his disposition and conduct, there appeared to him in sleep a
youth of remarkable appearance and commanding presence, who said to him:
"Follow me." Following him, he came to a city where he began to hear on the
right hand sounds of a melody so exquisitely sweet as to surpass anything
he had ever heard. When he inquired what it was, his guide said: "It is the
hymn of the blessed and the holy." What he reported himself to have seen on
the left hand escapes my remembrance. He awoke; the dream vanished, and he
thought of it as only a dream.

   4. On a second night, however, the same youth appeared to Gennadius,
and asked whether he recognised him, to which he replied that he knew him
well, without the slightest uncertainty. Thereupon he asked Gennadius where
he had become acquainted with him. There also his memory failed him not as
to the proper reply: he narrated the whole vision, and the hymns of the
saints which, under his guidance, he had been taken to hear, with all the
readiness natural to recollection of some very recent experience. On this
the youth inquired whether it was in sleep or when awake that he had seen
what he had just narrated. Gennadius answered: "In sleep." The youth then
said: "You remember it well; it is true that you saw these things in sleep,
but I would have you know that even now you are seeing in sleep." Hearing
this, Gennadius was persuaded of its truth, and in his reply declared that
he believed it. Then his teacher went on to say: "Where is your body now?"
He answered: "In my bed." "Do you know," said the youth, "that the eyes in
this body of yours are now bound and closed, and at rest, and e that with
these eyes you are seeing nothing?" He answered: "I know it." "What, then,
said the youth, "are the eyes with which you see me?" He, unable to
discover what to answer to this, was silent. While he hesitated, the youth
unfolded to him what he was endeavoring to teach him by these questions,
and forthwith said: "' As while you are asleep and lying on your bed these
eyes of your body are now unemployed and doing nothing, and yet you have
eyes with which you behold me, and enjoy this vision, so, after your death,
while your bodily eyes shall be wholly inactive, there shall be in you a
life by which you shall still live, and a faculty of perception by which
you shall still perceive. Beware, therefore, after this of harbouring
doubts as to whether the life of man shall continue after death." This
believer says that by this means all doubts as to this matter were removed
from him. By whom was he taught this but by the merciful, providential care
of God ?

   5. Some one may say that by this narrative I have not solved but
complicated the question. Nevertheless, while it is free to every one to
believe or disbelieve these statements, every man has his own consciousness
at hand as a teacher by whose help he may apply himself to this most
profound question. Every day man wakes, and sleeps, and thinks; let any
man, therefore, answer whence proceed these things which, while not
material bodies, do nevertheless resemble the forms, properties, and
motions of material bodies: let him, I say, answer this if he can. But if
he cannot do this, why is he in such haste to pronounce a definite opinion
on things which occur very rarely, or are beyond the range of his
experience, when he is unable to explain matters of daily and perpetual
observation? For my part, although I am wholly unable to explain in words
how those semblances of material bodies, without any real body, are
produced, I may say that I wish that, with the same certainty with which I
know that these things are not produced by the body, I could know by what
means those things are perceived which are occasionally seen by the spirit,
and are supposed to be seen by the bodily senses; or by what distinctive
marks we may know the visions of men who have been misguided by delusion,
or, most commonly, by impiety, since the examples of such visions closely
resembling the visions of pious and holy men are so numerous, that if I
wished to quote them, time, rather than abundance of examples, would fail
me.

   May you, through the mercy of the Lord grow m grace, most blessed lord
and venerable and beloved brother!

LETTER CLXIII. (A.D. 414.)

TO BISHOP AUGUSTIN, BISHOP EVODIUS SENDS GREETING.

   Some time ago I sent two questions to your Holiness; the tint, which
was sent, I think, by Jobinus, a servant in the nunnery,(1) related to God
and reason, and the second was in regard to the opinion that the body of
the Saviour is capable of seeing the substance of the Deity. I now propound
a third question: Does the rational soul which our Saviour assumed along
with His body fall under any one of the theories commonly advanced in
discussions on the origin of souls (if any theory indeed can be with
certainty established on the subject),--or does His soul, though rational,
belong not to any of the species under which the souls of living creatures
are classified, but to another?

   I ask also a fourth question: Who are those spirits in reference to
whom the Apostle Peter testifies concerning the Lord in these words: "Being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, in which also He
went and preached to the spirits in prison?" giving us to understand that
they were in hell, and that Christ descending into hell, preached the
gospel to them all, and by grace delivered them all from darkness and
punishment, so that from the time of the resurrection of the Lord judgment
is expected, hell having then been completely emptied.

   What your Holiness believes in this matter I earnestly desire to know.

LETTER CLXIV. (A.D. 414.)

TO MY LORD EVODIUS MOST BLESSED, MY BROTHER AND PARTNER IN THE EPISCOPAL
OFFICE, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. The question which you have proposed to me from the epistle of the
Apostle Peter is one which, as I think you are aware, is wont to perplex me
most seriously, namely, how the words which you have quoted are to be
understood on the supposition that they were spoken concerning hell? I
therefore refer this question back to yourself, that if either you yourself
be able, or can find any other person who is able to do so, you may remove
and terminate my perplexities on the subject. If the Lord grant to me
ability to understand the words before you do, and it be in my power to
impart what I receive from Him to you, I will not withhold it from a friend
so truly loved. In the meantime, I will communicate to you the things in
the passage which occasion difficulty to me, that, keeping in view these
remarks on the words of the apostle, you may either exercise your own
thoughts on them, or consult any one whom you find competent to pronounce
an opinion.

   2. After having said that "Christ was put to death in the flesh, and
quickened in the spirit," the apostle immediately went on to say: "in which
also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were
unbelieving,(2) when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of
Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were
saved by water;" thereafter he added the words: "which baptism also now by
a like figure has saved you."(3) This, therefore, is felt by me to be
difficult. If the Lord when He died preached in hell to spirits in prison,
why were those who continued unbelieving while the ark was a preparing the
only ones counted worthy of this favour, namely, the Lord's descending into
hell? For in the ages between the time of Noah and the passion of Christ,
there died many thousands of so many nations whom He might have found in
hell. I do not, of course, speak here of those who in that period of time
had believed in God, as, e.g. the prophets and patriarchs of Abraham's
line, or, going father back, Noah himself and his house, who had been saved
by water (excepting perhaps the one son, who afterwards was rejected), and,
in addition to these, all others outside of the posterity of Jacob who were
believers in God, such as Job, the citizens of Nineveh, and any others,
whether mentioned in Scripture or existing unknown to us in the vast human
family at any time. I speak only of those many thousands of men who,
ignorant of God and devoted to the worship of devils or of idols, had
passed out of this life from the time of Noah to the passion of Christ. How
was it that Christ, finding these in hell, did not preach to them, but
preached only to those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah when the
ark was a preparing? Or if he preached to all, why has Peter mentioned only
these, and passed over the innumerable multitude of others ?

   CHAP. II. 3. -- It is established beyond question that the Lord, after
He had been put to death in the flesh, "descended into hell;" for it is
impossible to gainsay either that utterance of prophecy, "Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell,"(1)--an utterance which Peter himself expounds in
the Acts of the Apostles, lest any one should venture to put upon it
another interpretation, -- or the words of the same apostle, in which he
affirms that the Lord "loosed the pains of hell, in which it was not
possible for Him to be holden."(2) Who, therefore, except an infidel, will
deny that Christ was in hell? As to the difficulty which is found in
reconciling the statement that the pains of hell were loosed by Him, with
the fact that He had never begun to be in these pains as in bonds, and did
not so loose them as if He had broken off chains by which He had been
bound, this is easily removed when we understand that they were loosed in
the same way as the snares of huntsmen may be loosed to prevent their
holding, not because they have taken hold. It may also be understood as
teaching us to believe Him to have loosed those pains which could not
possibly hold Him, but which were holding those to whom He had resolved to
grant deliverance.

   4. But who these were it is presumptuous for us to define. For if we
say that all who were found there were then delivered without exception,
who will not rejoice if we can prove this? Especially will men rejoice for
the sake of some who are intimately known to us by their literary labours,
whose eloquence and talent we admire, --not only the poets and orators who
in many parts of their writings have held up to contempt and ridicule these
same false gods of the nations, and have even occasionally confessed the
one true God, although along with the rest they observed superstitious
rites, but also those who have uttered the same, not in poetry or rhetoric,
but as philosophers: and for the sake of many more of whom we have no
literary remains, but in regard to whom we have learned from the writings
of these others that their lives were to a certain extent praiseworthy, so
that (with the exception of their service of God, in which they erred,
worshipping the vanities which had been set up as objects of public
worship, and serving the creature rather than the Creator) they may be
justly held up as models in all the other virtues of frugality, self-
denial, chastity, sobriety, braving of death in their country's defence,
and faith kept inviolate not only to fellow-citizens, but also to enemies.
All these things, indeed, when they are practised with a view not to the
great end of right and true piety, but to the empty pride of human praise
and glory, become in a sense worthless and unprofitable; nevertheless, as
indications of a certain disposition of mind, they please us so much that
we would desire those in whom they exist, either by special preference or
along with the others, to be freed from the pains of hell, were not the
verdict of human feeling different from that of the justice of the Creator.

   5. These things being so, if the Saviour delivered all from that place,
and, to quote the terms of the question in your letter, "emptied hell, so
that now from that time forward the last judgment was to be expected," the
following things occasion not unreasonable perplexity on this subject, and
are wont to present themselves to me in the meantime when I think on it.
First, by what authoritative statements can this opinion be confirmed? For
the words of Scripture, that "the pains of hell were loosed" by the death
of Christ, do not establish this, seeing that this statement may be
understood as referring to Himself, and meaning that he so far loosed (that
is, made ineffectual) the pains of hell that He Himself was not held by
them, especially since it is added that it was "impossible for Him to be
holden of them." Or if any one [objecting to this interpretation] ask the
reason why He chose to descend into hell, where those pains were which
could not possibly hold Him who was, as Scripture says, "free among the
dead," (3) in whom the prince and captain of death found nothing which
deserved punishment, the words that "the pains of hell were loosed" may be
understood as referring not to the case of all, but only of some whom He
judged worthy of that deliverance; so that neither is He supposed to have
descended thither in vain, without the purpose of bringing benefit to any
of those who were there held in prison, nor is it a necessary inference
that what divine mercy and justice granted to some must be supposed to have
been granted to all.

   CHAP. III. 6. As to the first man, the father of mankind, it is agreed
by almost the entire Church that the Lord loosed him from that prison; a
tenet which must be believed to have been accepted not without reason,-
from whatever source it was handed down to the Church, although the
authority of the canonical Scriptures cannot be brought forward as speaking
expressly in its support,(4) though this seems to be the opinion which is
more than any other borne out by these words in the book of Wisdom.(5) Some
add to this [tradition] that the same favour was bestowed on the holy men
of antiquity, on Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and
the other patriarchs and prophets, they also being loosed from those pains
at the time when the Lord descended into hell.

   7. But, for my part, I cannot see how Abraham, into whose bosom also
the pious beggar in the parable was received, can be understood to have
been in these pains; those who are able can perhaps explain this. But I
suppose every one must see it to be absurd to imagine that only two,
namely, Abraham and Lazarus, were in that bosom of wondrous repose before
the Lord descended into hell, and that with reference to these two alone it
was said to the rich man, "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed,
so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they
pass to us that would pass from thence."(1) Moreover, if there were more
than two there, who will dare to say that the patriarchs and prophets were
not there, to whose righteousness and piety so signal testimony is borne in
the word of God? What benefit was conferred in that case on them by Him who
loosed the pains of hell, in which they were not held, I do not yet
understand, especially as I have not been able to find anywhere in
Scripture the name of hell used in a good sense. And if this use of the
term is nowhere found in the divine Scriptures, assuredly the bosom of
Abraham, that is, the abode of a certain secluded rest, is not to be
believed to be a part of hell. Nay, from these words themselves of the
great Master in which He says that Abraham said, "Between us and you there
is a great gulf fixed," it is, as I think, sufficiently evident that the
bosom of that glorious felicity was not any integral part of hell. For what
is that great gulf but a chasm completely separating those places between
which it not only is, but is fixed? Wherefore, if sacred Scripture had
said, without naming hell and its pains, that Christ when He died went to
that bosom of Abraham, I wonder if any one would have dared to say that He
"descended into hell."

   8. But seeing that plain scriptural testimonies make mention of hell
and its pains, no reason; can be alleged for believing that He who is the i
Saviour went thither, except that He might save from its pains; but whether
He did save all whom He found held in them, or some whom He judged worthy
of that favour, I still ask: that He was, however, in hell, and that He
conferred this benefit on persons subjected to these pains, I do not doubt.
Wherefore, I have not yet found what benefit He, when He descended into
hell, conferred upon those righteous ones who were in Abraham's bosom, from
whom I see that, so far as regarded the beatific presence of His Godhead,
He never withdrew Himself; since even on that very day on which He died, He
promised that the thief should be with Him in paradise at the time when He
was about to descend to loose the pains of hell. Most certainly, therefore,
He was, before that time, both in paradise and the bosom of Abraham in His
beatific wisdom, and in hell in His condemning power; for since the Godhead
is confined by no limits, where is He not present? At the same time,
however, so far as regarded the created nature, in assuming which at a
certain point of time, He, while continuing to be God, became man -- that
is to say, so far as regarded His soul, He was in hell: this is plainly
declared in these words of Scripture, which were both sent before in
prophecy and filly expounded by apostolical interpretation: "Thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell."(2)

   9. I know that some think that at the death of Christ a resurrection
such as is promised to us at the end of the world was granted to the
righteous, founding this on the statement in Scripture that, in the
earthquake by which at the moment of His death the rocks were rent and the
graves were opened, many bodies of the saints arose and were seen with Him
in the Holy City after He rose. Certainly, if these did not fall asleep
again, their bodies being a second time laid in the grave, it would be
necessary to see in what sense Christ can be understood to 'be "the first
begotten from the dead," (3) if so many preceded Him in the resurrection.
And if it be said, in answer to this, that the statement is made by
anticipation, so that the graves indeed are to be supposed to have been
opened by that earthquake at the time when Christ was hanging on the cross,
but that the bodies of the saints did not rise then, but only after Christ
had risen before them, -- although on this hypothesis of anticipation in
the narrative, the addition of these words would not hinder us from still
believing, on the one hand, that Christ was without doubt "the first
begotten from the dead," and on the other, that to these saints permission
was given, when He went before them, to rise to an eternal state of
incorruption and immortality,there still remains a difficulty, namely, how
in that case Peter could have spoken as he did, saying what was without
doubt perfectly true, when he affirmed that in the prophecy quoted above
the words, that "His flesh should not see corruption," referred not to
David but to Christ, and added concerning David, "He is buried, and his
sepulchre is with us to this day," (4) -- a statement which would have had
no force as an argument unless the body of David was still undisturbed in
the sepulchre; for of course the sepulchre might still have been there even
had the saint's body been raised up immediately after his death, and had
thus not seen corruption. But it seems hard that David should not be
included in this resurrection of the saints, if eternal life was given to
them, since it is so frequently, so clearly, and with such honourable
mention of his name, declared that Christ was to be of David's seed.
Moreover, these words in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning the ancient
believers, "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without
us should not be made perfect,"(1) will be endangered, if these believers
have been already established in that incorruptible resurrection-state
which is promised to us when we are to be made perfect at the end of the
world.

