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ST. AUGUSTIN

LETTERS 1-30 (First Division, i.e., letters before his episcopate)

[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 I. (A.D. 386.)

TO HERMOGENIANUS(1) AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. I WOULD not presume, even in playful discussion, to attack the
philosophers of the Academy; (2) for when could the authority of such
eminent men fail to move me, did I not believe their views to be widely
different from those commonly ascribed to them? Instead of confuting them,
which is beyond my power, I have rather imitated them to the best of my
ability. For it seems to me to have been suitable enough to the times in
which they flourished, that whatever issued pure from the fountainhead of
Platonic philosophy should be rather conducted into dark and thorny
thickets for the refreshment of a very few men, than left to flow in open
meadowland, where it would be impossible to keep it clear and pure from the
inroads of the vulgar herd. I use the word herd advisedly; for what is more
brutish than the opinion that the soul is material? For defence against the
men who held this, it appears to me that such an art and method of
concealing the truth (3) was wisely contrived by; the new Academy. But in
this age of ours, when we see none who are philosophers,- for I do not
consider those who merely wear the cloak of a ,philosopher to be worthy of
that venerable name,--it seems to me that men (those, at least, whom the
teaching of the Academicians has, through the subtlety of the terms in
which it was expressed, deterred from attempting to understand its actual
meaning) should be brought back to the hope of discovering the truth, lest
that which was then for the time useful in eradicating obstinate error,
should begin now to hinder the casting in of the seeds of true knowledge.

   2. In that age the studies of contending schools of philosophers were
pursued with such ardour, that the one thing to be feared was the
possibility of error being approved. For every one who had been driven by
the arguments of the sceptical philosophers from a position which he had
supposed to be impregnable, set himself to seek some other in its stead,
with a perseverance and caution corresponding to the greater industry which
was characteristic of the men of that time, land the strength of the
persuasion then prevailing, that truth, though deep and hard to be
deciphered, does lie hidden in the nature of things and of the human mind.
Now, however, such is the indisposition to strenuous exertion, and the
indifference to the liberal arts, that so soon as it is noised abroad that,
in the opinion of the most acute philosophers, truth is unattainable, men
send their minds to sleep, and cover them up for ever. For they presume
not, forsooth, to imagine themselves to be so superior in discernment to
those great men, that they shall find out what, during his singularly long
life, Carneades,(4) with all his diligence, talents, and leisure, besides
his extensive and varied learning, failed to discover. And if, contending
somewhat against indolence, they rouse themselves so far as to read those
books in which it is, as it were, proved that the perception of truth is
denied to man, they relapse into lethargy so profound, that not even by the
heavenly trumpet can they be aroused.

   3. Wherefore, although I accept with the greatest pleasure your candid
estimate of my brief I treatise, and esteem you so much as to rely not less
on the sagacity of your judgment than on the sincerity of your friendship,
I beg you to give more particular attention to one point, and to write me
again concerning it, -- namely, whether you approve of that which, in the
end of the third book,(5) I have given as my opinion, in a tone perhaps of
hesitation rather than of certainty, but in statements, as I think, more
likely to be found useful than to be rejected as incredible. But whatever
be the value of those treatises [the books against the Academicians], what
I most rejoice in is, not that I have vanquished! the Academicians, as you
express it (using the language rather of friendly partiality than of
truth), but that I have broken and cast away from me the odious bonds by
which I was kept back from the nourishing breasts of philosophy, through
despair of attaining that truth which is the food of the soul.

LETTER II. (A.D. 386.)

TO ZENOBIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.(1)

   1. We are, I suppose, both agreed in maintaining that all things with
which our bodily senses acquaint us are incapable of abiding unchanged for
a single moment, but, on the contrary, are moving and in perpetual
transition, and have no present reality, that is, to use the language of
Latin philosophy, do not exist.(2) Accordingly, the true and divine
philosophy admonishes us to check and subdue the love of these things as
most dangerous and disastrous, in order that the mind, even while using
this body, may be wholly occupied and warmly interested in those things
which are ever the same, and which owe their attractive power to no
transient charm. Although this is all true, and although my mind, without
the aid of the senses, sees you as you really are, and as an object which
may be loved without disquietude, nevertheless I must own that when you are
absent in body, and separated by distance, the pleasure of meeting and
seeing you is one which I miss, and which, therefore, while it is
attainable, I earnestly covet. This my infirmity (for such it must be) is
one which, if I know you aright, you are well pleased to find in me; and
though you wish every good thing for your best and most loved friends, you
rather fear than desire that they should be cured of this infirmity. If,
however, your soul has attained to such strength that you are able both to
discern this snare, and to smile at those who are caught therein, truly you
are great, and different from what I am. For my part, as long as I regret
the absence of any one from me, so long do I wish him to regret my absence.
At the same time, I watch and strive to set my love as little as possible
on anything which can be separated from me against my will. Regarding this
as my duty, I remind you, in the meantime, whatever be your frame of mind,
that the discussion which I have begun with you must be finished, if we
care for each other. For I can by no means consent to its being finished
with Alypius, even if he wished it. But he does not wish this; for he is
not the man to join with me now in endeavouring, by as many letters as we
could send, to detain you with us, when you decline this, under the
pressure of some necessity to us unknown.

LETTER III. (A.D. 387.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.(3)

   1. Whether I am to regard it as the effect of what I may call your
flattering language, or whether the thing be really so, is a point which I
am unable to decide. For the impression was sudden, and I am not yet
resolved how far it deserves to be believed. You wonder what this can be.
What do you think? You have almost made me believe, not indeed that I am
happy--for that is the heritage of the wise alone -- but that I am at least
in a sense happy: as we apply the designation man to beings who deserve the
name only in a sense if compared with Plato's ideal man, or speak of things
which we see as round or square, although they differ widely from the
perfect figure which is discerned by the mind of a few. I read your letter
beside my lamp after supper: immediately after which I lay down, but not at
once to sleep; for on my bed I meditated long, and talked thus with myself
-- Augustin addressing and answering Augustin: "Is it not true, as
Nebridius affirms, that I am happy?" "Absolutely true it cannot be, for
that I am still far from wise he himself would not deny." "But may not a
happy life be the lot even of those who are not wise ?" "That is scarcely
possible; because, in that case, lack of wisdom would be a small
misfortune, and not, as it actually is, the one and only source of
unhappiness." "How, then, did Nebridius come to esteem me happy? Was it
that, 'after reading these little books of mine, he ventured to pronounce
me wise? Surely the vehemence of joy could not make him so rash, especially
seeing that he is a man to whose judgment I well know so much weight is to
be attached. I have it now: he wrote what he thought would be most
gratifying to me, because he had been gratified by what I had written in
those treatises; and he wrote in a joyful mood, without accurately weighing
the sentiments entrusted to his joyous pen. What, then, would he have said
if he had read my Soliloquies? He would have rejoiced with much more
exultation, and yet could find no loftier name to bestow on me than this
which he has already given in calling me happy. All at once, then, he has
lavished on me the highest possible name, and has not reserved a single
word to add to my praises, if at any time he were made by me more joyful
than he is now. See what joy does."

   2. But where is that truly happy life? where? ay, where? Oh! if it were
attained, one would spurn the atomic theory of Epicurus. Oh! if it were
attained, one would know that there is nothing here below but the visible
world. Oh! if it were attained, one would know that in the rotation of a
globe on its axis, the motion of points near the poles is less rapid than
of those which lie half way between them, --and other such like things
which we likewise know. But now, how or in what sense can I be called
happy, who know not why the world is such in size as it is, when the
proportions of the figures according to which it is framed do in no way
hinder its being enlarged to any extent desired? Or how might it not be
said to me- nay, might we not be compelled to admit that matter is
infinitely divisible; so that, starting from any given base (so to speak),
a definite number of corpuscles must rise to a definite and ascertainable
quantity? Wherefore, seeing that we do not admit that any particle is so
small as to be insusceptible of further diminution, what compels us to
admit that any assemblage of parts is so great that it cannot g possibly be
increased? Is there perchance some I important truth in what I once
suggested confidentially to Alypius, that since number, as cognisable by
the understanding, is susceptible of infinite augmentation, but not of
infinite diminution,(1) because we cannot reduce it lower than to the
units, number, as cognisable by the senses (and this, of course, just means
quantity of material parts or bodies), is on the contrary susceptible of
infinite diminution, but has a limit to its augmentation? This may perhaps
be the reason why philosophers justly pronounce riches to be found in the
things about which the understanding is exercised, and poverty in those
things with which the senses have to do. For what is poorer than to be
susceptible of endless diminution? and what more truly rich than to
increase as much as you will, to go whither you will, to return when you
will and as far as you will, and to have as the object of your love that
which is large and cannot be made less? For whoever understands these
numbers loves nothing so much as the unit; and no wonder, seeing that it is
through it that all the other numbers can be loved by him. But to return:
Why is the world the size that it is, seeing that it might have been
greater or less? I do not know: its dimensions are what they are, and I can
go no further. Again: Why is the world in the place it now occupies rather
than in another? Here, too, it is better not to put the question; for
whatever the answer might be, other questions would still remain. This one
thing' greatly perplexed me, that bodies could be infinitely subdivided. To
this perhaps an answer has been given, by setting over against it the
converse property of abstract number [viz. its susceptibility of infinite
multiplication].

   3. But stay: let us see what is that indefinable object(2) which is
suggested to the mind. This world with which our senses acquaint us is
surely the image of some world which the understanding apprehends  Now it
is a strange phenomenon which we observe in the images which mirrors
reflect to us, -- that however great the mirrors be, they do not make the
images larger than the objects placed before them, be they ever so small;
but in small mirrors, such as the pupil of the eye, although a large
surface be placed over against them, a very small image is formed,
proportioned to the size of the mirror.(3) Therefore if the mirrors be
reduced in size, the images reflected in them are also reduced; but it is
not possible for the images to be enlarged by enlarging the mirrors. Surely
there is in this something which might reward further investigation; but
meanwhile, I must sleep.(4) Moreover, if I seem to Nebridius to be happy,
it is not because I seek, but because perchance I have found something.
What, then, is that something? Is it that chain of reasoning which I am
wont so to caress as if it were my sole treasure, and in which perhaps I
take too much delight ?

   4. "Of what parts do we consist?" "Of soul and body " "Which of these
is the nobler ?" "Doubtless the soul." "What do men praise in the body?"
"Nothing that I see but comeliness." "And what is comeliness of body?"
"Harmony of parts in the form, together with a certain agreeableness of
colour." "is this comeliness better where it is true or where it is
illusive?" "Unquestionably it is better where it is true." "And where is it
found true? In the soul." "The soul, therefore, is to be loved more than
the body; but in what part of the soul does this truth reside ?" "In the
mind and understanding." "With what has the understanding to contend?"
"With the senses " "Must we then resist the senses with all our might ?"
"Certainly." "What, then, if the things with which the senses acquaint us
give us pleasure?" "We must prevent them from doing so." "How?" "By
acquiring the habit of doing without them, and desiring better things."
"But if the soul die, what then?" "Why, then truth dies, or intelligence is
not truth, or intelligence is not a part of the soul, Or that which has
some part immortal is liable to die: conclusions all of which I
demonstrated long ago in my Soliloquies to! be absurd because impossible;
and I am firmly persuaded that this is the case, but somehow through the
'influence of custom in the experience of evils we are terrified, and
hesitate. But even granting, finally, that the soul dies, which I do not
see to be in any way possible, it remains nevertheless true that a happy
life does not consist in the evanescent joy which sensible objects can
yield: this I have pondered deliberately, and proved."

   Perhaps it is on account of reasonings such as these that I have been
judged by my own Nebridius to be, if not absolutely happy, at least in a
sense happy. I,et me also judge myself to be happy: for what do I lose
thereby, or why should I grudge to think well of my own estate? Thus I
talked with myself, then prayed according to my custom, and fell asleep.

   5. These things I have thought good to write to you. For it gratifies
me that you should thank me when I write freely to you whatever crosses my
mind; and to whom can I more willingly write nonsense(1) than to one whom I
cannot displease? But if it depends upon fortune whether one: man love
another or not, look to it, I pray you, how can I be justly called happy
when I am I so elated with joy by fortune's favours, and avowedly desire
that my store of such good things may be largely increased? For those who
are most truly wise, and whom alone it is right to pronounce happy, have
maintained that fortune's favours ought not to be the objects of either
fear or desire.

   Now here I used the word "cupi:"(2) will you tell me whether it should
be "cupi" or "cupiri?" And I am glad this has come in the way, for I wish
you to instruct me in the inflexion of this verb "cupio," since, when I
compare similar verbs with it, my uncertainty as to the proper inflexion
increases. For "curio" is like "fugio," "sapio," "jacio," "capio;" but
whether the infinitive mood is "fugiri" or "fugi," "sapiri" or "sapi," I do
not know. I might regard "jaci" and "capi"(3) as parallel instances
answering my question as to the others, were I not afraid lest some
grammarian should "catch" and "throw" me like a ball in sport wherever he
pleased, by reminding me that the form of the supines "jactum" and "captum"
is different from that found in the other verbs "fugitum," "cupitum" and
"sapitum." As to these three words, moreover, I am likewise ignorant
whether the penultimate is to be pronounced long and with circumflex
accent, or without accent and short. I would like to provoke you to write a
reasonably long letter. I beg you to let me have what it will take some
time to read. For it is far beyond my power to express the pleasure which I
find in reading what you write.

LETTER IV. (A.D. 387.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. It is very wonderful how completely I was taken by surprise, when,
on searching to discover which of your letters still remained unanswered, I
found only one which held me as your debtor, --that, namely, in which you
request me to tell you how far in this my leisure, which you suppose to be
great, and which you desire to share with me, I am making progress in
learning to discriminate those things in nature with which the senses are
conversant, from those about which the understanding is employed. But I
suppose it is not unknown to you, that if one becomes more and more fully
imbued with false opinions, the more fully and intimately one exercises
himself in them, the corresponding effect is still more easily produced in
the mind by contact with truth. Nevertheless my progress, like our physical
development, is so gradual, that it is difficult to define its steps
distinctly, just as though there is a very great difference between a boy
and a young man, no one, if daily questioned from his boyhood onward, could
at any one date say that now he was no more a boy, but a young man.

   2. I would not have you, however, so to apply this illustration as to
suppose that, in the vigour of a more powerful understanding, I have
arrived as it were at the beginning of the soul's manhood. For I am yet but
a boy, though perhaps, as we say, a promising boy, rather than a good-for-
nothing. For although the eyes of my mind are for the most part perturbed
and oppressed by the distractions produced by blows inflicted through
things sensible, they are revived and raised up again by that brief process
of reasoning: "The mind and intelligence are superior to the eyes and the
common faculty of sight; which could not be the case unless the things
which we perceive by intelligence were more real than the things which we
perceive by the faculty .of sight." I pray you to help me in examining
whether any valid objection can be brought against this reasoning. By it,
meanwhile, I find myself restored and refreshed; and when, after calling
upon God for help, I begin to rise to Him, and to those things which are in
the highest sense real, I am at times satisfied with such a grasp and
enjoyment of the things which eternally abide, that I sometimes wonder at
my requiring any such reasoning as I have above given to persuade me of the
reality of those things which in my soul are as truly present to me as I am
to myself.

   Please look over your letters yourself, for I own that you will be in
this matter at greater pains than I, in order to make sure that I am not
perchance unwittingly still owing an answer to any of them: for I can
hardly believe that I have so soon got from under the burden of debts which
I used to reckon as so numerous; albeit, at the same time, I cannot doubt
that you have had some letters from me to which I have as yet received no
reply.

LETTER V. (A.D. 388.)

TO AUGUSTIN NEBRIDIUS SENDS GREETING.

   Is it true, my beloved Augustin, that you are spending your strength
and patience on the affairs of your fellow-citizens (in Thagaste), and that
the leisure from distractions which you so earnestly desired is still
withheld from you? Who, I would like to know, are the men who thus take
advantage of your good nature, and trespass on your time? I believe that
they do not know what you love most and long for. Have you no friend at
hand to tell them what your heart is set upon? Will neither Romanianus nor
Lucinianus do this? Let them hear me at all events. I will proclaim aloud;
I will protest that God is the supreme object of your love, and that your
heart's desire is to be His servant, and to cleave to Him. Fain would I
persuade you to come to my home in the country, and rest here; I shall not
be afraid of being denounced as a robber by those countrymen of yours, whom
you love only too well, and by whom you are too warmly loved in return.

LETTER VI. (A.D. 389.)

TO AUGUSTIN NEBRIDIUS SENDS GREETING.

   1. Your letters I have great pleasure in keeping as carefully as my own
eyes. For they are great, not indeed in length, but in the greatness of the
subjects discussed in them, and in the great ability With which the truth
in regard to these subjects is demonstrated. They shall bring to my ear the
voice of Christ, and the teaching of Plato and of Plotinus. To me,
therefore, they shall ever be pleasant Lo hear, because of their eloquent
style; easy to read, because of their brevity; and profitable to
understand, because of the wisdom which they contain. Be at pains,
therefore, to teach me everything which, to your judgment, commends itself
as holy or good. As to this letter in particular, answer it when you are
ready to discuss a subtle problem in regard to memory, and the images
presented by the imagination.(1) My opinion is, that although there can be
such images independently of memory, there is no exercise of memory
independently of such images.(2) You will say, What, then, takes place when
memory is exercised in recalling an act of understanding or of thought? I
answer this objection by saying, that such acts can be recalled by memory
for this reason, that in the supposed act of understanding or of thought we
gave birth to something conditioned by space or by time, which is of such a
nature that it can be reproduced by the imagination: for either we
connected the use of words with the exercise of the understanding and with
the thoughts, and words are conditioned by time, and thus fall within the
domain of the senses or of the imaginative faculty; or if we did not join
words with the mental act, our intellect at all events experienced in the
act of thinking something which was of such a nature as could produce in
the mind that which, by the aid of the imaginative faculty, memory could
recall. These things I have stated, as usual, without much consideration,
and in a somewhat confused manner: do you examine them, and, rejecting what
is false, acquaint me by letter with what you hold as the truth on this
subject.

   2. Listen also to this question: Why, I should like to know, do we not
affirm that the phantasy [imaginative faculty] derives all its images from
itself, rather than say that it receives these from the senses? For it is
possible that, as the intellectual faculty of the soul is indebted to the
senses, not for the objects upon which the intellect is exercised, but
rather for the admonition arousing it to see these objects, in the same
manner the imaginative faculty may be indebted to the senses, not for the
images which are the objects upon which it is exercised, but rather for the
admonition arousing it to contemplate these images. And perhaps it is in
this way that we are to explain the fact that the imagination perceives
some objects which the senses never perceived, whereby it is shown that it
has all its images within itself, and from itself. You will answer me what
you think of this question also.

LETTER VII. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

CHAP. I.- Memory may be exercised independently of such images as are
presented by the imagination.

   1. I shall dispense with a formal preface, and to the subject on which
you have for some time wished to hear my opinion I shall address myself at
once; and this I do the more willingly, because the statement must take
some time.

