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

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


ST. AUGUSTIN

LETTERS 31-57 (the begining of the Second Division).

[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.]


SECOND DIVISION.

LETTERS WHICH WERE WRITTEN BY AUGUSTIN AFTER HIS BECOMING BISHOP OF HIPPO,
AND BEFORE THE CONFERENCE HELD WITH THE DONATISTS AT CARTHAGE, AND THE
DISCOVERY OF THE HERESY OF PELAGIUS IN AFRICA (A.D. 396-410).

LETTER XXXI. (A.D. 396.)

TO BROTHER PAULINUS AND TO SISTER THERASIA, MOST BELOVED AND SINCERE, TRULY
MOST BLESSED AND MOST EMINENT FOR THE VERY ABUNDANT GRACE OF GOD BESTOWED
ON THEM AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. ALTHOUGH in my longing to be without delay near you in one sense,
while still remote in another, I wished much that what I wrote in answer to
your former letter (if, indeed, any letter of mine deserves to be called an
answer to yours) should go with all possible expedition to your Grace,(1)
my delay has brought me the advantage of a second letter from you. The Lord
is Good, who often withholds what we desire, that He may add to it what we
would prefer. For it is one pleasure to me that you will write me on
receiving my letter, and it is another that, through not receiving it at
once, you have written now. The joy which I have felt in reading this
letter would have been lost to me if my letter to your Holiness had been
quickly conveyed to you, as I intended and earnestly desired. But now, to
have this letter, and to expect a reply to my own, multiplies my
satisfaction. The blame of the delay cannot be laid to my charge; and the
Lord, in His more abundant kindness, has done that which He judged to be
more conducive to my happiness.

   2. We welcomed with great gladness in the Lord the holy brothers
Romanus and Agilis, who were, so to speak, an additional letter from you,
capable of hearing and answering our voices, whereby most agreeably your
presence was in part enjoyed by us, although only to make us long the more
eagerly to see you. It would be at all times and in every way impossible
for you to give, and unreasonable for us to ask, as much information from
you concerning yourself by letter as we received from them by word of
mouth. There was manifest also in them (what no paper could convey) such
delight in telling us of you, that by their very countenance and eyes while
they spoke, we could with unspeakable joy read you written on their hearts.
Moreover, a sheet of paper, of whatever kind it be, and however excellent
the things written upon it may be, enjoys no benefit itself from what it
contains, though it may be unfolded with great benefit to others; but, in
reading this letter of yours--namely, the minds of these brethren-when
conversing with them, we found that the blessedness of those upon whom you
had written was manifestly proportioned to the fulness with which they had
been written upon by you. In order, therefore, to attain to the same
blessedness, we transcribed in our own hearts what was written in theirs,
by most eager questioning as to everything concerning you.

   3. Notwithstanding all this, it is with deep regret that we consent to
their so soon leaving us, even to return to you. For observe, I beseech
you, the conflicting emotions by which we are agitated. Our obligation to
let them go without delay was increased according to the vehemence of their
desire to obey you; but the greater the vehemence of this desire in them,
the more completely did they set you forth as almost present with us,
because they let us see how tender your affections are. Therefore our
reluctance to let them go increased with our sense of the reasonableness of
their urgency to be permitted to go. Oh insupportable trial, were it not
that by such partings we are not, after all, separated from each other, --
were it not that 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!''(2) You recognise these words, I
suppose, as quoted from your own letter; and why should not I also use
them? Why should they be yours any more than mine, seeing that, inasmuch as
they are true, they proceed from communion with the same head? And in so
far as they contain something that has been specially given to you, I have
so loved them the more on that account, that they have taken possession of
the way leading through my breast, and would suffer no words to pass from
my heart to my tongue until they went first, with the priority which is due
to them as yours. My brother and sister, holy and beloved in God, members
of the same body with us, who could doubt that we are animated by one
spirit, except those who are strangers to that affection by which we are
bound to each other ?

   4. Yet I am curious to know whether you bear with more patience and
ease than I do this bodily separation. If it be so, I do not, I confess,
take any pleasure in your fortitude in this respect, unless perhaps because
of its reasonableness, seeing that I confess myself much less worthy of
your affectionate longing than you are of mine. At all events, if I found
in myself a power of bearing your absence patiently, this would displease
me, because it would make me relax my efforts to see you; and what could be
more absurd than to be made indolent by power of endurance? But I beg to
acquaint your Charity with the ecclesiastical duties by which I am kept at
home, inasmuch as the blessed father Valerius (who with me salutes you, and
thirsts for you with a vehemence of which you will hear from our brethren),
not content with having me as his presbyter, has insisted upon adding the
greater burden of sharing the episcopate with him. This office I was afraid
to decline, being persuaded, through the love of Valerius and the
importunity of the people, that it was the Lord's will, and being precluded
from excusing myself on other grounds by some precedents of similar
appointments. The yoke of Christ, it is true, is in itself easy, and His
burden light ;(1) yet, through my perversity and infirmity, I may find the
yoke vexatious and the burden heavy in some degree; and I cannot tell how
much more easy and light my yoke and burden would become if I were
comforted by a visit from you, who live, as I am informed, more disengaged
and free from such cares.(2) I therefore feel warranted in asking, nay,
demanding and imploring you to condescend to come over into Africa, which
is more oppressed with thirst for men such as you are than even by the
well-known aridity of her soil.(3)

   5. God knoweth that I long for your visiting this country, not merely
to gratify my own desire, nor merely on account of those who through me, or
by public report, have heard of your pious resolution;(4) I long for it for
the sake of others also who either have not heard, or, hearing, have not
believed the fame of your piety, but who might be constrained to love
excellence of which they could then be no longer in ignorance or doubt. For
although the perseverance and purity of your compassionate benevolence is
good, more is required of you; namely, "Let your light so shine before men,
that they may behold your good works, and may glorify your Father which is
in heaven."(5) The fishermen of Galilee found pleasure not only in leaving
their ships and their nets at the Lord's command, but also in declaring
that they had left all and followed Him.(6) And truly he despises all who
despises not only all that he was able, but also all that he was desirous
to possess. What may have .been desired is seen only by the eyes of God;
what was actually possessed is seen also by the eyes of men. Moreover, when
things trivial and earthly are loved by us, we are somehow more firmly
wedded to what we have than to what we desire to have. For whence was it
that he who sought from the Lord counsel as to the way of eternal life,
went away sorrowful upon hearing that, if he would be perfect, he must sell
all, and distribute to the poor, and have treasure in heaven, unless
because, as the Gospel tells us, he had great possessions? (7) For it is
one thing to forbear from appropriating what is wanting to us; it is
another thing to rend away that which has become a part of ourselves: the
former action is like declining food, the latter is like cutting off a
limb. How great and how full of wonder is the joy with which Christian
charity beholds in our day a sacrifice cheerfully made in obedience to the
Gospel of Christ, which that rich man grieved and refused to make at the
bidding of Christ Himself!

   6. Although language fails to express that which my heart has conceived
and labours to utter, nevertheless, since you perceive with your
discernment and piety that the glory of this is not yours, that is to say,
not of man, but the glory of the Lord in you (for you yourselves are most
carefully on your guard against your Adversary, and most devoutly strive to
be found as learners of Christ, meek and lowly in heart; and, indeed, it
were better with humility to retain than with pride to renounce this
world's wealth); -- since, I say, you are aware that the glory here is not
yours, but the Lord's, you see how weak and inadequate are the things which
I have spoken. For I have been speaking of the praises of Christ, a theme
transcending the tongue of angels. We long to see this glory of Christ
brought near to the eyes of our people; that in you, united in the bonds of
wedlock, there may be given to both sexes an example of the way in which
pride must be trodden under foot, and perfection hopefully pursued. I know
not any way in which you could give greater proof of your benevolence, than
in resolving to be not less willing to permit your worth to be seen, than
you are zealous to acquire and retain it.

   7. I recommend to your kindness and charity this boy Vetustinus, whose
case might draw forth the sympathy even of those who are not religious: the
causes of his affliction and of his leaving his country you will hear from
his own lips. As to his pious resolution -- his promise, namely, to devote
himself to the service of God -- it will be more decisively known after
some time has elapsed, when his strength has been confirmed, and his
present fear is removed. Perceiving the warmth of your love for me, and
encouraged thereby to believe that you will not grudge the labour of
reading what I have written, I send to your Holiness and Charity three
books: would that the size of the volumes were an index of the completeness
of the discussion of so great a subject; for the question of free-will is
handled in them! I know that these books, or at least some of them, are not
in the possession of our brother Romanianus; but almost everything which I
have been able for the benefit of any readers to write is, as I have
intimated, accessible to your perusal through him, because of your love to
me, although I did not charge him to carry them to you. For he already had
them all, and was carrying them with him: moreover, it was by him that my
answer to your first letter was sent. I suppose that your Holiness has
already discovered, by that spiritual sagacity which the Lord has given
you, how much that man bears in his soul of what is good, and how far he
still comes short through infirmity. In the letter sent through him you
have, as I trust, read with what anxiety I commended himself and his son to
your sympathy and love, as well as how close is the bond by which they are
united to me. May the Lord build them up by. your means! This must be asked
from Him rather than from you, for I know how much it is already your
desire.

   8. I have heard from the brethren that you are writing a treatise
against the Pagans: if we have any claim on your heart, send it at once to
us to read. For your heart is such an oracle of divine truth, that we
expect from it answers which shall satisfactorily and clearly decide the
most prolix debates. I understand that your Holiness has the books of the
most blessed father(1) Ambrose, of which I long greatly to see those which,
with much care and at great length, he has written against some most
ignorant and pretentious men, who affirm that our Lord was instructed by
the writings of Plato.(2)

   9. Our most blessed brother Severus, formerly of our community, now
president(3) of the church in Milevis, and well known by the brethren in
that city, joins me in respectful salutation to your Holiness. The brethren
also who are with me serving the Lord salute you as warmly as they long to
see you: they long for you as much as they love you; and they love you as
your eminent goodness merits. The loaf which we send you will become more
rich as a blessing through the love with which your kindness receives it.
May the Lord keep you for ever from this generation,(4) my brother and
sister most beloved and sincere, truly benevolent, and most eminently
endowed with abundant grace from the Lord.

LETTER XXXII.

This letter from Paulinus to Romanianus and Licentius expresses the
satisfaction with which he heard of the promotion of Augustin to the
episcopate, and conveys both in prose and in verse excellent counsels to
Licentius: it is one which in this selection may without loss be omitted.

LETTER XXXIII. (A.D. 396.)

TO PROCULEIANUS, MY LORD, HONOURABLE AND MOST BELOVED, AUGUSTIN SENDS
GREETING.

   1. The titles prefixed to this letter I need not defend or explain at
any length to you, though they may give offence to the vain prejudices of
ignorant men. For I rightly address you as lord, seeing that we are both
seeking to deliver each other from error, although to some it may seem
uncertain which of us is in error before the matter has been fully debated;
and therefore we are mutually serving one another, if we sincerely labour
that we may both be delivered from the perversity of discord. That I labour
to do this with a sincere heart, and with the fear and trembling of
Christian humility, is not perhaps to most men manifest, but is seen by Him
to whom all hearts are open. What I without hesitation esteem honourable in
you, you readily perceive. For I do not esteem worthy of any honour the
error of schism, from which I desire to have all men delivered, so far as
is within my power; but yourself I do not for a moment hesitate to regard
as worthy of honour, chiefly because you are knit to me in the bonds of a
common humanity, and because there are conspicuous in you some indications
of a more gentle disposition, by which I am encouraged to hope that you may
readily embrace the truth when it has been demonstrated to you. As for my
love to you, I owe not less than He commanded who so loved us as to bear
the shame of the cross for our sakes.

   2. Be not, however, surprised that I have so long forborne from
addressing your Benevolence; for I did not think that your views were such
as were with great joy declared to me by brother Evodius, whose testimony I
cannot but believe. For he tells me that, when you met accidentally :at the
same house, and conversation began between you concerning our hope, that is
to say, the inheritance of Christ, you were kindly pleased to say that you
were willing to have a conference with me in the presence of good men. I am
truly glad that you have condescended to make this proposal: and I can in
no wise forego so important an opportunity, given by your kindness, of
using whatever strength the Lord may be pleased to give me in considering
and debating with you what has been the cause, or source, or reason of a
division so lamentable and deplorable in that Church of Christ to which He
said: "Peace I give you, my peace I leave unto you."(1)

   3. I heard from the brother aforesaid that you had complained of his
having said something in answer to you in an insulting manner; but, I pray
you, do not regard it as an insult, for I am sure it did not proceed from
an overbearing spirit, as I know my brother well. But if, in disputing in
defence of his own faith and the Church's love, he spoke perchance with a
degree of warmth something which you regarded as wounding your dignity,
that deserves to be called, not contumacy, but boldness. For he desired to
debate and discuss the question, not to be merely submitting to you and
flattering you. For such flattery is the oil of the sinner, with which the
prophet does not desire to have his head anointed; for he saith: "The
righteous shall correct me in compassion, and rebuke me; but the oil of the
sinner shall not anoint my head."(2) For he prefers to be corrected by the
stem compassion of the righteous, rather than to be commended with the
soothing oil of flattery. Hence also the saying of the prophet: "They who
pronounce you happy cause you to err."(3) Therefore also it is commonly and
justly said of a man whom false compliments have made proud, "his head has
grown;"(4) for it has been increased by the oil of the sinner, that is, not
of one correcting with stern truth, hut of one commending with smooth
flattery. Do not, however, suppose me to mean by this, that I wish it to be
understood that you have been corrected by brother Evodius, as by a
righteous man; for I fear lest you should think that anything is spoken by
me also in an! insulting manner, against which I desire to the utmost of my
power to be on guard. But He: is righteous who hath said, "I am the
truth."(5) When, therefore, any true word has been uttered, though it may
be somewhat rudely, by the mouth of any man, we are corrected not by the
speaker, who may perhaps be not less a sinner than ourselves, but by the
truth itself, that is to say, by Christ who is righteous, lest the unction
of smooth but pernicious flattery, which is the oil of the sinner, should
anoint our head. Although, therefore, brother Evodius, through undue
excitement in defending the communion to which he belongs, may have said
something too vehemently through strong feeling, you ought to excuse him on
the ground of his age, and of the importance of the matter in his
estimation.