   CHAP. IV. -- 10. You perceive, therefore, how intricate is the question
why Peter chose to mention, as persons to whom, when shut up in prison, the
gospel was preached, those only who were unbelieving in the days of Noah
when the ark was a preparing -- and also the difficulties which prevent me
from pronouncing any definite opinion on the subject. An additional reason
for my hesitation is, that after the apostle had said, "Which baptism now
by a like figure saves you (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh,
but the answer of a good conscience towards God) by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, who is on the right hand of God, having swallowed up death
that we might be made heirs of eternal life; and having gone into heaven,
angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject to Him," he added:
"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves
likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath
ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the
flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God;" after which he
continues: "For the time: past of our life may suffice us to have wrought
the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousess, lusts, excess of
wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein Z they
think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot,
speaking evil of you; who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge
the quick and the dead." After these! words he subjoins: "For for this
cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might
be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the
Spirit."(2)

   11. Who can be otherwise than perplexed by words so profound as these?
He saith, "The gospel was preached to the dead;" and if by the "dead" we
understand persons who have departed from the body, I suppose he must mean
those described above as "unbelieving in the days of Noah," or certainly
all those whom Christ found in hell. What, then, is meant by the words,
"That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live
according to God in the spirit"? For how can they be judged in the flesh,
which if they be in hell they no longer have, and which if they have been
loosed from the pains of hell they have not yet resumed? For even if "hell
was," as you put in your question, "emptied," it is not to be believed that
all who were then there have risen again in the flesh, or those who,
arising, again appeared with the Lord resumed the flesh for this purpose,
that they might be in it judged according to men; but how this could be
taken as true in the case of those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah
I do not see, for Scripture does not affirm that they were made to live in
the flesh, nor can it be believed that the end for which they were loosed
from the pains of hell was that they who were delivered from these might
resume their flesh in order to suffer punishment. What, then, is meant by
the words, "That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but
live according to God in the spirit?" Can it mean that to those whom Christ
found in hell this was granted, that by the gospel they were quickened in
the spirit, although at the future resurrection they must be judged in the
flesh, that they may pass, through some punishment in the flesh, into the
kingdom of God? If this be what is meant, why were only the unbelievers of
the time of Noah (and not also all others whom Christ found in hell when He
went thither) quickened in spirit by the preaching of the gospel, to be
afterwards judged in the flesh with a punishment of limited duration? But
if we take this as applying to all, the question still remains why Peter
mentioned none but those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah.

   12. I find, moreover, a difficulty in the reason alleged by those who
attempt to give an explanation of this matter. They say that all those who
were found in hell when Christ descended thither had never heard the
gospel, and that that place of punishment or imprisonment was emptied of
all these, because the gospel was not published to the whole world in their
lifetime, and they had sufficient excuse for not believing that which had
never been proclaimed to them; but that thenceforth, men despising the
gospel when it was in all nations fully published and spread abroad would
be inexcusable, and therefore after the prison was then emptied there still
remains a just judgment, in which those who are contumacious and
unbelieving shall be punished even with eternal fire. Those who hold this
opinion do not consider that the same excuse is available for all those who
have, even after Christ's resurrection, departed this life before the
gospel came to them. For even after the Lord came back from hell, it was
not the case that no one was from that time forward permitted to go to hell
without having heard the gospel, seeing that multitudes throughout the
world died before the proclamation of its tidings came to them, all of whom
are entitled to plead the excuse which is alleged to have been taken away
from those of whom it is said, that because they had not before heard the
gospel, the Lord when He descended into hell proclaimed it to them.

   13. This objection may perhaps be met by saying that those also who
since the Lord's resurrection have died or are now dying without the gospel
having been proclaimed to them, may have heard it or may now hear it where
they are, in hell, so that there they may believe what ought to be believed
concerning the truth of Christ, and may also have that pardon and salvation
which those to whom Christ preached obtained; for the fact that Christ
ascended again from hell is no reason why the report concerning Him should
have perished from recollection there, for from this earth also He has gone
ascending into heaven, and yet by the publication of His gospel those who
believe in Him shall be saved; moreover, He was exalted, and received a
name that is above every name, for this end, I that in His name every knee
should bow, not only of things in heaven and on earth, but also of things
under the earth.(1) But if we accept this opinion, according to which we
are warranted in supposing that men who did not believe while they were in
life can in hell believe in Christ, who can bear the contradictions both of
reason and faith which must follow? In the first place, if this were true,
we should seem to have no reason for mourning over those who have departed
from the body without that grace, and there would be no ground for being
solicitous and using urgent exhortation that men would accept the grace of
God before they die, lest they should be punished with eternal death. If,
again, it be alleged that in hell those only believe to no purpose and in
vain who refused to accept here on earth the gospel preached to them, but
that believing will profit those who never despised a gospel which they
never had it in their power to hear another still more absurd consequence
is involved, namely, that forasmuch as all men shall certainly die, and
ought to come to hell wholly free from the guilt of having despised the
gospel; since otherwise it can be of no use to them to believe it when they
come there, the gospel ought not to be preached on earth, a sentiment not
less foolish than profane.

   CHAP. V. -- 14. Wherefore let us most firmly hold that which faith,
resting on authority established beyond all question, maintains: "that
Christ died according to the Scriptures," and that "He was buried," and
that "He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures," and all
other things which have been written concerning Him in records fully
demonstrated to be true. Among these doctrines we include the doctrine that
He was in hell, and, having loosed the pains of hell, in which it was
impossible for Him to be holden, from which also He is with good ground
believed to have loosed and delivered whom He would, He took again to
Himself that body which He had left on the cross, land which had been laid
in the tomb. These things, I say, let us firmly hold; but as to the
question propounded by you from the words of the Apostle Peter, since you
now perceive the difficulties which I find in it, and since other
difficulties may possibly be found if the subject be more carefully
studied, let us continue to investigate it, whether by applying our own
thoughts to the subject, or by asking the opinion of any one whom it may be
becoming and possible to consult.

   15. Consider, however, I pray you, whether all that the Apostle Peter
says concerning spirits shut up in prison, who were unbelieving in the days
of Noah, may not after all have been written without any reference to hell,
but rather to those times the typical character of which he has transferred
to the present time. For that transaction had been typical of future
events, so that those who do not believe the gospel in our age, when the
Church is being built up in all nations, may be understood to be like those
who did not believe in that age while the ark was a preparing; also, that
those who have believed and are saved by baptism may be compared to those
who at that time, being in the ark, were saved by water; wherefore he says,
"So baptism by a like figure saves you." Let us therefore interpret the
rest of the statements concerning them that believed not so as to harmonise
with the analogy of the figure, and refuse to entertain the thought that
the gospel was once preached, or is even to this hour being preached in
hell in order to make men believe and be delivered from its pains, as if a
Church had been established there as well as on earth.

   16. Those who have inferred from the words, "He preached to the spirits
in prison," that Peter held the opinion which perplexes you, seem to me to
have been drawn to this interpretation by imagining that the term "spirits"
could not be applied to designate souls which were at that time still in
the bodies of men, and which, being shut up in the darkness of ignorance,
were, so to speak, "in prison," -- a prison such as that from which the
Psalmist sought deliverance in the prayer, "Bring my soul out of prison,
that I may praise Thy name;"(2) which is in another place called the
"shadow of death,"(1) from which deliverance was granted, not certainly in
hell, but in this world, to those of whom it is written, "They that dwell
in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."(2)
But to the men of Noah's time the gospel was preached in vain, because they
believed not when God's long suffering waited for them during the many
years in which the ark was being built (for the building of the ark was
itself in a certain sense a preaching of mercy); even as .now men similar
to them are unbelieving, who, to use the same figure, are shut up in the
darkness of ignorance as in a prison, beholding in vain the Church which is
being built up throughout the world, while judgment is impending, as the
flood was by which at that time all the unbelieving perished; for the Lord
says: "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of
the Son of man; they did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were
given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the
flood came and destroyed them all."(3) But because that transaction was
also a type of a future event, that flood was a type both of baptism to
believers and of destruction to unbelievers, as in that figure in which,
not by a transaction but by words, two things are predicted concerning
Christ, when He is represented in Scripture as a stone which was destined
to be both to unbelievers a stone of stumbling, and to believers a
foundation-stone.(4) Occasionally, however, also in the same figure,
whether it be in the form of a typical event or of a parable, two things
are used to represent one, as believers were represented both by the
timbers of which the ark was built and by the eight souls saved in the ark,
and as in the gospel similitude of the sheepfold Christ is both the
shepherd and the door.(5)

   CHAP. VI.-- 17. And let it not be regarded as an objection to the
interpretation now given, that the Apostle Peter says that Christ Himself
preached to men shut up in prison who were unbelieving in the days of Noah,
as if we must consider this interpretation inconsistent with the fact that
at that time Christ had not come. For although he had not. yet come in the
flesh, as He came when afterwards He "showed Himself upon earth, and
conversed with men,"(6) nevertheless he certainly came often to this earth,
from the beginning of the human race, whether to rebuke the wicked, as
Cain, and before that, Adam and his wife, when they sinned, or to comfort
the good, or to admonish both, so that some should to their salvation
believe, others should to their condemnation refuse to believe, -- coming
then not in the flesh but in the spirit, speaking by suitable
manifestations of Himself to such persons and in such manner as seemed good
to Him. As to this expression, "He came in the spirit," surely He, as the
Son of God, is a Spirit in the essence of His Deity, for that is not
corporeal; but what is at any time done by the Son without the Holy Spirit,
or without the Father, seeing that all the works of the Trinity are
inseparable?

   18. The words of Scripture which are under consideration seem to me of
themselves to make this sufficiently plain to those who carefully attend to
them: "For Christ hath died once for our sins, the Just for the unjust,
that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but
quickened in the spirit: in which also He came and preached unto the
spirits in prison, who sometime were unbelieving, when the long-suffering
of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." The
order of the words is now, I suppose, carefully noted by you: "Christ being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit;" in which spirit He
came and preached also to those spirits who had once in the days of Noah
refused to believe His word; since before He came in the flesh to die for
us, which He did once, He often came in the spirit, to whom He would, by
visions instructing them as He would, coming to them assuredly in the same
spirit in which He was quickened when He was put to death in the flesh in
His passion. Now what does His being quickened in the spirit mean if not
this, that the same flesh in which alone He had experienced death rose from
the dead by the quickening spirit?

   CHAP. VII. 19. For who will dare to say that Jesus was put to death in
His soul, i.e. in the spirit which belonged to Him as man, since the only
death which the soul can experience is sin, from which He was absolutely
free when for us He was put to death in the flesh? For if the souls of all
men are derived from that one which the breath of God gave to the first
man, by whom "sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men,"(7) either the soul of Christ is not derived from the
same source as other souls, because He had absolutely no sin, either
original or personal, on account of which death could be supposed to be
merited by Him, since He paid on our behalf that which was not on His own
account due by Him, in whom the prince of this world, who had the power of
death, found nothing(8) -- and there is nothing unreasonable in the
supposition that He who created a soul for the first man should create a
soul for Himself; or if the soul of Christ be derived from Adam's soul He
in assuming it to Himself, cleansed it so that when. He came into this
world He was born of the Virgin perfectly free from sin either actual or
transmitted. If, however, the souls of men are not derived from that one
soul, and it is only by the flesh that original sin is transmitted from
Adam, the Son of God created a soul for Himself, as He creates souls for
all other men, but He united it not to sinful flesh, but to the "likeness
of sinful flesh."(1) For He took, indeed, from the Virgin the true
substance of flesh; not, however, "sinful flesh," for it was neither
begotten nor conceived through carnal concupiscence, but mortal, and
capable of change in the successive stages of life, as being like unto
sinful flesh in all points, sin excepted.

   20. Therefore, whatever be the true theory concerning the origin of
souls, -- and on this I feel it would be rash for me to pronounce,
meanwhile, any opinion beyond utterly rejecting the theory which affirms
that each soul is thrust into the body which it inhabits as into a prison,
where it expiates some former actions of its own of which I know nothing,
it is certain, regarding the soul of Christ, not only that it is, according
to the nature of all souls, immortal, but also that it was neither put to
death by sin nor punished by condemnation, the only two ways in which death
can be understood as experienced by the soul; and therefore it could not be
said of Christ that with reference to the soul He was "quickened in the
spirit." For He was quickened in that in which He had been put to death;
this, therefore, is spoken with reference to His flesh, for His flesh
received life again when the soul returned to it, as it also had died when
the soul departed. He was therefore said to be "put to death in the flesh,"
because He experienced death only in the flesh, but "quickened in the
spirit," because by the operation of that Spirit in which He was wont to
come and preach to whom He would, that same flesh in which He came to men
was quickened and rose from the grave.

   21. Wherefore, passing now to the words which we find farther on
concerning unbelievers, "Who shall give account to Him who is ready to
judge the quick and the dead," there is no necessity for our understanding
the "dead" here to be those who have departed from the body. For it may be
that the apostle intended by the word "dead" to denote unbelievers, as
being spiritually dead, like those of whom it was said, "Let the dead bury
their dead,"(2) and by the word "living" to denote those who believe in
Him, having not heard in vain the call, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light;"(3) of whom also the
Lord said: "The hour is corning, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall Have."(4) On the same
principle of interpretation, also, there is nothing compelling us to
understand the immediately succeeding words of Peter -- "For for this cause
was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be
judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the
spirit"(5)--as describing what has been done in hell. "For for this cause
has the gospel been preached" in this life "to the dead," that is, to the
unbelieving wicked, "that" when they believed "they might be judged
according to men in the flesh," -- that is, by means of various afflictions
and by the death of the body itself; for which reason the same apostle says
in another place: "The time is come that judgment must begin at the house
of God,"(6) -- "but live according to God in the spirit," since in that
same spirit they had been dead while they were held prisoners in the death
of unbelief and wickedness.

   22. If this exposition of the words of Peter offend any one, or,
without offending, at least fail to satisfy any one, let him attempt to
interpret them on the supposition that they refer to hell: and if he
succeed in solving my difficulties which I have mentioned above, so as to
remove the perplexity which they occasion, let him communicate his
interpretation to me; and if this were done, the words might possibly have
been intended to be understood in both ways, but the view which I have
propounded is not thereby shown to be false.