   It seems to you that there can be no exercise of memory without images,
or the apprehension of some objects presented by the imagination, which you
have been pleased to call "phantasiae." For my part, I entertain a
different opinion. In the first place, we must observe that the things
which we remember are not always things which are passing away, but are for
the most part things which are permanent. Wherefore, seeing that the
function of memory is to retain hold of what belongs to time past, it is
certain that it embraces on the one hand things which leave us, and on the
other hand things from which we go away. When, for example, I remember my
father, the object which memory recalls is one which has left me, and is
now no more; but when I remember Carthage, the object is in this case one
which still exists, and which I have left. In both cases, however, memory
retains what belongs to past time. For I remember that man and this city,
not by seeing them now, but by having seen them in the past.

   2. You perhaps ask me at this point, Why bring forward these facts? And
you may do this the more readily, because you observe that in both the
examples quoted the object remembered can come to my memory in no other way
than by the apprehension of such an image as you affirm to be always
necessary. For my purpose it suffices meanwhile to have proved in this way
that memory can be spoken of as embracing also those things which have not
yet passed away: and now mark attentively how this supports my opinion.
Some men raise a groundless objection to that most famous theory invented
by Socrates, according to which the things that we learn are not introduced
to our minds as new, but brought back to memory by a process of
recollection; supporting their objection by affirming that memory has to do
only with things which have passed away, whereas, as Plato himself has
taught, those things which we learn by the exercise of the understanding
are permanent, and being imperishable, cannot be numbered among things
which have passed away: the mistake into which they have fallen arising
obviously from this, that they do not consider  that it is only the mental
act of apprehension by which we have discerned these things which belongs
to the past; and that it is because we have, in the stream of mental
activity, left these behind, and begun in a variety of ways to attend to
other things, that we require to return to them by an effort of
recollection, that is, by memory. if, therefore, passing over other
examples, we fix our thoughts upon eternity itself as something which is
for ever permanent, and consider, on the one hand, that it does not require
any image fashioned by the imagination as the vehicle by which it may be
introduced into the mind; and, on the other hand, that it could never enter
the mind otherwise than by our remembering it,- we shall see that, in
regard to some things at least, there can be an exercise of memory without
any image of the thing remembered being presented by the imagination.

CHAP. II -- The mind is destitute of images presented by the imagination,
so long as it has not been informed by the senses of external things.

   3. In the second place, as to your opinion that it is possible for the
mind to form to itself images of material things independently of the
services of the bodily senses, this is refuted by the following argument: -
- If the mind is able, before it uses the body as its instrument in
perceiving material objects, to form to itself the images of these; and if,
as no sane man can doubt, the mind received more reliable and correct
impressions before it was involved in the illusions which the senses
produce, it follows that we must attribute greater value to the impressions
of men asleep than of men awake, and of men insane than of those who are
free from such mental disorder: for they are, in these states of mind,
impressed by the same kind of images as impressed them before they were
indebted for information to these most deceptive messengers, the senses;
and thus, either the sun which they see must be more real than the sun
which is seen by men in their sound judgment and in their waking hours, or
that which is an illusion must be better than what is real. But if these
conclusions, my dear Nebridius, are, as they obviously are, wholly absurd,
it is demonstrated that the image of which you speak is nothing else than a
blow inflicted by the senses, the function of which in connection with
these images is not, as you write, the mere suggestion or admonition
occasioning their formation by the mind within itself, but the actual
bringing in to the mind, or, to speak more definitely, impressing upon it
of the illusions to which through the senses we are subject. The difficulty
which you feel as to the question how it comes to pass that we can conceive
in thought, faces and forms which we have never seen, is one which proves
the acuteness of your mind. I shall therefore do what may extend this
letter beyond the usual length; not, however, beyond the length which you
will approve, for I believe that the greater the fulness with which I write
to you, the more welcome shall my letter be.

   4. I perceive that all those images which you as well as many others
call phantasiae, may be most conveniently and accurately divided into three
classes, according as they originate with the senses, or the imagination,
or the faculty of reason. Examples of the first class are when the mind
forms within itself and presents to me the image of your face, or of
Carthage, or of our departed friend Verecundus, or of any other thing at
present or formerly existing, which I have myself seen and perceived. Under
the second class come. all things which we imagine to have been, or to be
so and so: e.g. when, for the sake of illustration in discourse, we
ourselves suppose things which have no existence, but which are not
prejudicial to truth; or when we call up to our own minds a lively
conception of the things described while we read history, or hear, or
compose, or refuse to believe fabulous narrations. Thus, according to my
own fancy, and as it may occur to my own mind, I picture to myself the
appearance of Aeneas, or of Medea with her team of winged dragons, or of
Chremes, or Parmeno.(1) To this class belong also those things which have
been brought forward as true, either by wise men wrapping up some truth in
the folds of such inventions, or by foolish men building up various kinds
of superstition; e.g. the Phlegethon of Tortures, and the five caves of the
nation of darkness,(2) and the North Pole supporting the heavens, and a
thousand other prodigies of poets and of heretics. Moreover, we often say,
when carrying on a discussion, "Suppose that three worlds, such as the one
which we inhabit, were placed one above another;" or, "Suppose the earth to
be enclosed within a four-sided figure," and so on: for all such things we
picture to ourselves, and imagine according to the mood and direction of
our thoughts. As for the third class of images, it has to do chiefly with
numbers and measure; which are found partly in the nature of things, as
when the figure of the entire world is discovered, and an image consequent
upon this discovery is formed in the mind of one thinking upon it; and
partly in sciences, as in geometrical figures and musical harmonies, and in
the infinite variety of numerals: which, although they are, as I think,
true in themselves as objects of the understanding, are nevertheless the
causes of illusive exercises of the imagination, the misleading tendency of
which reason itself can only with difficulty withstand; although it is not
easy to preserve even the science of reasoning free from this evil, since
in our logical divisions and conclusions we form to ourselves, so to speak,
calculi or counters to facilitate the process of reasoning.

   5. In this whole forest of images, I believe that you do not think that
those of the first class belong to the mind previous to the time when they
find access through the senses. On this we need not argue any further. As
to the other two classes a question might reasonably be raised, were it not
manifest that the mind is less liable to illusions when it has not yet been
subjected to the deceptive influence of the senses, and of things sensible;
and yet who can doubt that these images are much more unreal than those
with which the senses acquaint us? For the things which we suppose, or
believe, or picture to ourselves, are in every point wholly unreal; and the
things which we perceive by sight and the other senses, are, as you see,
far more near to the truth than these products of imagination. As to the
third class, whatever extension of body in space I figure to myself in my
mind by means of an image of this class, although it seems as if a process
of thought had produced this image by scientific reasonings which did not
admit of error, nevertheless I prove it to be deceptive, these same
reasonings serving in turn to detect its falsity. Thus it is wholly
impossible for me i to believe [as, accepting your opinion, I must believe]
that the soul, while not yet using the .bodily senses, and not yet rudely
assaulted through these fallacious instruments by that which is mortal and
fleeting, lay under such ignominious subjection to illusions.

CHAP. III. -- Objection answered.

   6. "Whence then comes our capacity conceiving in thought things which
we have never seen?" What, think you, can be the cause of this, but a
certain faculty of diminution and addition which is innate in the mind, and
which it cannot but carry with it whithersoever it turns (a faculty which
may be observed especially in relation to numbers)? By the exercise of this
faculty, if the image of a crow, for example, which is very familiar to the
eye; be set before the eye of the mind, as it were, it may be brought, by
the taking away of some features and the addition of others, to almost any
image such as never was seen by the eye. By this faculty also it comes to
pass, that when men's minds habitually ponder such things, figures of this
kind force their way as it were unbidden into their thoughts. Therefore it
is possible for the mind, by taking away, as has been said, some things
from objects which the senses have brought within its knowledge, and by
adding some things, to produce in the exercise of imagination that which,
as a whole, was never within the observation of any of the senses; but the
parts of it had all been within such observation, though found in a variety
of different things: .e.g., when we were boys, born and brought up m an
inland district, we could already form some idea of the sea, after we had
seen water even in a small cup; but the flavour of strawberries and of
cherries could in no wise enter our conceptions before we tasted these
fruits in Italy. Hence it is also, that those who have been born blind know
not what to answer when they are asked about light and colours. For those
who have never perceived coloured objects by the senses are not capable of
having the images of such objects in the mind.

   7. And let it not appear to you strange, that though the mind is
present in and intermingled with all those images which in the nature of
things are figured or can be pictured by us, these are not evolved by the
mind from within itself before it has received them through the. senses
from without. For we also find that,. along with anger, joy, and other such
emotions, we produce changes in our bodily aspect and complexion, before
our thinking faculty even conceives that we have the power of producing
such images [or indications of our feeling]. These follow upon the
experience of the emotion in those wonderful ways (especially deserving
your attentive consideration), which consist in the repeated action and
reaction of hidden numbers(1) in the soul, without the intervention of any
image of illusive material things. Whence I would have you understand --
perceiving as you do that so many movements of the mind go on wholly
independently of the images in question --that of all the movements of the
mind by which it may conceivably attain to the knowledge of bodies, every
other is more likely than the process of creating forms of sensible things
by unaided thought, because I do not think that it is capable of any such
conceptions before it uses the body and the senses.

   Wherefore, my well beloved and most amiable brother, by the friendship
which unites us, and by our faith in the divine law itself,(2) I would warn
you never to link yourself in friendship with those shadows of the realm of
darkness, and to break off without delay whatever friendship may have been
begun between you and them. That resistance to the sway of the bodily
senses which it is our most sacred duty to practise, is wholly abandoned if
we treat with fondness and flattery the blows and wounds which the senses
inflict upon us.

LETTER VIII. (A.D. 389.)

TO AUGUSTIN NEBRIDIUS SENDS GREETING.

   1. As I am in haste to come to the subject of my letter, I dispense
with any preface or introduction. When at any time it pleases higher (by
which I mean heavenly) powers to reveal anything to us by dreams in our
sleep, how is this done, my dear Augustin, or what is the method which they
use? What, I say, is their method, i.e. by what art or magic, by what
agency or enchantments, do they accomplish this? Do they by their thoughts
influence our minds, so that we also have the same images presented in our
thoughts? Do they bring before us, and exhibit as actually done in their
own body or in their own imagination, the things which we dream? But if
they actually do these things in their own body, it follows 'that, in order
to our seeing what they thus do, we must be endowed with other bodily eyes
beholding what passes within while we sleep. If, however, they are not
assisted by their bodies in producing the effects in question, but frame
such things in their own imaginative faculty, and thus impress our
imaginations, thereby giving visible form to what we dream; why is it, I
ask, that I cannot compel your imagination to reproduce those dreams which
I have myself first formed by my imagination? I have undoubtedly the
faculty of imagination, and it is capable of presenting to my own mind the
picture of whatever I please; and yet I do not thereby cause any I dream in
you, although I see that even our bodies have the power of originating
dreams in us. i For by means of the bond of sympathy uniting it to the
soul, the body compels us in strange ways to repeat or reproduce by
imagination anything which it has once experienced. Thus often in sleep, if
we are thirsty, we dream that we drink; and if we are hungry, we seem to
ourselves to be eating; and many other instances there are in which, by
some mode of exchange, so to speak, things are transferred through the
imagination from the body to the soul.

   Be not surprised at the want of elegance and subtlety with which these
questions are here stated to you; consider the obscurity in which the
subject is involved, and the inexperience of the writer; be it yours to do
your utmost to supply his deficiencies.

LETTER IX. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. Although you know my mind well, you are perhaps not aware how much I
long to enjoy your society. This great blessing, however, God will some day
bestow on me. I have read your letter, so genuine in its utterances, in
which you complain of your being in solitude, and, as it were, forsaken by
your friends, in whose society you found the sweetest charm of life. But
what else can I suggest to you than that which I am persuaded is already
your exercise? Commune with your own soul, and raise it up, as far as you
are able, unto God. For in Him you hold us also by a firmer bond, not by
means of bodily images, which we must meanwhile be content to use in
remembering each other, but by means of that faculty of thought through
which we realize the fact of our separation from each other.

   2. In considering your letters, in answering all of which I have
certainly had to answer questions of no small difficulty and importance, I
was not a little stunned by the one in which you ask me by what means
certain thoughts and dreams are put into our minds by higher powers or by
superhuman agents.(1) The question is a great one, and, as your own
prudence must convince you, would require, in order to its being
satisfactorily answered, not a mere letter, but a full oral discussion or a
whole treatise. I shall try, however, knowing as I do your talents, to
throw out a few germs of thought which may shed light on this question, in
order that you may either complete the exhaustive treatment of the subject
by your own efforts, or at least not despair of the possibility of this
important matter being investigated with satisfactory results.

   3. It is my opinion that every movement. of the mind affects in some
degree the body. We know that this is patent even to our senses, dull and
sluggish though they are, when the movements of the mind are somewhat
vehement, as when we are angry, or sad, or joyful. Whence we may conjecture
that, in like manner, when thought is busy, although no bodily effect of
the mental act is discernible by us, there may be some such effect
discernible by beings of aerial or etherial essence whose perceptive
faculty is in the highest degree acute, --so much so, that, in comparison
with it, our faculties are scarcely worthy to be called perceptive.
Therefore these footprints of its motion, so to speak, which the mind
impresses on the body, may perchance not only remain, but remain as it were
with the force of a habit; and it may be that, when these are secretly
stirred and played upon, they bear thoughts and dreams into our minds,
according to the pleasure of the person moving or touching them: and this
is done with marvellous facility. For if, as is manifest, the attainments
of our earth-born and sluggish bodies in the department of exercise, e.g.
in the playing of musical instruments, dancing on the tight-rope, etc., are
almost incredible, it is by no means unreasonable to suppose that beings
which act with the powers of an aerial or etherial body upon our bodies,
and are by the constitution of their natures able to pass unhindered
through these bodies, should be capable of much greater quickness in moving
whatever they wish, while we, though not perceiving what they do, are
nevertheless affected by the results of their activity. We have a somewhat
parallel instance in the fact that we do not perceive how it is that
superfluity of bile impels us to more frequent outbursts of passionate
feeling; and yet it does produce this effect, while this superfluity of
bile is itself an effect of our yielding to such passionate feelings.

   4. If, however, you hesitate to accept this example .as a parallel one,
when it is thus cursorily stated by me, turn it over in your thoughts as
fully as you can. The mind, if it be continually obstructed by some
difficulty in the way of doing and accomplishing what it desires, is
thereby made continually angry. For anger, so far as I can judge of its
nature, seems to me to be a tumultuous eagerness to take out of the way
those things which restrict our freedom of action. Hence it is that
usually we vent our anger not only on men, but on such a thing, for
example, as the pen with which we write, bruising or breaking it in our
passion; and so does the gambler with his dice, the artist with his pencil,
and every man with the instrument which he may be using, if he thinks that
he is in some way thwarted by it. Now medical men themselves tell us that
by these frequent fits of anger bile is increased. But, on the other hand,
when the bile is increased, we are easily, and almost without any
provocation whatever, made angry. Thus the effect which the mind has by its
movement produced upon the body, is capable in its turn of moving the mind
again.

   5. These things might be treated at very great length, and our
knowledge of the subject might be brought to greater certainty and fulness
by a large induction from relevant facts. But take along with this letter
the one which I sent you lately concerning images and memory,(2) and study
it somewhat more carefully; for it was manifest to me, from your reply,
that it had not been fully understood. When, to the statements now before
you, you add the portion of that letter in which I spoke of a certain
natural faculty whereby the mind does in thought add to or take from any
object as it pleases, you will see that it is possible for us both in
dreams and in waking thoughts to conceive the images of bodily forms which
we have never seen.

LETTER X. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING,

   1. No question of yours ever kept me so disturbed while reflecting upon
it, as the remark which I read in your last letter, in which you chide me
for being indifferent as to making arrangements by which it may be possible
for us to live together. A grave charge, and one which, were it not
unfounded, would be most perilous. But since satisfactory masons seem to
prove that we can live as we would wish to do better here than at Carthage,
or even in the country, I am wholly at a loss, my dear Nebridius, what to
do with you. Shall such a conveyance as may best suit your state of health
be sent from us to you? Our friend Lucinianus informs me that you can be
carried without injury in a palanquin. But I consider, on the other hand,
how your mother, who could not bear your absence from her when you were in
health, will be much less able to bear it when you are ill. Shall I myself
then come to you? This I cannot do, for there are some here who cannot
accompany me, and whom I would think it a crime for me to leave. For you
already can pass your time agreeably when left to the resources of our own
mind i but in their case the object of present efforts is that they may
attain to this. Shall I go and come frequently, and so be now with you, now
with them? But this is neither to live together, nor to live as we would
wish to do. For the journey is not a short one, but so great at least that
the attempt to perform it frequently would prevent our gaining the wished-
for leisure. To this is added the bodily weakness through which, as you
know, I cannot accomplish what I wish, unless I cease wholly to wish what
is beyond my strength.

   2. To occupy one's thoughts throughout life with journeyings which you
cannot perform tranquilly and easily, is not the part of a man whose
thoughts are engaged with that last journey which is called death, and
which alone, as you understand, really deserves serious consideration. God
has indeed granted to some few men whom He has ordained to bear rule over
churches, the capacity of not only awaiting calmly, but even desiring
eagerly, that last journey, while at the same time they can meet without
disquietude the toils of those other journeyings; but I do not believe that
either to those who are urged to accept such duties through desire for
worldly honour, or to those who, although occupying a private station,
covet a busy life, so great a boon is given as that amid bustle and
agitating meetings, and journeyings hither and thither, they should acquire
that familiarity with death which we seek: for both of these classes had it
in their power to seek edification(1) in retirement. Or if this be not
true, I am, I shall not say the most foolish of all men, but at least the
most indolent, since I find it impossible, without the aid of such an
interval of relief from care and toil, to taste and relish that only real
good. Believe me, there is need of much withdrawal of oneself from the
tumult of the things which are passing away, in order that there may be
formed in man, not through insensibility, not through presumption, not
through vainglory, not through superstitious blindness, the ability to say,
"I fear nought." By this means also is attained that enduring joy with
which no pleasurable excitement found elsewhere is in any degree to be
compared.

   3. But if such a life does not fall to the lot of man, how is it that
calmness of spirit is our occasional experience? Wherefore is this
experience more frequent, in proportion to the devotion with which any one
in his inmost soul worships God? Why does this tranquillity for the most
part abide with one in the business of life, when he goes forth to its
duties from that sanctuary? Why are there times in which, speaking, we do
not fear death, and, silent, even desire it? I say to you -- for I would
not say it to every one-to you whose visits to the upper world I know well,
Will you, who have often felt how sweetly the soul lives when it dies to
all mere bodily affections, deny that it is possible for the whole life of
man to become at length so exempt from fear, that he may be justly called
wise? Or will you venture to affirm that this state of mind, on which
reason leans has ever been your lot, except when you were shut up to
commune with your own heart? Since these things are so, you see that it
remains only for you to share with me the labour of devising how we may
arrange to live together. You know much better than I do what is to be done
in regard to your mother, whom your brother Victor, of course, does not
leave alone. I will write no more, lest I turn your mind away from
considering this proposal.