   4. I beseech you, however, to remember what you have been pleased to
promise; namely, to investigate amicably with me a matter of so great
importance, and so closely pertaining to the common salvation, in the
presence of such spectators as you may choose (provided only that our words
are not uttered so as to be lost, but are taken down with the pen; so that
we may conduct the discussion in a more calm and orderly manner, and
anything spoken by us which escapes the memory may be recalled by reading
the notes taken). Or, if you prefer it, we may discuss the matter without
the interference of any third party, by means of letters or conference and
reading, wherever you please, lest perchance some hearers, unwisely
zealous, should be more concerned with the expectation of a conflict
between us, than the thought of our mutual profit by the discussion. Let
the people, however, be afterwards informed through us of the debate, when
it is concluded; or, if you prefer to have the matter discussed by letters
exchanged, let these letters be read to the two congregations, in order
that they may yet come to be no longer divided, but one. In fact, I
willingly accede to whatever terms you wish, or prescribe, or prefer. And
as to the sentiments of my most blessed and venerable father Valerius, who
is at present from home, I undertake with fullest confidence that he will
hear of this with great joy; for I know how much he loves peace, and how
free he is from being influenced by any paltry regard for vain parade of
dignity.

   5. I ask you, what have we to do with the dissensions of a past
generation? Let it suffice that the wounds which the bitterness of proud
men inflicted on our members have remained until now; for we have, through
the lapse of time, ceased to feel the pain to remove which the physician's
help is usually sought. You see how great and miserable is the calamity by
which the peace of Christian homes and families is broken. Husbands and
wives, agreeing together at the family hearth, are divided at the altar of
Christ. By Him they pledge themselves to be at peace between themselves,
yet in Him they cannot be at peace. Children have the same home, but not
the same house of God, with their own parents. They desire to be secure of
the earthly inheritance of those with whom they wrangle concerning the
inheritance of Christ. Servants and masters divide their common Lord, who
took on Him the form of a servant that He might deliver all from bondage.
Your party honours us, and our party honours you. Your members appeal to us
by our episcopal insignia,(1) and our members show the same respect to you.
We receive the words of all, we desire to give offence to none. Why then,
finding cause of offence in none besides, do we find it in Christ, whose
members we rend asunder? When we may be serviceable to men that are
desirous of terminating through our help disputes concerning secular
affairs, they address us as saints and servants of God, in order that they
may have their questions as to property disposed of by us: let us at
length, unsolicited, take up a matter which concerns both our own salvation
and theirs. It is not about gold or silver, or land, or cattle, matters
concerning which we are daily saluted with lowly respect, in order that we
may bring disputes to a peaceful termination, -- but it is concerning our
Head Himself that this dissension, so unworthy and pernicious, exists
between us. However low they bow their heads who salute us in the hope that
we may make them agree together in regard to the things of this world, our
Head stooped from heaven even to the cross, and yet we do not agree
together in Him.

   6. I beg and beseech you, if there be in you that brotherly feeling for
which some give you credit, let your goodness be approved sincere, and not
feigned with a view to passing honours, by this, that your bowels of
compassion be moved, so that you consent to have this matter discussed;
joining with me in persevering prayer, and in peaceful discussion of every
point. Let not the respect paid by the unhappy people to our dignities be
found, in the judgment of God, aggravating our condemnation; rather let
them be recalled along with us, through our unfeigned love, from errors and
dissensions, and guided into the ways of truth and peace.

   My lord, honourable and most beloved, I pray that you may be blessed in
the sight of God.

LETTER XXXIV. (A.D. 396.)

TO EUSEBIUS, MY EXCELLENT LORD AND BROTHER, WORTHY OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. God, to whom the secrets of the heart man are open, knoweth that it
is because of my love for Christian peace that I am so deeply moved by the
profane deeds of those who basely and impiously persevere in dissenting
from it. He knoweth also that this feeling of mine is one tending towards
peace, and that my desire is, not that any one should against his will be
coerced into the Catholic communion, but that to all who are in error the
truth may be openly declared, and being by God's help clearly exhibited
through my ministry, may so commend itself as to make them embrace and
follow it.

   2. Passing many other things unnoticed, what could be more worthy of
detestation than what has just happened? A young man is reproved by his
bishop for frequently beating his mother like a madman, and not restraining
his impious hands from wounding her who bore him, even on those days on
which the sternness of law shows mercy to the most guilty criminals.(2) He
then threatens his mother that he would pass to the party of the Donatists,
and that he would kill her whom he is accustomed to beat with incredible
ferocity. He utters these threats, then passes over to the Donatists, and
is rebaptized while filled with wicked rage, and is arrayed in white
vestments while he is burning to shed his mother's blood. He is placed in a
prominent and conspicuous position within the railing in the church; and to
the eyes of sorrowful and indignant beholders, he who is purposing
matricide is exhibited as a regenerate man.

   3. I appeal to you, as a man of most mature judgment, can these things
find favour in your eyes? I do not believe this of you: I know your wisdom.
A mother is wounded by her son in the members of that body which bore and
nursed the ungrateful wretch; and when the Church, his spiritual mother,
interferes, she too is wounded in those sacraments by which, to the same
ungrateful son, she ministered life and nourishment. Do you not seem to
hear the young man gnashing his teeth in rage for a parent's blood, and
saying, "What shall I do to the Church which forbids my wounding my mother?
I have found out what to do: let the Church herself be wounded by such
blows as she can suffer; let that be done in me which may cause her members
pain. Let me go to those who know how to despise the grace with which she
gave me spiritual birth, and to mar the form which in her womb I received.
Let me vex both my natural and my spiritual mother with cruel tortures: let
the one who was the second to give me birth be the first to give me burial;
for her sorrow let me seek spiritual death, and for the other's death let
me prolong my natural life." Oh, Eusebius! I appeal to you as an honourable
man, what else may we expect than that now he shall feel himself, as a
Donatist, so armed as to have no fear in assailing that unhappy woman,
decrepit with age and helpless in her widowhood, from wounding whom he was
restrained while he remained a Catholic? For what else had he purposed in
his passionate heart when he said to his mother, "I will pass over to the
party of Donatus, and I will drink your blood?" Behold, arrayed in white
vestments, but with conscience crimson with blood, he has fulfilled his
threat in part; the other part remains, viz. that he drink his mother's
blood. If, therefore, these things find favour in your eyes, let him be
urged by those who are now his clergy and his sanctifiers to fulfil within
eight days the remaining portion of his vow.

   4. The Lord's right hand indeed is strong, so that He may keep back
this man's rage from that unhappy and desolate widow, and, by means known
unto His own wisdom, may deter him from his impious design; but could I do
otherwise than utter my feelings when my heart was pierced with such grief?
Shall they do such things, and am I to be commanded to hold my peace? When
He commands me by the mouth of the apostle saying that those who teach what
they ought not must be rebuked by the bishop,(1) shall I be silent through
dread of their displeasure? The Lord deliver me from such folly! As to my
desire for having such an impious crime recorded in our public registers,
it was desired by me chiefly for this end, that no one who may hear me
bewailing these proceedings, especially in other towns where it may be
expedient for me to do so, may think that I am inventing a falsehood, and
the rather, because in Hippo itself it is already affirmed that
Proculeianus did not issue the order which was in the official report
ascribed to him.

   5. In what more temperate way could we dispose of this important matter
than through the mediation of such a man as you, invested with most
illustrious rank, and possessing calmness as well as great prudence and
goodwill? I beg, therefore, as I have already done by our brethren, good
and honourable men, whom I sent to your Excellency, that you will
condescend to inquire whether it is the case that the presbyter Victor did
not receive from his bishop the order which the public official records
reported; or whether, since Victor himself has said otherwise, they have in
their records laid a thing falsely to his charge, though they belong to the
same communion with him. Or, if he consents to our calmly discussing the
whole question of our differences, in order that the error which is already
manifest may become yet more so, I willingly embrace the opportunity. For I
have heard that he proposed that without popular tumult, in the presence
only of ten esteemed and honourable men from each party, we should
investigate what is the truth in this matter according to the Scriptures.
As to another proposal which some have reported to me as made by him, that
I should rather go to Constantina,(2) because in that town his party was
more numerous; or that I should go to Milevis, because there, as they say,
they are soon to hold a council; -- these things are absurd, for my special
charge does not extend beyond the Church of Hippo. The whole importance of
this question to me, in the first place, is as it affects Proculeianus and
myself; and if, perchance, he thinks himself not a match for me, let him
implore the aid of any one whom he pleases as his colleague in the debate.
For in other towns we interfere with the affairs of the Church only so far
as is permitted or enjoined by our brethren bearing the same priestly
office with us, the bishops of these towns.

   6. And yet I cannot comprehend what there is in me, a novice, that
should make him, who calls himself a bishop of so many years' standing,
unwilling and afraid to enter into discussion with me. If it be my
acquaintance with liberal studies, which perhaps he did not pursue at all,
or at least not so much as I have done, what has this to do with the
question in debate, which is to be decided by the Holy Scriptures or by
ecclesiastical or public documents, with which he has for so many years
been conversant, that he ought to be more skilled in them than I am? Once
more, I have here my brother and colleague Samsucius, bishop of the Church
of Turris,(3) who has not learned any of those branches of culture of which
he is said to be afraid: let him attend in my place, and let the debate be
between them. I will ask him, and, as I trust in the name of Christ, he
will readily consent to take my place in this matter; and the Lord will, I
trust, give aid to him when contending for the truth: for although
unpolished in language, he is well instructed in the true faith. There is
therefore no reason for his referring me to others whom I do not know,
instead of letting us settle between ourselves that which concerns
ourselves. However, as I have said, I will not decline meeting them if he
himself asks their assistance.

LETTER XXXV. (A.D. 396.) (Another letter to Eusebius on the same subject.)

TO EUSEBIUS, MY EXCELLENT LORD AND BROTHER, WORTHY OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. I did not impose upon you, by importunate exhortation or entreaty in
spite of your reluctance, the duty, as you call it, of arbitrating between
bishops. Even if I had desired to move you to this, I might perhaps have
easily shown how competent you are to judge between us in a cause so clear
and simple; nay, I might show how you are already doing this, inasmuch as
you, who are afraid of the office of judge, do not hesitate to pronounce
sentence in favour of one of the parties before you have heard both. But of
this, as I have said, I do not meanwhile say anything. For I had asked
nothing else from your honourable good-nature, -- and I beseech you to be
pleased to remark it in this letter, if you did not in the former, -- than
that you should ask Proculeianus whether he himself said to his presbyter
Victor that which the public registers have by official report ascribed to
him, or whether those who were sent have written in the public registers
not what they heard from Victor, but a falsehood; and further, what his
opinion is as to our discussing the whole question between us. I think that
he is not constituted judge between parties, who is only requested by the
one to put a question to the other, and condescend to write what reply he
has received. This also I now again ask you not to refuse to do, because,
as I know by experiment, he does not wish to receive a letter from me,
otherwise I would not employ your Excellency's mediation. Since, therefore,
he does not wish this, what could I do less likely to give offence, than to
apply through you, so good a man and such a friend of his, for an answer
concerning a matter about which the burden of my responsibility forbids me
to hold my peace? Moreover, you say (because the son's beating of his
mother is disapproved by your sound judgment), "If Proculeianus had known
this, he would have debarred that man from communion with his party." I
answer in a sentence, "He knows it now, let him now debar him."

   2. Let me mention another thing. A man who was formerly a subdeacon of
the church at Spana, Primus by name, when, having been forbidden such
intercourse with nuns as contravened the laws of the Church,(1) he treated
with contempt the established and wise regulations, was deprived of his
clerical office, -- this man also, being provoked by the divinely warranted
discipline, went over to the other party, and was by them rebaptized. Two
nuns also, who were settled in the same lands of the Catholic Church with
him, either taken by him to the other party, or following him, were
likewise rebaptized: and now, among bands of Circumcelliones and troops of
homeless women, who have declined matrimony that they may avoid restraint,
he proudly boasts himself in excesses of detestable revelry, rejoicing that
he now has without hindrance the utmost freedom in that misconduct from
which in the Catholic Church he was restrained. Perhaps Proculeianus knows
nothing about this case either. Let it therefore through you, as a man of
grave and dispassionate spirit, be made known to him; and let him order
that man to be dismissed from his communion, who has chosen it for no other
reason than that he had, on account of insubordination and dissolute
habits, forfeited his clerical office in the Catholic Church.