  I wrote and sent by the deacon Asellus a letter, which I suppose you
have received, giving such answers as I could to the questions which you
sent before, excepting the one concerning the vision of God by the bodily
senses, on which a larger treatise must be attempted. In your last note, to
which this is a reply, you propounded two questions concerning certain
words of the Apostle Peter, and concerning the soul of the Lord, both of
which I have discussed, -- the former more fully, the latter briefly.(7) I
beg you not to Fudge the trouble of sending me another copy of the letter
containing the question whether it is possible for the substance of the
Deity to be seen in a bodily form as limited to place; for it has, I know
not how, gone amissing here, and though long sought for, has not been
found.

LETTER CLXV. (A.D. 410.(1))

TO MY TRULY PIOUS LORDS MARCELLINUS(2) AND ANAPSYCHIA, SONS WORTHY OF BEING
ESTEEMED WITH ALL THE LOVE DUE TO THEIR POSITION, JEROME SENDS GREETING IN
CHRIST.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. At last I have received your joint letter from Africa,
and I do not regret the importunity with which, though you were silent, I
persevered in sending letters to you, that I might obtain a reply, and
learn, not through report from others, but from your own most welcome
statement, that you are in health. I have not forgotten the brief query, or
rather the very important theological(3) question, which you propounded in
regard to the origin of the soul, -- does it descend from heaven, as the
philosopher Pythagoras and all the Platonists and Origen think? or is it
part of the essence of the Deity, as the Stoics, Manichaeus, and the
Priscillianists of Spain imagine? or are souls kept in a divine treasure
house wherein they were stored of old as some ecclesiastics, foolishly
misled, believe? or are they daily created by God and sent into bodies,
according to what is written in the gospel, "My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work"?(4) or are souls really produced, as Tertullian, Apollinaris,
and the majority of the Western divines conjecture, by propagation, so that
as the body is the offspring of body, the soul is the offspring of soul,
and exists on conditions similar to those regulating the existence of the
inferior animals."(5) I know that I have published my opinion on this
question in my brief writings against Ruffinus, in reply to a treatise
addressed by him to Anastasius, of holy memory, bishop of the Roman:
Church, in which, while attempting to impose upon the simplicity of his
readers by a slippery and artful, yet withal foolish confession, he exposed
to contempt his own faith, or, rather, his own perfidy. These books are, I
think, in the possession of your holy kinsman Oceanus, for they were
published long ago to meet the calumnies contained in numerous writings of
Ruffinus. Be this as it may, you have in Africa that holy man and learned
bishop Augustin, who will be able to teach you on this subject viva race,
as the saying is, and expound to you his opinion, or, I should rather say,
my own opinion stated in his words.

   CHAP. II. -- 2. I have long wished to begin the I volume of Ezekiel,
and fulfil a promise frequently made to studious readers; but at the time
when I had just begun to dictate the proposed exposition, my mind was so
much agitated by the devastation of the western provinces of the empire,
and especially by the sack of Rome itself by the barbarians, that, to use a
common proverbial phrase, I scarcely knew my own name; and for a long while
I was silent, knowing that it was a time for tears. Moreover when I had, in
the course of this year, prepared three books of the Commentary, a sudden
furious invasion of the barbarous tribes mentioned by your Virgil as "the
widely roaming Barcaei,"(6) and by sacred Scripture in the words concerning
Ishmael, "He shall dwell in the presence of his brethren,"(7) swept over
the whole of Egypt, Palestine, Phenice, and Syria, carrying all before them
with the vehemence of a mighty torrent, so that it was only with the
greatest difficulty that we were enabled, by the mercy of Christ, to escape
their hands. But if, as a famous orator has said, "Laws are silent amid the
clash of arms,"(8) how much more may this be said of scriptural studies,
which demand a multitude of books and silence, together with uninterrupted
diligence of amanuenses, and especially the enjoyment of tranquillity and
leisure by those who dictate! I have accordingly sent two books to my holy
daughter Fabiola, of which, if you wish copies, you may borrow them from
her. Through lack of time I have been unable to transcribe others; when you
have read these, and have seen the portico, as it were, you may easily
conjecture what the house itself is designed to be. But I trust m the mercy
of God, who has helped me in the very difficult commencement of the
foresaid work, that He will help me also in the predictions concerning the
wars of Gog and Magog, which occupy the last division but one of the
prophecy,(9) and in the concluding portion itself, describing the building,
the details, and the proportions of that most holy and mysterious
temple.(10)

   CHAP. III. -- 3. Our holy brother Oceanus, to whom you desire to be
mentioned, is a man of such gifts and character, and so profoundly learned
in the law of the Lord, that he may probably give you instruction without
any request of mine, and can impart to you on all scriptural questions the
opinion which, according to the measure of our joint abilities, we have
formed.

   May Christ, our almighty God, keep you, my truly pious lords, in safety
and prosperity to a good old age!

LETTER CLXVI. (A.D. 415.)

A TREATISE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL, ADDRESSED TO JEROME.(1)

   CHAP. I.-- 1. Unto our God, who hath called us unto His kingdom and
glory,(2) I have prayed, and pray now, that what I write to you, holy
brother Jerome, asking your opinion in regard to things of which I am
ignorant, may by His good pleasure be profitable to us both. For although
in addressing you I consult one much older than myself, nevertheless I also
am becoming old; but I cannot think that it is at anytime of life too Rate
to learn what we need to know, because, although it is more fitting that
old men should be teachers than learners, it is nevertheless more fitting
for them to learn than to continue ignorant of that which they should teach
to others. I assure you that, amid the many disadvantages which I have to
submit to in studying very difficult questions, there is none which grieves
me more than the circumstance of separation from your Charity by a distance
so great that I can scarcely send a letter to you, and scarcely receive one
from you, even at intervals, not of days nor of months, but of several
years; whereas my desire would be, if it were possible, to have you daily
beside me, as one with whom I could converse on any theme. Nevertheless,
although I have not been able to do all that I wished, I am not the less
bound to do all that I can.

   2. Behold, a religious young man has come to me, by name Orosius, who
is in the bond of Catholic peace a brother, in point of age a son, and in
honour a fellow presbyter, -- a man, of quick understanding, ready speech,
and burning zeal, desiring to be in the Lord's house a vessel rendering
useful service in refuting those false and pernicious doctrines, through
which the souls of men in Spain have suffered much more grievous wounds
than have been inflicted on their bodies by the sword of barbarians. For
from the remote western coast of Spain he has come with eager haste to us,
having been prompted to do this by the report that from me he could learn
whatever he wished on the subjects on which he desired information. Nor has
his coming been altogether in vain. In the first place, he has learned not
to believe all that report affirmed of me: in the next place, I have taught
him all that I could, and, as for the things in which I could not teach
him, I have told him from whom he may lean them, and have exhorted him to
go on to you. As he received this counsel or rather injunction of mine with
pleasure, and with intention to comply with it, I asked him to visit us on
his way home to his own country when he comes from you. On receiving his
promise to this effect, I believed that the Lord had granted me an
opportunity of writing to you regarding certain things which I wish through
you to learn. For I was seeking some one whom I might send to you, and it
was not easy to fall in with one qualified both by trustworthiness in
performing and by alacrity in undertaking the work, as well as by
experience in travelling. Therefore, when I became acquainted with this
young man, I could not doubt that he was exactly such a person as I was
asking from the Lord.

   CHAP. II. -- 3. Allow me, therefore, to bring , before you a subject
which I beseech you not to ;refuse to open up and discuss with me. Many are
perplexed by questions concerning the soul, and I confess that I myself am
of this number. I shall in this letter, in the first place, state
explicitly the things regarding the soul which I most assuredly believe,
and shall, in the next , place, bring forward the things regarding which I
am still desirous of explanation.

   The soul of man is in a sense proper to itself immortal. It is not
absolutely immortal, as God is, of whom it is written that He "alone hath
immortality,"(3) for Holy Scripture makes mention of deaths to which the
soul was able as m the saying, "Let the dead bury their dead;"(4) but.
because when alienated from the life of God it so dies as not wholly to
cease from living in its own nature, it is found to be from a certain cause
mortal, yet so as to be not without reason called at the same time
immortal. The soul is not a part of God. For if it were,  it would be
absolutely immutable and incorruptible, in which case it could neither go
downward to be worse, nor go onward to be better; nor  could it either
begin to have anything in itself which it had not before, or cease to have
anything which it had within the sphere of its own experience. But how
different the actual facts of the case are is a point requiring no evidence
from without, it is acknowledged by every one who consults his own
consciousness. In vain, moreover, is it pleaded by those who affirm that
the soul is a part of God, that the corruption and baseness which we see in
the worst of men, and the weakness and blemishes which we see in all men,
come to it not from the soul itself, but from the body; for what matters it
whence the infirmity originates in that which, if it were indeed immutable,
could not, from any quarter whatever, be made infirm? For that which is
truly immutable and incorruptible is not liable to mutation or corruption
by any influence whatever from without, else the invulnerability which the
fable ascribed to the flesh of Achilles would be nothing peculiar to him,
but the property of every man, so long as no accident befell him. That
which is liable to be changed in any manner, by any cause, or in any part
whatever, is therefore not by nature immutable; but it were impiety to
think of God as otherwise than truly and supremely immutable: therefore the
soul is not a part of God.

   4. That the soul is immaterial is a fact of which I avow myself to be
fully persuaded, although men of slow understanding are hard to be
convinced that it is so. To secure myself, however, from either
unnecessarily causing to others or unreasonably bringing upon myself a
controversy about an expression, let me say that, since the thing itself is
beyond question, it is needless to contend about mere terms. If matter be
used as a term denoting everything which in any form has a separate
existence, whether it be called an essence, or a substance, or by another
name, the soul is material. Again, if you choose to apply the epithet
immaterial only to that nature which is supremely immutable and is
everywhere present in its entirety, the soul is material, for it is not at
all endowed with such qualities. But if matter be used to designate nothing
but that which, whether at rest or in motion, has some length, breadth, and
height, so that with a greater part of itself it occupies a greater part of
space, and with a smaller part a smaller space, and is in every part of it
less than the whole, then the soul is not material. For it pervades the
whole body which it animates, not by a local distribution of parts, but by
a certain vital influence, being at the same moment present in its entirety
in all parts of the body, and not less in smaller parts and greater in
larger parts, but here with more energy and there with less energy, it is
in its entirety present both in the whole body and in every part of it. For
even that which the mind perceives in only a part of the body is
nevertheless not otherwise perceived than by the whole mind; for when any
part of the living flesh is touched by a fine pointed instrument, although
the place affected is not only not the whole body, but scarcely discernible
in its surface, the contact does not escape the entire mind, and yet the
contact is felt not over the whole body, but only at the one point where it
takes place. How comes it, then, that what takes place in only a part of
the body is immediately known to the whole mind, unless the whole mind is
present at that part, and at the same time not deserting all the other
parts of the body in order to be present in its entirety at this one? For
all the other parts of the body in which no such contact takes place are
still living by the soul being present with them. And ira similar contact
takes place in the other parts, and the contact occur in both parts
simultaneously, it would in both cases alike be known at the same moment,
to the whole mind. Now this presence of the mind in all parts of the body
at the same moment, so that in every part of the body the whole mind is at
the same moment present, would be impossible if it were distributed over
these parts in the same way as we see matter distributed in space,
occupying less space with a smaller portion of itself, and greater space
with a greater portion. If, therefore, mind is to be called material, it is
not material in the same sense as earth, water, air, and ether are
material. For all things composed of these elements are larger in larger
places, or smaller in smaller places, and none of them is in its entirety
present at any part of itself, but the dimensions of the material
substances are according to the dimensions of the space occupied. Whence it
is perceived that the soul, whether it be termed material or immaterial,
has a certain nature of its own, created from a substance superior to the
elements of this world, -- a substance which cannot be truly conceived of
by any representation of the material images perceived by the bodily
senses, but which is apprehended by the understanding and discovered to our
consciousness by its living energy. These things I am stating, not with the
view of teaching you what you already know, but in order that I may declare
explicitly what I hold as indisputably certain concerning the soul, lest
any one should think, when I come to state the questions to which I desire
answers, that I hold none of the doctrines which we have learned from
science or from revelation concerning the soul.

   5. I am, moreover, fully persuaded that the soul has fallen into sin,
not through the fault of God, nor through any necessity either in the
divine nature or in its own, but by its own free will; and that it can be
delivered from the body of this death neither by the strength of its own
will, as if that were in itself sufficient to achieve this, nor by the
death of the body itself, but only by the grace of God through our Lord
Jesus Christ;(1) and that there is not one soul in the human family to
whose salvation the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
is not absolutely necessary. Every soul, moreover, which may at any age
whatsoever depart from this life without the grace of the Mediator and the
sacrament of this grace, departs to future punishment, and shall receive
again its own body at the last judgment as a partner in punishment. But if
the soul after its natural generation, which was derived from Adam, be
regenerated in Christ, it belongs to His fellowship,(2) and shall not only
have rest after the death of the body, but also receive again its own body
as a partner in glory. These are truths concerning the soul which I hold
most firmly.

   CHAP. III. -- 6. Permit me now, therefore, to bring before you the
question which I desire to have solved, and do not reject me; so may He not
reject you who condescended to be rejected for our sakes!

   I ask where can the soul, even of an infant snatched away by death,
have contracted the guilt which, unless the grace of Christ has come to the
rescue by that sacrament of baptism which is administered even to infants,
involves it in condemnation? I know you are not one of those who have begun
of late to utter certain new and absurd opinions, alleging that there is no
guilt derived from Adam which is removed by baptism in the case of infants.
If I knew that you held this view, or, rather, if I did not know that you
reject it, I would certainly neither address this question to you, nor
think that it ought to be put to you at all. Since, however, we hold on
this subject the opinion consonant with the immoveable Catholic faith,
which you have yourself expressed when, refuting the absurd sayings of
Jovinian, you have quoted this sentence from the book of Job: "In thy sight
,no one is clean, not even the infant, whose time of life on earth is a
single day,"(3) adding, "for we are held guilty in the similitude of Adam's
transgression,"(4) an opinion which your book on Jonah's prophecy declares
in a notable and lucid manner, where you affirm that the little children of
Nineveh were justly compelled to fast along with the people, because merely
of their original sin? it is not unsuitable that I should address to you
the question where has the soul contracted the guilt from which, even at
that age, it must be delivered by the sacrament of Christian grace?