LETTER XI. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. When the question, which has long been brought before me by you with
something even of friendly chiding, as to the way in which we might live
together, was seriously disturbing my mind, and I had resolved to write to
you, and to beg an answer from you bearing exclusively on this subject, and
to employ my pen on no other theme pertaining to our studies, in order that
the discussion of this matter between us might be brought to an end, the
very short and indisputable conclusion stated in your letter lately
received at once delivered me from all further solicitude; your statement
being to the effect that on this matter there ought to be no further
deliberation, because as soon as it is in my power to come to you, or in
your power to come to me, we shall feel alike constrained to improve the
opportunity. My mind being thus, as I have said, at rest, I looked over all
your letters, that I. might see what yet remained unanswered. In these I
have found so many questions, that even if they were easily solved, they
would by their mere number more than exhaust the time and talents of any
man. But they are so difficult, that if the answering of even one of them
were laid upon me, I would not hesitate to confess myself heavily burdened.
The design of this introductory statement is to make you desist for a
little from asking new questions until I am free from debt, and that you
confine yourself in your answer to the statement of your opinion of my
replies. At the same time, I know that it is to my own loss that I postpone
for even a little while the participation of your divine thoughts.

   2. Hear, therefore, the view which I hold concerning the mystery of the
Incarnation which the religion wherein we have been instructed commends to
our faith and knowledge as having been accomplished in order to our
salvation; which question I have chosen to discuss in preference to all the
rest, although it is not the most easily answered. For those questions
which are proposed by you concerning this world do not appear to me to have
a sufficiently direct reference to the obtaining of a happy life; and
whatever pleasure they yield when investigated, there is reason to fear
lest they take up time which ought to be devoted to better things. With
regard, then, to the subject which I have at this time undertaken, first of
all I am surprised that you were perplexed by the question why not the
Father, but the Son, is said to have become incarnate, and yet were not
also perplexed by the same question in regard to the Holy Spirit. For the
union of Persons in the Trinity is in the Catholic faith set forth and
believed, and by a few holy and blessed ones understood, to be so
inseparable, that whatever is done by the Trinity must be regarded as being
done by the Father, and by the Son, and by the Holy Spirit together; and
that nothing is done by the Father which is not also done by the Son and by
the Holy Spirit; and nothing done by the Holy Spirit which is not also done
by the Father and by the Son; and nothing done by the Son which is not also
done by the Father and by the Holy Spirit. From which it seems to follow as
a consequence, that the whole Trinity assumed human nature; for if the Son
did so, but the Father and the Spirit did not, there is something in which
they act separately.(1) Why, then, in our mysteries and sacred symbols, is
the Incarnation ascribed only to the Son? This is a very great question, So
difficult, and on a subject so vast, that it is impossible either to give a
sufficiently clear statement, or to support it by satisfactory proofs. I
venture, however, since I am writing to you, to indicate rather than
explain what my sentiments are, in order that you, from your talents and
our intimacy, through which you thoroughly know me, may for yourself fill
up the outline.

   3. There is no nature, Nebridius--and, indeed, there is no substance --
which does not contain in itself and exhibit these three things: first,
that it is; next, that it is this or that; and third, that as far as
possible it remains as it is. The first of these three presents the
original cause of nature from which all things exist; the second presents
the form (2) according to which all things are fashioned and formed in a
particular way; the third presents a certain permanence, so to speak, in
which all things are. Now, if it be possible that a thing can be, and yet
not be this or that, and not remain in its own generic form; or that a
thing can be this or that, and yet not be, and not remain in its own
generic form, so far as it is possible for it to do so; or that a thing can
remain in its own generic form according to the force belonging to it, and
yet not be, and not be this or that,- then it is also possible that in that
Trinity one Person can do something in which the others have no part. But
if you see that whatever is must forthwith be this or that, and must remain
so far as possible in its own generic form, you see also that these Three
do nothing in which all have not a part. I see that as yet I have only
treated a portion of this question, which makes its solution difficult. But
I wished to open up briefly to you--if, indeed, I have succeeded in this-
how great in the system of Catholic truth is the doctrine of the
inseparability of the Persons of the Trinity, and how difficult to be
understood.

   4. Hear now how that which disquiets your mind may disquiet it no more.
The mode of existence (Species--the second of the three above named) which
is properly ascribed to the Son, has to do with training, and with a
certain art, if I may use that word in regard to such things, and with the
exercise of intellect, by which the mind itself is moulded in its thoughts
upon things. Therefore, since by that assumption of human nature the work
accomplished was the effective presentation to us of a certain training in
the right way of living, and exemplification of that which is commanded,
under the majesty and perspicuousness of certain sentences, it is not
without reason that all this is ascribed to the Son. For in many things
which I leave your own reflection and prudence to suggest, although the
constituent elements be many, some one nevertheless stands out above the
rest, and therefore not unreasonably claims a right of possession, as it
were, of the whole for itself: as, e.g., in the. three kinds of questions
above mentioned,(1) although the question raised be whether a thing is or
not, this involves necessarily also both what it is (this or that), for of
course it cannot be at all unless it be something, and whether it ought to
be approved of or disapproved of, for whatever is is a fit subject for some
opinion as to its quality; in like manner, when the question raised is what
a thing is, this necessarily involves both that it is, and that its quality
may be tried by some standard; and in the same way, when the question
raised is what is the quality of a thing, this necessarily involves that
that thing is, and is something, since all things are inseparably joined to
themselves; -nevertheless, the question in each of the above cases takes
its name not from all the three, but from the special point towards which
the inquirer directed his attention. Now there is a certain training
necessary for men, by which they might be instructed and formed after some
model. We cannot say, however, regarding that which is accomplished in men
by this training, either that it does not exist, or that it is not a thing
to be desired [i.e. we cannot say what it is, without involving an
affirmation both of its existence and of its quality]; but we seek first to
know what it is, for in knowing this we know that by which we may infer
that it is something, and in which we may remain. Therefore the first thing
necessary was, that a certain rule and pattern of training be plainly
exhibited; and this was done by the divinely appointed method of the
Incarnation, which is properly to be ascribed to the Son, in order that
from it should follow both our knowledge, through the Son, of the Father
Himself, i.e. of the one first principle whence all things have their
being, and a certain inward and ineffable charm and sweetness of remaining
in that knowledge, and of despising all mortal things,--a gift and work
which is properly ascribed to the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, although in all
things the Divine Persons act perfectly in common, and without possibility
of separation, nevertheless their operations behoved to be exhibited in
such a way as to be distinguished from each other, on account of the
weakness which is in us, who have fallen from unity into variety. For no
one ever succeeds in raising another to the height on which he himself
stands, unless he stoop somewhat towards the level which that other
occupies.

   You have here a letter which may not indeed put an end to your
disquietude in regard to this doctrine, but which may set your own thoughts
to work upon a kind of solid foundation; so that, with the talents which I
well know you to possess, you may follow, and, by the piety in which
especially we must be stedfast, may apprehend that which still remains to
be discovered.

LETTER XII. (A.D. 389.)

Omitted, as only a fragment of the text of the letter is preserved.

LETTER XIII. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. I do not feel pleasure in writing of the subjects which I was wont
to discuss; I am not at liberty to write of new themes. I see that the one
would not suit you, and that for the other I have no leisure. For, since I
left you, neither opportunity nor leisure has been given me for taking up
and revolving the things which we are accustomed to investigate together.
The winter nights are indeed too long, and they are not entirely spent in
sleep by me; but when I have leisure, other subjects [than those which we
used to discuss] present themselves as having a prior claim on my
consideration.(2) What, then, am I to do? Am I to be to you as one dumb,
who cannot speak, or as one silent, who will not speak? Neither of these
things is desired, either by you or by me. Come, then, and bear what the
end of the night succeeded in eliciting from me during the time in which it
was devoted to following out the subject of this letter.

   2. You cannot but remember that a question often agitated between .us,
and which kept us agitated, breathless, and excited, was one concerning a
body or kind of body, which belongs perpetually to the soul, and which, as
you recollect, is called by some its vehicle. It is manifest that this
thing, if it moves from place to place, is not cognisable by the
understanding. But whatever is not cognisable by the understanding cannot
be understood. It is not, however, utterly impossible to form an opinion
approximating to the truth concerning a thing which is outside the province
of the intellect, if it lies within the province of the senses. But when a
thing is beyond the province of the intellect and of the senses, the
speculations to which it gives rise are too baseless and trifling; and the
thing of which we treat now is of this nature, if indeed it exists. Why,
then, I ask, do we not finally dismiss this unimportant question, and with
prayer to God raise ourselves to the supreme serenity of the Highest
existing nature ?

   3. Perhaps you may here reply: "Although bodies cannot be perceived by
the understanding, we can perceive with the understanding many things
concerning material objects; e.g. we know that matter exists. For who will
deny this, or affirm that in this we have to do with the probable rather
than the true? Thus, though matter itself lies among things probable, it is
a most indisputable truth that something like it exists in nature. Matter
itself is therefore pronounced to be an object cognisable by the senses;
but the assertion of its existence is pronounced to be a truth cognisable
by the intellect, for it cannot be perceived otherwise. And so this unknown
body, about which we inquire, upon which the soul depends for its power to
move from place to place, may possibly be cognisable by senses more
powerful than we possess, though not by ours; and at all events, the
question whether it exists is one which may be solved by our
understandings."

   4. If you intend to say this, let me remind you that the mental act we
call understanding is done by us in two ways: either by the mind and reason
within itself, as when we understand that the intellect itself exists; or
by occasion of suggestion from the senses, as in the case above mentioned,
when we understand that matter exists. In the first of these two kinds of
acts we understand through ourselves, i.e. by asking instruction of God
concerning that which is within us; but in the second we understand by
asking instruction of God regarding that of which intimation is given to us
by the body and the senses. If these things be found true, no one can by
his understanding discover whether that body of which you speak exists or
not, but the person to whom his senses have given some intimation
concerning it. If there be any living creature to which the senses give
such intimation, since we at least see plainly that we are not among the
number, I regard the conclusion l established which I began to state a
little ago, I that the question [about the vehicle of the soul] is one
which does not concern us. I wish you would consider this over and over
again, and take care to let me know the product of your consideration.

LETTER XIV. (A.D. 389.)

TO NEBRIDIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. I have preferred to reply to your last letter, not because I
undervalued your earlier questions, or enjoyed them less, but because in
answering you I undertake a greater task than you think. For although you
enjoined me to send you a superlatively long(1) letter, I have not so much
leisure as you imagine, and as you know I have always wished to have, and
do still wish. Ask not why it is so: for I could more easily enumerate the
things by which I am hindered, than explain why I am hindered by them.

   2. You ask why it is that you and I, though separate individuals, do
many things which are the same, but the sun does not the same as the other
heavenly bodies. Of this thing I must attempt to explain the cause. Now, if
you and I do the same things, the sun also does many things which the other
heavenly bodies do: if in some things it does not the same as the others,
this is equally true of you and me. I walk, and you walk; it is moved, and
they are moved: I keep awake, and you keep awake; it shines, and they
shine: I discuss, and you discuss; it goes its round, and they go their
rounds. And yet there is no fitness of comparison between mental acts and
things visible. If, however, as is reasonable, you compare mind with mind,
the heavenly bodies, if they have any mind, must be regarded as even more
uniform than men in their thoughts or contemplations, or whatever term may
more conveniently express such activity in them. Moreover, as to the
movements of the body, you will find, if you reflect on this with your
wonted attention, that it is impossible for precisely the same thing to be
done by two persons. When we walk together, do you think that we both
necessarily do the same thing? Far be such thought from one of your wisdom!
For the one of us who walks on the' side towards the north, must either, in
taking the same step as the other, get in advance of him, or walk more
slowly than he does. Neither of these things is perceptible by the senses;
but you, if I am not mistaken, look to what we know by the understanding
rather than to what we learn by the senses. If, however, we move from the
pole towards the south, joined and clinging to each other as closely as
possible, and treading on a sheet of marble or even ivory smooth and level,
a perfect identity is as unattainable in our motions as in the throbbings
of our pulses, or in our figures and faces. Put us aside, and place in our
stead the sons of Glaucus, and you gain nothing by this substitution: for
even in these twins so perfectly resembling each other, the necessity for
the motions of each being peculiarly his own, is as great as the necessity
for their birth as separate individuals.

   3. You will perhaps say: "The difference in this case is one which only
reason can discover; but the difference between the sun and the other
heavenly bodies is to the senses also patent." If you insist upon my
looking to their difference in magnitude, you know how many things may be
said as to the distances by which they are removed from us, and into how
great uncertainty that which you speak of as obvious may thus be brought
back. I may, however, concede that the actual size corresponds with the
apparent size of the heavenly bodies, for I myself believe this; and I ask
you to show me any one whose senses were incapable of remarking the
prodigious stature of Naevius, exceeding by a foot that of the tallest
man.(1) By the way, I think you have been just too eager to discover some
man to match him; and when you did not succeed in the search, have resolved
to make me stretch out my letter so as to rival his dimensions.(2) If
therefore even on earth such variety in size may be seen, I think that it
need not surprise us to find the like in the heavens. If, however, the
thing which moves your surprise is that the light of no other heavenly body
than the sun fills the day, who, I ask you, has ever been manifested to men
so great as that Man whom God took into union with Himself, in another way
entirely than He has taken all other holy and wise men who ever lived? for
if you compare Him with other men who were wise, He is separated from them
by superiority greater far than that which the sun has above the other
heavenly bodies. This comparison let me charge you by all means attentively
to study; for it is not impossible that to your singularly gifted mind I
may have suggested, by this cursory remark, the solution of a question
which you once proposed to me concerning the humanity of Christ.

   4. You also ask me whether that highest Truth and highest Wisdom and
Form (or Archetype) of things, by whom all things were made, and whom our
creeds confess to be the only-begotten Son of God, contains the idea (3) of
mankind in general, or also of each individual of our race. A great
question. My opinion is, that in the creation of man there was in Him the
idea only of man generally, and not of you or me as individuals; but that
in the cycle of time the idea of each individual, with all the varieties
distinguishing men from each other, lives in that pure Truth. This I grant
is very obscure; yet I know not by what kind of illustration light may be
shed upon it, unless perhaps we betake ourselves to those sciences which
lie wholly within our minds. In geometry, the idea of an angle is one
thing, the idea of a square is another. As often, therefore, as I please to
describe an angle, the idea of the angle, and that alone, is present to my
mind; but I can never describe a square unless I fix my attention upon the
idea of four angles at the same time. In like manner, every man, considered
as an individual man, has been made according to one idea proper to
himself; but in the making of a nation, although the idea according to
which it is made be also one, it is the idea not of one, but of many men
collectively. If, therefore, Nebridius is a part of this universe, as he
is, and the whole universe is made up of parts, the God who made the
universe could not but have in His plan the idea of all the parts.
Wherefore, since there is in this idea of a very great number of men, it
does not belong to man himself as such; although, on the other hand, all
the individuals are in wonderful ways reduced !to one. But you will
consider this at your :convenience. I beg you meanwhile to be content with
what I have written, although I have already outdone Naevius himself.

LETTER XV. (A.D. 390.)

TO ROMANIANUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. This letter indicates a scarcity of paper,(4) but not so as to
testify that parchment is plentiful here. My ivory tablets I used in the
letter which I sent to your uncle. You will more readily excuse this scrap
of parchment, because what I wrote to him could not be delayed, and I
thought that not to write to you for want of better material would be most
absurd. But if any tablets of mine are with you, I request you to send them
to meet a case of this kind. I have written something, as the Lord has
deigned to enable me, concerning the Catholic religion, which before my
coming I wish to send to you, if my paper does not fail me in the meantime.
For you will receive with indulgence any kind of writing from the office of
the brethren who are with me. As to the manuscripts of which you speak, I
have entirely forgotten them, except the books de Oratore; but I could not
have written anything better than that you should take such of them as you
please, and I am still of the same mind; for at this distance I know not
what else I can do in the matter.

   2. It gave me very great pleasure that in your last letter you desired
to make me a sharer of l your joy at home; but

   "Wouldst thou have me forget how soon the deep,
   So tranquil now, may wear another face,
   And rouse these slumbering waves ?"(1)

Yet I know you would not have me forget this, nor are you yourself
unmindful of it. Wherefore, if some leisure is granted you for more
profound meditation, improve this divine blessing. For when these things
fall to our lot, we should not only congratulate ourselves, but show our
gratitude to those to whom we owe them; for if in the stewardship of
temporal blessings we act in a manner that is just and kind, and with the
moderation and sobriety of spirit which befits the transient nature of
these possessions, -- if they are held by us without laying hold on us, are
multiplied without entangling us, and serve us without bringing us into
bondage,such conduct entitles us to the recompense of eternal blessings.
For by Him who is the Truth it was said: "If ye have not been faithful in
that which is another man's, who will give you[ that. which is your own?"
Let us therefore disengage ourselves from care about the passing things of
time; let us seek the blessings that are imperishable and sure: let us soar
above our worldly possessions. The bee does not the less need its wings
when it has gathered an abundant store; for if it sink in the honey it
dies.

LETTER XVI. (A.D. 390.)

FROM MAXIMUS OF MADAURA TO AUGUSTIN.

   1. Desiring to be frequently made glad by communications from you, and
by the stimulus of your reasoning with which in a most pleasant way, and
without violation of good feeling, you recently attacked me, I have not
forborne from replying to you in the same spirit, lest you should: call my
silence an acknowledgment of being in the wrong. But I beg you to give
these sentences an indulgent kindly hearing, if you judge them to give
evidence of the feebleness of old age.

   Grecian mythology tells us, but without sufficient warrant for our
believing the statement, that Mount Olympus is the dwelling-place of the,
gods. But we actually see the market-place of our town occupied by a crowd
of beneficent. deities; and we approve of this. Who could ever be so
frantic and infatuated as to deny that there is one supreme God, without
beginning, without natural offspring, who. is, as it were, the great and
mighty Father of all? The powers of this Deity, diffused throughout the
universe which He has made, we worship under many names, as we are all
ignorant of His true name, the name God (2) being common to all kinds of
religious belief. Thus it comes, that while in diverse supplications we
approach separately, as it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are
seen in reality to be the worshippers of Him in whom all these parts are
one.

   2. Such is the greatness of your delusion in i another matter, that I
cannot conceal the impatience with which I regard it. For who can bear to
find Mygdo honoured above that Jupiter who hurls the thunderbolt; or
(Sanae) above Juno, Minerva, Venus, and Vesta; or the arch-martyr Namphanio
(oh horror !) above all the immortal gods together? Among the immortals,
Lucitas also is looked up to with no less religious reverence, and others
in an endless list (having names abhorred both by gods and by men), who,
when they met the ignominious end which their character and conduct had
deserved, put the crowning act upon their criminal career by affecting to
die nobly in a good cause, though conscious of the infamous deeds for which
they were condemned. The tombs of these men (it is a folly almost beneath
our notice) are visited by crowds of simpletons, who forsake our temples
and despise the memory of their ancestors, so that the prediction of the
indignant bard is notably fulfilled: "Rome shall, in the temples of the
gods, swear by the shades of men."(3) To me it almost seems at this time as
if a second campaign of Actium had begun, in which Egyptian monsters,
doomed soon to perish, dare to brandish their weapons against the gods of
the Romans.

   3. But, O man of great wisdom, I beseech you, lay aside and reject for
a little while the vigour of your eloquence, which has made you everywhere
renowned; lay down also the arguments of Chrysippus, which you are
accustomed to use in debate; leave for a brief season your logic, which
aims in the forthputting of its energies to leave nothing certain to any
one; and show me plainly and actually who is that God whom you Christians
claim as belonging specially to you, and pretend to see present among you
in secret places. For it is in open day, before the eyes and ears of all
men, that we worship our gods with pious supplications, and propitiate them
by acceptable sacrifices; and we take pains that these things be seen and
approved by all.