   3. For my own part, if it please the Lord, I purpose to adhere to this
rule, that whoever, after being deposed among them by a sentence of
discipline, shall express a desire to pass over into the Catholic Church,
must be received on condition of submitting to give the same proofs of
penitence as those which, perhaps, they would have constrained him to give
if he had remained among them. But consider, I beseech you, how worthy of
abhorrence is their procedure in regard to those whom we check by
ecclesiastical censures for unholy living, persuading them first to come to
a second baptism, in order to their being qualified for which they declare
themselves to be pagans (and how much blood of martyrs has been poured out
rather than that such a declaration should proceed from the mouth of a
Christian!); and thereafter, as if renewed and sanctified, but in truth
more hardened in sin, to defy with the impiety of new madness, under the
guise of new grace, that discipline to which they could not submit. If,
however, I am wrong in attempting to obtain the correction of these abuses
through your benevolent interposition, let no one find fault with my
causing them to be made known to Proculeianus by the public registers, -- a
means of notification which in this Roman city cannot, I believe, be
refused to me. For, since the Lord commands us to speak and proclaim the
truth, and in teaching to rebuke what is wrong, and to labour in season and
out of season, as I can prove by the words of the Lord and of the
apostles,(2) let no man think that I am to be persuaded to be silent
concerning these things. If they meditate any bold measures of violence or
outrage, the Lord, who has subdued under His yoke all earthly kingdoms in
the bosom of His Church spread abroad through the whole world, will not
fail to defend her from wrong.

   4. The daughter of one of the cultivators of the property of the Church
here, who had been one of our catechumens, had been, against the will of
her parents, drawn away by the other party, and after being baptized among
them, had assumed the profession of a nun. Now her father wished to compel
her by severe treatment to return to the Catholic Church; but I was
unwilling that this woman, whose mind was so perverted, should be received
by us unless with her own will, and choosing, in the free exercise of
judgment, that which is better: and when the countryman began to attempt to
compel his daughter by blows to submit to his authority, I immediately
forbade his using any such means. Notwithstanding, after all, when I was
passing through the Spanian district, a presbyter of Proculeianus, standing
in a field belonging to an excellent Catholic woman, shouted after me with
a most insolent voice that I was a Traditor and a persecutor; and he hurled
the same reproach against that woman, belonging to our communion, on whose
property he was standing. But when I heard his words, I not only refrained
from pursuing the quarrel, but also held back the numerous company which
surrounded me. Yet if I say, Let us inquire and ascertain who are or have
been indeed Traditors and persecutors, they reply, "We will not debate, but
we will rebaptize. Leave us to prey upon your flocks with crafty cruelty,
like wolves; and if you are good shepherds, bear it in silence." For what
else has Proculeianus commanded but this, if indeed the order is justly
ascribed to him: "If thou art a Christian,". said he, "leave this to the
judgment of God; whatever we do, hold thou thy peace." The same presbyter,
moreover, dared to utter a threat against a countryman who is overseer of
one of the farms belonging to the Church.

   5. I pray you to inform Proculeianus of all these things. Let him
repress the madness of his clergy, which, honoured Eusebius, I have! felt
constrained to report to you. Be pleased to write to me, not your own
opinion concerning them all, lest you should think that the responsibility
of a judge is laid upon you by me, but the answer which they give to my
questions. May the mercy of God preserve you from harm, my excellent lord
and brother, most worthy of affection and esteem.

LETTER XXXVI. (A.D. 396.)

TO MY BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER CASULANUS, MOST BELOVED AND LONGED FOR,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. I know not how it was that I did not reply to your first
letter; but I know that my neglect was not owing to want of esteem for you.
For I take pleasure in your studies, and even in the words in which you
express your thoughts; and it is my desire as well as advice that you make
great attainments in your early years in the word of God, for the
edification of the Church. Having now received a second letter from you, in
which you plead for an answer on the most just and amiable Found of that
brotherly love in which we are one, I have resolved no longer to postpone
the gratification of the desire expressed by your love; and although in the
midst of most engrossing business, I address myself to discharge the debt
due to you.

   2. As to the question on which you wish my opinion, "whether it is
lawful to fast on the seventh day of the week,"(1) I answer, that if it
were wholly unlawful, neither Moses nor Elijah, nor our Lord Himself, would
have fasted for forty successive days. But by the same argument it is
proved that even on the Lord's day fasting is not unlawful. And yet, if any
one were to think that the Lord's day should be appointed a day of fasting,
in the same way as! the seventh day is observed by some, such a man would
be regarded, and not unjustly, as bringing a great cause of offence into
the Church. For in those things concerning which the divine Scriptures have
laid down no definite rule, the custom of the people of God, or the
practices instituted by their fathers, are to be held as the law of the
Church.(2) If we choose to fall into a debate about these things, and to
denounce one party merely because their custom differs from that of others,
the consequence must be an endless contention, in which the utmost care is
necessary lest the storm of conflict overcast with clouds the calmness of
brotherly love, while strength is spent in mere controversy which cannot
adduce on either side any decisive testimonies of truth. This danger the
author has not been careful to avoid, whose prolix dissertation you deemed
worth sending to me with your former letter, that I might answer his
arguments.

   CHAP. II. -- 3. I have not at my disposal sufficient leisure to enter
on the refutation of his opinions one by one: my time is demanded by other
and more important work. But if you devote a little more carefully to this
treatise of an anonymous Roman author,(3) the talents which by your letters
you prove yourself to possess, and which I greatly love in you as God's
gift, you will see that he has not hesitated to wound by his most injurious
language almost the whole Church of Christ, from the rising of the sun to
its going down. Nay, I may say not almost, but absolutely, the whole
Church. For he is found to have not even spared the Roman Christians, whose
custom he seems to himself to defend; but he is not aware how the force of
his invectives recoils upon them, for it has escaped his observation. For
when arguments to prove the obligation to fast on the seventh day of the
week fail him, he enters on a vehement blustering protest against the
excesses of banquets and drunken revelries, and the worst licence of
intoxication, as if there were no medium between fasting and rioting. Now
if this be admitted, what good can fasting on Saturday do to the Romans?
since on the other days on which they do not fast they must be presumed,
according to his reasoning, to be gluttonous, and given to excess in wine.
If, therefore, there is any difference between loading the heart with
surfeiting and drunkenness, which is always sinful, and relaxing the
strictness of fasting, with due regard to self-restraint and temperance on
the other, which is done on the Lord's day without censure from any
Christian, -- if, I say, there is a difference between these two things,
let him first mark the distinction between the repasts of saints and the
excessive eating and drinking of those whose god is their belly, lest he
charge the Romans themselves with belonging to the latter class on the days
on which they do not fast; and then let him inquire, not whether it is
lawful to indulge in drunkenness on the seventh day of the week, which is
not lawful on the Lord's day, but whether it is incumbent on us to fast on
the seventh day of the week, which we are not wont to do on the Lord's day.

   4. This question I would wish to see him investigate, and resolve in
such a manner as would not involve him in the guilt of openly speaking
against the whole Church diffused throughout the world, with the exception
of the Roman Christians, and hitherto a few of the Western communities. Is
it, I ask, to be endured among the entire Eastern Christian communities,
and many of those in the West, that this man should say of so many and so
eminent servants of Christ, who on the seventh ,day of the week refresh
themselves soberly and moderately with food, that they "are in the flesh,
and cannot please God;" and that of them it is written, "Let the wicked
depart from me, I will not know their way;" and that they make their belly
their god, that they prefer Jewish rites to those of the Church, and are
sons of the bondwoman; that they are governed not by the righteous law of
God, but by their own good pleasure, consulting their own appetites instead
of submitting to salutary restraint; also that they are carnal, and savour
of death, and other such charges, which if he had uttered against even one
servant of God, who would listen to him, who Would not be bound to turn
away from him? But now, when he assails with such reproachful and abusive
language the Church bearing fruit and increasing throughout the whole
world, and in almost all places observing no fast on the seventh day of the
week, I warn him, whoever he is, to beware. For in wishing to conceal from
me his name, you plainly showed your unwillingness that I should judge him.

   CHAP. III. -- 5. "The Son of man," he sap, "is Lord of the Sabbath, and
in that day it is by all means lawful to do good rather than do evil."(1)
If, therefore, we do evil when we break our fast, there is no Lord's day
upon which we live as we should. As to his admission that the apostles did
eat upon the seventh day of the week, and his remark upon this, that the
time for their fasting had not then come, because of the Lord's own words,
"The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and
then shall the children of the Bridegroom fast;" (2) since there is "a time
to rejoice, and a time to mourn," (3) he ought first to have observed, that
our Lord was speaking there of fasting in general, but not of fasting upon
the seventh day. Again, when he says that by fasting grief is signified,
and that by food joy is represented, why does he not reflect what it was
which God designed to signify by that which is written, "that He rested on
the seventh day from all His works," -- namely, that joy, and not sorrow,
was set forth in that rest? Unless, perchance, he intends to affirm that in
God's resting and hallowing of the Sabbath, joy was signified to the Jews,
but grief to the Christians. But God did not lay down a rule concerning
fasting or eating on the seventh day of the week, either at the time of His
hallowing that day because in it He rested from His works, or afterwards,
when He gave precepts to the Hebrew nation concerning the observance of
that day. The only thing enjoined on man there is, that he abstain from
doing work himself, or requiring it from his servants. And the people of
the former dispensation, accepting this rest as a shadow of things to come,
obeyed the command by such abstinence from work as we now see practised by
the Jews; not, as some suppose, through their being carnal, and
misunderstanding what the Christians tightly understand. Nor do we
understand this law better than the prophets, who, at the time when this
was still binding, observed such rest on the Sabbath as the Jews believe
ought to be observed to this day. Hence also it was that God commanded them
to stone to death a man who had gathered sticks on the Sabbath; (4) but we
nowhere read of any one being stoned, or deemed worthy of any punishment
whatever, for either fasting or eating on the Sabbath. Which of the two is
more in keeping with rest, and which with toil, let our author himself
decide, who has regarded joy as the portion of those who eat, and sorrow as
the portion of those who fast, or at least has understood that these things
were so regarded by the Lord, when, giving answer concerning fasting, He
said: "Can the children of the bride-chamber mourn as long as the
Bridegroom is with them?"(1)

   6. Moreover, as to his assertion, that the reason of the apostles
eating on the seventh day (a thing forbidden by the tradition of the
elders) was, that the time for their fasting on that day had not come; I
ask, if the time had not then come for the abolition of the Jewish rest
from work on that day? Did not the tradition of the elders prohibit fasting
on the one hand, and enjoin rest on the other? and.yet the disciples of
Christ, of whom we read that they did eat on the Sabbath, did on the same
day pluck the ears of corn, which was not then lawful, because forbidden by
the tradition of the elders. Let him therefore consider whether it might
not with more reason be said in reply to him, that the Lord desired to have
these two things, the plucking of the ears of corn and the taking of food,
done in the same day by His disciples, for this reason, that the former
action might confute those who would prohibit all work on the seventh day,
and the latter action confute those who would enjoin fasting on the seventh
day; since by the former action He taught that the rest from labour was
now, through the change in the dispensation, an act of superstition; and by
the latter He intimated His will, that under both dispensations the matter
of fasting or not was left to every man's choice. I do not say this by way
of argument in support of my view, but only to show how, in answer to him,
things much more forcible than what he has spoken might be advanced.

   CHAP. IV. -- 7. "How shall we," says our author, "escape sharing the
condemnation of the Pharisee, if we fast twice in the week?"(2) As if the
Pharisee had been condemned for fasting twice in the week, and not for
proudly vaunting himself above the publican. He might as well! say that
those also are condemned with that Pharisee, who give a tenth of all their
possessions to the poor, for he boasted of this among his other works;
whereas I would that it were done by many Christians, instead of a very
small number, as we find. Or let him say, that whosoever is not an unjust
man, or adulterer, or extortioner, must be condemned with that Pharisee,
because he boasted that he was none of these; but the man who could think
thus is, beyond question,, beside himself. Moreover, if these things which
the Pharisee mentioned as found in him, being admitted by all to be good in
themselves, are not to be retained with the haughty boastfulness which was
manifest in him, but are to be retained i with the lowly piety which was
not in him; by I the same rule, to fast twice in the week is in a man such
as the Pharisee unprofitable, but is in one who has humility and faith a
religious service. Moreover, after all, the Scripture does not say that the
Pharisee was condemned, but only that the publican was "justified rather
than the other."

   8. Again, when our author insists upon interpreting, in connection with
this matter, the words of the Lord, "Except your righteousness shall exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven,"(3) and thinks that we cannot fulfil this precept unless
we fast oftener than twice in the week, let him mark well that there are
seven days in the week. If, then, from these any one subtract two, not
fasting on the seventh day nor on the Lord's day, there remain five days in
which he may surpass the Pharisee, who fasts but twice in the week. For I
think that if any man fast three times in the week, he already surpasses
the Pharisee who fasted but twice. And if a fast is observed four times, or
even so often as five times, passing over only the seventh day and the
Lord's day without fasting, -- a practice observed by many through their
whole lifetime, especially by those who are settled in monasteries, -- by
this not the Pharisee alone is surpassed in the labour of fasting, but that
Christian also whose custom is to fast on the fourth, and sixth, and
seventh days, as the Roman community does to a large extent. And yet your
nameless metropolitan disputant calls such an one carnal, even though for
five successive days of the week, excepting the seventh and the Lord's day,
he so fast as to withhold all refection from the body; as if, forsooth,
food and drink on other days had nothing to do with the flesh, and condemns
him as making a god of his belly, as if it was only the seventh day's
repast which entered into the belly.