   7. Some years ago, when I wrote certain books concerning Free Will,
which have gone forth into the hands of many, and are now in the possession
of very many readers, after referring to these four opinions as to the
manner of the soul's incarnation, -- 1. that all other souls are derived
from the one which was given to the first man; 2. that for each individual
a new soul is made; 3. that souls already in existence somewhere are sent
by divine act into the bodies; or 4. glide into them of their own accord, I
thought that it was necessary to treat them in such a way that, whichever
of them tight be true, the decision should not hinder the object which I
had in view when contending with all my might against those who attempt to
lay upon God the blame of a nature endowed with its own principle of evil,
namely, the Manichaeans;(6) for at that time I had not heard of the
Priscillianists, who utter blasphemies not very dissimilar to these. As to
the fifth opinion, namely, that the soul is a part of God, -- an opinion
which, in order to omit none, you have mentioned along with the rest in
your letter to Marcellinus (a man of pious memory and very dear to us in
the grace of Christ), who had consulted you on this question,(7)--I did not
add it to the others for two reasons,--first, because, in examining this
opinion, we discuss not the incarnation of the soul, but its nature;
secondly, because this is the view held by those against whom I was
arguing, and the main design of my argument was to prove that the blameless
and inviolable nature of the Creator has nothing to do with the faults and
blemishes of the creature, while they, on their part, maintained that the
substance of the good God itself is, in so far as it is led captive,
corrupted and oppressed and brought under a necessity of sinning by the
substance of evil, to which they ascribe a proper dominion and
principalities. Leaving, therefore, out of the question this heretical
error, I desire to know which of the other four opinions we ought to
choose. For whichever of them may justly claim our preference, far be it
from us to assail this article of :faith, about which we have no
uncertainty, that l every soul, even the soul of an infant, requires to be
delivered from the binding guilt of sin, and that there is no deliverance
except through Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

   CHAP. IV -- 8. To avoid prolixity, therefore, let me refer to the
opinion which you, I believe, entertain, viz. that God even now makes each
soul for each individual at the time of birth. To meet the objection to
this view which might be taken from the fact that God finished the whole
work of creation on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day, you quote
the testimony of the words in the gospel, "My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work."(1) This you have written in your letter to Marcellinus, in which
letter, moreover, you have most kindly condescended to mention my name,
saying that he had me here in Africa, who could more easily explain to him
the opinion held by you.(2) But had I been able to do this, he would not
have applied for instruction to you, who were so remote from him, though
perhaps he did not write from Africa to you. For I know not when he wrote
it; I only know that he knew well my hesitation to embrace any definite
view on this subject, for which reason he preferred to write to you without
consulting me. Yet, even if he had consulted me, I would rather have
encouraged him to write to you, and would have expressed my gratitude for
the benefit which might have been conferred on us all, had you not
preferred to send a brief note, instead of a full reply, doing this, I
suppose, to save yourself from unnecessary expenditure of effort in a place
where I, whom you supposed to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject of
his inquiries, was at hand. Behold, I am willing that the opinion which you
hold should be also mine; but I assure you that as yet I have not embraced
it.

   9. You have sent to me scholars, to whom you wish me to impart what I
have not yet learned myself. Teach me, therefore, what I am to teach them;
for many urge me vehemently to be a teacher on this subject, and to them I
confess that of this, as well as of many other things, I am ignorant, and
perhaps, though they maintain a respectful demeanour in my presence, they
say among themselves: "Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these
things?"(3) a rebuke which the Lord gave to one who belonged to the class
of men who delighted in being called Rabbi; which was also the reason of
his coming by night to the true Teacher, because perchance he, who had been
accustomed to teach, blushed to take the learner's place. But, for my own
part, it gives me much more pleasure to hear instruction from another, than
to be myself listened to as a teacher. For I remember what He said to those
whom, above all men, He had chosen: "But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is
your master, even Christ."(4) Nor was it any other teacher who taught Moses
by Jethro,(5) Cornelius by Peter the earlier apostle,(6) and Peter himself
by Paul the later apostle;(7) for by whomsoever truth is spoken, it is
spoken by the gift of Him who is the Truth. What if the reason of our still
being ignorant of these things, and of our having failed to discover them,
even after praying, reading, thinking, and reasoning, be this: that full
proof may be made not only of the love with which we give instruction to
the ignorant, but also of the humility with which we receive instruction
from the learned?

   10. Teach me, therefore, I beseech you, what I may teach to others;
teach me what I ought to hold as my own opinion; and tell me this: if souls
are from day to day made for each individual separately at birth, where, in
the case of infant children, is sin committed by these souls, so that they
require the remission of sin in the sacrament of Christ, because of sinning
in Adam from whom the sinful flesh has been derived? or if they do not sin,
how is it compatible with the justice of the Creator, that, because of
their being united to mortal members derived from another, they are so
brought under the bond of the sin of that other, that unless they be
rescued by the Church, perdition overtakes them, although it is not in
their own power to secure that they be rescued by the grace of baptism?
Where, therefore, is the justice of the condemnation of so many thousands
of souls, which in the deaths of infant children leave this world without
the benefit of the Christian sacrament, if being newly created they have,
not through any preceding sin of their own, but by the will of the Creator,
become severally united to the individual bodies to animate which they were
created and bestowed by Him, who certainly knew that every one of them was
destined, not through any fault of its own, to leave the body without
receiving the baptism of Christ? Seeing, therefore, that we may riot say
concerning God either that He compels them to become sinners, or that He
punishes innocent souls and seeing that, on the other hand, it is not
lawful for us to deny that nothing else than perdition is the doom of the
souls, even of little children, which have departed from the body without
the sacrament of Christ, tell me, I implore you, where anything can be
found to support the opinion that souls are not all derived from that one
soul of the first man, but are each created separately for each individual,
as Adam's soul was made for him.

   CHAP. V. -- 11. As for some other objections which are advanced against
this opinion, I think that I could easily dispose of them. For example,
some think that they urge a conclusive argument against this opinion when
they ask, how God finished all His works an the sixth day and rested on the
seventh day,(8) if He is still creating new souls. If we meet them with the
quotation from the gospel (given by you in the letter to Marcellinus
already mentioned), "My Father worketh hitherto," they answer that He
"worketh" in maintaining those natures which He has created, not in
creating new natures; otherwise, this statement would contradict the words
of Scripture in Genesis, where it is most plainly declared that God
finished all His works. Moreover, the words of Scripture, that He rested,
are unquestionably to be understood of His resting from creating new
creatures not from governing those which He had created for at that time He
made things which previously did not exist, and from making these He rested
because He had finished all the creatures which before they existed He saw
necessary to be created, so that thenceforward He did not create and make
things which previously did not exist, but made and fashioned out of things
already existing whatever He did make. Thus the statements, "He rested from
His works," and, "He worketh hitherto," are both true, for the gospel could
not contradict Genesis.

   12. When, however, these things are brought forward by persons who
advance them as conclusive against the opinion that God now creates new
souls as He created the soul of the first man, and who hold either that He
forms them from that one soul which existed before He rested from creation,
or that He now sends them forth into bodies from some reservoir or
storehouse of souls which He then created, it is easy to turn aside their
argument by answering, that even in the six days God formed many things out
of those natures which He had already created, as, for example, the birds
and fishes were formed from the waters, and the trees, the grass, and the
animals from the earth, and yet it is undeniable that He was then making
things which did not exist before. For there existed previously no bird, no
fish, no tree, no animal, and it is clearly understood that He rested from
creating those things which previously were not, and were then created,
that is to say, He ceased in this sense, that, after that, nothing was made
by Him which did not already exist. But if, rejecting the opinions of all
who believe either that God sends forth into men souls existing already in
some incomprehensible reservoir, or that He makes souls emanate like drops
of dew from Himself as particles of His own substance, or that He brings
them forth from that one soul of the first man, or that He binds them in
the fetters of the bodily members because of sins committed in a prior
state of existence, if, I say, rejecting these, we affirm that for each
individual He creates separately a new soul when he is born, we do not
herein affirm that He makes anything which tie had not already made. For He
had already made man after His own image on the sixth day; and this work of
His is unquestionably to be understood with reference to the rational soul
of man. The same work He still does, not in creating what did not exist,
but in multiplying what already existed. Wherefore it is true, on the one
hand, that He rested from creating things which previously did not exist,
and equally true, on the other hand, that He continues still to work, not
only in governing what He has made, but also in making (not anything which
did not previously exist, but) a larger number of those creatures which He
had already made. Wherefore, either by such an explanation, or by any other
which may seem better, we escape from the objection advanced by those who
would make the fact that God rested from His works a conclusive argument
against our believing that new souls are still being daily created, not
from the first soul, but in the same manner as it was made.

   13. Again, as for another objection, stated in the question, "Wherefore
does He create souls for those whom He knows to be destined to an early
death?" we may reply, that by the death of the children the sins of the
parents are either reproved or chastised. We may, moreover, with all
propriety, leave these things to the disposal of the Lord of all, for we
know that he appoints to the succession of events in time, and therefore to
the births and deaths of living creatures as included in these, a course
which is consummate in beauty and perfect in the arrangement of all its
parts; whereas we are not capable of perceiving those things by the
perception of which, if it were attainable, we should be soothed with an
ineffable, tranquil joy. For not in vain has the prophet, taught by divine
inspiration, declared concerning God, "He bringeth forth in measured
harmonies the course of time."(1) For which reason music, the science or
capacity of i correct harmony, has been given also by the kindness of God
to mortals having reasonable souls, with a view to keep them in mind of
this great truth. For if a man, when composing a song which is to suit a
particular melody, knows how to distribute the length of time allowed to
each word so as to make the song flow and pass on in most beautiful
adaptation to the ever changeling notes of the melody, how much more shall
God, whose wisdom is to be esteemed as infinitely transcending human arts,
make infallible provision that not one of the spaces of time alloted to
natures that are born and die -- spaces which are like the words and
syllables of the successive epochs of the course of time -- shall have, in
what we may call the sublime psalm of the vicissitudes of this world, a
duration either more brief or more protracted than the foreknown and
predetermined harmony requires! For when I may speak thus with reference
even to the leaves of every tree, and the number of the hairs upon our
heads, how much more may I say it regarding the birth and death of men,
seeing that every man's life on earth continues for a time, which is
neither longer nor shorter than God knows to be in harmony with the plan
according to which He rules the universe.

   14. As to the assertion that everything which has begun to exist in
time is incapable of immortality, because all things which are born die,
and all things which have grown decay through age, and the opinion which
they affirm to follow necessarily from this, viz. that the soul of man must
owe its immortality to its having been created before time began, this does
not disturb my faith; for, passing over other examples, which conclusively
dispose of this assertion, I need only refer to the body of Christ, which
now "death no more; death shall have no more dominion over it."(1)

   15. Moreover, as to your remark in your book against Ruffinus, that
some bring forward as against this opinion that souls are created for each
individual separately at birth the objection that it seems worthy of God
that He should give souls to the offspring of adulterers, and who
accordingly attempt to build on this a theory that souls may possibly be
incarcerated, as it were, in such bodies, to suffer for the deeds of a life
spent in some prior state of being,(2) -- this objection does not disturb
me, as many things by which it may be answered occur to me when I consider
it. The answer which you yourself have given, saying, that in the case of
stolen wheat, there is no fault in the grain, but only in him who stole it,
and that the earth is not under obligation to refuse to cherish the seed
because the sower may have cast it in with a hand defiled by dishonesty, is
a most felicitous illustration. But even before I had read it, I felt that
to me the objection drawn from the offspring of adulterers caused no
serious difficulty when I took a general view of the fact that God brings
many good things to light, even out of our evils and our sins. Now, the
creation of any living creature compels ever), one who considers it with
piety and wisdom to give to the Creator praise which words cannot express;
and if this praise is called forth by the creation of any living creature
whatsoever, how much more is it called forth by the creation of a man! If,
therefore, the cause of any act of creative power be sought for, no shorter
or better reply can be given than that every creature of God is good. And
[so far from such an act being unworthy of God] what is more worthy of Him
than that He, being good, should make those good things which, no one else
than God alone can make?

   CHAP. VI. -- 16. These things, and others which I can advance, I am
accustomed to state, as well as I can, against those who attempt to
overthrow by such objections the opinion that souls are made for each
individual, as the first man's soul was made for him.

   But when we come to the penal sufferings of infants, I am embarrassed,
believe me, by great difficulties, and am wholly at a loss to find an
answer by which they are solved; and I speak here not only of those
punishments in the life to come, which are involved in that perdition to
which they must be drawn down if they depart l from the body without the
sacrament of Christian grace, but also of the sufferings which are to our
sorrow endured by them before our eyes in this present life, and which are
so various, that time rather than examples would fail me if I were to
attempt to enumerate them. They are liable to wasting disease, to racking
pain, to the agonies of thirst and hunger, to feebleness of limbs, to
privation of bodily senses, and to vexing assaults of unclean spirits.
Surely it is incumbent on us to show how it is compatible with justice that
infants suffer all these things without any evil of their own as the
procuring cause. For it would be impious to say, either that these things
take place without God's knowledge, or that He cannot resist those who
cause them, or that He unrighteously does these things, or permits them to
be done. We are warranted in saying that irrational animals are given by
God to serve creatures possessing a higher nature, even though they be
wicked, as we see most plainly in the gospel that the swine of the
Gadarenes were given to the legion of devils at their request; but could we
ever be warranted in saying this of men? Certainly not. Man is, indeed, an
animal, but an animal endowed with reason, though mortal. In his members
dwells a reasonable soul, which in these severe afflictions is enduring a
penalty. Now God is good, God is just, God is omnipotent -- none but a
madman would doubt that he is so;let the great sufferings, therefore, which
infant children experience be accounted for by some reason compatible with
justice. When older people suffer such trials, we are accustomed,
certainly, to say, either that their worth is being proved, as in Job's
case, or that their wickedness is being punished, as in Herod's; and from
some examples, which it has pleased God to make perfectly clear, men are
enabled to conjecture the nature of others which are more obscure; but this
is in regard to persons of mature age. Tell me, therefore, what we must
answer in regard to infant children; is it true that, although they suffer
so great punishments, there are no sins in them deserving to be punished?
for, of course, there is not in them at that age any righteousness
requiring to be put to the proof.

   17. What shall I say, moreover, as to the [difficulty which besets the
theory of the creation of each soul separately at the birth of the
individual in connection with the] diversity of talent in different souls,
and especially the absolute privation of reason in some? This is, indeed,
not apparent in the first stages of infancy, but being developed
continuously from the beginning of life, it becomes manifest in children,
of whom some are so slow and defective in memory that they cannot learn
even the letters of the alphabet, and some (commonly called idiots) so
imbecile that they differ very little, from the beasts of the field.
Perhaps I am told, in answer to this, that the bodies are the cause of
these imperfections. But surely the opinion which we wish to see vindicated
from objection does not require us to affirm that the soul chose for itself
the body which so impairs it, and, being deceived in the choice, committed
a blunder; or that the soul, when it was compelled, as a necessary
consequence of being born, to enter into some body, was hindered from
finding another by crowds of souls occupying the other bodies before it
came, so that, like a man who takes whatever seat may remain vacant for him
in a theatre, the soul was guided in taking possession of the imperfect
body not by its choice, but by its circumstances. We, of course, cannot say
and ought not to believe such things. Tell us, therefore, what we ought to
believe and to say in order to vindicate from this difficulty the theory
that for each individual body a new soul is specially created.