   4. Being, however, infirm and old, I withdraw myself from further
prosecution of this contest, and willingly consent to the opinion of the
rhetorician of Mantua, "Each one is drawn by that which pleases himself
best." (4)

   After this, O excellent man, who hast turned aside from my faith, I
have no doubt that this letter will be stolen by some thief, and destroyed
by fire or otherwise. Should this happen, the paper will be lost, but not
my letter, of which I will always retain a copy, accessible to all
religious persons. May you be preserved by the gods, through whom we all,
who are mortals on the surface of this earth, with apparent discord but
real harmony, revere and worship Him who is the common Father of the gods
and of all mortals.

LETTER XVII. (A.D. 390.)

TO MAXIMUS OF MADAURA.

   1. Are we engaged in serious debate with each other, or is it your
desire that we merely amuse ourselves? For, from the language of your
letter, I am at a loss to know whether it is due to the weakness of your
cause, or through the courteousness of your manners, that you have
preferred to show yourself more witty than weighty in argument. For, in the
first place, a comparison was drawn by you between Mount Olympus and your
market-place, the reason for which I cannot divine, unless it was in order
to remind me that on the said mountain Jupiter pitched his camp when he was
at war with his father, as we are taught by history, which your
religionists call sacred; and that in the said market-place Mars is
represented in two images, the one unarmed, the other armed, and that a
statue of a man placed over against these restrains with three extended
fingers the fury of their demonship from the injuries which he would
willingly inflict on the citizens. Could I then ever believe that by
mentioning that market-place you intended to revive my recollection of such
divinities, unless you wished that we should pursue the discussion in a
jocular spirit rather than in earnest? But in regard to the sentence in
which you said that such gods as these are members, so to speak, of the one
great God, I admonish you by all means, since you vouchsafe such an
opinion, to abstain very carefully from profane jestings of this kind. For
if you speak of the One God, concerning whom learned and unlearned are, as
the ancients have said, agreed, do you affirm that those whose savage fury
-- or, if you prefer it, whose power- the image of a dead man keeps in
check are members of Him? I might say more on this point, and your own
judgment may show you how wide a door for the refutation of your views is
here thrown open. But I restrain myself, lest I should be thought by you to
act more as a rhetorician than as one earnestly defending truth.

   2. As to your collecting of certain Carthaginian names of deceased
persons, by which you think reproach may be cast, in what seems to you a
witty manner, against our religion, I do not know whether I ought to answer
this taunt, or to pass it by in silence. For if to your good sense these
things appear as trifling as they really are, I have not time to spare for
such pleasantry. If, however, they seem to you important, I am surprised
that it did not occur to you, who are apt to be disturbed by absurdly-
sounding names, that your religionists have among their priests Eucaddires,
and among their deities, Abaddires. I do not suppose that these were absent
from your mind when you were writing, but that, with your courtesy and
genial humour, you wished for the unbending of our minds, to recall to our
recollection what ludicrous things are in your superstition. For surely,
considering that you are an African, and that we are both settled in
Africa, you could not have so forgotten yourself when writing to Africans
as to think that Punic names were a fit theme for censure. For if we
interpret the signification of these words, what else does Namphanio mean
than "man of the good foot," i.e. whose coming brings with it some good
fortune, as we are wont to say of one whose coming to us has been followed
by some prosperous event, that he came with a lucky foot? And if the Punic
language is rejected by you, you virtually deny what has been admitted by
most learned men, that many things have been wisely preserved from oblivion
in books written in the Punic tongue. Nay, you ought even to be ashamed of
having been born in the country in which the cradle of this language is
still warm, i.e. in which this language was originally, and until very
recently, the language of the people. If, however, it is not reasonable to
take offence at the mere sound of names, and you admit that I have given
correctly the meaning of the one in question, you have reason for being
dissatisfied with your friend Virgil, who gives to your god Hercules an
invitation to the sacred rites celebrated by Evander in his honour, in
these terms, "Come to us, and to these rites in thine honour, with
auspicious foot."(1) He wishes him to come "with auspicious foot;" that is
to say, he wishes Hercules to come as a Namphanio, the name about which you
are pleased to make much mirth at our expense. But if you have a penchant
for ridicule, you have among yourselves ample material for witticisms --the
god Stercutius, the goddess Cloacina, the Bald Venus, the gods Fear and
Pallor, and the goddess Fever, and others of the same kind without number,
to whom the ancient Roman idolaters erected temples, and judged it right to
offer worship; which if you neglect, you are neglecting Roman gods, thereby
making it manifest that you are not thoroughly versed in the sacred rites
of Rome; and yet you despise and pour contempt on Punic names, as if you
were a devotee at the altars of Roman deities.

   3. In truth however, I believe that perhaps you do not value these
sacred rites any more than we do, but only take from them some
unaccountable pleasure in your time of passing through this world: for you
have no hesitation about taking refuge under Virgil's wing, and de-fending
yourself with a line of his:

   "Each one is drawn by that which pleases himself best." (1)

If, then, the authority of Maro pleases you, as you indicate that it does,
you will be pleased with. such lines as these: "First Saturn came from
lofty Olympus, fleeing before the arms of Jupiter, an exile bereft of his
realms,"(2)--and other such statements, by which he aims at making it
understood that Saturn and your other gods like him were men. For he had
read much history, confirmed by ancient authority, which Cicero also had
read, who makes the same statement in his l dialogues, in terms more
explicit than we would venture to insist upon, and labours to bring it to
the knowledge of men so far as the times in which he lived permitted.

   4. As to your statement, that your religious services are to be
preferred to ours because you worship the gods in public, but we use more
retired places of meeting, let me first ask you how you could have
forgotten your Bacchus, whom you consider it right to exhibit only to the
eyes of the few who are initiated. You, however, think that, in making
mention of the public celebration of your sacred rites, you intended. only
to make sure that we would place before our eyes the spectacle presented by
your magistrates and the chief men of the city when intoxicated and raging
along your streets; in which solemnity, if you are possessed by a god, you
surely see of what nature he must be who deprives men of their reason. If,
however, this madness is only feigned, what say you to this keeping of
things hidden in a service which you boast of as public, or what good
purpose is served by so base an imposition? Moreover, why do you not
foretell future events in your songs, if you are endowed with the prophetic
gift? or why do you rob the bystanders, if you are in your sound mind?

   5. Since, then, you have recalled to our remembrance by your letter
these and other things which I think it better to pass over meanwhile, why
may not we make sport of your gods, which, as every one who knows your
mind, and has read your letters, is well aware, are made sport of
abundantly by yourself? Therefore, if you wish us to discuss these subjects
in a way becoming your years and wisdom, and, in fact, as may be justly
required of us, in connection with our purpose, by our dearest friends,
seek some topic worthy of being debated between us; and be careful to say
on behalf of your gods such things as may prevent us from supposing that
you are intentionally betraying your own cause, when we find you rather
bringing to our remembrance things which may be said against them' than
alleging anything in their defence. In conclusion, however, lest this
should be unknown to you, and you might thus be brought unwittingly into
jestings which are profane, let me assure you that by the Christian
Catholics (by whom a church has been set up in your own town also) no
deceased person is worshipped, and that nothing, in short, which has been
made and fashioned by God is worshipped as a divine power. This worship is
rendered by them only to God Himself, who framed and fashioned all
things.(3)

   These things shall be more fully treated of, with the help of the one
true God, whenever I learn that you are disposed to discuss them seriously.

LETTER XVIII. (A.D. 390.)

TO COELESTINUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING,

   1. Oh how I wish that I could continually say one thing to you! It is
this: Let us shake off ,he burden of unprofitable cares, and bear only
those which are useful. For I do not know whether anything like complete
exemption from care is to be hoped for in this world. I wrote to you, but
have received no reply. I sent you as many of my books against the
Manichaeans as I could send in a finished and revised condition, and as yet
nothing has been communicated to me as to the impression they have made on
your(4) judgment and feelings. It is now a fitting opportunity for me to
ask them back, and for you to return them. I beg you therefore not to lose
time in sending them, along with a letter from yourself, by which I eagerly
long to know what you are doing with them, or with what further help you
think that you require still to be furnished in order to assail that error
with success.

   2. As I know you well, I ask you to accept and ponder the following
brief sentences on a great theme. There is a nature which is susceptible of
change with respect to both place and time, namely, the corporeal. There is
another nature which is in no way susceptible of change with respect to
place, but only with respect to time, namely, the spiritual. And there is a
third Nature which can be changed neither in respect to place nor in
respect to time: that is, God. Those natures of which I have said that they
are mutable in some respect are called creatures; the Nature which is
immutable is called Creator. Seeing, however, that we affirm the existence
of anything only in so far as it continues and is one (in consequence of
which, unity is the condition essential to beauty in every form), you
cannot fail to distinguish, in this classification of natures, which exists
in the highest possible manner; and which occupies the lowest place, yet is
within the range of existence; and which occupies the middle place, greater
than the lowest, but coming short of the highest. That highest is essential
blessedness; the lowest, that which cannot be either blessed or wretched;
and the intermediate nature lives in wretchedness when it stoops towards
that which is lowest, and in blessedness when it turns towards that which
is highest. He who believes in Christ does not sink his affections in that
which is lowest, is not proudly self-sufficient in that which is
intermediate, and thus he is qualified for union and fellowship with that
which is highest; and this is the sum of the active life to which we are
commanded, admonished, and by holy zeal impelled to aspire.

LETTER XIX. (A.D. 390.)

TO GAIUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. Words cannot express the pleasure with which the recollection of you
filled my heart after I parted with you, and has often filled my heart
since then. For I remember that, notwithstanding the amazing ardour which
pervaded your inquiries after truth, the bounds of proper moderation in
debate were never transgressed by you. I shall not easily find any one who
is more eager in putting questions, and at the same time more patient in
hearing answers, than you approved yourself. Gladly therefore would I spend
much time in converse with you; for the time thus spent, however much it
might be, would not seem long. But what avails it to discuss the hindrances
on account of which it is difficult for us to enjoy such converse? Enough
that it is exceedingly difficult. Perhaps at some future period it may be
made very easy; may God grant this! Meanwhile it is otherwise. I have.
given to the brother by whom I have sent this letter the charge of
submitting all my writings to your eminent wisdom and charity, that they
may be read by you. For nothing written by me will find in you a reluctant
reader; for I know the goodwill which you cherish towards me. Let me say,
however, that if, on reading these things, you approve of them, and
perceive them to be true, you must not consider them to be mine otherwise
than as given to me; and you are at liberty to turn to that same source
whence proceeds also the power given you to appreciate their truth. For no
one discerns the truth of that which he reads from anything which is in the
mere manuscript, or in the writer, but rather by something within himself,
if the light of truth, shining with a clearness beyond what is men's common
lot, and very far removed from the darkening influence of the body, has
penetrated his own mind. If, however, you discover some things which are
false and deserve to be rejected, I would have you know that these things
have fallen as dew from the mists of human frailty, and these you are to
reckon as truly mine. I would exhort you to persevere in seeking the truth,
were it not that I seem to see the mouth of your heart already opened wide
to drink it in. I would also exhort you to cling with manly tenacity to the
truth which you have learned, were it not that you already manifest in the
clearest manner that you possess strength of mind and fixedness of purpose.
For all that lives within you has, in the short time of our fellowship,
revealed itself to me, almost as if the bodily veil had been rent asunder.
And surely the merciful providence of our God can in no wise permit a man
so good and so remarkably gifted as you are to be an alien from the flock
of Christ.

LETTER XX. (A.D. 390.)

TO ANTONINUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. As letters are due to you by two of us, a part of our debt is repaid
with very abundant usury when you see one of the two in person; and since
by his voice you, as it were, hear my own, I might have refrained from
writing, had I .not been called to do it by the urgent request of the very
person whose journey to you seemed to me to make this unnecessary.
Accordingly I now hold converse with you even more satisfactorily than if I
were personally with you, because you both read my letter, and you listen
to the words of one in whose heart you know that I dwell. I have with great
joy studied and pondered the letter sent by your Holiness, because it
exhibits both your Christian spirit unsullied by the guile of an evil age,
and your heart full of kindly feeling towards myself.

   2. I congratulate you, and I give thanks to our God and Lord, because
of the hope and faith and love which are in you; and I thank you, in Him,
for thinking so well of me as to believe me to be a faithful servant of
God, and for the love which with guileless heart you cherish towards that
which you commend in me; although, indeed, there is occasion rather for
congratulation than for thanks in acknowledging your goodwill in this
thing. For it is profitable for: yourself that you should love for its own
sake that goodness which he of course loves who loves l another because he
believes him to be good, whether that other be or be not what he is
supposed to be. One error only is to be carefully avoided in this matter,
that we do not think otherwise than truth demands, not of the individual,
but of that which is true goodness in man. But, my brother well beloved,
seeing that you are not in any degree mistaken either in believing or in
knowing that the great good for men is to serve God cheerfully and purely,
when you love any man because you believe him to share this good, you reap
the reward, even though the man be not what you suppose him to be.
Wherefore it is fitting that you should on this account be congratulated;
but the person whom you love is to be congratulated, not because of his
being for that reason loved, but! because of his being truly (if it is the
case) such an one as the person who for this reason loves him esteems him
to be. As to our real l character, therefore, and as to the progress we may
have made in the divine life, this is seen by Him whose judgment, both as
to that which is good in man, and as to each man's personal character,
cannot err. For your obtaining the! reward of blessedness so far as this
matter is concerned, it is sufficient that you embrace! me with your whole
heart because you believe me to be such a servant of God as I ought to be.
To you, however, I also render many thanks for this, that you encourage me
wonderfully to aspire after such excellence, by your praising me as i if I
had already attained it. Many more thanks! still shall be yours, if you not
only claim an! interest in my prayers, but also cease not to pray for me.
For intercession on behalf of a' brother is more acceptable to God when it
is offered as a sacrifice of love.

   3. I greet very kindly your little son, and I pray that he may grow up
in the way of obedience to the salutary requirements of God's law. I desire
and pray, moreover, that the one true faith and worship, which alone is
catholic, may prosper and increase in your house; and if you think any
labour on my part necessary for the promotion of this end, do not scruple
to claim my service, relying upon Him who is our common Lord, and upon the
law of love which we must obey. This especially would I recommend to your
pious discretion, that by reading the word of God, and by serious
conversation with your partner,(1) you should either plant the seed or
foster the growth in her heart of an intelligent fear of God. For it is
scarcely possible that any one who is concerned for the soul's welfare, and
is therefore without prejudice resolved to know the will of the Lord,
should fail, when enjoying the guidance of a good instructor, to discern
the difference which exists between every,' form of schism and the one
Catholic Church.

LETTER XXI. (A.D. 391.)

TO MY LORD BISHOP VALERIUS, MOST BLESSED AND VENERABLE, MY FATHER MOST
WARMLY CHERISHED WITH TRUE LOVE IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD, AUGUSTIN,
PRESBYTER, SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. Before all things I ask your pious wisdom to take into consideration
that, on the one hand, if the duties of the office of a bishop, or
presbyter, or deacon, be discharged in a perfunctory and time-serving
manner, no work can be in this life more easy, agreeable, and likely to
secure the favour of men, especially in our day, but none at the same time
more miserable, deplorable, and worthy of condemnation in the sight of God;
and, on the other hand, that if in the office of bishop, or presbyter, or
deacon, the orders of the Captain of our salvation be observed, there is no
work in this life more difficult, toilsome, and hazardous, especially in
our day, but none at the same time more blessed in the sight of God.(2) But
what the proper mode of discharging these duties is, I did not learn either
in boyhood or in the earlier ),ears of manhood; and at the time when I was
beginning to learn it, I was constrained as a just correction for my sins
(for I know not what else to think) to accept the second place at the helm,
when as yet I knew not how to handle an oar.

   2. But I think that it was the purpose of my Lord hereby to rebuke me,
because I presumed, as if entitled by superior knowledge and excellence, to
reprove the faults of many sailors before I had learned by experience the
nature of their work. Therefore, after I had been sent in among them to
share their labours, then I began to feel the rashness of my censures;
although even before that time I judged this office to be beset with many
dangers. And hence the tears which some of my brethren perceived me
shedding in the city at the time of my ordination, and because of which
they did their utmost with the best intentions to console me, but with
words which, through their not knowing the causes of my sorrow, did not
reach my case at all.(1) But my experience has made me realize these things
much more both in degree and in measure than I had done in merely thinking
of them: not that I have now seen any new waves or storms of which I had
not previous knowledge by observation, or report, or reading, or
meditation; but because I had not known my own skill or strength for
avoiding or encountering them, and had estimated it to be of some value
instead of none. The Lord, however, laughed at me, and was pleased to show
me by actual experience. what I am.

   3. But if He has done this not in judgment, but in mercy, as I
confidently hope even now, when I have learned my infirmity, my duty is to
study with diligence all the remedies which the Scriptures contain for such
a case as mine, and to make it my business by prayer and reading to secure
that my soul be endued with the health and vigour necessary for labours so
responsible. This I have not yet done, because I have not had time; for I
was ordained at the very time when I was thinking of having, along with
others, a season of freedom from all other occupation, that we might
acquaint ourselves with the divine Scriptures, and was intending to make
such arrangements as would secure unbroken leisure for this great work.
Moreover, it is true that I did not at any earlier period know how great
was my unfitness for the arduous work which now disquiets and crushes my
spirit. But if I have by experience learned what is necessary for a man who
ministers to a people in the divine sacraments and word, only to find
myself prevented from now obtaining what I have learned that I do not
possess, do you bid me perish, father Valerius? Where is your charity? Do
you indeed love me? Do you indeed love the Church to which you have
appointed me,' thus unqualified, to minister? I am well assured that you
love both; but you think me qualified, whilst I know myself better; and yet
I would not have come to know myself if I had not learned by experience.

   4. Perhaps your Holiness replies: I wish to know what is lacking to fit
you for your office. The things which I lack are so many, that I could more
easily enumerate the things which I have than those which I desire to have.
I may venture to say that I know and unreservedly believe the doctrines
pertaining to our salvation. But my difficulty is in the question how I am
to use this truth in ministering to the salvation of others, seeking what
is profitable not for myself alone, but for many, that they may !be saved.
And perhaps there may be, nay, beyond all question there are, written in
the sacred books, counsels by the knowledge and acceptance of which the man
of God may so discharge his duties to the Church in the things of God, or
at least so keep a conscience void of o(fence in the midst of ungodly men,
whether living or dying, as to secure that that life for which alone humble
and meek Christian hearts sigh is not lost. But how can this be done,
except, as the Lord Himself tells us, by asking, seeking, knocking, that
is, by praying, reading, and weeping? For this I. have by the brethren made
the request, which in this petition I now renew, that a short time, say
till Easter, be granted me by your unfeigned and venerable charity.