------------------------------------
We have no compunction in passing over about eight columns here of this
letter, in which Augustin exposes, with a tedious minuteness and with a
waste of rhetoric, other feeble and irrelevant puerilities of the Roman
author whose work Casulanus had submitted to his review. Instead of
accompanying him into the shallow places into which he was drawn while
pursuing such an insignificant foe, let us resume the translation at the
point at which Augustin gives his own opinion regarding the question
whether it is binding on Christians to fast on Saturday.
------------------------------------

   CHAP. XI. -- 25. As to the succeeding paragraphs with which he
concludes his treatise, they are, like some other things in it which I have
not thought worthy of notice, even more irrelevant to a discussion of the
question whether we should fast or eat on the seventh day of the week. But
I leave it to yourself, especially if you have found any help from what I
have already said, to observe and dispose of these. Having now to the best
of my ability, and as I think sufficiently, replied to the reasonings of
this author, if I be asked what is my own opinion in this matter, I answer,
after carefully pondering the question, that in the Gospels and Epistles,
and the entire collection of books for our instruction called the New
Testament, I see that fasting is enjoined. But I do not discover any rule
definitely laid down by the Lord or by the apostles as to days on which we
ought or ought not to fast. And by this I am persuaded that exemption from
fasting on the seventh day is more suitable, not indeed to obtain, but to
foreshadow, that eternal rest in which the true Sabbath is realized, and
which is obtained only by faith, and by that righteousness whereby the
daughter of the King is all glorious within.

   26. In this question, however, of fasting or not fasting on the seventh
day, nothing appears to me more safe and conducive to peace than the
apostle's rule: "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and
let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth:"(1) "for neither if we
eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse;"(2) our
fellowship with those among whom we live, and along with whom we live in
God, being preserved undisturbed by these things. For as it is true that,
in the words of the apostles, "it is evil for that man who eateth with
offence,"(3) it is equally true that it is evil for that man who fasteth
with offence. Let us not therefore be like those who, seeing John the
Baptist neither eating nor drinking, said, "He hath a devil;" but let us
equally avoid imitating those who said, when they saw Christ eating and
drinking, "Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans
and sinners."(4) After mentioning these sayings, the Lord subjoined a most
important truth in the words, "But Wisdom is justified of her children;"
and if you ask who these are, read what is written, "The sons of Wisdom are
the congregation of the righteous:"(5) they are they who, when the, eat, do
not despise others who do not eat; and when they eat not, do not judge
those who eat, but who do despise and judge those who, with offence, either
eat or abstain from eating.

   CHAP. XII. -- 27. AS to the seventh day of the week there is less
difficulty in acting on the rule above quoted, because both the Roman
Church and some other churches, though few, near to it or remote from it,
observe a fast on that day; but to fast on the Lord's day is a great
offence, especially since the rise of that detestable heresy of the
Manichaeans, so manifestly and grievously contradicting the Catholic faith
and the divine Scriptures: for the Manichaeans have prescribed to their
followers the obligation of fasting upon that day; whence it has resulted
that the fast upon the Lord's day is regarded with the greater abhorrence.
Unless, perchance, some one be able to continue an unbroken fast for more
than a week, so as to approach as nearly as may be to the fast of forty
days, as we have known some do; and we have even been assured by brethren
most worthy of credit, that one person did attain to the full period of
forty days. For as, in the time of the Old Testament fathers, Moses and
Elijah did not do anything against liberty of eating on the seventh day of
the week, when they fasted forty days; so the man who has been able to go
beyond seven days in fasting has not chosen the Lord's day as a day of
fasting, but has only come upon it in course among the days for which, so
far as he might be able, he had vowed to prolong his fast. If, however, a
continuous fast is to be concluded within a week, there is no day upon
which it may more suitably be concluded than the Lord's day; but if the
body is not refreshed until more than a week has elapsed, the Lord's day is
not in that case selected as a day of fasting, but is found occurring
within the number of days for which it had seemed good to the person to
make a vow.

   28. Be not moved by that which the Priscillianists(6) (a sect very like
the Manichaeans) are wont to quote as an argument from the Acts of the
Apostles, concerning what was done by the Apostle Paul in Troas. The
passage is as follows: "Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples
came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on
the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight."(7) Afterwards, when
he had come down from the supper chamber where they had been gathered
together, that he might restore the young man who, overpowered with sleep,
had fallen from the window and was taken up dead, the Scripture states
further concerning the apostle:" When he therefore was come up again, and
had broken bread, and eaten and talked a long while, even till break of
day, so he departed." (8) Far be it from us to accept this as affirming
that the apostles were accustomed to fast habitually on the Lord's day. For
the day now known as the Lord's day was then called the first day of the
week, as is more plainly seen in the Gospels; for the day of the Lord's
resurrection is called by Matthew mi'a sabba'twn, and by the other three
evangelists hh mi'a (tw^n) sabba'twn,(1) and it is well ascertained that
the same is the day which is now called the Lord's day. Either, therefore,
it was after the close of the seventh day that they had assembled,--namely,
in the beginning of the night which followed, and which belonged to the
Lord's day, or the first day of the week, -- and in this case the apostle,
before proceeding to break bread with them, as is done in the sacrament of
the body of Christ, continued his discourse until midnight, and also, after
celebrating the sacrament, continued still speaking again to those who were
assembled, being much pressed for time in order that he might set out at
dawn upon the Lord's day; or if it was on the first day of the week, at an
hour before sunset on the Lord's day, that they had assembled, the words of
the text, "Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow,"
themselves expressly state the reason for his prolonging! his discourse,--
namely, that he was about to! leave them, and wished to give them ample
instruction. The passage does not therefore prove that they habitually
fasted on the Lord's day, but only that it did not seem meet to the apostle
to interrupt, for the sake of taking refreshment, an important discourse,
which was listened to with the ardour of most lively interest by persons
whom he was about to leave, and whom, on account of his many other
journeyings, he visited but seldom, and perhaps on no other occasion than
this, especially because, as subsequent events prove, he was then leaving
them without expectation of seeing them again in this life. Nay, by this
instance, it is rather proved that such fasting on the Lord's day was not
customary, because the writer of the history, in order to prevent this
being thought, has taken care to state the reason why the discourse was so
prolonged, that we might know that in an emergency dinner is not to stand
in the way of more important work. But indeed the example of these most
eager listeners goes further; for by them all bodily refreshment, not
dinner only, but supper also, was disregarded when thirsting vehemently,
not for water, but for the word of truth; and considering that the fountain
was about to be removed from them, they drank in with unabated desire
whatever flowed from the apostle's lips.

   29. In that age, however, although fasting upon the Lord's day was not
usually practised, it was not so great an offence to the Church when, in
any similar emergency to that in which Paul was at Troas, men did not
attend to the refreshment of the body throughout the whole of the Lord's
day until midnight, or even until the dawn of the following morning. But
now, since heretics, and especially these most impious Manichaeans, have
begun not to observe an occasional fast upon the Lord's day, when
constrained by circumstances, but to prescribe such fasting as a duty
binding by sacred and solemn institution, and this practice of theirs has
become well known to Christian' communities; even were such an emergency
arising as that which the apostle experienced, I verily think that what he
then did should not now be done, lest the harm done by the offence given
should be greater than the good received from the words spoken. Whatever
necessity may arise, or good reason, compelling a Christian to fast on the
Lord's day, --as we find, e.g., in the Acts of the Apostles, that in peril
of shipwreck they fasted on board of the ship in which the apostle was for
fourteen days successively, within which the Lord's day came round
twice,(2) -- we ought to have no hesitation in believing that the Lord's
day is not to be placed among the days of voluntary fasting, except in the
case of one vowing to fast continuously for a period longer than a week.

   CHAP. XIII. -- 30. The reason why the Church prefers to appoint the
fourth and sixth days of the week for fasting, is found by considering the
gospel narrative. There we find that on the fourth day of the week(3) the
Jews took counsel to put the Lord to death. One day having intervened, --
on the evening of which, at the close, namely, of the day which we call the
fifth day of the week, the Lord ate the passover with His disciples, -- He
was thereafter betrayed on the night which belonged to the sixth day of the
week, the day (as is everywhere known) of His passion. This day, beginning
with the evening, was the first day of unleavened bread. The evangelist
Matthew, however, says that the fifth day of the week was the first of
unleavened bread, because in the evening following it the paschal supper
was to be observed, at which they began to eat the unleavened bread, and
the lamb offered in sacrifice. From which it is inferred that it was upon
the fourth day of the week that the Lord said, "You know that after two
days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be
crucified;"(4) and for this reason that day has been regarded as one
suitable for fasting, because, as the evangelist immediately adds: "Then
assembled together the chief priests and the scribes and the elders of the
people unto the palace of the high priest, who is called Caiaphas, and
consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty and kill Him."(5) After
the intermission of one day,-- the day, namely, of which the evangelist
writes:(1) "Now, on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, the
disciples came to Jesus, saying unto Him, Where wilt Thou that we prepare
for Thee to eat the passover? " -- the Lord suffered on the sixth day of
the week, as is admitted by all: wherefore the sixth day also is rightly
reckoned a day for fasting, as fasting is symbolical of humiliation; whence
it is said, "I humbled my soul with fasting."(2)

   31. The next day is the Jewish Sabbath, on which day Christ's body
rested in the grave, as in the original fashioning of the world God rested
on that day from all His works. Hence originated that variety in the robe
of His bride (3) which we are now considering: some, especially the Eastern
communities, preferring to take food on that day, that their action might
be emblematic of the divine rest; others, namely the Church of Rome, and
some churches in the West, preferring to fast on that day because of the
humiliation of the Lord in death. 'Once in the year, namely at Easter, all
Christians observe the seventh day of the week by fasting, in memory of the
mourning with which the disciples, as men bereaved, lamented the death of
the Lord (and this is done with the utmost devoutness by those who take
food on the seventh day throughout the rest of the year); thus providing a
symbolical representation of both events, -- of the disciples' sorrow on
one seventh day in the year, and of the blessing of repose on all the
others. There are two things which make the happiness of the just and the
end of all their misery to be confidently expected, viz. death and the
resurrection of the dead. In death is that rest of which the prophet
speaks: "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors
about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the
indignation be overpast." (4) In resurrection blessedness is consummated in
the whole man, both body and soul. Hence it came to be thought that both of
these things [death and resurrection] should be symbolized, not by the
hardship of fasting, but rather by the cheerfulness of refreshment with
food, excepting only the Easter Saturday, on which, as I have said, it had
been resolved to commemorate by a more protracted fast the mourning of the
disciples, as one of the events to be had in remembrance.

   CHAP. XIV.--32. Since, therefore (as I have said above), we do not find
in the Gospels or in the apostolical writings, belonging properly to the
revelation of the New Testament, that any law was laid down as to fasts to
be observed on particular days; and since this is consequently one of many
things, difficult to enumerate, which make up a variety in the robe of the
King's daughter,(5) that is to say, of the Church,-- I will tell you the
answer given to my questions on this subject by the venerable Ambrose
Bishop of Milan, by whom I was baptized. When my mother was with me in that
city, I, as being only a catechumen, felt no concern about these questions;
but it was to her a question causing anxiety, whether she ought, after the
custom of our own town, to fast on the Saturday, or, after the custom of
the Church of Milan, not to fast. To deliver her from perplexity, I put the
question to the man of God whom I have just named. He answered, "What else
can I recommend to others than what I do myself?" When I thought that by
this he intended simply to prescribe to us that we should take food on
Saturdays --for I knew this to be his own practice -- he, following me,
added these words: "When I am here I do not fast on Saturday; but when I am
at Rome I do: whatever church you may come to, conform to its custom, if
you would avoid either receiving or giving offence." This reply I reported
to my mother, and it satisfied her, so that she scrupled not to comply with
it; and I have myself followed the same rule. Since, however, it happens,
especially in Africa, that one church, or the churches within the same
district, may have some members who fast and others who do not fast on the
seventh day, it seems to me best to adopt in each congregation the custom
of those to whom authority in its government has been committed. Wherefore,
if you are quite willing to follow my advice, especially because in regard
to this matter I have spoken at greater length than was necessary, do not
in this resist your own bishop, but follow his practice without scruple or
debate.

LETTER XXXVII. (A.D. 397.)

TO SIMPLICIANUS,(6) MY LORD MOST BLESSED, AND MY FATHER MOST WORTHY OF
BEING CHERISHED WITH RESPECT AND SINCERE AFFECTION, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING
IN THE LORD.

   1. I received the letter which your Holiness kindly sent, -- a letter
full of occasions of much joy to me, because assuring me that you remember
me, that you love me as you used to do, and that you take great pleasure in
every one of the gifts which the Lord has in His compassion been pleased to
bestow on me. In reading that letter, I have eagerly welcomed the fatherly
affection which flows from your benignant heart towards me: and this I have
not found for the first time, as something short-lived and new, but long
ago proved and well known, my lord, most blessed, and most worthy of being
cherished with respect and sincere love.

   2. Whence comes so great a recompense for the literary labour given by
me to the writing of a few books as this, that your Excellency should
condescend to read them? Is it not that the Lord, to whom my soul is
devoted, has purposed thus to comfort me under my anxieties, and to lighten
the fear with which in such labour I cannot but be 'exercised, lest,
notwithstanding the evenness of the plain of truth, I stumble through want
either of knowledge or of caution? For when what I write meets your
approval, I know by whom it is approved, for I know who dwells in you; and
the Giver and Dispenser of all spiritual gifts designs by your approbation
to confirm my obedience to Him. For whatever in these writings of mine
merits your approbation is from God, who has by me as His instrument said,
"Let it be done," and it was done; and in your approval God has pronounced
that what was done is "good."(1)

   3. As for the questions which you have condescended to command me to
resolve, even if through the dulness of my mind I did not understand them,
I might through the assistance of your merits find an answer to them. This
only I ask, that on account of my weakness you intercede with God for me,
and that whatever writings of mine come into your sacred hands, whether on
the topics to which you have in a manner so kind and fatherly directed my
attention, or on any others, you will not only take pains to read them, but
also accept the charge of reviewing and correcting them; for I acknowledge
the mistakes which I myself have made, as readily as the gifts which God
has bestowed on me.