   CHAP. VII. -- 18. In my books on Free Will, already referred to, I have
said something, not l in regard to the variety of capacities in different
souls, but, at least, in regard to the pains which I infant children suffer
in this life. The nature of the opinion which I there expressed, and the
reason why it is insufficient for the purposes of our present inquiry, I
will now submit to you, and will put into this letter a copy of the passage
in the third book to which I refer. It is as follows: -- "In connection
with the bodily sufferings experienced by the little children who, by
reason of their tender age, have no sins -- if the souls which animate them
did not exist before they were born into the human family -- a more
grievous and, as it were, compassionate complaint is very commonly made in
the remark, 'What evil have they done that they should suffer these
things?' as if there could be a meritorious innocence in any one before the
time at which it is possible for him to do anything wrong I Moreover, if
God accomplishes, in any measure, the correction of the parents when they
are chastised by the sufferings or by the death of the children that are
dear to them, is there any reason why these things should not take place,
seeing that, after they are passed, :they will be, to those who experienced
them, as if they had never been, while the persons on whose account they
were inflicted will either become better, being moved by the rod of
temporal afflictions to choose a better mode of life, or be left without
excuse under the punishment awarded at the coming judgment, if,
notwithstanding the sorrows of this life, they have refused to turn their
desires towards eternal life? Morever, who knows what may be given to the
little children by means of whose sufferings the parents have their
obdurate hearts subdued, or their faith exercised, or their compassion
proved? Who knows what good recompense God may, in the secret of his
judgments, reserve for these little ones? For although they have done no
righteous action, nevertheless, being free from any transgression of their
own, they have suffered these trials. It is certainly not without reason
that the Church exalts to the honourable rank of martyrs those children who
were slain when Herod sought our Lord Jesus Christ to put Him to death."(1)

   19. These things I wrote at that time when I was endeavouring to defend
the opinion which is now under discussion. For, as I mentioned shortly
before, I was labouring to prove that whichever of these four opinions
regarding the soul's incarnation may be found true, the substance of the
Creator is absolutely free from blame, and is completely removed from all
share in our sins. And, therefore, whichever of these opinions might come
to be established or demolished by the truth, this had no bearing oft the
object aimed at in the work which I was then attempting, seeing that
whichever opinion might win the victory over all the rest, after they had
been examined in a more thorough discussion, this would take place without
causing me any disquietude, because my object then was to prove that, even
admitting all these opinions, the doctrine maintained by me remained
unshaken. But now my object is, by the force of sound reasoning, to select,
if possible, one opinion out of the four; and, therefore, when I carefully
consider the words now quoted from that book, I do not see that the
arguments there used in defending the opinion which we are now discussing
are valid and conclusive.

   20. For what may be called the chief prop of my defence is in the
sentence, "Moreover, who knows what may be given to the little children, by
means of whose sufferings the parents have their obdurate hearts subdued,
or their faith exercised, or their compassion proved? Who knows what good
recompense God may, in the secret of His judgments, reserve for these
little ones?" I see that this is not an unwarranted conjecture in the case
of infants who, in any way, suffer (though they know it not) for the sake
of Christ and in the cause of true religion, and of infants who have
already been made partakers of the sacrament of Christ; because, apart from
union to the one Mediator, they cannot be delivered from condemnation, and
so put in a position in which it is even possible that a recompense could
be made to them for the evils which, in diverse afflictions, they have
endured in this world. But since the question cannot be fully solved,
unless the answer include also the case of those who, without having
received the sacrament of Christian fellowship, die in infancy after
enduring the most painful sufferings, what recompense can be conceived of
in their case, seeing that, besides all that they suffer in this life,
perdition awaits them in the life to come? As to the baptism of infants, I
have, in the same book, given an answer, not, indeed, fully, but so far as
seemed necessary for the work which then occupied me, proving that it
profits children, even though they do not know what it is, and have, as
yet, no faith of their own; but on the subject of the perdition of those
infants who depart from this life without baptism, I did not think it
necessary to say anything then, because the question under discussion was
different from that with which we are now engaged.

   21. If, however, we pass over and make no account of those sufferings
which are of brief continuance, and which, when endured, are not to be
repeated, we certainly cannot, in like manner, make no account of the fact
that "by one man death came, and by one man came also the resurrection of
the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive."(1) For, according to this apostolical, divine, and perspicuous
declaration, it is sufficiently plain that no one goes to death otherwise
than through Adam, and that no one goes to life eternal otherwise; than
through Christ. For this is the force of all in the two parts of the
sentence; as all men, by their first, that is, their natural birth, belong
to Adam, even so all men, whoever they be, who come to Christ come to the
second, that is, the spiritual birth. For this reason, therefore, the word
all is used in both clauses, because as all who die do not die otherwise
than in Adam, so all who shall be made alive shall not be made alive
otherwise than in Christ. Wherefore whosoever tells us that any man can be
made alive in the resurrection of the dead otherwise than in Christ, he is
to be detested as a pestilent enemy to the common faith. Likewise,
whosoever says that those children who depart out of this life without
partaking of that sacrament shall be made alive in Christ, certainly
contradicts the apostolic declaration, and condemns the universal Church,
in which it is the practice to lose i no time and run in haste to
administer baptism to infant children, because it is believed, as an i
indubitable truth, that otherwise they cannot be made alive in Christ. Now
he that is not made alive in Christ must necessarily remain under the
condemnation, of which the apostle says, that "by the offence of one
judgment came upon all men to condemnation."(2) That infants are born under
the guilt of this offence is believed by the whole Church. It is also a
doctrine which you have most faithfully set forth, both in your treatise
against Jovinian and your exposition of Jonah, as I mentioned above, and,
if I am not mistaken, in other parts of your works which I have not read or
have at present forgotten. I therefore ask, what is the ground of this
condemnation of unbaptized infants? For if new souls are made for men,
individually, at their birth, I do not see, on the one hand, that they
could have any sin while yet in infancy, nor do I believe, on the other
hand, that God condemns any soul which He sees to have no sin.

   CHAP. VIII. -- 22. Are we perchance to say, in answer to this, that in
the infant the body alone is the cause of sin; but that for each body a new
soul is made, and that if this soul live according to the precepts of God,
by the help of the grace of Christ, the reward of being made incorruptible
may be secured for the body itself, when subdued and kept under the yoke;
and that inasmuch as the soul of an infant cannot yet do this, unless it
receive the sacrament of Christ, that which could not yet be obtained for
the body by the holiness of the soul is obtained for it by the grace of
this sacrament; but if the soul of an infant depart without the sacrament,
it shall itself dwell in life eternal, from which it could not be
separated, as it had no sin, while, however, the body which it occupied
shall not rise again in Christ, because the sacrament had not been received
before its death?

   23. This opinion I have never heard or read anywhere. I have, however,
certainly heard and believed the statement which led me to speak thus,
namely, "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall
hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life," -- the resurrection, namely, of which it is said
that "by one man came the resurrection of the dead," and in which "all
shall be made alive in Christ," -- "and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation."(1) Now, what is to be understood regarding
infants which, before they could do good or evil, have quitted the body
without baptism? Nothing is said here concerning them. But if the bodies of
these infants shall not rise again, because they, have never done either
good or evil, the bodies of the infants that have died after receiving the
grace of baptism shall also: have no resurrection, because they also were
not: in this life able to do good or evil. If, however,. these are to rise
among the saints, i.e. among: those who have done good, among whom shall
the others rise again but among those who have done evil -- unless we are
to believe that some human souls shall not receive, either in the
resurrection of life, or in the resurrection of damnation, the bodies which
they lost in death? This opinion, however, is condemned, even before it is
formally refuted, by its absolute novelty; and besides this, who could bear
to think that those who run with their infant children to have them
baptized, are prompted to do so by a regard for their bodies, not for their
souls? The blessed Cyprian, indeed, said, in order to correct those who
thought that an infant should not be baptized before the eighth day, that
it was not the body but the soul which behoved to be saved from perdition -
- in which statement he was not inventing any new doctrine, but preserving
the firmly established faith of the Church; and he, along with some of his
colleagues in the episcopal office, held that a child may be properly
baptized immediately after its birth.(2)

   24. Let every man, however, believe anything which commends itself to
his own judgment, even though it run counter to some opinion of Cyprian,
who may not have seen in the matter! what should have been seen. But let no
man believe anything which runs counter to the perfectly unambiguous
apostolical declaration, that by the offence of one all are brought into
condemnation, and that from this condemnation nothing sets men free but the
grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone life is given to
all who are made alive. And let no man believe anything which runs counter
to the firmly grounded practice of the Church, in which, if the sole reason
for hastening the administration of baptism were to save the children, the
dead as well as the living would be brought to be baptized.

   25. These things being so, it is necessary still to investigate and to
make known the reason! why, if souls are created new for every individual
at his birth, those who die in infancy without the sacrament of Christ are
doomed to perdition; for that they are doomed to this if they so depart
from the body is testified both by Holy Scripture and by the holy Church.
Wherefore, as to that opinion of yours concerning the creation of new
souls, if it does not contradict this firmly grounded article of faith, let
it be mine also; but if it does, let it be no longer yours.

   26. Let it not be said to me that we ought to receive as supporting
this opinion the words of Scripture in Zechariah, "He formeth the spirit of
man within him,"(3) and in the book of Psalms, "He formeth their hearts
severally."(4) We must seek for the strongest and most indisputable proof,
that we may not be compelled to believe that God is a judge who condemns
any soul which has no fault. For to create signifies either as much or,
probably, more than to form [fingere]; nevertheless it is written, "Create
in me a clean heart, O God,"(5) and yet it cannot be supposed that a soul
here expresses a desire to be made before it has begun to exist. Therefore,
as it is a soul already existing which is created by being renewed in
righteousness, so it is a soul already existing which is formed by the
moulding power of doctrine. Nor is ),our opinion, which I would willingly
make my own, supported by that sentence in Ecclesiastes, "Then shall the
dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who
gave it."(6) Nay, it rather favours those who think that all souls are
derived from one; for they say that, as the dust returns to the earth as it
was, and yet the body of which this is said returns not to the man from
whom it was derived, but to the earth from which the first man was made,
the spirit in like manner, though derived from the spirit of the first man,
does not return to him but to the Lord, by whom it was given to our first
parent. Since, however, the testimony of this passage in their favour is
not so decisive as to make it appear altogether opposed to the opinion
which shall gladly see vindicated, I thought proper to submit these remarks
on it to your judgment, to prevent you from endeavouring to deliver me from
my perplexities by quoting passages such as these. For although no man's
wishes can make that true which is not true, nevertheless, were this
possible, I would wish that this opinion should be true, as I do wish that,
if it is true, it should be most clearly and unanswerably vindicated by
you.

   CHAP. IX. -- 27. The same difficulty attends those also who hold that
souls already existing elsewhere, and prepared from the beginning of the
works of God, are sent by Him into bodies. For to these persons also the
same question may be put: If these souls, being without any fault, go
obediently to the bodies to which they are sent, why are they subjected to
punishment in the case of infants, if they come without being baptized to
the end of this life? The same difficulty unquestionably attaches to both
opinions. Those who affirm that each soul is, according to the deserts of
its actions in an earlier state of being, united to the body alloted to it
in this life, imagine that they escape more easily from this difficulty.
For they think that to "die in Adam" means to suffer punishment in that
flesh which is derived from Adam, from which condition of guilt the grace
of Christ, they say, delivers the young as well as the old. So far, indeed,
they teach what is right, and true, and excellent, when they say that the
grace of Christ delivers the young as well as the old from the guilt of
sins. But that souls sin in another earlier life, and that for their sins
in that state of being they are cast down into bodies as prisons, I do not
believe: I reject and protest against such an opinion. I do this, in the
first place, because they affirm that this is accomplished by means of some
incomprehensible revolutions, so that after I know not how many cycles the
soul must return again to the same burden of corruptible flesh and to the
endurance of punishment, -- than which opinion I do not know that anything
more horrible could be conceived. In the next place, who is the righteous
man gone from the earth about whom we should not (if what they say is true)
feel afraid lest, sinning in Abraham's bosom, he should be cast down into
the flames which tormented the rich man in the parable?(1) For why may the
soul not sin after leaving the body, if it can sin before entering it?
Finally, to have sinned in Adam (in regard to which the apostle says that
in him all have sinned) is one thing, but it is a wholly different thing to
have sinned, I know not where, outside of Adam, and then because of this to
be thrust into Adam -- that is, into the body, which is derived from Adam,
as into a prison-house. As to the other opinion mentioned above, that all
souls are derived from one, I will not begin to discuss it unless I am
under necessity to do so; and my desire is, that if the opinion which we
are now discussing is true, it may be so vindicated by you that there shall
be no longer any necessity for examining the other.

   28. Although, however, I desire and ask, and with fervent prayers wish
and hope, that by you the Lord may remove my ignorance on this subject, if,
after all, I am found unworthy to obtain this, I will beg the grace of
patience from the Lord our God, in whom we have such faith, that even if
there be some things which He does not open to us when we knock, we know it
would be wrong to murmur in the least against Him. I remember what He said
to the apostles themselves: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now."(2) Among these things, so far at least as I am
concerned, let me still reckon this, and let me guard against being angry
that I am deemed unworthy to possess this knowledge, lest by such anger I
be all the more clearly proved to be unworthy. I am equally ignorant of
many other things, yea, of more than I could name or even number; and of
this I would be more patiently ignorant, were it not that I fear lest some
one of these opinions, involving the contradiction of truth which we most
assuredly believe, should insinuate itself into the minds of the unwary.
Meanwhile, though I do not yet know which of these opinions is to be
preferred, this one thing I profess as my deliberate conviction, that the
opinion which is true does not conflict with that most firm and well
grounded article in the faith of :he Church of Christ, that infant
children, even when they are newly born, can be delivered from perdition in
no other way than through the grace of Christ's name, which He has given in
His sacraments.

LETTER CLXVII. (A.D. 415.)

FROM AUGUSTIN TO JEROME ON JAMES II. 10.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. My brother Jerome, esteemed worthy to be honoured in
Christ by me, when I wrote to you propounding this question concerning the
human soul, -- if a new soul be now created for each individual at birth,
whence do souls contract the bond of guilt which we assuredly believe to be
removed by the sacrament of the grace of Christ, when administered even to
new-born children? -- as the letter on that subject grew to the size of a
considerable volume, I was unwilling to impose the burden of any other
question at that time; but there is a subject which has a much stronger
claim on my attention, as it presses more seriously on my mind. I therefore
ask you, and in God's name beseech you, to do something which will, I
believe, be of great service to many, namely, to explain to me (or to
direct me to any work in which you or any other commentator has already
expounded) the sense in which we are to understand these words in the
Epistle of James, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in
one point, he is guilty of all."(3) This subject is of such importance that
I very greatly regret that I did not write to you in regard to it long ago.