   5. For what shall I answer to the Lord my Judge? Shall I say, "I was
not able to acquire the things of which I stood in need, because I was
engrossed wholly with the affairs of the Church "? What if He thus reply:
"Thou wicked servant, if property belonging to the Church (in the
collection of the fruits of which great labour is expended) were suffering
loss under some oppressor, and it was in thy power to do something in
defence of her rights at the bar of an earthly judge, wouldst thou not,
leaving the field which I have watered with my blood, go to plead the cause
with the consent of all, and even with the urgent commands of some? And if
the decision given were against the Church, wouldst thou not, in
prosecuting an appeal, go across the sea; and would no complaint be heard
summoning thee home from an absence of a year or more, because thy object
was to prevent another from taking possession of land required not for the
souls, but for the bodies of the poor, whose hunger might nevertheless be,
satisfied in a way much easier and more acceptable to me by my living
trees, if these were cultivated with care? Wherefore, then, dost thou
allege that thou hadst not time to learn how to cultivate my field?" Tell
me, I beseech you, what could I reply? Are you perchance willing that I
should say, "The aged Valerius is to blame; for, believing me to be
instructed in all things necessary, he declined, with a determination
proportioned to his love for me, to give me permission to learn what I had
not acquired "?

   6. Consider all these things, aged Valerius; consider them, I beseech
you, by the goodness and severity of Christ, by His mercy and judgment, by
Him who has inspired you with such love for me that I dare not displease
you, even when the advantage of my soul is at stake. You, moreover, appeal
to God and to Christ to bear witness to me concerning your innocence and
charity, and the sincere love which you bear to me, just as if all these
were not things about which I may myself willingly take my oath. I
therefore appeal to the love and affection which you have thus avouched.
Have pity on me, and grant me, for the purpose for which I have asked it,
the time which I have asked; and help me with your prayers, that my desire
may not be in vain, and that my absence may not be without fruit to the
Church of Christ, and to the profit of my brethren and fellow-servants. I
know that the Lord will not despise your love interceding for me,
especially in such a cause as this; and accepting it as a sacrifice of
sweet savour, He will restore me to you, perhaps, within a period shorter
than I have craved, thoroughly furnished for His service by the profitable
counsels of His written word.

LETTER XXII (A.D. 392.)

TO BISHOP AURELIUS, AUGUSTIN, PRESBYTER, SENDS GREETING.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. When, after long hesitation, I knew not how to frame a
suitable reply to the letter of your Holiness (for all attempts to express
my feelings were baffled by the strength of affectionate emotions which,
rising spontaneously, were by the reading of your letter much more
vehemently inflamed), I cast myself at last upon God, that He might,
according to my strength, so work in me that I might address to you such an
answer as should be suitable to the zeal for the Lord and the care of His
Church which we have in common, and in accordance with your dignity and the
respect which is due to you from me. And, first of all, as to your belief
that you are aided by my prayers, I not only do not decline this assurance,
but I do even willingly accept it. For thus, though not through my prayers,
assuredly in yours, our Lord will hear me. As to your most benignant
approval of the conduct of brother Alypius in remaining in connection with
us, to be an example to the brethren who desire to withdraw themselves from
this world's cares, I thank you more warmly than words can declare. May the
Lord recompense this to your own soul! The whole company, therefore, of
brethren which has begun to grow up together beside me, is bound to you by
gratitude for this great favour; in bestowing which, you, being far
separated from us only by distance on the surface of the earth, have
consulted our interest as one in spirit very near to us. Wherefore, to the
utmost of our power we give ourselves to prayer that the Lord may be
pleased to uphold along with you the flock which has been committed to you,
and may never anywhere forsake you, but be present as your help in all
times of need, showing in His dealings with His Church, through your
discharge of priestly functions, such mercy as spiritual men with tears and
groanings implore Him to manifest.

   2. Know, therefore, most blessed lord, venerable for the superlative
fulness of your charity, that I do not despair, but rather cherish lively
hope that, by means of that authority which you wield, and which, as we
trust, has been committed to your spirit, not to your flesh alone, our Lord
and God may be able, through the respect due to councils(1) and to
yourself, to bring healing to the many carnal blemishes and disorders which
the African Church is suffering in the conduct of many, and is bewailing in
the sorrow of a few of her members. For whereas. the apostle had in one
passage briefly set forth as fit to be hated and avoided three classes of
vices, from which there springs an innumerable crop of vicious courses,
only one of these -- that, namely, which he has placed second- is very
strictly punished by the Church; but the other two, viz. the first and
third, appear to be tolerable in the estimation of men, and so it may
gradually come to lass that they shall even cease to be regarded as vices.
The words of the chosen vessel are these: "Not in rioting and drunkenness,
not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the
lusts thereof."(2)

   3. Of these three, then, chambering and wantonness are regarded as
crimes so great, that any one stained with these sins is deemed unworthy
not merely of holding office in the Church, but also of participation in
the sacraments; and rightly so. But why restrict such censure to this form
of sin alone? For rioting and drunkenness are so tolerated and allowed by
public opinion, that even in services designed to honour the memory of the
blessed martyrs, and this not only on the annual festivals (which itself
must be regarded as deplorable by every one who looks with a spiritual eye
upon these things), but every day, they are openly practised. Were this
corrupt practice objectionable only because of its being disgraceful, and
not on the ground of impiety, we might consider it as a scandal to be
tolerated with such amount of forbearance as is within our power. And yet,
even in that case, what are we to make of the fact that, when the same
apostle had given a long list of vices, among which he mentioned
drunkenness, he concluded with the warning that we should not even eat
bread with those who are guilty of such things?(1) But let us, if it must
be so, bear with these things in the luxury and disorder of families, and
of those convivial meetings which are held within the walls of private
houses; and let us take the body   of Christ in communion with those with
whom we are forbidden to eat even the bread which sustains our bodies; but
at least let this outrageous insult be kept far away from the tombs of the
sainted dead, from the scenes of sacramental privilege, and from the houses
of prayer. For who may venture to forbid in private life excesses which,
when they. are practised by crowds in holy places, are called an honouring
of the martyrs ?

   4. If Africa were the first country in which an attempt were made to
put down these things, her example would deserve to be esteemed worthy of
imitation by all other countries;(2) but when, both throughout the greater
part of Italy and in all or almost all the churches beyond the sea, these
practices either, as in some places, never existed, or, as in other places
where they did exist, have been, whether they were recent or of long
standing, rooted out and put down by the diligence and the censures of
bishops who were holy men, entertaining true views concerning the life to
come;--when this, I say, is the case, do we hesitate as to the possibility
of removing this monstrous defect in our morals, after an example has been
set before us in so many lands? Moreover, we have as our bishop a man
belonging to those parts, for which we give thanks earnestly to God;
although he is a man of such moderation and gentleness, in fine, of such
prudence and zeal in the Lord, that even had he been a native of Africa,
the persuasion would have been wrought in him by the Scriptures, that a
remedy must be applied to the wound which this loose and disorderly custom
has inflicted. But so wide and deep is the plague caused by this
wickedness, that, in my opinion, it cannot be completely cured without
interposition of a council's authority. If, however, a beginning is to be
made by one church, it seems to me, that as it would be presumptuous for
any other church to attempt to change what the Church of Carthage still
maintained, so would it also be the height of effrontery for any other to
wish to persevere in a course which the Church of Carthage had condemned.
And for such a reform in Carthage, what better bishop could be desired than
the prelate who, while he was a deacon, solemnly denounced these practices
?

   5. But that over which you then sorrowed you ought now to suppress, not
harshly, but as it is written, "in the spirit of meekness."(3) Pardon my
boldness, for your letter revealing to me your true brotherly love gives me
such confidence, that I am encouraged to speak as freely to you as I would
to myself. These offences are taken out of the way, at least in my
judgment, by other methods than harshness, severity, and an imperious mode
of dealing, -- namely, rather by teaching than by commanding, rather by
advice than by denunciation.(4) Thus at least we must deal with the
multitude; in regard to the sins of a few, exemplary severity must be used.
And if we do employ threats, let this be done sorrowfully, supporting our
threatenings of coming judgment by the texts of Scripture, so that the fear
which men feel through our words may be not of us in our own authority, but
of God Himself. Thus an impression shall be made in the first place upon
those who are spiritual, or who are nearest to that state of mind; and then
by means of the most gentle, but at the same time most importunate
exhortations, the opposition of the rest of the multitude shall be broken
down.(5)

   6. Since, however, these drunken revels and luxurious feasts in the
cemeteries are wont to be regarded by the ignorant and carnal multitude as
not only an honour to the martyrs, but also a solace to the dead, it
appears to me that they might be more easily dissuaded from such scandalous
and unworthy practices in these places, if, besides showing that they are
forbidden by Scripture, we take care, in regard to the offerings for the
spirits of those who sleep, which indeed we are bound to believe to be of
some use, that they be not sumptuous beyond what is becoming respect for
the memory of the departed, and that they be distributed without
ostentation, and cheerfully to all who ask a share of them; also that 'they
be not sold, but that if any one desires to offer any money as a religious
act, it be given on the spot to the poor. Thus the appearance of neglecting
the memory of their deceased friends, which might cause them no small
sorrow of heart, shall be avoided, and that which is a pious and honourable
act of religious service shall be celebrated as it should be in the Church.
This may suffice meanwhile in regard to rioting and drunkenness.

   CHAP. II -- 7. As to "strife and deceit,"(6) what right have I to
speak, seeing that these vices prevail more seriously among our own order
than among our congregations? Let me, however, say that the source of these
evils is pride, and a desire for the praises of men, which also frequently
produces hypocrisy. This is successfully resisted only by him who is
penetrated with love and fear of God, through the multiplied declarations
of the divine books; provided, however, that such a man exhibit in himself
a pattern both of patience and of humility, by assuming as his due less
praise and honour than is offered to him: at the same time neither
accepting all nor refusing all that is rendered to him by those who honour
him; and as to the portion which he does accept, receiving it not for his
own sake, seeing that he ought to live wholly in the sight of God and to
despise human applause, but for J the sake of those whose welfare he cannot
promote if by too great self-abasement he lose his place in their esteem.
For to this pertains that word, "Let no man despise thy youth;"(1) while he
who said this says also in another place, "If I yet pleased men, I should
not be the servant of Christ." (2)

   8. It is a great matter not to exult in the honours and praises which
come from men, but to reject all vain pomp; and, if some of this be
necessary, to make whatever is thus retained contribute to the benefit and
salvation of those who confer the honour. For it has not been said in vain,
"God will break the bones of those who seek to please men." (3) For what
could be feebler. what more destitute of the firmness and strength which
the bones here spoken of figuratively represent, than the man who is
prostrated by the tongue of slanderers, although he knows that the things
spoken against him are false? The pain arising from this thing would in no
wise rend the bowels of his soul, if its bones had not been broken by the
love of praise. I take for granted your strength of mind: therefore it is
to myself that I say those things which I am now stating to you.
Nevertheless you are willing, I believe, to consider along with me how
important and how difficult these things are. For the man who has not
declared war against this enemy has no idea of its power; for if it be
comparatively easy to dispense with praise so long as it is denied to him,
it is difficult to forbear from being captivated with praise when it is
offered. And yet the hanging of our minds upon God ought to be so great,
that we would at once correct those with whom we may take that liberty,
when we are by them undeservedly praised, so as to prevent them from either
thinking us to possess what is not in us, or regarding that as ours which
belongs to God, or commending us for things which, though we have them, and
perhaps have them in abundance, are nevertheless in their nature not worthy
of commendation, such as are all those good things which we have in common
with the lower animals or with wicked men. If, however, we are deservedly
praised on account of what God has given us, let us congratulate those to
whom what is really good yields pleasure; but , let us not congratulate
ourselves on the fact of 'our pleasing men, but on the fact of our being
(if it is the case) such in the sight of God as we are in their esteem, and
because praise is given not to us, but to God, who is the giver of all
things which are truly and justly praised. These things are daily repeated
to me by myself, or rather by Him from whom proceed all profitable
instructions, whether they are found in the reading of the divine word or
are suggested from within to the mind; and yet, although strenuously
contending with my adversary, I often receive wounds from him when I am
unable to put away from myself the fascinating power of the praise which is
offered to me.

   9. These things I have written, in order that, if they are not now
necessary for your Holiness (your own thoughts suggesting to you other and
more useful considerations of this kind, or your Holiness being above the
need of such remedies), my disorders at least may be known to you, and you
may know that which may move you to deign to plead with God for me as my
infirmity demands: and I beseech you, by the humanity of Him who hath
commanded us to bear each other's burdens, that you offer such intercession
most importunately on my behalf. There are many things in regard to my life
and conversation, of which I will not write, which I would confess with
tears if we were so situated that nothing was required but my mouth and
your ears as the means of communication between my heart and your heart.
If, however, the aged Saturninus, venerated by us and beloved by all here
with unreserved and unfeigned affection, whose brotherly love and devotion
to you I observed when I was with you,- if he, I say, is pleased to visit
us so soon as he finds it convenient, whatever converse we may be able to
enjoy with that holy and spiritually-minded man shall be esteemed by us
very little, if at all, different from personal conference with your
Excellency. With entreaties too earnest for words to express their urgency,
I beg you to condescend to join us in asking and obtaining from him this
favour. For the people of Hippo fear much, and far more than they ought, to
let me go to so great a distance from them, and will on no account trust me
by myself so far as to permit me to see the field given by your care and
generosity to the brethren, of which, before your letter came, we had heard
through our brother and fellow-servant Parthenius, from whom we have also
learned many other things which we longed to know. The Lord will accomplish
the fulfilment of all the other things which we still desiderate.

LETTER XXIII (A.D. 392.)

TO MAXIMIN, MY WELL-BELOVED LORD AND BROTHER, WORTHY OF HONOUR, AUGUSTIN,
PRESBYTER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. Before entering on the subject on which I have resolved to write to
your Grace, I shall briefly state my reasons for the terms used in the
title of this letter, test these should surprise either yourself or any
other person. I have written "to my lord," because it is written:
"Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an
occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another."(1) Seeing,
therefore, that in this duty of writing to you I am actually by love
serving you, I do only what is reasonable in calling you "my lord," for the
sake of that one true Lord who gave us this command. Again, as to my having
written "well-beloved," God knoweth that I not only love you, but love you
as I love myself; for I am well aware that I desire for you the very
blessings which I am fain to make my own. As to my adding the words "worthy
of honour," I did not mean, by adding this, to say that I honour your
episcopal office, for to me you are not a bishop; and this I trust you will
take as spoken with no intention to give offence, but from the conviction
that in our mouth Yea should be Yea, and Nay, Nay: for neither you nor any
one who knows us can fail to know that you are not my bishop, and I am not
your presbyter. "Worthy of honour I therefore willingly call you on this
ground, that I know you to be a man; and I know that man was made in the
image and likeness of God, and is placed in honour by the very order and
law of nature, if by understanding the thin s which he ought to understand
he retain his honour. For it is written, Man being placed in honour did not
understand: he is compared to the brutes devoid of reason, and is made like
unto them."(2) Why then may I not address you as worthy of honour, inasmuch
as you are a man, especially since I dare not despair of your repentance
and salvation so long as you are in this life? Moreover, as to my calling
you "brother," you are well acquainted with the precept divinely given to
us, according to which we are to say, "Ye are our brethren," even to those
who deny that they are our brethren; and this has much to do with the
reason which has made me resolve to write to you, my brother. Now that the
reason for my making such an introduction to my letter has been given, I
bespeak your calm attention to what follows.

   2. When I was in your district, and was with all my power expressing my
abhorrence of the sad and deplorable custom followed by men who, though
they boast of the name of Christians, do not hesitate to rebaptize
Christians, there were not wanting some who said in praise of you, that you
do not conform to this custom. I confess that at first I did not believe
them; but afterwards, considering that it was possible for the fear of God
to take possession of a human soul exercised in meditation upon the life to
come, in such a way as to restrain a man from most manifest wickedness, I
believed their statement, rejoicing that by holding such a resolution you
showed yourself averse to complete alienation from the Catholic Church. I
was even on the outlook for an opportunity of conversing with you, in order
that, if it were possible, the small difference which still remained
between us might be taken away, when, behold, a few days ago it was
reported to me that you had rebaptized a deacon of ours belonging to
Mutugenna! I was deeply grieved both for his melancholy fall and for your
sin, my brother, which surprised and disappointed me. For I know what the
Catholic Church is, The nations are Christ's inheritance, and the ends of
the earth are His possession. You also know what the Catholic Church is; or
if you do not know it, apply your attention to discern it, for it may be
very easily known by those who are willing to be taught. Therefore, to
rebaptize even a heretic who has received in baptism the seal of holiness
which the practice(3) of the Christian Church has transmitted to us, is
unquestionably a sin; but to re-baptize a Catholic is one of the worst of
crimes. As I did not, however, believe the report, because I still retained
my favourable impression of you, I went in person to Mutugenna. The
miserable man himself I did not succeed in finding, but I learned from his
parents that he had been made one of your deacons. Nevertheless I still
think so favourably of you, that I will not believe that he has been
rebaptized.

   3. Wherefore, my beloved brother, I beseech you, by the divine and
human natures of our Lord Jesus Christ, have the kindness to reply to i
this letter, telling me what has been done, and [so to write as knowing
that I intend to read your letter aloud to our brethren in the church. This
I have written, lest, by afterwards doing that which you did not expect me
to do, I should give offence to your Charity, and give you occasion for
making a just complaint against me to our common friends. What can
reasonably prevent you from answering this letter I do not see. For if you
do rebaptize, you have nothing to apprehend from your colleagues when you
write that you are doing that which they would command you to do even if
you were unwilling; and if you, moreover, defend this by the best arguments
known to you, as a thing which ought to be done, your colleagues, so far
from being displeased on this account, will praise you. But if you do not
rebaptize, hold fast your Christian liberty, my brother Maximin; hold it
fast, I implore you: fixing your eye on Christ, fear not the censure,
tremble not before the power of any man. Fleeting is the honour of this
world, and fleeting are all the objects to which earthly ambition aspires.
Neither thrones ascended by flights of steps,(1) nor canopied pulpits,(2)
nor processions and chantings of crowds of consecrated virgins, shall be
admitted as available for the defence of those who have now these honours,
when at the judgment-seat of Christ conscience shall beg.in to lift its
accusing voice, and He who is the Judge of the consciences of men shall
pronounce the final sentence. What is here esteemed an honour shall then be
a burden: what uplifts men here, shall weigh heavily on them in that day.
Those things which meanwhile are done for the Church's welfare as tokens of
respect to us, shall then be vindicated, it may be, by a conscience void of
offence; but they will avail nothing as a screen for a guilty conscience.