LETTER XXXVIII. (A.D. 397.)

TO HIS BROTHER PROFUTURUS AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   1. As for my spirit, I am well, through the Lord's good pleasure, and
the strength which He condescends to impart; but as for my body, I am
confined to bed. I can neither walk, nor stand, nor sit, because of the
pain and swelling of a boil or tumour.(2) But even in such a case, since
this is the will of the Lord, what else can I say than that I am well? For
if we do not wish that which He is pleased to do, we ought rather to take
blame to ourselves than to think that He could err in anything which He
either does or suffers to be done. All this you know well; but what shall I
more willingly say to you than the things which I say to myself, seeing
that you are to me a second self? I commend therefore both my days and my
nights to your pious intercessions. Pray for me, that I may not waste my
days through want of self-control, and that I may bear my nights with
patience: pray that, though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, the
Lord may so be with me that I shall fear no evil.

   2. You have heard, doubtless, of the death of the aged Megalius,(3) for
it is now twenty-four days since he put off this mortal body. I wish to
know, if possible, whether you have seen, as you proposed, his successor in
the primacy. We are not delivered from offences, but it is equally true
that we are not deprived of our refuge; our griefs do not cease, but our
consolations are equally abiding. And well do you know, my excellent
brother, how, in the midst of such offences, we must watch lest hatred of
any one gain a hold upon the heart, and so not only hinder us from praying
to God with the door of our chamber closed,(4) but also shut the door
against God Himself; for hatred of another insidiously creeps upon us,
while no one who is angry considers his anger to be unjust. For anger
habitually cherished against any one becomes hatred, since the sweetness
which is mingled with what appears to be righteous anger makes us detain it
longer than we ought in the vessel, until the whole is soured, and the
vessel itself is spoiled. Wherefore it is much better for us to forbear
from anger, even when one has given us just occasion for it, than,
beginning with what seems just anger against any one, to fall, through this
occult tendency of passion, into hating him. We are wont to say that, in
entertaining strangers, it is much better to bear the inconvenience of
receiving a bad man than to run the risk of having a good man shut out,
through our caution test any bad man be admitted; but in the passions of
the soul the opposite rule holds true. For it is incomparably more for our
soul's welfare to shut the recesses of the heart against anger, even when
it knocks with a just claim for admission, than to admit that which it will
be most difficult to expel, and which will rapidly grow from a mere sapling
to a strong tree. Anger dares to increase with boldness more suddenly than
men suppose, for it does not blush in the dark, when the sun has gone down
upon it.(1) You will understand with how great care and anxiety I write
these things, if you consider the things which lately on a Certain journey
you said to me.

   3. I salute my brother Severus, and those who are with him. I would
perhaps write to them also, if the limited time before the departure of the
bearer permitted me. I beseech you also to assist me in persuading our
brother Victor (to whom I desire through your Holiness to express my thanks
for his informing me of his setting out to Constantina) not to refuse to
return by way of Calama, on account of a business known to him, in which I
have to bear a very heavy burden in the importunate urgency of the eider
Nectarius concerning it; he gave me his promise to this effect. Farewell!

LETTER XXXIX. (A.V. 397.)

TO MY LORD AUGUSTIN, A FATHER(2) TRULY HOLY AND MOST BLESSED, JEROME SENDS
GREETING IN CHRIST.

   CHAP. I. -- I. Last year I sent by the hand of our brother, the
subdeacon Asterius, a letter conveying to your Excellency a salutation due
to you, and readily rendered by me; and I think that my letter was
delivered to you. I now write again, by my holy brother the deacon
Praesidius, begging you in the first place not to forget me, and in the
second place to receive the bearer of this letter, whom I commend to you
with the request that you recognise him as one very near and dear to me,
and that you encourage and help him in whatever way his circumstances may
demand; not that he is in need of anything (for Christ has amply endowed
him), but that he is most eagerly desiring the friendship of good men, and
thinks that in securing: this he obtains the most valuable blessing. His
design in travelling to the West you may learn from his own lips.

   CHAP. II. -- 2. As for us, established here in our monastery, we feel
the shock of waves on every side, and are burdened with the cares of our
lot as pilgrims. But we believe in Him who hath said, "Be of good cheer, I
have overcome the world," (3) and are confident that by His grace and
guidance we shall prevail against our adversary the devil.

   I beseech you to give my respectful salutation to the holy and
venerable brother, our father Alypius. The brethren who, with me, devote
themselves to serve the Lord in this monastery, salute you warmly. May
Christ our Almighty God guard you from harm, and keep you mindful of me, my
lord and father truly holy and venerable.

LETTER XL. (A.D. 397.)

TO MY LORD MUCH BELOVED, AND BROTHER WORTHY OF BEING HONOURED AND EMBRACED
WITH THE MOST SINCERE DEVOTION OF CHARITY, MY FELLOW-PRESBYTER JEROME,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   CHAP. I. -- I. I thank you that, instead of a mere formal salutation,
you wrote me a letter, though it was much shorter than I would desire to
have from you; since nothing that comes from you is tedious, however much
time it may demand. Wherefore, although I am beset with great anxieties
about the affairs of others, and that, too, in regard to secular matters, I
would find it difficult to pardon the brevity of your letter, were it not
that I consider that it was written in reply to a yet shorter letter of my
own. Address yourself, therefore, I entreat you, to that exchange of
letters by which we may have fellowship, and may not permit the distance
which separates us to keep us wholly apart from each other; though we are
in the Lord bound together by the unity of the Spirit, even when our pens
rest and we are silent. The books in which you have laboured to bring
treasures from the Lord's storehouse give me almost a complete knowledge of
you. For if I may not say, "I know you," because I have not seen your face,
it may with equal truth be said that you do not know yourself, for you
cannot see our own face. If, however, it is this alone which constitutes
your acquaintance with yourself, that you know your own mind, we also have
no small knowledge of it through your writings, in studying which we bless
God that to yourself, to us, to all who read your works, He has given you
as you are.

   CHAP. II. -- 2. It is not long since, among other things, a certain
book of yours came into my hands, the name of which I do not yet know, for
the manuscript itself had not the title written, as is customary, on the
first page. The brother with whom it was found said that its title is
Epitaphium, -- a name which we might believe you to have approved, if we
found in the work a notice of the lives or writings of those only who are
deceased. Inasmuch, however, as mention is there made of the works of some
who were at the time when it was written, or are even now, alive, we wonder
why you either gave this title to it, or permitted others to believe that
you had done so. The book itself has our complete approval as a useful
work.

   CHAP. III.--3. In your exposition of the Epistle of Paul to the
Galatians I have found one thing which causes me much concern. For if it be
the case that statements untrue in themselves, but made, as it were, out of
a sense of duty in the interest of religion,(1) have been admitted into the
Holy Scriptures, what authority will be left to them? If this be conceded,
what sentence can be produced from these Scriptures, by the weight of which
the wicked obstinacy of error can be broken down? For as soon as you have
produced it, if it be disliked by him who contends with you, he will reply
that, in the passage alleged, the writer was uttering a falsehood under the
pressure of some honourable sense of duty. And where will any one find this
way of escape impossible, if it be possible for men to say and believe
that, after introducing his narrative with these words, "The things which I
write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not,"(2) the apostle lied when he
said of Peter and Barnabas," I saw that they walked not uprightly,
according to the truth of the gospel "? (3) For if they did walk uprightly,
Paul wrote what was false; and if he wrote what was false here, when did he
say what was true? Shall he be supposed to say what is true when his
teaching corresponds with the predilection, of his reader, and shall
everything which runs' counter to the impressions of the reader be!
reckoned a falsehood uttered by him under a sense of duty? It will be
impossible to prevent ,men from finding reasons for thinking that he not
only might have uttered a falsehood, but was bound to do so, if we admit
this canon of interpretation. There is no need for many words in pursuing
this argument, especially in writing to you, for whose wisdom and prudence
enough has already been said. I would by no means be so arrogant as to
attempt to enrich by my small coppers(4) your mind, which by the divine
gift is golden; and none is more able than yourself to revise and correct
that work to which I have referred.

   CHAP. IV. --4. You do not require me to teach you in what sense the
apostle says, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the
Jews,"(5) and other such things in the same passage, which are to be
ascribed to the compassion of pitying love, not the artifices of
intentional deceit. For he that ministers to the sick becomes as if he were
sick himself; not, indeed, falsely pretending to be under the fever, but
considering, with the mind of one truly sympathizing, what he would wish
done for himself if he were in the sick man's place. Paul was indeed a Jew;
and when he had become a Christian, he had not abandoned those Jewish
sacraments which that people had received in the right way, and for a
certain appointed time. Therefore, even although he was an apostle of
Christ, he took observing these; but with this view, that he might show
that they were in no wise hurtful to those who, even after they had
believed in Christ, desired to retain the ceremonies which by the law they
had learned from their fathers; provided only that they did riot build on
these their hope of salvation, since the salvation which was foreshadowed
in these has now been brought in by the Lord Jesus. For the same reason, he
judged that these ceremonies should by no means be made binding on the
Gentile converts, because, by imposing a heavy and superfluous burden, they
might turn aside from the faith those who were unaccustomed to them.

   5. The thing, therefore, which he rebuked in Peter was not his
observing the customs handed down from his fathers--which Peter, if he
wished, might do without being chargeable with deceit or inconsistency,
for, though now superfluous, these customs were not hurtful to one who bad
been accustomed to them -- but his compelling the Gentiles to observe
Jewish ceremonies? which he could not do otherwise than by so acting in
regard to them as if their observance was, even after the Lord's coming,
still necessary to salvation, against which truth protested through the
apostolic office of Paul. Nor was the Apostle Peter ignorant of this, but
he did it through fear of those who were of the circumcision. Manifestly,
therefore, Peter was truly corrected, and Paul has given a true narrative
of the event, unless, by the admission of a falsehood here, the authority
of the Holy Scriptures given for the faith of all coming generations is to
be made wholly uncertain and wavering. For it is neither possible nor
suitable to state within the compass of a letter how great and how
unutterably evil must be the consequences of such a concession. It might,
however, be shown seasonably, and with less hazard, if we were conversing
together.

   6. Paul had forsaken everything peculiar to the Jews that was evil,
especially this: "That, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going
about to establish their own righteousness, they had not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God." (6) In this, moreover, he
differed from them: that after the passion and resurrection of Christ, in
whom had been given and made manifest the mystery of grace, according to
the order of Melchizedek, they still considered it binding on them to
celebrate, not out of mere reverence for old customs, but as necessary to
salvation, the sacraments of the old economy, which were indeed at one time
necessary, else had it been unprofitable and vain for the Maccabees to
suffer martyrdom, as they did, for their adherence to them.(1) Lastly, in
this also Paul differed from the Jews: that they persecuted the Christian
preachers of grace as enemies of the law. These and all similar errors and
sins he declares that he "counted but loss and dung that he might win
Christ;" (2) but he does not, in so saying, disparage the ceremonies of the
Jewish law, if only they were observed after the custom of their fathers,
in the way in which he himself observed them, without regarding them as
necessary to salvation, and not in the way in which the Jews affirmed that
they must be observed, nor in the exercise of deceptive dissimulation such
as he had rebuked in Peter. For if Paul observed these sacraments in order,
by pretending to be a Jew, to gain the Jews, why did he not also take part
with the Gentiles in heathen sacrifices, when to them that were without law
he became as without law, that he might gain them also? The explanation is
found in this, that he took part in the Jewish sacrifices, as being himself
by birth a Jew; and that when he said all this which I have quoted, he
meant, not that he pretended to be what he was not, but that he felt with
true compassion that he must bring such help to them as would be needful
for himself if he were involved in their error. Herein he exercised not the
subtlety of a deceiver, but the sympathy of a compassionate deliverer. In
the same passage the apostle has stated the principle more generally: "To
the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things
to all men, that I might by all means save some,"(3)--the latter clause of
which guides us to understand the former as meaning that he showed himself
one who pitied the weakness of another as much as if it had been his own.
For when he said, "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" (4) he did not wish it
to be supposed that he pretended to suffer the infirmity of another, but
rather that he showed it by sympathy.

   7. Wherefore I beseech you, apply to the correction and emendation of
that book a frank and truly Christian severity, and chant what the Greeks
call palinw/(i)dia. For incomparably more lovely than the Grecian Helen is
Christian truth: In her defence, our martyrs have fought against Sodom with
more courage than the heroes of Greece displayed against Troy for Helen's
sake. I do not say this in order that you may recover the faculty of
spiritual sight,(5) -- far be it from me to say that you have lost it! --
but that, having eyes both clear and quick in discernment, you may turn
them towards that from which, in unaccountable dissimulation, you have
turned them away, refusing to see the calamitous consequences which would
follow on our once admitting that a writer of the divine books could in any
part of his work honourably and piously utter a falsehood.