   2. For whereas in the question which I thought it neccessary to submit
to you concerning the soul, our inquiries were engaged with the
investigation of a life wholly past and sunk out of sight in oblivion, in
this question we study this present life, and how it must be spent if we
would attain to eternal life. As an apt illustration of this remark let me
quote an entertaining anecdote. A man had fallen into a well where the
quantity of water was sufficient to break his fall and save him from death,
but not deep enough to cover his mouth and deprive him of speech. Another
man approached, and on seeing him cries out in surprise: "How did you fall
in here?" He answers: "I beseech you to plan how you can get me out of
this, rather than ask how I fell in." So, since we admit and hold as an
article of the Catholic faith, that the soul of even a little infant
requires to be delivered out of the guilt of sin, as out of a pit, by the
grace of Christ, it is sufficient for the soul of such a one that we know
the way in which it is saved, even though we should never know the way in
which it came into that wretched condition. But I thought it our duty to
inquire into this subject, lest we should incautiously hold any one of
those opinions concerning the manner of the soul's becoming united with the
body which might contradict the doctrine that the souls of little children
require to be delivered, by denying that they are subject to the bond of
guilt. This, then, being very firmly held by us, that the soul of every
infant needs to be freed from the guilt of sin, and can be freed in no
other way except by the grace of. God through Jesus Christ our Lord, if we
can ascertain the cause and origin of the evil itself, we are better
prepared and equipped for resisting adversaries whose empty talk I call not
reasoning but quibbling; if, however, we cannot: ascertain the cause, the
fact that the origin of, this misery is hid from us is no reason for our
being slothful in the work which compassion demands from us. In our
conflict, however, with those who appear to themselves to know what they do
not know, we have an additional strength and safety in not being ignorant
of our ignorance on this subject. For there are some things which it is
evil not to know; there are other things which cannot be known, or are not
necessary to be known, or have no bearing on the life which we seek to
obtain; but the question which I now submit to you from the writings of the
Apostle James is intimately connected with the course of conduct in which
we live, and in which, with a view to life eternal, we endeavour to please
God.

   3. How, then, I beseech you, are we to understand the words: "Whosoever
shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of
all"? Does this affirm that the person who shall have committed theft, nay,
who even shall have said to the rich man, "Sit thou here" and to the poor
man, "Stand thou there," is guilty of homicide, and adultery, and
sacrilege? And if he is not so, how can it be said that a person who has
offended in one point has become guilty of all? Or are the things which the
apostle said concerning the rich man and the poor man not to be reckoned
among those things in one of which if any man offend he becomes guilty of
all? But we must remember whence I that sentence is taken, and what goes
before it, and in what connection it occurs. "My brethren," he says, "have
not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with respect of
persons. For if there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in
goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye
have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit
thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit
here under my footstool; are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are
become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God
chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom
which He hath promised to them that love Him? But ye have despised the
poor,"(1) -- inasmuch as you have said to the poor man, "Stand thou there,"
when you would have said to a man with a gold ring, "Sit thou here in a
good place." And then there follows a passage explaining and enlarging upon
that same conclusion: "Do not rich men oppress you by their power, and draw
you before the judgment-seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by
the which ye are called? If ye fulfil the royal law according to the
Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: but if ye
have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as
transgressors."(2) See how the apostle calls those transgressors of the law
who say to the rich man, "Sit here," and to the poor, "Stand there." See
how, lest they should think it a trifling sin to transgress the law in this
one thing, he goes on to add: "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet
offend in one point, he is guilty Of all. For He that said, Do not commit
adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou do not kill, yet, if thou
commit adultery, thou art become a transgressor of the law," according to
that which he had said: "Ye are convinced of the law as transgressors."
Since these things are so, it seems to follow, unless it can be shown that
we are to understand it in some other way, that he who says to the rich
man, "Sit here," and to the poor, "Stand there," not treating the one with
the same respect as the other, is to be judged guilty as an idolater, and a
blasphemer, and an adulterer, and a murderer -- in short, -- not to
enumerate all, which would be tedious, -- as guilty of all crimes, since,
offending in one, he is guilt), of all."

   CHAP. II. -- 4. But has he who has one virtue all virtues? and has he
no virtues who lacks one? If this be true, the sentence of the apostle is
thereby confirmed. But what I desire is to have the sentence explained, not
confirmed, since of itself it stands more sure in our esteem than all the
authority of philosophers could make it. And even if what has just been
said concerning virtues and vices were true, it would not follow that
therefore all sins are equal. For as to the inseparable co-existence of the
virtues, this is a doctrine in regard to which, if I remember rightly,
what, indeed, I have almost forgotten (though perhaps I am mistaken), all
philosophers who affirm that virtues are essential to the right conduct of
life are agreed. The doctrine of the equality of sins, however, the Stoics
alone dared to maintain in opposition to the unanimous sentiments of
mankind: an absurd tenet, which in writing against Jovinianus (a Stoic in
this opinion, but an Epicurean in following after and defending pleasure)
you have most clearly refuted from the Holy Scriptures.(1) In that most
delightful and noble dissertation you have made it abundantly plain that it
has not been the doctrine of our authors, or rather of the Truth Himself,
who has spoken through them, that all sins are equal. I shall now do my
utmost in endeavouring, with the help of God, to show how it can be that,
although the doctrine of philosophers concerning virtues is true, we are
nevertheless not compelled to admit the Stoics' doctrine that all sins are
equal. If I succeed, I will look for your approbation, and in whatever
respect I come short, I beg you to supply my deficiencies.

   5. Those who maintain that he who has one virtue has all, and that he
who lacks one lacks] all, reason correctly from the fact that prudence
cannot be cowardly, nor unjust, nor intemperate; for if it were any of
these it would no longer be prudence. Moreover, if it be prudence only when
it is brave, and just, and temperate, assuredly wherever it exists it must
have the other virtues along with it. In like manner, also, courage cannot
be imprudent, or intemperate, or unjust; temperance must of necessity be
prudent, brave, and just; and justice does not exist unless it be prudent,
brave, and temperate. Thus, wherever any one of these virtues truly exists,
the others likewise exist; and where some are absent, that which may appear
in some measure to resemble virtue is not really present.

   6. There are, as you know, some vices opposed to virtues by a palpable
contrast, as imprudence is the opposite of prudence. But there are some
vices opposed to virtues simply because they are vices which, nevertheless,
by a deceitful appearance resemble virtues; as, for example, in the
relation, not of imprudence, but of craftiness to the said virtue of
prudence. I speak here of that craftiness (2) which is wont to be
understood and spoken of in connection with the evilly disposed, not in the
sense in which the word is usually employed in our Scriptures, where it is
often used in a good sense, as, "Be crafty as serpents,"(3) and again, to
give craftiness to the simple."(4) It is true that among heathen writers
one of the most accomplished of Latin authors, speaking of Catiline, has
said: "Nor was there lacking on his part craftiness to guard against
danger,"(5) using "craftiness" (astutia) in a good sense; but the use of
the word in this sense is among them very rare, among us very common. So
also in regard to the virtues classed under temperance. Extravagance is
most manifestly opposite to the virtue of frugality; but that which the
common people are . wont to call niggardliness is indeed a vice, yet one
which, not in its nature, but by a very deceitful similarity of appearance,
usurps the name of frugality. In the same manner injustice is by , a
palpable contrast opposed to justice; but the desire of avenging oneself is
wont often to be a counterfeit of justice, but it is a vice. There is an
obvious contrariety between courage and cowardice; but hardihood, though
differing from courage in nature, deceives us by its resemblance to that
virtue. Firmness is a part of virtue; fickleness is a vice far removed from
and undoubtedly opposed to it; but obstinacy lays claim to the name of
firmness, yet is wholly different, because firmness is a virtue, and
obstinacy is a vice.

   7. To avoid the necessity of again going over the same ground, let us
take one case as an example, from which all others may be understood.
Catiline, as those who have written concerning him had means of knowing,
was capable of enduring cold, thirst, hunger, and patient in fastings,
cold, and watchings beyond what any one could believe, and thus he
appeared, both to himself and to his followers, a man endowed , with great
courage.(6) But this courage was not prudent, for he chose the evil instead
of the good; was not temperate, for his life was disgraced by the lowest
dissipation; was not just, for he conspired against his country; and
therefore it was not courage, but hardihood usurping the name of courage to
deceive fools; for if it had been courage, it would not have been a vice
but a virtue, and if it had been a virtue, it would never have been
abandoned by the other virtues, its inseparable companions.

   8. On this account, when it is asked also concerning vices, whether
where one exists all in like manner exist, or where one does not exist none
exist, it would be a difficult matter to show this, because two vices are
wont to be opposed to one virtue, one that is evidently opposed, and
another that bears an apparent likeness. Hence the hardihood of Catiline is
the more easily seen not to have been courage, since it had not along with
it other virtues; but it may be difficult to convince men that his
hardihood was cowardice, since he was in the habit of enduring and
patiently submitting to the severest hardships to a degree almost
incredible. But perhaps, on examining the matter more closely, this
hardihood itself is seen to be cowardice, because he shrunk from the toil
of those liberal studies by which true courage is acquired. Nevertheless,
as there are rash men who are not guilty of cowardice, and there are
cowardly men who are not guilty of rashness, and since.in both there is
vice, for the truly brave man neither ventures rashly nor fears without
reason, we are forced to admit that vices are more numerous than virtues.

   9. Accordingly, it happens sometimes that one vice is supplanted by
another, as the love of money by the love of praise. Occasionally, one vice
quits the field that more may take its place, as in the case of the
drunkard, who, after becoming temperate m the use of drink, may come under
the power of niggardliness and ambition. It is possible, therefore, that
vices may give place to vices, not to virtues, as their successors, and
thus they are more numerous. When one virtue, however, has entered, there
will infallibly be (since it brings all the other virtues along with it) a
retreat of all vices whatsoever that were in the man; for all vices were
not in him, but at one time so many, at another a greater or smaller number
might occupy their place.

   CHAP. III. -- 10. We must inquire more carefully whether these things
are so; for the statement that "he who has one virtue has all, and that all
virtues are awanting to him who lacks one," is not given by inspiration,
but is the view held by many men, ingenious, indeed, and studious, but
still men. But I must avow that, in the case -- I shall not say of one of
those from whose name the word virtue is said to be derived,(1) but even of
a woman who is faithful to her husband, and who is so from a regard to the
commandments and promises of God, and, first of all, is faithful to Him, I
do not know how I could say of her that she is unchaste, or that chastity
is no virtue or a trifling one. I should feel the same in regard to a
husband who is faithful to his wife; and yet there are many such, none of
whom I could affirm to be without any sins, and doubtless the sin which is
in them, whatever it be, proceeds from some Vice. Whence it follows that
though conjugal fidelity in religious men and women is undoubtedly a
virtue, for it is neither a nonentity nor a vice, yet it does not bring
along with it all virtues, for if all virtues were there, there would be no
vice, and if there were no vice, there would be no sin; but where is the
man who is altogether without sin? Where, therefore, is the man who is
without any vice, that is, fuel or root, as it were, of sin, when he who
reclined on the breast of the Lord says, "If we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"?(2) It is not necessary for
us to urge this at greater length in writing to you, but I make the
statement for the sake of others who perhaps shall read this. For you,
indeed, in that same splendid work against Jovinianus, have carefully
proved this from the Holy Scriptures; in which work also you have quoted
the words, "in many things we all offend,"(3) from this very epistle in
which occur the words whose meaning we are now investigating. For though it
is an apostle of Christ who is speaking, he does not say, "ye offend," but,
"we offend;" and although in the passage under consideration he says,
"Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is
guilty of all," (4) in the words just quoted he affirms that we offend not
in one i thing but in many, and not that some offend but that we all
offend.

   11. Far be it, however, from any believer to think that so many
thousands of the servants of Christ, who, lest they should deceive
themselves, and the truth should not be in them, sincerely confess
themselves to have sin, are altogether without virtues For wisdom is a
great virtue, and wisdom herself has said to man, "Behold the fear of the
Lord, that is wisdom."(5) Far be it from us, then, to say that so many and
so great believing and pious men have not the fear of the Lord, which the
Greeks call euse'beia, or more literally and fully, theose'beia And what is
the fear of the Lord but His worship? and whence is He truly worshipped
except from love? Love, then, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience,
and faith unfeigned, is the great and true virtue, because it is "the end
of the commandment."(1) Deservedly is love said to be "strong as death,"(2)
because, like death, it is vanquished by none; or because the measure of
love in this life is even unto death, as the Lord says, "Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;"(3) or,
rather, because, as death forcibly separates the soul from the senses of
the body, so love separates it from fleshly lusts. Knowledge, when it is of
the right kind, is the handmaid to love, for without love "knowledge
puffeth up,"(4) but where love, by edifying, has filled the heart, there
knowledge will find nothing empty i which it can puff up. Moreover, Job has
shown, what is that useful knowledge by defining it where, after saying,
"The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom" he adds "and to depart from evil, I
that is understanding."(5) Why do we not then say that the man who has this
virtue has all virtues, since "love is the fulfilling of the law?"(6). Is
it not true that, the more love exists in a man the more he is endowed with
virtue, and the less love he has the less virtue is in him, for love is
itself virtue; and the less virtue there is in a man so much the more vice
will there be in him? Therefore, where love is full and perfect, no vice
will remain.

   12. The Stoics, therefore, appear to me to be mistaken in refusing to
admit that a man who is advancing in wisdom has any wisdom at all, and in
affirming that he alone has it who has become altogether perfect in wisdom.
They do not,! indeed, deny that he has made progress, but they say that he
is in no degree entitled to be called wise, unless, by emerging, so to
speak, from the depths, he suddenly springs forth into the free air of
wisdom. For, as it matters not when a man is drowning whether the depth of
water above him be many stadia or only the breadth of a hand or finger, so
they say in regard to the progress of those who are advancing towards
wisdom, that they are like men rising from the bottom of a whirlpool
towards the air, but that unless they by their progress, so escape as to
emerge wholly from folly as from an overwhelming flood, they have not
virtue and are not wise; but that, when they have so escaped, they
immediately have wisdom in perfection, and not a vestige of folly whence
any sin could be originated remains.

   12. This simile, in which folly is compared to water and wisdom to air,
so that the mind emerging, as it were, from the stifling influence of folly
breathes suddenly the free air of wisdom, does not appear to me to
harmonize sufficiently with the authoritative statement of our Scriptures;
a better simile, so far, at least, as illustration of spiritual things can
be borrowed from material things, is that which compares vice or folly to
darkness, and virtue or wisdom to light. The way to wisdom is therefore not
like that of a man rising from the water into the air, in which, in the
moment of rising above the surface of the water, he suddenly breathes
freely, but, like that of a man proceeding from darkness into light, on
whom more light gradually shines as he advances. So long, therefore, as
this is not fully accomplished, we speak of the man as of one going from
the dark recesses of a vast cavern towards its entrance, who is more and
more influenced by the proximity of the light as he comes nearer to the
entrance of the cavern; so that whatever light he has proceeds from the
light to which he is advancing, and whatever darkness still remains in him
proceeds from the darkness out of which he is emerging. Therefore it is
true that in the sight of God "shall no man living be justified,"(7) and
yet that "the just shall live by his faith."(8) On the one hand, "the
saints are clothed with righteousness,"(9) one more, another less; on the
other hand, no one lives here wholly without sin -- one sins more, another
less, and the best is the man who sins least.