   4. If, then, it be indeed the case that, under the promptings of a
devout and pious mind, you abstain from dispensing a second baptism, and
rather accept the baptism of the Catholic Church as the act of the one true
Mother, who to all nations both offers a welcome to her bosom, that they
may be regenerated, and gives a mother's nourishment to them when they are
regenerated, and as the token of admission into Christ's one possession,
which reaches to the ends of the earth; if, I say, you indeed do this, why
do you not break forth into a joyful and independent confession of your
sentiments? Why do you hide under a bushel the lamp which might so
profitably shine? Why do you not rend and cast from you the old sordid
livery of your craven-hearted bondage, and go forth clad in the panoply of
Christian boldness, saying, "I know but one baptism consecrated and sealed
with the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost: this
sacrament, wherever I find it, I am bound to acknowledge and approve; I do
not destroy what I discern to be my Lord's; I do not treat with dishonour
the banner of my King"? Even the men who parted the raiment of Christ among
them did not rudely rend in pieces the seamless robe; (3) and they were men
who had not then any faith in Christ's resurrection; nay, they were
witnessing His death. If, then, persecutors forbore from rending the
vesture of Christ when He was hanging upon the cross, why should Christians
destroy the sacrament of His institution now when He is sitting in heaven
upon His throne? Had I been a Jew in the time of that ancient people, when
there was nothing better that I could be, I would undoubtedly have received
circumcision. That "seal of the righteousness which is by faith" was of so
great importance in that dispensation before it was abrogated (4) by the
Lord's coming, that the angel would have strangled the infant-child of
Moses, had not the child's mother, seizing a stone, circumcised the child,
and by this sacrament averted impending death.(5) This sacrament also
arrested the waters of the Jordan, and made them flow back towards their
source. This sacrament the Lord Himself received in infancy, although He
abrogated it when He was crucified. For these signs of spiritual blessings
were not condemned, but gave place to others which were more suitable to
the later dispensation. For as circumcision was abolished by the first
coming of the Lord, so baptism shall be abolished by His second coming. For
as now, since the liberty of faith has come, and the yoke of bondage has
been removed, no Christian receives circumcision in the flesh; so then,
when the just are reigning with the Lord, and the wicked have been
condemned, no one shall be baptized, but the reality which both ordinances
prefigure--namely, circumcision of the heart and cleansing of the
conscience- shall be eternally abiding. If, therefore, I had been a Jew in
the time of the former dispensation, and there had come to me a Samaritan
who was willing to become a Jew, abandoning the error which the Lord
Himself condemned when He said, "Ye worship ye know not what; we know what
we worship, for salvation is of the Jews; "(6) -- if, I say, a Samaritan
whom Samaritans had circumcised had expressed his willingness to become a
Jew, there would have been no scope for the boldness which would have
insisted on the repetition of the rite; and instead of this, we would have
been compelled to approve of that which God had commanded, although it had
been done by heretics. But if, in the flesh of a circumcised man, I could
not find place for the repetition of the circumcision, because there is but
one member which is circumcised, much less is place found in the one heart
of man for the 'repetition of the baptism of Christ. Ye, therefore, who
wish to baptize twice, must seek as subjects of such double baptism men who
have double hearts.

   5. Publish frankly, therefore, that you are doing what is right, if it
be the case that you do not rebaptize; and write me to that effect, not
only without fear, but with joy. Let no Councils of your party deter you,
my brother, from this step: for if this displease them, they are not worthy
to have you among them; but if it please them, we trust that there shall
soon be peace between you and us, through the mercy of our Lord, who never
forsakes those who fear to displease Him, and who labour to do what is
acceptable in His sight; and let not our honours --a dangerous burden, of
which an account must yet be given- be a hindrance, making it unhappily
impossible for our people who believe in Christ, and who share with one
another in daily bread at home, to sit down at the same table of Christ. Do
we not grievously lament that husband and wife do in most cases, when
marriage makes them one flesh, vow mutual fidelity in the name of Christ,
and yet rend asunder Christ's own body by belonging to separate communions?
If, by your moderate measures and wisdom, and by your exercise of that love
which we all owe to Him who shed His blood for us, this schism, which is
such a grievous scandal, causing Satan to triumph and many souls to perish,
be taken out of the way in these parts, who can adequately express how
illustrious is the reward which the Lord prepares for you, in that from you
should proceed an example which, if imitated, as it may so easily be, would
bring health to all His other members, which throughout the whole of Africa
are lying now miserably exhausted? How much t fear lest, since you cannot
see my heart, I appear to you to speak rather in irony than in the
sincerity of love! But what more can I do than present my words before your
eye, and my heart before God ?

   6. Let us put away from between us those vain objections which are wont
to be thrown at each other by the ignorant on either side. Do not on your
part cast up to me the persecutions of Macarius. I, on mine, will not
reproach you with the excesses of the Circumcelliones. If you are not to
blame for the latter, neither am I for the former; they pertain not to us.
The: Lord's floor is not yet purged--it cannot be! without chaff; be it
ours to pray, and to do what in us lies that we may be good grain. I could
not pass over in silence the rebaptizing of our deacon; for I know how much
harm my silence Z might do to myself. For I do not propose to i spend my
time in the empty enjoyment of ecclesiastical dignity; but I propose to act
as mindful of this, that to the one Chief Shepherd I must give account of
the sheep committed unto me. If you would rather that I should not thus
write to you, you must, my brother, excuse me on the ground of my fears;
for I do fear greatly, lest, if I were silent and concealed my sentiments,
others might be rebaptized by you. I have resolved, therefore, with such
strength and opportunity as the Lord may grant, so to manage this
discussion, that by our peaceful conferences, all who belong to our
communion may know how far apart from heresy and schism is the position of
the Catholic Church, and with what care they should guard against the
destruction which awaits the tares and the branches cut off from the Lord's
vine. If you willingly accede to such conference with me, by consenting to
the public reading of the letters of both, I shall unspeakably rejoice. If
this proposal is displeasing to you, what can I do, my brother, but read
our letters, even without your consent, to the Catholic congregation, with
a view to its instruction? But if you do not condescend to write me a
reply, I am resolved at least to read my own letter, that, when your
misgivings as to your procedure are known, others may be ashamed to be
rebaptized.

   7. I shall not, however, do this in the presence of the soldiery, lest
any of you should think that I wish to act in a violent way, rather than as
the interests of peace demand; but only after their departure, that all who
hear me may understand, that I do not propose to compel men to embrace the
communion of any party, but desire the truth to be made known to persons
who, in their search for it, are free from disquieting apprehensions. On
our side there shall be no appeal to men's fear of the civil power on your
side, let there be no intimidation by a mob of Circumcelliones. Let us
attend to the real matter in debate, and let our arguments appeal to reason
and to the authoritative teaching of the Divine Scriptures, dispassionately
and calmly, so far as we are able; let us ask, seek, and knock, that we may
receive and find, and that to us the door may be opened, and thereby may be
achieved, by God's blessing on our united efforts and prayers, the first
towards the entire removal from our district of that impiety which is such
i a disgrace to Africa. If you do not believe that I am willing to postpone
the discussion until after the soldiery have left, you may delay your
answer until they have gone; and if, while they are still here, I should
wish to read my own letter to the people, the production of the letter will
of itself convict me of breaking my word. May the Lord in His mercy prevent
me from acting in a way so contrary to morality, and to the good
resolutions with which, by laying His yoke on me, He has been pleased to
inspire me !

   8. My bishop would perhaps have preferred to send a letter himself to
your Grace, if he had been here i or my letter would have been written, if
not by his order, at least with his sanction. But in his absence, seeing
that the rebaptizing of this deacon is said to have occurred recently, I
have not by delay allowed the feelings caused by the action to cool down,
being moved by the promptings of the keenest anguish on account of what I
regard as really the death of a brother. This my grief the compensating joy
of reconciliation between us and you may perhaps be appointed to heal,
through the help of the mercy and providence of our Lord. May the Lord our
God grant thee a calm and conciliatory spirit, my dearly beloved lord and
brother !

LETTER XXIV.

   This letter, written in 394 to Alypius by Paulinus, owes its place in
the collection of Augustin's letters to the notice of the treatises written
by Augustin against the Manichaeans, and its connection with the following
letter addressed by Paulinus to Augustin himself. It is obviously one of
those which, in making a selection of letters, may be safely omitted.

LETTER XXV. (A.D. 394.)

TO AUGUSTIN, OUR LORD AND BROTHER BELOVED AND VENERABLE, FROM PAULINUS AND
THERASIA, SINNERS.

   1. The love of Christ which constrains us, and which unites us, though
separated by distance, in the bond of a common faith, has itself!
emboldened me to dismiss my fear and address a letter to you; and it has
given you a place in my inmost heart by means of your writings-so full of
the stores of learning, so sweet with celestial honey, the medicine and the
nourishment of my soul. These I at present have in. five books, which,
through the kindness of our blessed and venerable Bishop Alypius, I
received, not only as a means of my own instruction, but. for the use of
the Church in many towns. These books I am now reading: in them I take
great delight: in them I find food, not that which perisheth, but that
which imparts the substance of eternal life through our faith, whereby we
are in our Lord Jesus Christ made members of His body; for the writings and
examples of the faithful do greatly strengthen that faith which, not
looking at things seen, longs after things not seen with that love which
accepts implicitly all things which are according to the truth of the l
omnipotent God. O true salt of the earth, by which our hearts are preserved
from being corrupted by the errors of the world! O light worthy of your
place on the candlestick of the Church, diffusing widely in the Catholic
towns the brightness of a flame fed by the oil of the seven-branched lamp
of the upper sanctuary, you also disperse even the thick mists of heresy,
and rescue the light of truth from the confusion of darkness by the beams
of your luminous demonstrations.

   2. You see, my brother beloved, esteemed, and welcomed in Christ our
Lord, with what intimacy I claim to know you, with what amazement I admire
and with what love I embrace you, seeing that I enjoy daily converse with
you by the medium of your writings, and am fed by the breath of your mouth.
For your mouth I may justly call a pipe conveying living water, and a
channel from the eternal fountain; for Christ has become in you a fountain
of "living water springing up into eternal life."(1) Through desire for
this my soul thirsted within me, and my parched ground longed to be flooded
with the fulness of your river. Since, therefore, you have armed me
completely by this your Pentateuch against the Manichaeans, if you have
prepared any treatises in defence of the Catholic faith against other
enemies (for our enemy, with his thousand pernicious stratagems, must be
defeated by weapons as various as the artifices by which he assails us), I
beg you to bring these forth from your armoury for me, and not refuse to
furnish me with the "armour of righteousness." For I am oppressed even now
in my work with a heavy burden, being, as a sinner, a veteran in the ranks
of sinners, but an untrained recruit in the service of the King eternal.
The wisdom of this world I have unhappily hitherto regarded with
admiration, and, devoting myself to literature which I now see to be
unprofitable, and wisdom which I now reject, I was in the sight of God
foolish and dumb. When I had become old in the fellowship of my enemies,
and had laboured in vain in my thoughts, I lifted mine eyes to the
mountains, looking up to the precepts of the law and to the gifts of grace,
whence my help came from the Lord, who, not requiting me according to mine
iniquity, enlightened my blindness, loosed my bonds, humbled me who had
been sinfully exalted, in order that He might exalt me when graciously
humbled.

   3. Therefore I follow, with halting pace indeed as yet, the great
examples of the just, if I may through your prayers apprehend that for
which I have been apprehended by the compassion of God. Guide, therefore,
this infant creeping on the ground, and by your steps teach him to walk.
For I would not have you judge of me by the age which began with my natural
birth, but by that which began with my spiritual new birth. For as to the
natural life, my age is that which the cripple, healed by the apostles by
the power of their word at the gate Beautiful, had attained.(2) But with
respect to the birth of my soul, mine is as yet the age of those infants
who, being sacrificed by the death-blows which were aimed at Christ,
preceded with blood worthy of such honour the offering of the Lamb, and
were the harbingers of the passion of the Lord.(1) Therefore, as I am but a
babe in the word of God, and as to spiritual age a sucking child, satisfy
my vehement desire by nourishing me with your words, the breasts of faith,
and wisdom, and love. If you consider only the office which we both hold,
you are my brother; but if you consider the ripeness of your understanding
and other powers, you are, though my junior in years, a father to me;
because the possession of a venerable wisdom has promoted you, though
young, to a maturity of worth, and to the honour which belongs to those who
are old. Foster and strengthen me, then, for I am, as I have said, but a
child in the sacred Scriptures and in spiritual studies; and seeing that,
after long contendings and frequent shipwreck, I have but little skill, and
am even now with difficulty rising above the waves of this world, do you,
who have already found firm footing on the shore, receive me into the safe
refuge of your bosom, that, if it please you, we may together sail towards
the harbour of salvation. Meanwhile, in my efforts to escape from the
dangers of this life and the abyss of sin, support me by your prayers, as
by a plank, that from this world I may escape as one does from a shipwreck,
leaving all behind.

   4. I have therefore been at pains to rid myself of all baggage and
garments which might impede my progress, in order that, obedient to the
command and sustained by the help of Christ, I may swim, unhindered by any
clothing for the flesh or care for the morrow, across the sea of this
present life, which, swelling with waves and echoing with the barking of
our sins, like the dogs of Scylla, separates between us and God. I do not
boast that I have accomplished this: even if I might so boast, I would
glory only in the Lord, whose it is to accomplish what it is our part to
desire; but my soul is in earnest that the judgments of the Lord be her
chief desire. You can judge how far he is on the way to efficiently
performing the will of God, who is desirous that he may desire to perform
it. Nevertheless, so far as in me lies, I have loved the beauty of His
sanctuary, and, if left to myself, would have chosen to occupy the lowest
place in the Lord's house. But to Him who was pleased to separate me from
my mother's womb, and to draw me away from the friendship of flesh and
blood to His grace, it has seemed good to raise me from the earth and from
the gulf of misery, though destitute of all merit, and to take me from the
mire and from the dunghill, to set me among the princes of His people, and
appoint my place in the same rank with yourself; so that, although you
excel me in worth, I should be associated with you as your equal in office.

   5. It is not therefore by my own presumption, but .in accordance with
the pleasure and appointment of the Lord, that I appropriate the honour of
which I own myself unworthy, claiming for myself the bond of brotherhood
with you; for I am persuaded, from the holiness of your character, that you
are taught by the truth "not to mind high things, but to condescend to men
of low estate." Therefore I hope that you will readily and kindly accept
the assurance of the love which in humility we bear to you, and which, I
trust, you have already received through the most blessed priest Alypius,
whom (with his permission) we call our father. For he doubtless has himself
given you an example of loving us both while we are yet strangers, and
above our desert; for he has found it possible, in the spirit of far-
reaching and self-diffusing genuine love, to behold us by affection, and to
come in contact with us by writing, even when we were unknown to him, and
severed by a wide interval both of land and sea. He has presented us with
the first proofs of his affection to us, and evidences of your love, in the
above-mentioned gift of books. And as he was greatly concerned that we
should be constrained to ardent love for you, when known to us, not by his
testimony alone, but more fully by the eloquence and the faith seen in your
own writings; so do we believe that he has taken care, with equal zeal, to
bring you to imitate his example in cherishing a very warm love towards us
in return. (0) brother in Christ, beloved, venerable, and ardently longed
for, we desire that the grace of God, as it is with you, may abide for
ever. We salute, with the utmost affection of cordial brotherhood, your
whole household, and every one who is in the Lord a companion and imitator
of your holiness. We beg you to bless, in accepting it, one loaf which we
have sent to your Charity, in token of our oneness of heart with you.

LETTER XXVI. (A.D. 395.)

TO LICENTIUS(2) FROM AUGUSTIN.

   1. I have with difficulty found an opportunity for writing to you: who
would believe it? Yet Licentius must take my word for it. I do not wish you
to search curiously for the causes and reasons of this; for though they
could be given, your confidence' in me acquits me of obligation to furnish
them. Moreover, I received your letters by messengers who were not
available for the carrying back of my reply. And as to the thing which you
asked me to ask, I attended to it by letter as far as it seemed to me right
to bring it forward; but with what result you may have seen. If I have not
yet succeeded, I will press the matter more earnestly, either when the
result comes to my knowledge, or when you yourself remind me of it. Thus
far I have spoken to you of the things in which we hear the sound of the
chains of this life. I pass from them. Receive now in a few words the
utterance of my heart's anxieties concerning your hope for eternity, and
the question how a way may be opened for you to God.

   2. I fear, my dear Licentius, that you, while repeatedly rejecting and
dreading the restraints of wisdom, as if these were bonds, are becoming
firmly and fatally in bondage to mortal things. For wisdom, though at first
it restrains men, and subdues them by some labours in the way of
discipline, gives them presently true freedom, and enriches them, when
free, with the possession and enjoyment of itself; and though at first it
educates them by the help of temporary restraints, it folds them afterwards
in its eternal embrace, the sweetest and strongest of all conceivable
bonds. I admit, indeed, that these initial restraints are somewhat hard to
bear; but the ultimate restraints of wisdom I cannot call grievous, because
they are most sweet; nor can I call them easy, because they are most firm:
in short, they possess a quality which cannot be described, but which can
be the object of faith, and hope, and love. The bonds of this world, on the
other hand, have a real harshness and a delusive charm, certain pain and
uncertain pleasure, hard toil and troubled rest, an experience full of
misery, and a hope devoid of happiness. And are you submitting neck and
hands and feet to these chains, desiring to be burdened with honours of
this kind, reckoning your labours to be in vain if they are not thus
rewarded, and spontaneously aspiring to become fixed in that to which
neither persuasion nor force ought to have induced you to go? Perhaps you
answer, in the words of the slave in Terence,

   "So ho, you are pouring out wise words here."

Receive my words, then, that I may pour them out without wasting them. But
if I sing, while you prefer to dance to another tune, even thus I do not
regret my effort to give advice; for the exercise of singing yields
pleasure even when the song fails to stir to responsive .motion the person
for whom it is sung with loving care. There were in your letters some
verbal mistakes which attracted my attention, but I judge it trifling to
discuss these when solicitude about your actions and your whole life
disturbs me.

   3. If your verses were marred by defective arrangement, or violated the
laws of prosody, or grated on the ears of the hearer by imperfect rhythm,
you would doubtless be ashamed, and you would lose no time, you would take
no rest, until you arranged, corrected, remodelled, and balanced your
composition, devoting any amount of earnest study and toil to the
acquisition and practice of the art of versification: but when you yourself
are marred by disorderly living, when you violate the laws of God, when
your life accords neither with the honourable desires of friends on your
behalf, nor with the light given by your own learning, do you think this is
a trifle to be cast out of sight and out of mind? As if, forsooth, you
thought yourself of less value than the sound of your own voice, and
esteemed it a smaller matter to displease God by ill-ordered life, than to
provoke the censure of grammarians by ill-ordered syllables.

   4. You write thus: "Oh that the morning light of other days could with
its gladdening chariot bring back to me bright hours that are gone, which
we spent together in the heart of Italy and among the high mountains, when
proving the generous leisure and pure privileges which belong to the good!
Neither stern winter with its frozen snow, nor the rude blasts of Zephyrs
and raging of Boreas, could deter me from following your footsteps with
eager tread. You have only to express your wish."(1)

   Woe be to me if I do not express this wish, nay, if I do not compel and
command, or beseech and implore you to follow me. If, however, your ear is
shut against my voice, let it be open to your own voice, and give heed to
your own poem: listen to yourself, O friend, most unyielding, unreasonable,
and unimpressible. What care I for your tongue of gold, while your heart is
of iron? How shall I, not in verses, but in lamentations, sufficiently
bewail these verses of yours, in which I discover what a soul, what a mind
that is which I am not permitted to seize and present as an offering to our
God? You are waiting for me to express the wish that you should become
good, and enjoy rest and happiness: as if any day could shine more
pleasantly on me than that in which I shall enjoy in God your gifted mind,
or as if you did not know how I hunger and thirst for you, or as if you did
not in this poem itself confess this. Return to the mind in which you wrote
these things; say to me now again, "You have only to express your wish."
Here then is my wish, if my expression of it be enough to move you to
comply: Give yourself to me- give yourself to my Lord, who is the Lord of
us both and who has endowed you with your faculties: for what am I but
through Him your servant, and under Him your fellow-servant?