   CHAP. V.-- 8. I had written some time ago a letter to you on this
subject,(6) which was not delivered to you, because the bearer to whom it
was entrusted did not finish his journey to you. From it I may quote a
thought which occurred to me while I was dictating it, and which I ought
not to omit in this letter, in order that, if your opinion is still
different from mine, and is better, you may readily forgive the anxiety
which has moved me to write. It is this: If your opinion is different, and
is according to truth (for only in that case can it be better than mine),
you will grant that "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." (7)

   9. As to the reply which you were pleased to give me concerning Origen,
I did not need to be told that we should, not only in ecclesiastical
writers, but in all others, approve and commend what we find right and
true, but reject and condemn what we find false and mischievous. What I
craved from your wisdom and learning (and I still crave it), was that you
should acquaint us definitely with the points in which that remarkable man
is proved to have departed from the belief of the truth. Moreover, in that
book in which you have mentioned all the ecclesiastical writers whom you
could remember, and their works, it would, I think, be a more convenient
arrangement if, after naming those whom you know to be heretics (since you
have chosen not to pass them without notice), you would add in what respect
their doctrine is to be avoided. Some of these heretics also you have
omitted, and I would fain know on what grounds. If, however, perchance it
has been from a desire not to enlarge that volume unduly that you refrained
from adding to a notice of heretics, the statement of the things in which
the Catholic Church has authoritatively condemned them, I beg you not to
grudge bestowing on this subject, to which with humility and brotherly love
I direct your attention, a portion of that literary labour by which
already, by the grace of the Lord our God, you have in no small measure
stimulated and assisted the saints in the study of the Latin tongue, and
publish in one small book (if your other occupations permit you) a digest
of the perverse dogmas of all the heretics who up to this time have,
through arrogance, or ignorance, or self-will, attempted to subvert the
simplicity of the Christian faith; a work most necessary for the
information of those who are prevented, either by lack of leisure or by
their not knowing the Greek language, from reading and understanding so
many things. I would urge my request at greater length, were it not that
this is commonly a sign of misgivings as to the benevolence of the party
from whom a favour is sought. Meanwhile I cordially recommend to your
goodwill in Christ our brother Paulus, to whose high standing in these
regions I bear before God willing testimony.

LETTER XLI. (A.D. 397.)

TO FATHER AURELIUS, OUR LORD MOST BLESSED AND WORTHY OF VENERATION, OUR
BROTHER MOST SINCERELY BELOVED, AND OUR PARTNER IN I THE SACERDOTAL OFFICE,
ALYPIUS AND AUGUSTIN SEND GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. "Our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing,"(1)
by your letter informing us that, by the help of that God whose inspiration
guided you, you have carried into effect your pious purpose concerning all
our brethren in orders, and especially concerning the regular delivering of
a sermon to the people in your presence by the presbyters, through whose
tongues thus engaged your love sounds louder in the hearts than their voice
does in the( ears of men. Thanks be unto God! Is there anything better for
us to have in our heart, or utter with our lips, or record with our pen,
than this? Thanks be unto God! No other phrase is more easily spoken, and
nothing more pleasant in sound, profound in significance, and profitable in
practice, than this. Thanks be unto God, who has endowed you with a heart
so true to the interests of your sons, and who has brought to light what
you had latent in the inner soul, beyond the reach of human eye, giving you
not only the will to do good, but the means of realizing your desires. So
be it, certainly so be it! let these works shine before men, that they may
see them, and rejoice and glorify your Father in heaven.(2) In such things
delight yourself in the Lord; and may your prayers for these presbyters be
graciously heard on their behalf by Him whose voice you do not consider it
beneath you to hear when He speaks by them! May they go on, and walk, yea,
run in the way of the Lord! May the small and the great be blessed
together, being made glad by those who 'say unto them, "Let us go into the
house of the Lord!"(3) Let the stronger lead; let the weaker imitate their
example, being followers of them, as they are of Christ. May we all be as
ants pursuing eagerly the path of holy industry, as bees labouring amidst
the fragrance of holy duty; and may fruit be brought forth in patience by
the saving grace of stedfastness unto the end! May the Lord "not suffer us
to be tempted above that we are able, but with the temptation may He make a
way to escape, that we may be able to bear it"!(4)

   2. Pray for us: we value your prayers as worthy to be heard, since you
go to God with so great an offering of unfeigned love, and of praise
brought to Him by your works. Pray that in us also these works may shine,
for He to whom you pray knows with what fulness of joy we behold them
shining in you. Such are our desires; such are the abounding comforts which
in the multitude of our thoughts within us delight our souls.(5) It is so
now because such is the promise of God; and as He hath promised, so shall
it be in the time to come. We beseech you, by Him who hath blessed you, and
has by you bestowed this blessing on the people whom you serve, to order
any of the presbyters' sermons which you please to be transcribed, and
after revisal sent to us. For I on my part am not neglecting what you
required of me; and as I have written often before, I am still longing to
know what you think of Tychonius' seven Rules or Keys.(6)

   We warmly commend to you our brother Hilarinus, leading physician and
magistrate of Hippo. As to our brother Romanus, we know how actively you
are exerting yourself on his behalf, and that we need ask nothing but that
God may prosper your endeavours.

LETTER XLII. (A.D. 397.)

TO PAULINUS AND THERASIA, MY BROTHER AND SISTER IN CHRIST, WORTHY OF
RESPECT AND PRAISE, MOST EMINENT FOR PIETY, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE
LORD.

   Could this have been hoped or expected by us, that now by our brother
Severus we should have to claim the answer which your love has not yet
written to us, so long and so impatiently desiring your reply? Why have we
been doomed through two summers (and these in the parched land of Africa)
to bear this thirst? What more can I say? O generous man, who art daily
giving away what is your own, be just, and pay what is a debt to us.
Perhaps the reason of your long delay is your desire to finish and transmit
to me that book against heathen worship, in writing which I had heard that
you were engaged, and for which I had expressed a very earnest desire. O
that you might by so rich a feast satisfy the hunger which has been
sharpened by fasting (so far as your pen was concerned) for more than a
year! but if this be not yet prepared, our complaints will not cease unless
meanwhile you prevent us from being famished before that is finished.
Salute our brethren, especially Romanus and Agilis.(1) From this place all
who are with me salute you, and they would be less provoked by your delay
in writing if they loved you less than they do.

LETTER XLIII. (A.D. 397.)

TO GLORIUS, ELEUSIUS, THE TWO FELIXES, GRAMMATICUS, AND ALL OTHERS TO WHOM
THIS MAY BE ACCEPTABLE, MY LORDS MOST BELOVED AND WORTHY OF PRAISE,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   CHAP. I. -- I. The Apostle Paul hath said: "A man that is an heretic
after the first and second admonition reject, knowing that he that is such
is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself."(2) But though the
doctrine which men hold be false and perverse, if they do not maintain it
with passionate obstinacy, especially when they have not devised it by the
rashness of their own presumption, but have accepted it from parents who
had been misguided and had fallen into error, and if they are with anxiety
seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found
it, such men are not to be counted heretics. Were it not that I believe you
to be such, perhaps I would not write to you. And yet even in the case of a
heretic, however puffed up with odious conceit, and insane through the
obstinacy of his wicked resistance to truth, although we warn others to
avoid him, so that he may not deceive the weak and inexperienced, we do not
refuse to strive by every means in our power for his correction. On this
ground I wrote even to some of the chief of the Donatists, not indeed
letters of communion, which on account of their perversity they have long
ceased to receive from the undivided Catholic Church which is spread
throughout the world, but letters of a private kind, such as we may send
even to pagans. These letters, however, though they have sometimes read
them, they have not been willing, or perhaps it is more probable, have not
been able, to answer. In these cases, it seems to me that I have discharged
the obligation laid on me by that love which the Holy Spirit teaches us to
render, not only to our own, but to all, saying by the apostle: "The Lord
make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all
men."(3) In another place we are warned that those who are of a different
opinion from us must be corrected with meekness, "if God peradventure will
give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may
recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by
him at his will." (4)

   2. I have said these things by way of preface, lest any one should
think, because you are not of our communion, that I have been influenced by
forwardness rather than consideration in sending this letter, and in
desiring thus to confer with you regarding the welfare of the soul; though
I believe that, if I were writing to you about an affair of property, or
the settlement of some dispute about money, no one would find fault with
me. So precious is this world in the esteem of men, and so small is the
value which they set upon themselves! This letter, therefore, shall be a
witness in my vindication at the bar of God, who knows the spirit in which
I write, and who has said: "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be
called the sons of God."(5)

   CHAP. II.- 3. I beg you, therefore, to call to mind that, when I was in
your town,(6) and was discussing with you a little concerning the communion
of Christian unity, certain Acts were brought forward by you, from which a
statement was read aloud that about seventy bishops condemned Caecilianus,
formerly our Bishop of Carthage, along with his colleagues, and those by
whom he was ordained. In the same Acts was given a full account of the case
of Felix of Aptunga, as one singularly odious and criminal. When all these
had been read, I answered that it was not to be wondered at if the men who
then caused that schism, and who did not scruple to tamper with Acts,
thought that it was right to condemn those against whom they had been
instigated by envious and wicked men, although the sentence was passed
without deliberation, in the absence of the parties condemned, and without
acquainting them with the matter laid to their charge. I added that we have
other ecclesiastical Acts, according to which Secundus of Tigisis, who was
for the time Primate of Numidia, left those who, being there present,
confessed themselves traditors to the judgment of God, and permitted them
to remain in the episcopal sees which they then occupied; and I stated that
the names of these men are in the list of those who condemned Caecilianus,
and that this Secundus himself was president of the Council in which he
secured the condemnation of those who, being absent, were accused as
traditors, by the votes of those whom he pardoned when, being present, they
confessed the same crime.

   4. I then said that some time after the ordination of Majorinus, whom
they with impious wickedness set up against Caecilianus, raising one altar
against another, and rending with infatuated contentiousness the unity of
Christ, they applied to Constantine, who was then emperor, to appoint
bishops to act as judges and arbiters concerning the questions which,
having arisen in Africa, disturbed the peace of the Church.(1) This having
been done, Caecilianus and those who had sailed from Africa to accuse him
being present, and the case tried by Melchiades, who was then Bishop of
Rome, along with the assessors whom at the request of the Donatists the
Emperor had sent, nothing could be proved against Caecilianus; and thus,
while he was confirmed in his episcopal see, Donatus, who was present as
his opponent, was condemned. After all this, when they all still persevered
in the obstinacy of their most sinful schism, the Emperor being appealed
to, took pains to have the matter again more carefully examined and settled
at Arles. They, however, declining an ecclesiastical decision, appealed to
Constantine himself to hear their cause. When this trial came on, both
parties being present, Caecilianus was pronounced innocent, and they
retired vanquished; but they still persisted in the same perversity. At the
same time the case of Felix of Aptunga was not forgotten, and he too was
acquitted of the crimes laid to his charge, after an investigation by the
proconsul at the order of the same prince.

   5. Since, however, I was only saying these things, not reading from the
record, I seemed to you to be doing less than my earnestness had led you to
expect. Perceiving this, I sent at once for that which I had promised to
read. While I went on to visit the Church at Gelizi, intending to return
thence to you, all these Acts were brought to you before two days had
passed, and were read to you, as you know, so far as time permitted, in one
day. We read first how Secundus of Tigisis did not dare to depose his
colleagues in office who confessed themselves to be traditors; but
afterwards, by the help of these very men, dared to condemn, without their
confessing the crime, and in their absence, Caecilianus and others who were
his colleagues. And we next read the proconsular Acts in which Felix was,
after a most thorough investigation, proved innocent. These, as you will
remember, were read in the forenoon. In the afternoon I read to you their
petition to Constantine, and the ecclesiastical record of the proceedings
in Rome of the judges whom he appointed, by which the Donatists were
condemned, and Caecilianus confirmed in his episcopal dignity. In
conclusion, I read the letters of the Emperor Constantine, in which the
evidence of all these things was established beyond all possibility of
dispute.

   CHAP. III. -- 6. What more do you ask, sirs? what more do you ask? The
matter in question here is not your gold and silver; it is not your land,
nor property, nor bodily health that is at stake. I appeal to your souls
concerning their obtaining eternal life, and escaping eternal death. At
length awake! I am not handling an obscure question, nor searching into
some hidden mystery, for the investigation of which capacity is found in no
human intellect, or at least in only a few: the thing is clear as day. Is
anything more obvious? could anything be more quickly seen? I affirm that
parties innocent and absent were condemned by a Council, very numerous
indeed, but hasty in their decisions. I prove this by the proconsular Acts,
in which that man was wholly cleared from the charge of being a traditor,
whom the Acts of the Council which your party brought forward proclaimed as
most specially guilty. I affirm further, that the sentence against those
who were said to be traditors was passed by men who had confessed
themselves guilty of that very crime. I prove this by the ecclesiastical
Acts in which the names of those men are set forth, to whom Secundus of
Tigisis, professing a desire to preserve peace, granted pardon of a crime
which he knew them to have committed, and by whose help he afterwards,
notwithstanding the destruction of peace, passed sentence upon others of
whose crime he had no evidence; whereby he made it manifest that in the
former decision he had been moved, not by a regard for peace, but by fear
for himself. For Purpurius, Bishop of Limata, had alleged against him that
he himself, when he had been put in custody by a curator and his soldiers,
in order to compel him to give up the Scriptures, was let go, doubtless not
without paying a price, in either giving up something, or ordering others
to do so for him. He, fearing that this suspicion might be easily enough
confirmed, having obtained the advice of Secundus the younger, his own
kinsman, and having consulted all his colleagues in the episcopal office,
Emitted crimes which required no proof to be judged by God, and in so doing
appeared to be protecting the peace of the Church: which was false, for he
was only protecting himself.