   CHAP. IV. -- 14. But why have I, as if forgetting to whom I address
myself, assumed the tone of a teacher in stating the question regarding
which I wish to be instructed by you? Nevertheless, as I had resolved to
submit to your examination my opinion regarding the equality of sins (a
subject involving a question closely bearing on the matter on which I was
writing), let me now at last bring my statement to a conclusion. Even
though it were true that he who has one virtue has all virtues, and that he
who lacks one virtue has none, this would not involve the consequence that
all sins are equal; for although it is true that where there is no virtue
there is nothing right, it by no means follows that among bad actions one
cannot be worse than another, or that divergence from that which is right
does not admit of degrees. I think, however, that it is more agreeable to
truth and consistent with the Holy Scriptures to say, that what is true of
the members of the body is true i of the different dispositions of the soul
(which, though not seen occupying different places, are by their
distinctive workings perceived as plainly as the members of the body),
namely, that as in the same body one member is more fully shone upon by the
light, another is less shone upon, and a third is altogether without light,
and remains in the dark under some impervious covering, something similar
takes place in regard to the various dispositions of the soul. If this be
so, then according to the manner in which every man is shone upon by the
light of holy love, he may be said to have one virtue and to lack another
virtue, or to have one virtue in larger and another in smaller measure. For
in reference to that love which is the fear of God, we may correctly say
both that it is greater in one man than in another, and tim there is some
of it in one man, and none of it in another; we may also correctly say as
to an individual that he has greater chastity than patience, and that he
has either virtue in a higher degree than he had yesterday, if he is making
progress, or tim he still lacks self-control, but possesses, at the same
time, a large measure of compassion.

   15. To sum up generally and briefly the view which, so far as relates
to holy living, I entertain concerning virtue, -- virtue is tile love with
which that which ought to be loved is loved. This is in some greater, in
others less, and there are men in whom it does not exist at all; but in the
absolute fulness which admits of no increase, it exists in no man while
living on this earth; so long, however, as it admits of being increased
there can be no doubt that, in so far as it is less than it ought to be,
the shortcoming proceeds from vice. Because of this vice there is "not a
just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not;"(1) because of this
vice, "in God's sight shall no man living be justified."(2) On account of
this vice, "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us."(3) On account of this also, whatever progress we may
have made, we must say, "Forgive us our debts,"(4) although all debts in
word, deed, and thought were washed away in baptism. He, then, who sees
aright, sees whence, and when, and where he must hope for that perfection
to which nothing can be added. Moreover, if there had been no commandments,
there would have been no means whereby a man might certainly examine
himself and see from what things he ought to turn aside, whither he should
aspire, and in what things he should find occasion for thanksgiving or for
prayer. Great, therefore, is the benefit of commandments, if to free will
so much liberty be granted that the grace of God may be more abundantly
honoured.

   CHAP. V. -- 16. If these things be so, how shall a man who shall keep
the whole law, and yet offend in one point, be guilty of all? May it not
be, that since the fulfilling of the law is that love wherewith we love God
and our neighbour, on which commandments of love "hang all the law and the
prophets,"(5) he is justly held to be guilty of all who violates that on
which all hang? Now, no one sins without violating this love; "for this,
thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shall do no murder; thou shall not
steal; thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is
briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shall love thy neighbour as
thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the
fulfilling of the law."(6) No one, however, loves his neighbour who does
not out of his love to God do all in his power to bring his neighbour also,
whom he loves as himself, to love God, whom if he does not love, he neither
loves himself nor his neighbour. Hence it is true that if a man shall keep
the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he becomes guilty of all,
because he does what is contrary to the love on which hangs the whole law.
A man, therefore, becomes guilty of all by doing what is contrary to that
on which all hang.

   17. Why, then, may not all sins be said to be equal? May not the reason
be, that the transgression of the law of love is greater in him who commits
a more grievous sin, and is less in him who commits a less grievous sin?
And in the mere fact of his committing any sin whatever, he becomes guilty
of all; but in committing a more grievous sin, or in sinning in more
respects than one, he becomes more guilty; committing a less grievous sin,
or sinning in fewer respects, he becomes less guilty, -- his guilt being
thus so much the greater the more he has sinned, the less the less he has
sinned. Nevertheless, even though it be only in one point that he offend,
he is guilty of all, because he violates that love on which all hang. If
these things be true, an explanation is by this means found, clearing up
that saying of the man of apostolic grace, "In many things we offend
all."(7) For we all offend, but one more grievously, another more slightly,
according as each may have committed a more grievous or a less grievous sin
; every one being great in the practice of sin in proportion as he is
deficient in loving God and his neighbour, and, on the other hand,
decreasing in the practice of sin in proportion as he increases in the
;love of God and of his neighbour. The more, therefore, that a man is
deficient in love, the more is he full of sin. And perfection in love i is
reached when nothing of sinful infirmity remains in us.

   18. Nor, indeed, in my opinion, are we to esteem it a trifling sin "to
have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons," if we
take the difference between sitting and standing, of which mention is made
in the context, to refer to ecclesiastical honours; for who can bear to see
a rich man chosen to a place of honour in the Church, while a poor man, of
superior qualifications and of greater holiness. is despised? If, however,
the apostle speaks there of our daily assemblies, who does not offend in
the matter? At the same time, only those really offend here who cherish in
their hearts the opinion that a man's worth is to be estimated according to
his wealth; for this seems to be the meaning of the expression, "Are ye not
then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?"

   19. The law of liberty, therefore, the law of love, is that of which he
says: "If ye fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect to
persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.(1)
And then (after the difficult sentence, "Whosoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," concerning which I
have with sufficient fulness stated my opinion), making mention of the same
law of liberty, he says: "So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be
judged by the law of liberty." And as he knew by experience what he had
said a little before, "in many things we offend all," he suggests a
sovereign remedy, to be applied, as it l were day by day, to those less
serious but real] wounds which the soul suffers day by day, for he says:
"He shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy."(2) For
with the same purpose the Lord says: "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
give, and it shall be given unto you."(3) After which the apostle says:
"But mercy rejoiceth over judgment: it's not said that mercy prevails over
judgment, for it is not an adversary of judgment, but it "rejoiceth" over
judgment, because a greater number are gathered in by mercy; but they are
those who have shown mercy, for, "Blessed are the merciful, for God shall
have mercy on them."(4)

   20. It is, therefore, by all means just that they be forgiven, because
they have forgiven others, and that what they need be given to them,
because they have given to others. For God uses mercy when He judgeth, and
uses judgment when He showeth mercy. Hence the Psalmist says: "I will sing
of mercy and of judgment unto Thee, O Lord."(5) For if any man, thinking
himself too righteous to require mercy, presumes, as if he had no reason
for anxiety, to wait for judgment without mercy, he provokes that most
righteous indignation through fear of which the Psalmist said: "Enter not
into judgment with Thy servant."(6) For this reason the Lord says to a
disobedient people: "Wherefore will ye contend with me in judgment? (7) For
when the righteous King shall sit upon His throne, who shall boast that he
has a pure heart, or who shall boast that he is clean from sin? What hope
is there then unless mercy shall "rejoice over" judgment? But this it will
do only in the case of those who have showed mercy, saying with sincerity,
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," and who have given
without murmuring, for "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver."(8) To conclude,
St. James is led to speak thus concerning works of mercy in this passage,
in order that he may console those whom the statements immediately
foregoing might have greatly alarmed, his purpose being to admonish us ]low
those daily sins from which our life is never free here below may also be
expiated by daily remedies; lest any man, becoming guilty of all when he
offends in even one point, be brought, by offending in many points (since
"in many things we all offend"), to appear before the bar of the Supreme
Judge under the enormous amount of guilt which has accumulated by degrees,
and find at that tribunal no mercy, because he showed no mercy to others,
instead of rather meriting the forgiveness of his own sins, and the
enjoyment of the gifts promised in Scripture, by his extending forgiveness
and bounty to others.

   21. I have written at great length, which may perhaps have been tedious
to you, as you, although approving of tile statements now made, do not
expect to be addressed as if you were but learning truths which you have
been accustomed to teach to others. If, however, there be anything in these
statements -- not in the style of language in which they are expounded, for
I am not much concerned as to mere phrases, but in the substance of the
statements -- which your erudite judgment condemns, I beseech you to point
this out to me in your reply, and do not hesitate to correct my error. For
I pity the man who, in view of the unwearied labour and sacred character of
your studies, does not on account of them both render to you the honour
which you deserve, and give thanks unto our Lord God by whose grace you are
what you are. Wherefore, since I ought to be more willing to learn from any
teacher the things of which to my disadvantage I am ignorant, than prompt
to teach any others what I know, with how much greater reason do I claim
the payment of this debt of love from you, by whose learning ecclesiastical
literature in the latin tongue has been, in the Lord's name, and by His
help, advanced to an extent which had been previously unattainable.
Especially, however, I ask attention to the sentence: "Whosoever shall keep
the whole law, and offend in one point, is guilty of all." If you know any
better way, my beloved brother, in which it can be explained, I beseech you
by the Lord to favour us by communicating to us your exposition.

LETTER CLXIX. (A.D. 415.)

BISHOP AUGUSTIN TO BISHOP EVODIUS.

   CHAP, I. -- 1. If acquaintance with the treatises which specially
occupy me, and from which I am unwilling to be turned aside to anything
else, is so highly valued by your Holiness, let some one be sent to copy
them for you. For I have now finished several of those which had been
commenced by me this year before Easter, near the beginning of Lent. For,
to the three books on the City of God, in opposition to its enemies, the
worshippers of demons, I have added two others, and in these five books I
think enough has been said to answer those who maintain that the [heathen]
gods must be worshipped in order to secure prosperity in this present life,
and who are hostile to the Christian name from an idea that that prosperity
is hindered by us. In the sequel I must, as I promised in the first
book,(1) answer those who think that the worship of their gods is the only
way to obtain that life after death with a view to obtain which we are
Christians. I have dictated also, in volumes of considerable size,
expositions of three Psalms, the 68th, the 72d, and the 78th. Commentaries
on the other Psalms -- not yet dictated, nor even entered on -- are eagerly
expected and demanded from me. From these studies I am unwilling to be
called away and hindered by any questions thrusting themselves upon me from
another quarter; yea, so unwilling, that I do not wish to turn at present
even to the books on the Trinity, which I have long had on hand and have
not yet completed, because they require a great amount of labour, and I
believe that they are of a nature to be understood only by few; on which
account they claim my attention less urgently than writings which may, I
hope, be useful to very many.

   2. For the words, "He that is ignorant shall be ignored,"(2) were not
used by the apostle in reference to this subject, as your letter affirms;
as if this punishment were to be inflicted on the man who is not able to
discern by the exercise of his intellect the ineffable unity of the
Trinity, in the same way as the unity of memory, understanding, and will in
the soul of man is discerned. The apostle said these words with a wholly
different design. Consult the passage and you will see that he was speaking
of those things which might be for the edification of the many in faith and
holiness, not of those which might with difficulty be comprehended by the
few, and by them only in the small degree in which the comprehension of so
great a subject is attainable in this life. The positions laid down by him
were,that prophesying was to be preferred to speaking with tongues; that
these gifts should not be exercised in a disorderly manner, as if the
spirit of prophecy compelled them to speak even against their will; that
women should keep silence in the Church; and that all things should be done
decently and in order. While treating of these things he says: "If any man
think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him know the things which
I write to you, for they are the commands of the Lord. If any man be
ignorant, he shall be ignored;" intending by these words to restrain and
call to order persons who were specially ready to cause disorder in the
Church, because they imagined themselves to excel in spiritual gifts,
although they were disturbing everything by their presumptions conduct. "If
any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him know," he
says, "the things which I write to you, for they are the commands of the
Lord." If any man thinks himself to be, and in reality is not, a prophet,
for he who is a prophet undoubtedly knows and does not need admonition and
exhortation, because "he judgeth all things, and is himself judged of no
man."(3) Those persons, therefore, caused confusion and trouble in the
Church who thought themselves to be in the Church what they were not. He
teaches these to know the commandments of the Lord, for he is not a "God of
confusion, but of peace."(4) But "if any one is ignorant, he shall be
ignored," that is to say, he shall be rejected; for God is not ignorant --
so far as mere knowledge is concerned -- in regard to the persons to whom
He shall one day say, "I know you not,"(5) but their rejection is signified
by this expression.

   3. Moreover, since the Lord says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God,"(6) and that sight is promised to us as the highest
reward at the last, we have no reason to fear lest, if we axe now unable to
see clearly those things which we believe concerning the nature of God,
this defective apprehension should bring us under the sentence, "He that is
ignorant shall be ignored." For when "in the wisdom of God the world by
wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
those who believed." This foolishness of preaching and "foolishness of God
which is wiser than man"(1) draws many to salvation, in such a way that not
only those who are as yet incapable of perceiving with clear intelligence
the nature of God which in faith they hold, but even those who have not yet
so learned the nature of their own soul as to distinguish between its
incorporeal essence and the body as a whole with the same certainty with
which they perceive that they live, understand, and will, are not on this
account shut out from that salvation which that foolishness of preaching
bestows on believers.

   4. For if Christ died for those only who with clear intelligence can
discern these things, our labour in the Church is almost spent in vain. But
if, as is the fact, crowds of common people, possessing no great strength
of intellect, run to the Physician m the exercise of faith, with the result
of being healed by Christ and Him crucified, that "where sin has abounded,
grace may much more abound,"(2) it comes in wondrous ways to pass, through
the depths of the riches of the. wisdom and knowledge of God and His
unsearchable judgments, that, on the one hand, some who do discern between
the material and: the spiritual in their own nature, while pluming
themselves on this attainment, and despising that foolishness of preaching
by which those who believe are saved, wander far from the only path which
leads to eternal life; and, on the other hand, because not one perishes for
whom Christ died,(3) many glorying in the cross of Christ, and not
withdrawing from that same path, attain, notwithstanding their ignorance of
those things which some with most profound subtlety investigate, unto that
eternity, truth, and love, -- that is, unto that enduring, clear, and full
felicity,in which to those who abide, and see, and love, all things are
plain.