   5. Nay, has not He given expression to His will? Hear the gospel: it
declares, "Jesus stood and cried."(1) "Come unto me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: so shall ye find rest to your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."(2) If these words are
not heard, or are heard only with the ear, do you, Licentius, expect
Augustin to issue his command to his fellow-servant, and not rather
complain that the will of his Lord is despised, when He orders, nay
invites, and as it were entreats all who labour to seek rest in Him? But to
your strong and proud neck, forsooth, the yoke of the world seems easier
than the yoke of Christ; yet consider, in regard to the yoke which He
imposes, by whom and with what recompense it is imposed. Go to Campania,
learn in the case of Paulinus, that eminent and holy servant of God, how
great worldly honours he shook off, without hesitation, from neck truly
noble because humble, in order that he might place it, as he has done,
beneath the yoke of Christ; and now, with his mind at rest, he meekly
rejoices in Him as the guide of his way. Go, learn with what wealth of mind
he offers to Him the sacrifice of praise, rendering unto Him all the good
which he has received from Him, test, by failing to store all that he has
in Him from whom he received it, he should lose it all.

   6. Why are you so excited? why so wavering? why do you turn your ear
away from us, and lend it to the imaginations of fatal pleasures? They are
false, they perish, and they lead to perdition. They are false, Licentius.
"May the truth," as you desire, "be made plain to us by demonstration, may
it flow more clear than Eridanus." The truth alone declares what is true:
Christ is the truth; let us come to Him that we may be released from
labour. That He may heal us, let us take His yoke upon us, and learn of Him
who is meek and lowly in heart, and we shall find rest unto our souls: for
His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. The devil desires to wear you as
an ornament. Now, if you found in the earth a golden chalice, you would
give it to the Church of God. But you have received' from God talents that
are spiritually valuable as gold; and do you devote these to the service of
your lusts, and surrender yourself to Satan? Do it not, I entreat you. May
you at some time perceive with what a sad and sorrowful heart I have
written these things; and I pray you, have pity on me if you have ceased to
be precious in your own eyes.

LETTER XXVII. (A.D. 395.)

TO MY LORD, HOLY AND VENERABLE, AND WORTHY OF HIGHEST PRAISE IN CHRIST, MY
BROTHER PAULINUS, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. O excellent man and excellent brother, there was a time when you
were unknown to my mind; and I charge my mind to bear patiently your being
still unknown to my eyes, but it almost--nay, altogether--refuses to obey.
Does it indeed bear this patiently? If so, why then does a longing for your
presence rack my inmost soul? For if I were suffering bodily infirmities,
and these did not interrupt the serenity of my mind, I might be justly said
to bear them patiently; but when I cannot bear with equanimity the
privation of not seeing you, it would be intolerable were I to call my
state of mind patience. Nevertheless, it would perhaps be still more
intolerable if I were to be found patient while absent from you, seeing
that you are such an one as you are. It is well, therefore, that I am
unsatisfied under a privation which is such that, if I were satisfied under
it, every one would justly be dissatisfied with me. What has befallen me is
strange, yet true: I grieve because I do not see you, and my grief itself
comforts me; for I neither admire nor covet a fortitude easily consoled
under the absence of good men such ins you are. For do we not long for the
heavenly Jerusalem? and the more impatiently we long for it, do we not the
more patiently submit to all things for its sake? Who can so withhold
himself from joy in seeing you, as to feel no pain when you are. no longer
seen? I at least can do neither; and seeing that if I could, it could only
be by trampling on right and natural feeling, I rejoice that I cannot, and
in this rejoicing I find some consolation. It is therefore not the removal,
but the contemplation, of this sorrow that consoles me. Blame me not, I
beseech you, with that devout seriousness of spirit which so eminently
distinguishes you; say not that I do wrong to grieve because of my not yet
knowing you, when you have disclosed to my sight your mind, which is the
inner man. For if, when sojourning in any place, or in the city to which
you belong, I had come to know you as my brother and friend, and as one so
eminent as a Christian, so noble as a man, how could you think that it
would be no disappointment to me if I were not permitted to know your
dwelling? How, then, can I but mourn because I have not yet seen your face
and form, the dwelling-place of that mind which I have come to know as if
it were my own ?

   2. For I have read your letter, which flows with milk and honey, which
exhibits the simplicity of heart wherewith, under the guidance of piety,
you seek the Lord, and which brings glory and honour to Him. The brethren
have read it also, and find unwearied and ineffable satisfaction in those
abundant and excellent gifts with which God has endowed you. As many as
have read it carry it away with them, because, while they read, it carries
them away. Words cannot express how sweet is the savour of Christ which
your letter breathes. How strong is the wish to be more fully acquainted
with you which that letter awakens by presenting you to our sight! for it
at once permits us to discern and prompts us to desire you. For the more
effectually that it makes us in a certain sense realize your presence, the
more does it render us impatient under your absence. All love you as seen
therein, and wish to be loved by you. Praise and thanksgiving are offered
to God, by whose grace you are what you are. In your letter, Christ is
awakened that He may be pleased to calm the winds and the waves for you,
directing your steps towards His perfect stedfastness.(1) In it the reader
beholds a wife(2) who does not bring her husband to effeminacy, but by
union to him is brought herself to share the strength of his nature; and
unto her in you, as completely one with you, and bound to you by spiritual
ties which owe their strength to their purity, we desire to return our
salutations with the respect due to your Holiness. In it, the cedars of
Lebanon, levelled to the ground, and fashioned by the skilful craft of love
into the form of the Ark, cleave the waves of this world, fearless of
decay. In it, glory is scorned that it may be secured, and the world given
up that it may be gained. In it, the little ones, yea, the mightier sons of
Babylon, the sins of turbulence and pride, are dashed against the rock.

   3. These and other such most delightful and hallowed spectacles are
presented to the readers of your letter, -- that letter which exhibits a
true faith, a good hope, a pure love. How it breathes to us your thirst,
your longing and fainting for the courts of the Lord! With what holy love
it is inspired! How it overflows with the abundant treasure of a true
heart! What thanksgivings it renders to God! What blessings it procures
from Him! Is it elegance or fervour, light or life-giving power, which
shines most in your letter? For how can it at once soothe us and animate
us? how can it combine fertilizing rains with the brightness of a cloudless
sky? How is this? I ask; or how shall I repay you, except by giving myself
to be wholly yours in Him whose you wholly are? If this be little, it is at
least all I have to give. But you have made me think it not little, by your
deigning to honour me in that letter with such praises, that when I requite
you by giving myself to you, I would be chargeable if I counted the gift a
small one, with refusing to believe your testimony. I am ashamed, indeed,
to believe so much good spoken of myself, but I am yet more unwilling to
refuse to believe you. I have one way of escape from the dilemma: I shall
not credit your estimate of my character, because I do not recognise myself
in the portrait you have drawn; but I shall believe myself to be beloved by
you, because I perceive and feel this beyond all doubt. Thus I shall be
found neither rash in judging of myself, nor ungrateful for your esteem.
Moreover, when I offer myself to you, it is not a small offering; for I
offer one whom you very warmly love, and one who, though he is not what you
suppose him to be, is nevertheless one for whom you are praying that he may
become such. And your prayers I now beg the more earnestly, lest, thinking
me to be already what I am not, you should be less solicitous for the
supply of that which I lack.

   4. The bearer of this letter (3) to your Excellency and most eminent
Charity is one of my dearest friends, and most intimately known to me from
early years. His name is mentioned in the treatise De Religione, which your
Holiness, as you indicate in your letter, has read with very great
pleasure, doubtless because it was made more acceptable to you by the
recommendation of so good a man as he who sent it to you.(4) I would not
wish you, however, to give credence to the statements which, perchance, one
who is so intimately my friend may have made in praise of me. For I have
often observed, that, without intending to say what was untrue, he was, by
the bias of friendship, mistaken in his opinion concerning me, and that he
thought me to be already possessed of many things, for the gift of which my
heart earnestly waited on the Lord. And if he did such things in my
presence, who may not conjecture that out of the fulness of his heart he
may utter many things more excellent than true concerning me when absent?
He will submit to your esteemed attention, and review all my treatises; for
I am not aware of having written anything, either addressed to those who
are beyond the pale of the Church, or to the brethren, which is not in his
possession. But when you are reading these, my holy Paulinus, let not those
things which Truth has spoken by my weak instrumentality, so carry you away
as to prevent your carefully observing what I myself have spoken, lest,
while you drink in with eagerness the things good and true which have been
given to me as a servant, you should forget to pray for the pardon of my
errors and mistakes. For in all that shall, if observed, justly displease
you, I myself am seen; but in all which in my books is justly approved by
you, through the gift of the Holy Spirit bestowed on you, He is to be
loved, He is to be praised, with whom is the fountain of life, and in whose
light we shall see light,(1) not darkly as we do here, but face to face.(2)
When, in reading over my writings, I discover in them anything which is due
to the working of the old leaven in me, I blame myself for it with true
sorrow; but if anything which I have spoken is, by God's gift, from the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, I rejoice therein with trembling.
For what have we that we have not received? Yet it may be said, his portion
is better whom God has endowed with larger and more numerous gifts, than
his on whom smaller and fewer have been conferred. True; but, on the other
hand, it is better to have a small gift, and to render to Him due thanks
for it, than, having a large gift, to wish to claim the merit of it as our
own. Pray for me, my brother, that I may make such acknowledgments
sincerely, and that my heart may not be at variance with my tongue. Pray, I
beseech you, that, not coveting praise to myself, but rendering praise to
the Lord, I may worship Him; and I shall be safe from mine enemies.

   5. There is yet another thing which may move you to love more warmly
the brother who bears my letter; for he is a kinsman of the venerable and
truly blessed bishop Alypius, whom you love with your whole heart, and
justly: for whoever thinks highly of that man, thinks highly of the great
mercy and wonderful gifts which God has bestowed on him. Accordingly, when
he had read your request, desiring him to write for you a sketch of his
history, and, while willing to do, it because of your kindness, was yet
unwilling to do it because of his humility, I, seeing him unable to decide
between the respective claims of love and humility, transferred the burden
from his shoulders to my own, for he enjoined me by letter to do so. I
shall therefore, with God's help, soon place in your heart Alypius just as
he is: for this I chiefly feared, that he would be afraid to declare all
that God has conferred on him, lest (since what he writes would be read by
others besides you) he should seem to any who are less competent to
discriminate to be commending not God's goodness bestowed on men, but his
own merits; and that thus you, who know what construction to put on such
statements, would, through his regard for the infirmity of others, be
deprived of that which to you as a brother ought to be imparted. This I
would have done already, and you would already be reading my description of
him, had not my brother suddenly resolved to set out earlier than we
expected. For him I bespeak a welcome from your heart and from your lips as
kindly as if your acquaintance with him was not beginning now, but of as
long standing as my own. For if he does not shrink from laying himself open
to your heart, he will be in great measure, if not completely, healed by
your lips; for I desire him to be often made to hear the words of those who
cherish for their friends a higher love than that which is of this world.

   6. Even if Romanianus had not been going to visit your Charity, I had
resolved to recommend to you by letter his son [Licentius], dear to me as
my own (whose name you will find also in some of my books), in order that
he may be encouraged, exhorted, and instructed, not so much by the sound of
your voice, as by the example of your spiritual strength. I desire
earnestly, that while his life is yet in the green blade, the tares may be
turned into wheat, and he may believe those who know by experience the
dangers to which he is eager to expose himself. From the poem of my young
friend, and my letter to him, your most benevolent and considerate wisdom
may perceive my grief, fear, and care on his account. I am not without hope
that, by the Lord's favour, I may through your means be set free from such
disquietude regarding him.

   As you are now about to read much that I have written, your love will
be much more gratefully  esteemed by me, if, moved by compassion, and
judging impartially, you correct and reprove whatever displeases you. For
you are not one whose oil anointing my head would make me afraid.(3)

   The brethren, not those only who dwell with us, and those who, dwelling
elsewhere, serve God in the same way as we do, but almost all who are in
Christ our warm friends, send you salutations, along with the expression of
their veneration and affectionate longing for you as a brother, as a saint,
and as a man.(4) I dare not ask; but if you have any leisure from
ecclesiastical duties, you may see for what favour all Africa, with myself,
is thirsting.

LETTER XXVIII. (A.D. 394 OR 395.)

TO JEROME, HIS MOST BELOVED LORD, AND BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER, WORTHY
OF BEING HONOURED AND EMBRACED WITH THE SINCEREST AFFECTIONATE DEVOTION,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.(1)

   CHAP. I.- 1. Never was the face of any one more familiar to another,
than the peaceful, happy, and truly noble diligence of your studies in the
Lord has become to me. For although I long greatly to be acquainted with
you, I feel that already my knowledge of you is deficient in respect of
nothing but a very small part of you, -- namely, your personal appearance;
and even as to this, I cannot deny that since my most blessed brother
Alypius (now invested with the office of bishop, of which he was then truly
worthy) has seen you, and has on his return been seen by me, it has been
almost completely imprinted on my mind by his report of you; nay, I may say
that before his return, when he saw you there, I was seeing you myself with
his eyes. For any one who knows us may say of him and me, that in body
only, and not in mind, we are two, so great is the union of heart, so firm
the intimate friendship subsisting between us; though in merit we are not
alike, for his is far above mine. Seeing, therefore, that you love me, both
of old through the communion of spirit by which we are knit to each other,
and more recently through what you know of me from the mouth of my friend,
I feel that it is not presumptuous in me (as it would be in one wholly
unknown to you) to recommend to your brotherly esteem the brother
Profuturus, in whom we trust that the happy omen of his name (Good-speed)
may be fulfilled through our efforts furthered after this by your aid;
although, perhaps, it may be presumptuous on this ground, that he is so
great a man, that it would be much more fitting that I should be commended
to you by him, than he by me. I ought perhaps to write no more, if I were
willing to content myself with the style of a formal letter of
introduction; but my mind overflows into conference with you, concerning
the studies with which we are occupied in Christ Jesus our Lord, who is
pleased to furnish us largely through your love with many benefits, and
some helps by the way, in the path which He has pointed out to His'
followers.

   CHAP. II.--2. We therefore, and with us all that are devoted to study
in the African churches, beseech you not to refuse to devote care and
labour to the translation of the books of those who have written in the
Greek language most able commentaries on our Scriptures. You may thus put
us also in possession of these men, and especially of that one whose name
you seem to have singular pleasure in sounding forth in your writings
[Origen]. But I beseech you not to devote your labour to the work of
translating into Latin the sacred canonical books, unless you follow the
method in which you have translated Job, viz. with the addition of notes,
to let it be seen plainly what differences there are between this version
of yours and that of the LXX., whose authority is worthy of highest esteem.
For my own part, I cannot sufficiently express my wonder that anything
should at this date be found in the Hebrew Mss. which escaped so many
translators perfectly acquainted with the language. I say nothing of the
LXX., regarding whose harmony in mind and spirit, surpassing that which is
found in even one man, I dare not in any way pronounce a decided opinion,
except that in my judgment, beyond question, very high authority must in
this work of translation be conceded to them. I am more perplexed by those
translators who, though enjoying the advantage of labouring after the LXX.
had completed their work, and although well acquainted, as it is reported,
with the force of Hebrew words and phrases, and with Hebrew syntax, have
not only failed to agree among themselves, but have left man), things
which, even after so long a time, still remain to be discovered and brought
to light. Now these things were either obscure or plain: if they were
obscure, it is believed that you are as likely to have been mistaken as the
others; if they were plain, it is not believed that they [the LXX.] could
possibly have been mistaken. Having stated the grounds of my perplexity, I
appeal to your kindness to give me an answer regarding this matter.

   CHAP. II.-- 3. I have been reading also some writings, ascribed to you,
on the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. In reading your exposition of the
Epistle to the Galatians, that passage came to my hand in which the Apostle
Peter is called back from a course of dangerous dissimulation. To find
there the defence of falsehood undertaken, whether by you, a man of such
weight, or by any author (if it is the writing of another), :causes me, I
must confess, great sorrow, until at least those things which decide my
opinion in the matter are refuted, if indeed they admit of refutation. For
it seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our
believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say,
that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to
writing, did put down in these books anything false. It is one question
whether it may be at any time the duty of a good man to deceive; but it is
another question whether it can have been the duty of a writer of Holy
Scripture to deceive: nay, it is not another question -- it is no question
at all. For if you once admit into such a high sanctuary of authority one
false statement as made in the way of duty,(1) there will not be left a
single sentence of those books which, if appearing to any one difficult in
practice or hard to believe, may not by the same fatal rule be explained
away, as a statement in which, intentionally, and under a sense of duty,
the author declared what was not true.

   4. For if the Apostle Paul did not speak the truth when, finding fault
with the Apostle Peter, he said: "If thou, being a Jew, livest after the
manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the
Gentiles to live as do the Jews?"--if, indeed, Peter seemed to him to be
doing what was right, and if, notwithstanding, he, in order to soothe
troublesome opponents, both said and wrote that Peter did what was
wrong;(2)-- if we say thus, what then shall be our answer when perverse men
such as he himself prophetically described arise, forbidding marriage,(3)
if they defend themselves by saying that, in all which the same apostle
wrote in confirmation of the lawfulness of marriage,(4) he was, on account
of men who, through love for their wives, might become troublesome
opponents, declaring what was false,-- saying these things, forsooth, not
because he believed them, but because their opposition might thus be
averted? It is unnecessary to quote many parallel examples. For even things
which pertain to the praises of God might be represented as piously
intended falsehoods, written in order that love for Him might be enkindled
in men who were slow of heart; and thus nowhere in the sacred books shall
the authority of pure truth stand sure. Do we not observe the great care
with which the same apostle commends the truth to us, when he says: "And if
Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also
vain: yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have
testified of God that He raised up  Christ; whom He raised not up, if so be
that the dead rise not." (5) If any one said to him, "Why are you so
shocked by this falsehood, when the thing which you have said, even if it
were false, tends very greatly to the glory of God ?" would he not,
abhorring the madness of such a man, with every word and sign which could
express his feelings, open clearly the secret depths of his own heart,
protesting that to speak well of a falsehood uttered on behalf of God, was
a crime not less, perhaps even greater, than to speak ill of the truth
concerning Him? We must therefore be careful to secure, in order to our
knowledge of the divine Scriptures, the guidance only of such a man as is
imbued with a high reverence for the sacred books, and a profound
persuasion of their truth, preventing him from flattering himself in any
part of them with the hypothesis of a statement being made not because it
was true, but because it was expedient, and making him rather pass by what
he does not understand, than set up his own feelings above that truth. For,
truly, when he pronounces anything to be untrue, he demands that he be
believed in preference, and endeavours to shake our confidence in the
authority of the divine Scriptures.

   5. For my part, I would devote all the strength which the Lord grants
me, to show that every one of those texts which are wont to be quoted in
defence of the expediency of falsehood ought to be otherwise understood, in
order that everywhere the sure truth of these passages themselves may be
consistently maintained. For as statements adduced in evidence must not be
false, neither ought they to favour falsehood. This, however, I leave to
your own judgment. For if you apply more thorough attention to the passage,
perhaps you will see it much more readily than I have done. To this more
careful study that piety will move you, by which you discern that the
authority of the divine Scriptures becomes unsettled (so that every one may
believe what he wishes, and reject what he does not wish) if this be once
admitted, that the men by whom these things have been delivered unto us,
could in their writings state some things which were not true, from
considerations of duty;(6) unless, perchance, you propose to furnish us
with certain rules by which we may know when a falsehood might or might not
become a duty. If this can be done, I beg you to set forth these rules with
reasonings which may be neither equivocal nor precarious; and I beseech you
by our Lord, in whom Truth was incarnate, not to consider me burdensome or
presumptuous in making this request. For a mistake of mine which is in the
interest of truth cannot deserve great blame, if indeed it deserves blame
at all, when it is possible for you to use truth in the interest of
falsehood without doing wrong.