   7. For if, in truth, regard for peace had any place in his heart, he
would not afterwards at Carthage have joined those traditors whom he had
left to the judgment of God when they were present, and confessed their
fault, in passing sentence for the same crime upon others who were absent,
and against whom no one had proved the charge. He was bound, moreover, to
be the more afraid on that occasion of disturbing the peace, inasmuch as
Carthage was a great and famous city, from which any evil originating there
might extend, as from the head of the body, throughout all Africa. Carthage
was also near to the countries beyond the sea, and distinguished by
illustrious renown, so that it had a bishop of more than ordinary
influence, who could afford to disregard even a number of enemies
conspiring against him, because he saw himself united by letters of
communion both to the Roman Church, in which the supremacy of an apostolic
chair has always flourished,' and to all other lands from which Africa
itself received the gospel, and was prepared to defend himself before these
Churches if his adversaries attempted to cause an alienation of them from
him. Seeing, therefore, that Caecilianus declined to come before his
colleagues, whom he perceived or suspected (or, as they affirm, pretended
to suspect) to be biassed by his enemies against the real merits of his
case, it was all the more the duty of Secundus, if he wished to be the
guardian of true peace, to prevent the condemnation in! their absence of
those who had wholly declined! to compear at their bar. For it was not a
matter concerning presbyters or deacons or clergy. of inferior order, but
concerning colleagues who (1) might refer their case wholly to the judgment
of other bishops, especially of apostolical churches, in which the sentence
passed against them in their absence would have no weight, since they had
not deserted their tribunal after having compeared before it, but had
always declined compearance because of the suspicions which they
entertained.

   8. This consideration ought to have weighed much with Secundus, who was
at that time Primate, if his desire, as president of the Council, was to
promote peace; for he might perhaps have quieted or restrained the mouths
of those who were raging against men who were absent, if he had spoken
thus: "Ye see, brethren, how after so great havoc of persecution peace has
been given to us, through God's mercy, by the princes of this world; surely
we, being Christians and bishops, ought not to break up the Christian unity
which even pagan enemies have ceased to assail. Either, therefore, let us
leave to God, as Judge, all those cases which the calamity of a most
troublous time has brought upon the Church; or if there be some among you
who have such certain knowledge of the guilt of other parties, that they
are able to bring against them a definite indictment, and prove it if they
plead not guilty, and who also shrink from having communion with such
persons, let them hasten to our brethren and peers, the bishops of the i
churches beyond the sea, and present to them 'in the first place a
complaint concerning the conduct and contumacy of the accused, as having
through consciousness of guilt declined the jurisdiction of their peers in
Africa, so that by these foreign bishops they may be summoned to compear
and answer before them regarding the things laid to their charge. If they
disobey this summons, their criminality and obduracy will become known to
those other bishops; and by a synodical letter sent in their name to all
parts of the world throughout which the Church of Christ is nosy extended,
the parties accused will be excluded from communion with all churches, in
order to prevent the springing up of error in the see of the Church at
Carthage. When that has been done, and these men have been separated from
the whole Church, we shall without fear ordain another bishop over the
community in Carthage; whereas, if now another bishop be ordained by us,
communion will most probably be withheld from him by the Church beyond the
sea, because they will not recognise the validity of the deposition of the
bishop, whose ordination was everywhere acknowledged, and with whom letters
of communion had been exchanged; and thus, through our undue eagerness to
pronounce without deliberation a final sentence, the great scandal of
schism within the Church, when it has rest from without, may arise, and we
may be found presuming to set up another altar, not against Caecilianus,
but against the universal Church, which, uninformed of our procedure, would
still hold communion with him."

   9. If any one had been disposed to reject sound and equitable counsels
such as these, what could he have done? or how could he have procured the
condemnation of any one of his absent peers, when he could not have any
decisions with the authority of the Council, seeing that the Primate was
opposed to him? And if such a serious revolt against the authority of the
Primate himself arose, that some were resolved to condemn at once those
whose case he desired to postpone, how much better would it have been for
him to separate himself by dissent from such quarrelsome and factious men,
than from the communion of the whole world! But because there were no
charges which could be proved at the bar of foreign bishops against
Caecilianus and those who took part in his ordination, those who condemned
them were not willing to delay passing sentence; and when they had
pronounced it, were not at any pains to intimate to the Church beyond the
sea the names of those in Africa with whom, as condemned traditors, she
should avoid communion. For if they had attempted this, Caecilianus and the
others would have defended themselves, and would have vindicated their
innocence against their false accusers by a most thorough trial before the
ecclesiastical tribunal of bishops beyond the sea.

   10. Our belief concerning that perverse and unjust Council is, that it
was composed chiefly of traditors whom Secundus of Tigisis had pardoned on
their confession of guilt; and who, when a rumour had gone abroad that some
had been guilty of delivering up the sacred books, sought to turn aside
suspicion from themselves by bringing a calumny upon others, and to escape
the detection of their crime, through surrounding themselves with a cloud
of lying rumours, when men throughout all Africa, believing their bishops,
said what was false concerning innocent men, that they had been condemned
at Carthage as traditors. Whence you perceive, my beloved friends, how that
which some of your party affirmed to be improbable could indeed happen,
viz. that the very men who had confessed their own guilt as traditors, and
had obtained the remission of their case to the divine tribunal, afterwards
took part in judging and condemning others who, not being present to defend
themselves, were accused of the same crime. For their own guilt made them
more eagerly embrace an opportunity by which they might overwhelm others
with a groundless accusation, and by thus finding occupation for the
tongues of men, which screen their own misdeeds from investigation.
Moreover, if it were inconceivable that a man should condemn in another the
wrong which he had himself done, the Apostle Paul would not have had
occasion to say: "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art
that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself;
for thou that judgest doest the same things."(1) This is exactly what these
men did, so that the words of the apostle may be fully and appropriately
applied to them.

   11. Secundus, therefore, was not acting in the interests of peace and
unity when he remitted to the divine tribunal the crimes which these men
confessed: for, if so, he would have been much more careful to prevent a
schism at Carthage, when there were none present to whom he might be
constrained to grant pardon of a crime which they confessed; when, on the
contrary, all that the preservation of peace demanded was a refusal to
condemn those who were absent. They would have acted unjustly to these
innocent men, had they even resolved to pardon them, when they were not
proved guilty, and had not confessed the guilt, but were actually not
present at all. For the guilt of a man is established beyond question when
he accepts a pardon. How much more outrageous and blind were they who
thought that they had power to condemn for crimes which, as unknown, they
could not even have forgiven! In the former case, crimes that were known
were remitted to the divine arbitration, lest others should be inquired
into; in the latter case, crimes that were not known were made ground of
condemnation, that those which were known might be concealed. But it will
be said, the crime of Caecilianus and the others was known. Even if I were
to admit this, the fact of their absence ought to have protected them from
such a sentence. For they were not chargeable with deserting a tribunal
before which they had never stood; nor was the Church so exclusively
represented in these African bishops, that in refusing to appear before
them they could be supposed to decline all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For
there remained thousands of bishops in countries beyond the sea, before
whom it was manifest that those who seemed to distrust their peers in
Africa and Numidia could be tried. Have you forgotten what Scripture
commands: "Blame no one before you have examined him; and when you have
examined him, let your correction be just"?(2) If, then, the Holy Spirit
has forbidden us to blame or correct any one before we have questioned him,
how much greater is the crime of not merely blaming or correcting, but
actually condemning men who, being absent, could not be examined as to the
charges brought against them!

   12. Moreover, as to the assertion of these judges, that though the
parties accused were absent, having not fled from trial, but always avowed
their distrust of that faction, and declined to appear before them, the
crimes for which they condemned them were well known; I ask, my brethren,
how did they know them? You reply, We cannot tell, since the evidence is
not stated in the public Acts. But I will tell you how they knew them.
Observe carefully the case of Felix of Aptunga, and first read how much
more vehement they were against him; for they had just the same grounds for
their knowledge in the case of the others as in his, who was afterwards
proved most completely innocent by a thorough and severe investigation. How
much greater the justice and safety and readiness with which we are
warranted in believing the innocence of the others whose indictment was
less serious, and their condemnation less severe, seeing that the man
against whom they raged much more furiously has been proved innocent!

   CHAP. IV. -- 13. Some one may perhaps make an objection which, though
it was disapproved by you when it was brought forward, I must not pass
over, for it has been made by others, viz.: It was not meet that a bishop
should be acquitted by trial before a proconsul: as if the bishop had
himself procured this trial, and it had not been done by order of the
Emperor, to whose care this matter, as one concerning which he was
responsible to God, especially belonged. For they themselves had
constituted the Emperor the arbiter and judge in this question regarding
the surrender of the sacred books, and regarding the schism, by their
sending petitions to him, and afterwards appealing to him; and nevertheless
they refuse to acquiesce in his decision. If, therefore, he is to be blamed
whom the magistrate absolved, though he had not himself applied to that
tribunal, how much more worthy of blame are those who desired an earthly
king to be the judge of their cause! For if it be not wrong to appeal to
the Emperor, it is not wrong to be tried by the Emperor, and consequently
not wrong to be tried by him to whom the Emperor refers the case. One of
your friends was anxious to make out a ground of complaint on the fact
that, in the case of the bishop Felix, one witness was suspended on the
rack, and another tortured with pincers.(1) But was it in the power of
Felix to prevent the prosecution of the inquiry with diligence, and even
severity, when the case regarding which the advocate was labouring to
discover the truth was his own? For what else would such a resistance to
investigation have been construed to signify, than a confession of his
crime? And yet this proconsul, surrounded with the awe-inspiring voices of
heralds, and the blood-stained hands of executioners at his service, would
not have condemned one of his peers in absence, who declined to come before
his tribunal, if there was any other place where his cause could be
disposed of. Or if he had in such circumstances pronounced sentence, he
would himself assuredly have suffered the due and just award prescribed by
civil law.

   CHAP. V. -- 14. If, however, you repudiate the Acts of a proconsul,
submit yourselves to the Acts of the Church. These have all been read over
to you in their order. Perhaps you will say that Melchiades, bishop of the
Roman Church, along with the other bishops beyond the sea who acted as his
colleagues, had no right to usurp the place of judge in a matter which had
been already settled by seventy African bishops, over whom the bishop of
Tigisis as Primate presided. But what will you say if he in fact did not
usurp this place? For the Emperor, being appealed to, sent bishops to sit
with him as judges, with authority to decide the whole matter in the way
which seemed to them just. This we prove, both by the petitions of the
Donatists and the words of the Emperor himself, both of which were, as you
remember, read to you, and are now accessible to be studied or transcribed
by you. Read and ponder all these. See with what scrupulous care for the
preservation or restoration of peace and unity everything was discussed;
how the legal standing of the accusers was inquired into, and what defects
were proved in this matter against some of them; and how it was clearly
proved by the testimony of those present that they had nothing to say
against Caecilianus, but wished to transfer the whole matter to the people
belonging to the party of Majorinus,(2) that is, to the seditious multitude
who were opposed to the peace of the Church, in order, forsooth, that
Caecilianus might be accused by that crowd which they believed to be
powerful enough to bend aside to their views the minds of the judges by
mere turbulent clamour, without any documentary evidence or examination as
to the truth; unless it was likely that true accusations should be brought
against Caecilianus by a multitude infuriated and infatuated by the cup of
error and wickedness, in a place where seventy bishops had with insane
precipitancy condemned, in their absence, men who were their peers, and who
were innocent, as was proved in the case of Felix of Aptunga. They wished
to have Caecilianus accused by a mob such as that to which they had given
way themselves, when they pronounced sentence upon parties who were absent,
and who had not been examined. But assuredly they had not come to judges
who could be persuaded to such madness.

   15. Your own prudence may enable you to remark here both the obstinacy
of these men, and the wisdom of the judges, who to the last persisted in
refusing to admit accusations against Caecilianus from the populace who
were of the faction of Majorinus, who had no legal standing in the case.
You will also remark how they were required to bring forward the men who
had come with them from Africa as accusers or witnesses, or in some other
connection with the case, and how it was said that they had been present,
but had been withdrawn by Donatus. The said Donatus promised that he would
produce them, and this promise he made repeatedly; yet, after all, declined
to appear again in presence of that tribunal before which he had already
confessed so much, that it seemed as if by his refusal to return he desired
only to avoid being present to hear himself condemned; but the things for
which he was to be condemned had been proved against him in his own
presence, and after examination. Besides this, a libel bringing charges
against Caecilianus was handed in by some parties. How the inquiry was
thereupon opened anew, what persons brought up the libel, and how nothing
after all could be proved against Caecilianus, I need not state, seeing
that l you have heard it all, and can read it as often as you please.

   16. As to the fact that there were seventy bishops in the Council
[which condemned Caecilianus], you remember what was said in the way of
pleading against him the venerable authority of so great a number.
Nevertheless these most venerable men resolved to keep their judgment
unembarrassed by endless questions of hopeless intricacy, and did not care
to inquire either what was the number of those bishops, or whence they had
been collected, when they saw them to be blinded with such reckless
presumption as to pronounce rash sentence upon their peers in their
absence, and without having examined them. And yet what a decision was
finally pronounced by the blessed Melchiades himself; how equitable, how
complete, how prudent, and how fitted to make peace! For he did not presume
to depose from his own rank those peers against whom nothing had been
proved; and, laying blame chiefly upon Donatus, whom he had found the cause
of the whole disturbance, he gave to all the others restoration if they
chose to accept it, and was prepared to send letters of communion even to
those who were l known to have been ordained by Majorinus; so that wherever
there were two bishops, through t this dissension doubling their number, he
decided that the one who was prior in the date of ordination should be
confirmed in his see, and a new congregation found for the other. O
excellent man! O son of Christian peace, father of the Christian people!
Compare now this handful, with that multitude of bishops, not counting, but
weighing them: on the one side you have moderation and circumspection; on
the other, I precipitancy and blindness. On the one side, clemency has not
wronged justice, nor has justice been at variance with clemency; on the
other side, fear was hiding itself under passion, and passion was goaded to
excess by fear. In the one case, they assembled to clear the innocent from
false accusations by discovering where the guilt really lay; in the other,
they had met to screen the guilty from true accusations by bringing false
charges against the innocent.