   CHAP. II. -- 5. Therefore let us with steadfast piety believe in one
God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; let us at the same time
believe that the Son is not [the person] who is the Father, and the Father
is not [the person] who is the Son, and neither the Father nor the Son is
[the person] who is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son. Let it not
be supposed that in this Trinity there is any separation in respect of time
or place, but that these Thee are equal and co-eternal, and absolutely of
one nature: and that the creatures have been made, not some by the Father,
and some by the Son, and some by the Holy Spirit, but that each and all
that have been or are now being created subsist in the Trinity as their
Creator; and that no one is saved by the Father without the Son and the
Holy Spirit, or by the Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, or by
the Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son, but by the ,Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, the only one, true, and truly immortal (that is,
absolutely unchangeable) God. At the same time, we believe that many things
are stated in Scripture separately concerning each of the Three, in order
to teach us that, though they are an inseparable Trinity, yet they are a
Trinity. For, just as when their names are pronounced in human language
they cannot be named simultaneously, although their existence in
inseparable union is at every moment simultaneous, even so in some places
of Scripture also, they are by certain created things presented to us
distinctively and in mutual relation to each other: for example, [at the
baptism of Christ] the Father is heard in the voice which said, "Thou art
my Son;" the Son is seen in the human nature which, in being born of the
Virgin, He assumed; the Holy Spirit is seen in the bodily form of a
dove,(4) -- these things presenting the Three to our apprehension
separately, indeed, but in no wise separated.

   6. To present this in a form which the intellect may apprehend, we
borrow an illustration from the Memory, the Understanding, and the Will.
For although we can speak of each of these faculties severally in its own
order, and at a separate time, we neither exercise nor even mention any one
of them without the other two. It must not, however, be supposed, from our
using this comparison between these three faculties and the Trinity, that
the things compared agree in every particular, for where, in any process of
reasoning, can we find an illustration in which the correspondence between
the things compared is so exact that it admits of application in every
point to that which it is intended to illustrate? In the first place,
therefore, the similarity is found to be imperfect in this respect, that
whereas memory, understanding, and will are not the soul, but only exist in
the soul, the Trinity does not exist in God, but is God. In the Trinity,
therefore, there is manifested a singleness [simplicitas] commanding our
astonishment, because in this Trinity it is not one thing to exist, and
another thing to understand, or do anything else which is attributed to the
nature of God; but in the soul it is one thing that it exists, and another
thing that it understands, for even when it is not using the understanding
it still exists. In the second place, who would dare to say that the Father
does not understand by Himself but by the Son, as memory does not
understand by itself but by the understanding, or, to speak more correctly,
the soul in which these faculties are understands by no other faculty than
by the understanding, as it remembers only by memory, and exercises
volition only by the will? The point, therefore, to which the illustration
is intended to apply is this, -- that, whatever be the manner in which we
understand, in regard to these three faculties in the soul, that when the
several names by which they are severally represented are uttered, the
utterance of each separate name is nevertheless accomplished only in the
combined operation of all the three, since it is by an act of memory and of
understanding and of will that it is spoken, -- it is in the same manner
that we understand, in regard to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
that no created thing which may at any time be employed to present only one
of the Three to our minds is produced otherwise than by the simultaneous,
because essentially inseparable, operation of the Trinity; and that,
consequently, neither the voice of the Father, nor the body and soul of the
Son, nor the dove of the Holy Spirit, was produced in any other way than by
the combined operation of the Trinity.

   7. Moreover, that sound of a voice was certainly not made indissolubly
one with the person of the Father, for so soon as it was uttered it ceased
to be. Neither was that form of a dove made indissolubly one with the
person of Holy Spirit, for it also, like the bright cloud which covered the
Saviour and His three disciples on the mount,(1) or rather like the tongues
of flame which once represented the same Holy Spirit, ceased to exist as
soon as it had served its purpose as a symbol. But it was otherwise with
the body and soul in which the Son of God was manifested: seeing that the
deliverance of men was the object for which all these things were done, the
human nature in which He appeared was, in a way marvellous and unique,
assumed into real union with the person of the Word of God, that is, of the
only Son of God,-- the Word remaining unchangeably in His own nature,
wherein it is not conceivable that there should be composite elements in
union with which any mere semblance of a human soul could subsist. We read,
indeed, that "the Spirit of wisdom is manifold;"(2) but it is as properly
termed simple. Manifold it is, indeed, because there are many things which
it possesses; but simple, because it is not a different thing from what it
possesses, as the Son is said to have life in Himself, and yet He is
Himself that life. The human nature came to the Word; the Word did not
come, with susceptibility of change, into the human nature; (3) and
therefore, in His union to the human nature which He has assumed, He is
still properly called the Son of God; for which reason the same person is
the Son of God immutable and co-eternal with the Father, and the Son of God
who was laid in the grave, -- the former being true of Him only as the
Word, the latter true of Him only as a man.

   8. Wherefore it behoves us, in reading any statements made concerning
the Son of God, to observe in reference to which of these two natures they
are spoken. For by His assumption of the soul and body of a man, no
increase was made in the number of Persons: the Trinity remained as before.
For just as in every man, with the exception of that one whom alone He
assumed into personal union, the soul and body constitute one person, so in
Christ the Word and His human soul and body constitute one person. And as
the name philosopher, for example, is given to a man certainly with
reference only to his soul, and yet it is nothing absurd, but only a most
suitable and ordinary use of language, for us to say the philosopher was
killed, the philosopher died, the philosopher was buried, although all
these events befell him in his body, not in that part of him in which he
was a philosopher; in like manner the name of God, or Son of God, or Lord
of Glory, or any other such name, is given to Christ as the Word, and it
is, nevertheless, correct to say that God was crucified, seeing that there
is no question that He suffered this death in his human nature, not in that
in which He is the Lord of Glory.(4)

   9. As for the sound of the voice, however, and the bodily form of a
dove, and the cloven tongues which sat upon each of them, these, like the
terrible wonders wrought at Sinai,(5) and like the pillar of cloud by day
and of fire by night,(6) were produced only as symbols, and vanished when
this purpose had been served. The thing which we must especially guard
against in connection with them is, lest any one should believe that the
nature of God -- whether of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy
Spirit -- is susceptible of change or transformation. And we must not be
disturbed by the fact that the sign sometimes receives the name of the
thing signified, as when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended in a
bodily form as a dove and abode upon Him; for in like manner the smitten
rock is called Christ,(7) because it was a symbol of Christ.

   CHAP. III. -- 10. I wonder, however, that, although you believe it
possible for the sound of the voice which said, "Thou art my Son," to have
been produced through a divine act, without the intermediate agency of a
soul, by something the nature of which was corporeal, you nevertheless do
not believe that a bodily form and movements exactly resembling those of
any real living creature whatsoever could be produced in the same way,
namely, through a divine act, without the intermediate agency of a spirit
imparting life. i For if inanimate matter obeys God without the
instrumentality of an animating spirit, so as to emit sounds such as are
wont to be emited by animated bodies, in order to bring to the human ear
words articulately spoken, why should it not obey Him, so as to present to
the human eye the figure and motions of a bird, by the same power of the
Creator without the instrumentalist of any animating spirit? The objects of
both sight and hearing m the sound which strikes the ear and the appearance
which meets the eye, the articulations of the voice and the outlines of the
members, every audible and visible motion -- are both alike produced from
matter contiguous to us; is it, then, granted to the sense of hearing, and
not to the sense of sight, to tell us regarding the body which is perceived
by this bodily sense, both that it is a true body, and that it is nothing
beyond what the bodily sense perceives it to be? For in every living
creature the soul is, of course, not perceived by any bodily sense. We do
not, therefore, need to inquire how the bodily form of the dove appeared to
the eye, just as we do not need to inquire how the voice of a bodily form
capable of speech was made to fall upon the ear. For if it was possible to
dispense with the intermediate agency of a soul in the case in which a
voice, not something like a voice, is said to have been produced, how  much
more easily was it possible in the case in which it is said that the Spirit
descended "like a dove," a phrase which signifies that a mere bodily form
was exhibited to the eye, and does not affirm that a real living creature
was seen! In like manner, it is said that on the day of Pentecost,
"suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and
there appeared to them cloven tongues like as of fire,"(1) in which
something like wind and like fire, i.e. resembling these common and
familiar natural phenomena, is said to have been perceived, but it does not
seem to be indicated that these common and familiar natural phenomena were
actually produced.

   11. If, however, more subtle reasoning or more thorough investigation
of the matter result in demonstrating that that which is naturally
destitute of motion both in time and in space [i.e. matter] cannot be moved
otherwise than through the intermediate agency of that which is capable of
motion only in time, not in space [i.e. spirit], it will follow from this
that all those things must have been done by the instrumentality of a
living creature, as things are done by angels, on which subject a more
elaborate discussion would be tedious, and is not necessary. To this it
must be added, that there are visions which appear to the spirit as plainly
as to the senses of the body, not only in sleep or delirium, but also to
persons of sound mind in n their waking hours, -- visions which are due not
to the deceitfulness of devils mocking men, but to some spiritual
revelation accomplished by means of immaterial forms resembling bodies, and
which cannot by any means be distinguished from real objects, unless they
are by divine assistance more fully revealed and discriminated by the
mind's intelligence, which is done sometimes (but with difficulty) at the
time, but for the most part after they have disappeared. This being the
case in regard to these visions which, whether their nature be really
material, or material only in appearance but really spiritual, seem to
manifest themselves to our spirit as if they were perceived by the bodily
senses, we ought not, when these things are recorded in sacred Scripture,
to conclude hastily to which of these two classes they are to be referred,
or whether, if they belong to the former, they are produced by the
intermediate agency of a spirit; while, at the same time, as to the
invisible and immutable nature of the Creator, that is, of the supreme and
ineffable Trinity, we either simply, without any doubt, believe, or, in
addition to this, with some degree of intellectual apprehension, understand
that it is wholly removed and separated both from the senses of fleshly
mortals, and from all susceptibility of being changed either for the worse
or for the better, or to anything whatever of a variable nature.

   CHAP. IV. -- 12. These things I send you in reference to two of your
questions, -- the one concerning the Trinity, and the other concerning the
dove in which the Holy Spirit, not in His own nature, but in a symbolical
form, was manifested, as also the Son of God, not in His eternal Sonship
(of which the Father said: "Before the morning star I have begotten
Thee"(2)), but in that human nature which He assumed from the Virgin's
womb, was crucified .by the Jews: observe that to you who are at leisure I
have been able, notwithstanding immense pressure of business, to write so
much. I have not, however, deemed it necessary to discuss everything which
you have brought forward in your letter; but on these two questions which
you wished me to solve, I think I have written as much as is exacted by
Christian charity, though I may not have satisfied your vehement desire.

   13. Besides the two books added to the first three in the City of God,
and the exposition of three psalms, as above mentioned,(1) I have also
written a treatise to the holy presbyter Jerome concerning the origin of
the soul,(2) asking him, in regard to the opinion which, in writing to
Marcellinus of pious memory, he avowed as his own, that a new soul is made
for each individual at birth, how this can be maintained without
overthrowing that most surely established article of the Church's faith,
according to which we firmly believe that all die in Adam,(3) and are
brought down under condemnation unless they be delivered by the grace of
Christ, which, by means of His sacrament, works even in infants. I have,
moreover, written to the same person to inquire his opinion as to the sense
in which the words of James, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet
offend in one point, he is guilty of all," are to be understood.(4) In this
letter I have also stated my own opinion: in the other, concerning the
origin of the soul, I have only asked what was his opinion, submitting the
matter to his judgment, and at the same I time discussing it to some
extent. I wrote these I to Jerome because I did not wish to lose an
opportunity of correspondence afforded by a certain very pious and studious
young presbyter, Orosius, who, prompted only by burning zeal in regard to
the Holy Scriptures, came to us from I the remotest part of Spain, namely,
from the shore of the ocean, and whom I persuaded to go on from us to
Jerome. In answer to certain questions of the same Orosius, as to things
which troubled him in reference to the heresy of the Priscillianists, and
some opinions of Origen which the Church has not accepted, I have written a
treatise of moderate size with as much brevity and clearness as was in my
power. I have also written a considerable book against the heresy of
Pelagius,(5) being constrained to do this by some brethren whom he had
persuaded to adopt his fatal error, denying the grace of Christ. If you
wish to have all these, send some one to copy them all for you. Allow me,
however, to be free from distraction in studying and dictating to my clerks
those things which, being urgently required by many, claim in my opinion
precedence over your questions, which are of interest to very few.

LETTER CLXXII.

(A.D. 416.)

TO AUGUSTIN, MY TRULY PIOUS LORD AND FATHER, WORTHY OF MY UTMOST AFFECTION
AND VENERATION, JEROME SENDS GREETING IN CHRIST.

   1. That honourable man, my brother, and your Excellency's son, the
presbyter Orosius, I have, both on his own account and in obedience to your
request, made welcome. But a most trying time has come upon us,(6) in which
I have found it better for me to hold my peace than to speak, so that our
studies have ceased, lest what Appius calls "the eloquence of dogs" should
be provoked into exercise.(7) For this reason I have not been able at the
present time to give to those two books dedicated to my name-books of
profound erudition, and brilliant with every charm of splendid eloquence --
the answer which I would otherwise have given; not that I think anything
said in them demands correction, but because I am mindful of the words of
the blessed apostle in regard to the variety of men's judgments, "Let every
man be fully persuaded in his own mind."(8) Certainly, whatever can be said
on the topics there discussed, and whatever can be drawn by commanding
genius from the fountain of sacred Scripture regarding them, has been in
these letters stated in your positions, and illustrated by your arguments.
But I beg your Reverence to allow me for a little to praise your genius.
For in any discussion between us, the object aimed at by both of us is
advancement in learning. But our rivals, and especially heretics, if they
see different opinions maintained by us, will assail us with the calumny
that our differences are due to mutual jealousy. For my part, however, I am
resolved to love you, to look up to you, to reverence and admire you, and
to defend your opinions as my own. I have also in a dialogue, which I
recently published, made allusion to your Blessedness in suitable terms. Be
it ours, therefore, rather to rid the Church of that most pernicious heresy
which always feigns repentance, in order that it may have liberty to teach
in our churches, and may not be expelled and extinguished, as it would be
if it disclosed its real character in the light of day.

   2. Your pious and venerable daughters, Eustochium and Paula, continue
to walk worthy of their own birth and of your counsels, and they send
special salutations to your Blessedness: in which they are joined by the
whole brotherhood of those who with us labour to serve the Lord our
Saviour. As for the holy presbyter Firmus, we sent him last year to go on
business of Eustochium and Paula, first to Ravenna, and afterwards to
Africa and Sicily, and we suppose that he is now detained somewhere in
Africa. I beseech you to present my respectful salutations to the saints
who are associated with you. I have also sent to your care a letter from me
to the holy presbyter Firmus; if it reaches you, I beg you to take the
trouble of forwarding it to him. May Christ the Lord keep you in safety,
and mindful of me, my truly pious lord and most blessed father.

   (As a postscript.) We suffer in this province from a grievous scarcity
of clerks acquainted with the Latin language; this is the reason why we are
not able to comply with your instructions, especially in regard to that
version of the Septuagint which is furnished with distinctive asterisks and
obelisks;(1) for we have lost, through some one's dishonesty, the most of
the results of our earlier labour.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
1867. (LNPF I/I, Schaff). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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