   CHAP. IV. -- 6. Of many other things I would wish to discourse with
your most ingenuous heart, and to take counsel with you concerning
Christian studies; but this desire could not be satisfied within the limits
of any letter. I may do this more fully by means of the brother bearing
this letter, whom I rejoice in sending to share and profit by your sweet
and useful conversation. Nevertheless, although I do not reckon myself
superior in any respect to him, even he may take less from you than I would
desire; and he will excuse my saying so, for I confess myself to hay, more
room for receiving from you than he has. I see his mind to be already more
fully stored, in which unquestionably he excels me. Therefore, when he
returns, as I trust he may happily do by God's blessing, and when I become
a sharer in all with which his heart has been richly furnished by you,
there will still be a consciousness of void unsatisfied in me, and a
longing for personal fellowship with you. Hence of the two I shall be the
poorer, and he the richer, then as now. This brother carries with him some
of my writings, which if you condescend to read, I implore you to review
them with candid and brotherly strictness. For the words of Scripture, "The
righteous shall correct me in compassion, and reprove me; but the oil of
the sinner shall i not anoint my head,"(1) I understand to mean that he is
the truer friend who by his censure heals me, than the one who by flattery
anoints my head. I find the greatest difficulty in exercising a right
judgment when I read over what I have written, being either too cautious or
too rash. For I sometimes see my own faults, but I prefer to hear them
reproved by those who are better able to judge than I am; lest after I
have, perhaps justly, charged myself with error, I begin again to flatter
myself, and think that my censure has arisen from an undue mistrust of my
own judgment.

LETTER XXIX. (A.D. 395.)

A LETTER FROM THE PRESBYTER OF THE DISTRICT OF HIPPO TO ALYPIUS THE BISHOP
OF THAGASTE, CONCERNING THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF LEONTIUS,(2)
FORMERLY BISHOP OF HIPPO.

   1. In the absence of brother Macharius, I have not been able to write
anything definite concerning a matter about which I could not feel
otherwise than anxious: it is said, however, that he will soon return, and
whatever can be with God's help done in the matter shall be done. Although
also our brethren, citizens of your town, who were with us, might
sufficiently assure you of our solicitude on their behalf when the),
returned, nevertheless+ the thing which the Lord has granted to me is one
worthy to be the subject of that epistolary intercourse which ministers so
much to the comfort of us both; it is, moreover, a thing in the obtaining
of which I believe that I have been greatly assisted by your own solicitude
regarding it, seeing that it could not but constrain you to intercession on
our behalf.

   2. Therefore let me not fail to relate to your Charity what has taken
place; so that, as you joined us in pouring out prayers for this mercy
before it was obtained, you may now join us in rendering thanks for it
after it has been received. When I was informed after your departure that
some were becoming openly violent, and declaring that they could not submit
to the prohibition (intimated while you were here) of that feast which they
call Laetitia, vainly attempting to disguise their revels under a fair
name, it happened most opportunely for me, by the hidden fore-ordination of
the Almighty God, that on the fourth holy day that chapter of the Gospel
fell to be expounded in ordinary course, in which the words occur: "Give
not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before
swine." (3) I discoursed therefore concerning dogs and swine in such a way
as to compel those who clamour with obstinate barking against the divine
precepts, and who are given up to the abominations of carnal pleasures, to
blush for shame; and followed it up by saying, that they might plainly see
how criminal it was to do, under the name of religion, within the walls of
the church, that which, if it were practised by them in their own houses,
would make it necessary for them to be debarred from that which is holy,
and from the privileges which are the pearls of the Church.

   3. Although these words were well received, nevertheless, as few had
attended the meeting, all had not been done which so great an emergency
required. When, however, this discourse was, according to the ability and
zeal of each, made known abroad by those who had heard it, it found many
opponents. But when the morning of Quadragesima came round, and a great
multitude had assembled at the hour of exposition of Scripture, that
passage in the Gospel was read in which our Lord said, concerning those
sellers who were driven out of the temple, and the tables of the money-
changers which He had overthrown, that the house of His Father had been
made a den of thieves instead of a house of prayer.(4) After awakening
their attention by bringing forward the subject of immoderate indulgence in
wine, I myself also read this chapter, and added to it an argument to prove
with how much greater anger and vehemence our Lord would cast forth drunken
revels, which are everywhere disgraceful, from that temple from which He
thus drove out merchandise lawful elsewhere, especially when the things
sold were those required for the sacrifices appointed in that dispensation;
and I asked them whether they regarded a place occupied by men selling what
was necessary, or one used by men drinking to excess, as bearing the
greater resemblance to a den of thieves.

   4. Moreover, as passages of Scripture which I had prepared were held
ready to be put into my hands, I went on to say that the Jewish nation,
with all its lack of spirituality in religion, never held feasts, even
temperate feasts, much less feasts 'disgraced by intemperance, in their
temple, in which at that time the body and blood of the Lord were not yet
offered, and that in history they are not found to have been excited by
wine on any public occasion bearing the name of worship, except when they
held a feast before the idol which they had made.(1) While I said these
things I took the manuscript from the attendant, and read that whole
passage. Reminding them of the words of the apostle, who says, in order to
distinguish Christians from the obdurate Jews, that they are his epistle
written, not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart,(2)
I asked further, with the deepest sorrow, how it was that, although Moses
the servant of God broke both the tables of stone because of these rulers
of Israel, I could not break the hearts of those who, though men of the New
Testament dispensation, were desiring in their celebration of saints' days
to repeat often the public perpetration of excesses ,of which the people of
the Old Testament economy were guilty only once, and that in an act of
idolatry.

   5. Having then given back the manuscript of Exodus, I proceeded to
enlarge, so far as my time permitted, on the crime of drunkenness, and took
up the writings of the Apostle Paul, and showed among what sins it is
classed by him, .reading the text, "If any man that is called a brother be
a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or
an extortioner; with such an one (ye ought) not even to eat;" (3)
pathetically reminding them how great is our danger in eating with those
who are guilty of intemperance even in their own houses. I read also what
is added, a little further on, in the same epistle: "Be not deceived:
neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of
God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified,
but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of
our God." (4) After reading these, I charged them to consider how believers
could hear these words, "but ye are washed," if they still tolerated in
their own hearts--that is, in God's inner temple--the abominations of such
lusts as these against which the kingdom of heaven is shut. Then I went on
to that passage: "When ye come together into one place, this is not to eat
the Lord's supper: for in eating, every one taketh before other his own
supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What! have ye not houses
to eat and to drink in, or despise ye the church of God ?"(5) After reading
which, I more especially begged them to remark that not even innocent and
temperate feasts were permitted in the church: for the apostle said not,
"Have ye not houses of your own in which to be drunken? "--as if it was
drunkenness alone which was unlawful in the church; but, "Have ye not
houses to eat and to drink in?" --things lawful in themselves, but not
lawful in the church, inasmuch as men have their own houses in which they
may be recruited by necessary food: whereas now, by the corruption of the
times and the relaxation of morals, we have been brought so low, that, no
longer insisting upon sobriety in the houses of men, all that we venture to
demand is, that the realm of tolerated excess be restricted to their own
homes.

   6. I reminded them also of a passage in the Gospel which I had
expounded the day before, m which it is said of the false prophets: "Ye
shall know them by their fruits." (6) I also bade them remember that in
that place our works are signified by the word fruits. Then I asked among
what kind of fruits drunkenness was named, and read that passage in the
Epistle to the Galatians: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which
are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions,
heresies, envyings, murder, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the
which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they which
do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (7) After these
words, I asked how, when God has commanded that Christians be known by
their fruits,' we could be known as Christians by this fruit of
drunkenness? I added also, that we must read what follows there: "But the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."(8) And I pied with them to consider
how shameful and lamentable it would be, if, not content with living at
home in the practice of these works of the flesh, they even wished by them,
forsooth, to honour the church, and to fill the whole area of so large a
place of worship, if they were permitted, with crowds of revellers and
drunkards: and yet would not present to God those fruits of the Spirit
which, by the authority of Scripture, and by my groans, they were called to
yield, and by the offering of which they would most suitably celebrate the
saints' days.

   7. This being finished, I returned the manuscript; and being asked to
speak,(1) I set before I their eyes with all my might, as the danger itself
constrained me, and as the Lord was pleased to give strength, the danger
shared by them who were committed to my care, and by me, who must give
account to the Chief Shepherd, and implored them by His humiliation, by the
unparalleled insults, the buffetings and spitting on the face which He
endured, by His pierced hands and crown of thorns, and by His cross and
blood, to have pity on me at least, if they were displeased with
themselves, and to consider the inexpressible love cherished towards me by]
the aged and venerable Valerius, who had not scrupled to assign to me for
their sakes the perilous burden of expounding to them the word of truth,
and had often told them that in my coming here his prayers were answered;
not rejoicing, surely, that I had come to share or to behold the death of
our hearers, but rejoicing that I had come to share his labours for the
eternal life. In conclusion, I told them that I was resolved to trust in
Him who cannot lie, and who has given us a promise by the mouth of the
prophet, saying of our Lord Jesus Christ, "If His children forsake my law,
and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my
commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their
iniquity with stripes: nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly
take from Him."(2) I declared, therefore, that I put my trust in Him, that
if they despised the weighty words which had now been read and spoken to
them, He would visit  them with the rod and with stripes, and not leave
them to be condemned with the world. In this appeal I put forth all the
power in thought and utterance which, in an emergency so great and
hazardous, our Saviour and Ruler was pleased to supply. I did not move them
to weep by first weeping myself; but while these things were being spoken,
I own that, moved by the tears which they began to shed, I myself could not
refrain from following their example. And when we had thus wept together, I
concluded my sermon with full persuasion that they would be restrained by
it from the abuses denounced.

   8. Next morning, however, when the day dawned, which so many were
accustomed to devote to excess in eating and drinking, I received notice
that some, even of those who were present when I preached, had not yet
desisted from complaint, and that so great was the power of detestable
custom with them, that, using no other argument, they asked, "Wherefore is
this now prohibited? Were they not Christians who in former times did not
interfere with this practice?" On hearing this, I knew not what more
powerful means for influencing them I could devise; but resolved, in the
event of their judging it proper to persevere, that after reading in:
Ezekiel's prophecy that the watchman has delivered his own soul if he has
given warning, even though the persons warned refuse to give heed to him, I
would shake my garments and depart. But then the Lord showed me that He
leaves us not alone, and taught me how He encourages us to trust Him; for
before the time at which I had to ascend the pulpit,(3) the very persons of
whose complaint against interference with long-established custom I had
heard came to me. Receiving them kindly, I by a few words brought them
round to a right opinion; and when it came to the time for my discourse,
having laid aside the lecture which I had prepared as now unnecessary, I
said a few things concerning the question mentioned above, "Wherefore now
prohibit this custom?" saying that to those who might propose it the
briefest and best answer would be this: "Let us now at last put down what
ought to have been earlier prohibited."

   9. Lest, however, any slight should seem to be put by us on those who,
before our time, either tolerated or did not dare to put down such manifest
excesses of an undisciplined multitude, I explained to them the
circumstances out of which this custom seems to have necessarily risen in
the Church, --namely, that when, in the peace which came after such
numerous and violent persecutions, crowds of heathen who wished to assume
the Christian religion were kept back, because, having been accustomed to
celebrate the feasts connected with their worship of idols in revelling and
drunkenness, they could not easily refrain from pleasures so hurtful and so
habitual, it had seemed good to our ancestors, making for the time a
concession to this infirmity, to permit them to celebrate, instead of the
festivals which they renounced, other feasts in honour of the holy martyrs,
which were observed, not as before with a profane design, but with similar
self-indulgence. I added that now upon them, as persons bound together in
the name of Christ, and submissive to the yoke of His august authority, the
wholesome restraints of sobriety were laid -- restraints with which the
honour and fear due to Him who appointed them should move them to comply -
and that therefore the time had now come in which all who did not dare to
cast off the Christian profession should begin to walk according to
Christ's will; and being now confirmed Christians, should reject those
concessions i to infirmity which were made only for a time in order to
their becoming such.

   10. I then exhorted them to imitate the example of the churches beyond
the sea, in some of which these practices had never been tolerated, while
in others they had been already put down by the people complying with the
counsel of good ecclesiastical rulers; and as the examples of daily excess
in the use of wine in the church of the blessed Apostle Peter were brought
forward in defence of the practice, I said in the first place, that I had
heard that these excesses had been often forbidden, but because the place
was at a distance from the bishop's control, and because in such a city the
multitude of carnally-minded persons was great, the foreigners especially,
of whom there is a constant influx, clinging to that practice with an
obstinacy proportioned to their ignorance, the suppression of so great an
evil had not yet been possible. If, however, I continued, we would honour
the Apostle Peter, we ought to hear his words, and look much more to the
epistles by which his mind is made known to us, than to the place of
worship, by which it is not made known; and immediately taking the'
manuscript, I read his own words: "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. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought
the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess
of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries."(1) After
this, when I saw that all were with one consent turning to a right mind,
and renouncing the custom against which I had protested, I exhorted them to
assemble at noon for the reading of God's word and singing of psalms;
stating that we had resolved thus to celebrate the festival in a way much
more accordant with purity and piety; and that, by the number of
worshippers who should assemble for this purpose, it would plainly appear
who were guided by reason, and who were the slaves of appetite. With these
words the discourse concluded.

   11. In the afternoon a greater number assembled than in the forenoon,
and there was reading and praise alternately up to the hour at which I went
out in company with the bishop; and after our coming two psalms were read.
Then the old man [Valerius] constrained me by his express command to say
something to the people; from which I would rather have been excused, as I
was longing for the close of the anxieties of the day. I delivered a short
discourse in order to express our gratitude to God. And as we heard the
noise of the feasting, which was going on as usual in the church of the
heretics, who still prolonged their revelry while we were so differently
engaged, I remarked that the beauty of day is enhanced by contrast with the
night, and that when anything black is near, the purity of white is the
more pleasing; and that, in like manner, our meeting for a spiritual feast
might perhaps have been somewhat less sweet to us, but for the contrast of
the carnal excesses in which the others indulged; and I exhorted them to
desire eagerly such feasts as we then enjoyed, if they had tasted the
goodness of the Lord. At the same time, I said that those may well be
afraid who seek anything which shall one day be destroyed as the chief
object of their desire, seeing that every one shares the portion of that
which he worships; a warning expressly given by the apostle to such, when
he says of them their "god is their belly," (2) inasmuch as he has
elsewhere said, "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God
shall destroy both it and them." (3) I added that it is our duty to seek
that which is imperishable, which, far removed from carnal affections, is
obtained through sanctification of the spirit; and when those things which
the Lord was pleased to suggest to me had been spoken on this subject as
the occasion required, the daily evening exercises of worship were
performed; and when with the bishop I retired from the church, the brethren
said a hymn there, a considerable multitude remaining in the church, and
engaging in praise (4) even till daylight failed.

   12. I have thus related as concisely as I could that which I am sure
you longed to hear. Pray that God may be pleased to protect our efforts
from giving offence or provoking odium in any way. In the tranquil
prosperity which you enjoy we do with lively warmth of affection
participate in no small measure, when tidings so frequently reach us of the
gifts possessed by the highly spiritual church of Thagaste. The ship
bringing our brethren has not yet arrived. At Hasna, where our brother
Argentius is presbyter, the Circumcelliones, entering our church,
demolished the altar. The case is now in process of trial; and we earnestly
ask your prayers that it may be decided in a peaceful way and as becomes
the Catholic Church, so as to silence the tongues of turbulent heretics. I
have sent a letter to the Asiarch.(1)

   Brethren most blessed, may ye. persevere in the Lord, and remember us.
Amen.

LETTER XXX. (A.D. 396.)

This letter of Paulinus was written before receiving a reply to his former
letter, No. (27), p. (248).

TO AUGUSTIN, OUR LORD AND HOLY AND BELOVED BROTHER, PAULINUS AND THERASIA,
SINNERS, SEND GREETING.

   1. My beloved brother in Christ the Lord, having through your holy and
pious works come to know you without your knowledge, and to see you though
absent long ago, my mind embraced you with unreserved affection, and I
hastened to  secure the gratification of hearing you through familiar
brotherly exchange of letters. I believe also that by the Lord's hand and
favour my letter has reached you; but as the youth whom, before winter, we
had sent to salute you and others equally loved in God's name, has not
returned, we could no longer either put off what we feel to be our duty, or
restrain the vehemence of our desire to hear from you. If, then, my former
letter has been found worthy to reach you, this is the second; if, however,
it was not so fortunate as to come to your hand, accept this as the first.

   2. But, my brother, judging all things as a spiritual man, do not
estimate our love to you by the duty which we render, or the frequency of
our letters. For the Lord, who everywhere, as one and the same, worketh His
love in His own, is witness that, from the time when, by the kindness of
the venerable bishops Aurelius and Alypius, we came to know you through
your writings against the Manichaeans, love for you has taken such a place
in us, that we seemed not so much to be acquiring a new friendship as
reviving an old affection. Now at length we address you in writing; and
though we are novices in expressing, we are not novices in feeling love to
you; and by communion of the spirit, which is the inner man, we are as it
were acquainted with you. Nor is it strange that though distant we are
near, though unknown we are well known to each other; for we are members of
one body, having one Head, enjoying the effusion of the same grace, living
by the same , bread, walking in the same way, and dwelling in the same
home. In short, in all that makes up our being,- in the whole faith and
hope by which we stand in the present life, or labour for that which is to
come, --we are both in the spirit and in the body of Christ so united, that
if we fell from this union we would cease to be.

   3. How small a thing, therefore, is that which our bodily separation
denies to us!--for it is nothing more than one of those fruits that gratify
the eyes, which are occupied only with the things of time. And yet,
perhaps, we should not number this pleasure which in the body we enjoy
among the blessings which are only in time the portion of spiritual men, to
whose bodies the resurrection will impart immortality; as we, though in
ourselves unworthy, are bold to expect, through the merit of Christ and the
mercy of God the Father. Wherefore I pray that the grace of God by our Lord
Jesus Christ may grant unto us this favour too, that we may yet see your
face. Not only would this bring great gratification to our desires; but by
it illumination would be brought to our minds, and our poverty would be
enriched by your abundance. This indeed you may grant to us even while we
are absent from you, especially on the present occasion, through our sons
Romanus and Agilis, beloved and most dear to us in the Lord (whom as our
second selves we commend to you), when they return to us in the Lord's
name, after fulfilling the labour of love in which they are engaged; in
which work we beg that they may especially enjoy the goodwill of your
Charity. For you know what high rewards the Most High promises to the
brother who gives his brother help. If you are pleased to impart to me any
gift of the grace that has been bestowed on you, you may safely do it
through them; for, believe me, they are of one heart and of one mind with
us in the Lord. May the grace of God always abide as it is with you, O
brother beloved, venerable, most dear, and longed for in Christ the Lord!
Salute on our behalf all the saints in Christ who are with you, for
doubtless such attach themselves to your fellowship; commend us to them
all, that they may, along with yourself, remember us in prayer.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning in
(186)7. (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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