   CHAP. VI -- 17. Could Caecilianus leave himself to be tried and judged
by these men, when he had such others before whom, if his case were argued,
he could most easily prove his innocence? He could not have left himself in
their hands even had he been a stranger recently ordained over the Church
at Carthage, and consequently not aware of the power in perverting the
minds of men, either worthless or unwise, which was then possessed by a
certain Lucilla, a very wealthy woman, whom he had offended when he was a
deacon, by rebuking her in the exercise of church discipline; for this evil
influence was also at work to bring about that iniquitous transaction. For
in that Council, in which men absent and innocent were condemned by persons
who had confessed themselves to be traditors, there were a few who wished,
by defaming others, to hide their own crimes, that men, led astray by
unfounded rumours, might be turned aside from inquiring into the truth. The
number of those who were especially interested in this was not great,
although the preponderating authority was on their side; because they had
with them Secundus himself, who, yielding to fear, had pardoned them. But
the rest are said to have been bribed and instigated specially against
Caecilianus by the money of Lucilla. There are Acts in the possession of
Zenophilus, a man of consular rank, according to which one Nundinarius, a
deacon who had been (as we learn from the same Acts) deposed by Sylvanus,
bishop of Cirta, having failed in an attempt to recommend himself to that
party by the letters of other bishops, in the heat of passion revealed many
secrets, and brought them forward in open court; amongst which we read this
on the record, that the rearing of rival altars in the Church of Carthage,
the chief city of Africa, was due to the bishops being bribed by the money
of Lucilla. I am aware that I did not read these Acts to you, but you
remember that there was not time. Besides these influences, there was also
some bitterness arising from mortified pride, because they had not
themselves ordained Caecilianus bishop of Carthage.

   18. When Caecilianus knew that these men had assembled, not as
impartial judges, but hostile and perverted through all these things, was
it possible that either he should consent, or the people over whom he
presided should allow him, to leave the church and go into a private
dwelling, where he was not to be tried fairly by his peers, but to be slain
by a small faction, urged on by a woman's spite, especially when he saw
that his case might have an unbiassed and equitable hearing before the
Church beyond the sea, which was uninfluenced by private enmities on either
side in the dispute? If his adversaries declined pleading before that
tribunal, they would thereby cut themselves off from that communion with
the whole world which innocence enjoys. And if they attempted there to
bring a charge against him, then he would compear for himself, and defend
his innocence against all their plots, as you have learned that he
afterwards did, when they, already guilty of schism, and stained with the
atrocious crime of having actually reared their rival altar, applied -- but
too late -- for the decision of the Church beyond the sea. For this they
would have done at first, if their cause had been supported by truth; but
their policy was to come to the trial after false rumours had gained
strength by lapse of time, and public report of old standing, so to speak,
had prejudged the case; or, which seems more likely, having first condemned
Caecilianus as they pleased, they relied for safety upon their number, and
did not dare to open the discussion of so bad a case before other judges,
by whom, as they were not influenced by bribery, the truth might be
discovered.

   CHAP. VII. -- 19. But when they actually found that the communion of
the whole world with Caecilianus continued as before, and that letters of
communion from churches beyond the sea were sent to him, and not to the man
whom they had flagitiously ordained, they became ashamed of being always
silent; for it might be objected to them: Why did they suffer the Church in
so many countries to go on in ignorance, communicating with men that were
condemned; and especially why did they cut themselves off from communion
with the whole world, against which they had no charge to make, by their
bearing in silence the exclusion from that communion of the bishop whom
they had ordained in Carthage? They chose, therefore, as it is reported, to
bring their dispute with Caecilianus before the foreign churches, in order
to secure one of two things, either of which they were prepared to accept:
if, on the one hand, by any amount of craft, they succeeded in making good
the false accusation, they would abundantly satisfy their lust of revenge;
if, however, they failed, they might remain as stubborn as before, but
would now have, as it were, some excuse for it, in alleging that they had
suffered at the hands of an unjust tribunal, -- the common outcry of all
worthless litigants, though they have been defeated by the clearest light
of truth, -- as if it might not have been said, and most justly said, to
them: "Well, let us suppose that those bishops who decided the case at Rome
were not good judges; there still remained a plenary Council of the
universal Church, in which these judges themselves might be put on their
defence; so that, if they were convicted of mistake, their decisions might
be reversed." Whether they have done this or not, let them prove: for we
easily prove that it was not done, by the fact that the whole world does
not communicate with them; or if it was done, they were defeated there
also, of which their state of separation from the Church is a proof.

   20. What they actually did afterwards, however, is sufficiently shown
in the letter of the Emperor. For it was not before other bishops, but at
the bar of the Emperor, that they dared to bring the charge of wrong
judgment against ecclesiastical judges of so high authority as the bishops
by whose sentence the innocence of Caecilianus and their own guilt had been
declared. He granted them the second trial at Aries, before other bishops;
not because this was due to them, but only as a concession to their
stubbornness, and from a desire by all means to restrain so great
effrontery. For this Christian Emperor did not presume so to grant their
unruly and groundless complaints as to make himself the judge of the
decision pronounced by the bishops who had sat at Rome; but he appointed,
as I have said, other bishops, from whom, however, they preferred again to
appeal to the Emperor himself; and you have heard the terms in which he
disapproved of this. Would that even then they had desisted from their most
insane contentions, and had yielded at last to the truth, as he yielded to
them when (intending afterwards to apologize for this course to the
reverend prelates) he consented to try their case after the bishops, on
condition that, if they did not submit to his decision, for which they had
themselves appealed, they should thenceforward be silent! For he ordered
that both parties should meet him at Rome to argue the case. When
Caecilianus, for some reason, failed to compear there, he, at their
request, ordered all to fob low him to Milan. Then some of their party
began to withdraw, perhaps offended that Constantine did not follow their
example, and condemn Caecilianus in his absence at once and summarily. When
the prudent Emperor was aware of this, he compelled the rest to come to
Milan in charge of his guards. Caecilianus having come thither, he brought
him forward in person, as he has written; and having examined the matter
with the diligence, caution, and prudence which his letters on the subject
indicate, he pronounced Caecilianus perfectly innocent, and them most
criminal.

   CHAP. VIII. -- 21. And to this day they administer baptism outside of
the communion of the Church, and, if they can, they rebaptize the members
of the Church: they offer sacrifice in discord and schism, and salute in
the name of peace communities which they pronounce beyond the bounds of the
peace of salvation. The unity of Christ is rent asunder, the heritage of
Christ is reproached, the baptism of Christ is treated with contempt; and
they refuse to have these errors corrected by constituted human
authorities, applying penalties of a temporal kind in order to prevent them
from being doomed to eternal punishment for such sacrilege. We blame them
for the rage which has driven them to schism, the madness which makes them
rebaptize, and for the sin of separation from the heritage of Christ, which
has been spread abroad through all lands. In using manuscripts which are in
their hands as well as in ours, we mention churches, the names of which are
now read by them also, but with which they have now no communion; and when
these are pronounced in their conventicles, they say to the reader, "Peace
be with thee;" and yet they have no peace with those to whom these letters
were written. They, on the other hand, blame us for crimes of men now dead,
making charges which either are false, or, if true, do not concern us; not
perceiving that in the things which we lay to their charge they are all
involved, but in the things which they lay to our charge the blame is due
to the chaff or the tares in the Lord's harvest, and the crime does not
belong to the good grain; not considering, moreover, that within our unity
those only have fellowship with the wicked who take pleasure in, their
being such, whereas those who are displeased; with their wickedness yet
cannot correct them, -- as they do not presume to root out the tares before
the harvest, lest they root out the wheat also,(1) -- have fellowship with
them, not in their deeds, but in the altar of Christ; so that not only do
they avoid being defiled by them, but they deserve commendation and praise
according to the word of God, because, in order to prevent the name of
Christ from being reproached by odious schisms, they tolerate in the
interest of unity that which in the interest of righteousness they hate.

   22. If they have ears, let them hear what the Spirit saith to the
churches. For in the Apocalypse of John we read: "Unto the angel of the
Church of Ephesus write: These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars
in His right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden
candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how
thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say
they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: and hast borne,
and hast patience, and for My name's sake hast tolerated them,(2) and hast
not fainted."(3) Now, if He wished this to be understood as addressed to a
celestial angel, and not to those invested with authority in the Church, He
would not go on to say: "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because
thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art
fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee
quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou
repent."(4) This could not be said to the heavenly angels, who retain their
love unchanged, as the only beings of their order that have departed and
fallen from their love are the devil and his angels. The first love here
alluded to is that which was proved in their tolerating for Christ's name's
sake the false apostles. To this He commands them to return, and to do
"their first works." Now we are reproached with the crimes of bad men, not
done by us, but by others; and some of them, moreover, not known to us.
Nevertheless, even if they were actually committed, and that under our own
eyes, and we bore with them for the sake of unity, letting the tares alone
on account of the wheat, whosoever with open heart receives the Holy
Scriptures would pronounce us not only free from blame, but worthy of no
small praise.

   23. Aaron bears with the multitude demanding, fashioning, and
worshipping an idol. Moses bears with thousands murmuring against God, and
so often offending His holy name. David bears with Saul his persecutor,
even when forsaking the things that are above by his wicked life, and
following after the things that are beneath by magical arts, avenges his
death, and calls him the Lord's anointed,(5) because of the venerable right
by which he had been consecrated. Samuel bears with the reprobate sons of
Eli, and his own perverse sons, whom the people refused to tolerate, and
were therefore rebuked by the warning and punished by the severity of God.
Lastly, he bears with the nation itself, though proud and despising God.
Isaiah bears with those against whom he hurls so many merited
denunciations. Jeremiah bears with those at whose hands he suffers so many
things. Zechariah bears with the scribes and Pharisees, as to whose
character in those days Scripture informs us. I know that I have omitted
many examples: let those who are willing and able read the divine records
for themselves: they will find that all the holy servants and friends of
God have always had to bear with some among their own people, with whom,
nevertheless, they partook in the sacraments of that dispensation, and in
so doing not only were not defiled by them, but were to be commended for
their tolerant spirit, "endeavouring to keep," as the apostle says, "the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."(1) Let them also observe what
has occurred since the Lord's coming, in which time we would find many more
examples of this toleration in all parts of the world, if they could all be
written down and authenticated: but attend to those which are on record.
The Lord Himself bears with Judas, a devil, a thief, His own betrayer; He
permits him, along with the innocent disciples, to receive that which
believers know as our ransom.(2) The apostles bear with false apostles; and
in the midst of men who sought their own things, and not the things of
Jesus Christ, Paul, not seeking his own, but the things of Christ, lives in
the practice of a most noble toleration. In fine, as I mentioned a little
while ago, the person presiding under the title of Angel over a Church, is
commended, because, though he hated those that were evil, he yet bore with
them for the Lord's name's sake, even when they were tried and discovered.

   24. In conclusion, let them ask themselves: Do they not bear with the
murders and devastations by fire which are perpetrated by the
Circumcelliones, who treat with honour the dead bodies of those who cast
themselves down from dangerous heights? Do they not bear with the misery
which has made all Africa groan for years beneath the incredible outrages
of one man, Optatus [bishop of Thamugada]? I forbear from specifying the
tyrannical acts of violence and public depredations in districts, towns,
and properties throughout Africa; for it is better to leave you to speak of
these to each other, whether in whispers or openly, as you please. For
wherever you turn your eyes, you will find the things of which I speak, or,
more correctly, refrain from speaking. Nor do we on this ground accuse
those whom, when they do such things, you love. What we dislike in that
party is not their bearing with those who are wicked, but their intolerable
wickedness in the matter of schism, of raising altar against altar, and of
separation from the heritage of Christ now spread, as was so long ago
promised, throughout the world. We behold with grief and lamentation peace
broken, unity rent asunder, baptism administered a second time, and
contempt poured on the sacraments, which are holy even when ministered and
received by the wicked. If they regard these things as trifles, let them
observe those examples by which it has been proved how they are esteemed by
God. The men who made an idol perished by a common death, being slain with
the sword:(3) but when the men endeavoured to make a schism in Israel, the
leaders were swallowed up by the opening earth, and the crowd of their
accomplices was consumed by fire.(4) In the difference between the
punishments, the different degrees of demerit may be discerned.

   CHAP. IX. -- 25. These, then, are the facts: In time of persecution,
the sacred books are surrendered to the persecutors. Those who were guilty
of this surrender confess it, and are remitted to the divine tribunal;
those who were innocent are not examined, but condemned at once by rash
men. The integrity of that one who, of all the men thus condemned in their
absence, was the most vehemently accused, is afterwards vindicated before
unimpeachable judges. From the decision of bishops an appeal is made to the
Emperor; the Emperor is chosen judge; and the sentence of the Emperor, when
pronounced, is set at naught. What was then done you have read; what is now
being done you have before your eyes. If, after all that you have read, you
are still in doubt, be convinced by what you see. By all means let us give
up arguing from ancient manuscripts, public archives, or the acts of
courts, civil or ecclesiastical. We have a greater book -- the world
itself. In it I read the accomplishment of that of which I read the promise
in the Book of God: "The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day
have I begotten Thee: ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for
Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy
possession."(5) He that has not communion with this inheritance may know
himself to be disinherited, whatever books he may plead to the contrary. He
that assails this inheritance is plainly enough declared to be an outcast
from the family of God. The question is raised as to the parties guilty of
surrendering the divine books in which that inheritance is promised. Let
him be believed to have delivered the testament to the flames, who is
resisting the intentions of the testator. O faction of Donatus, what has
the Corinthian Church done against you? In speaking of this one Church, I
wish to be understood as asking the same question in regard to all similar
churches remote from you. What have these churches done against you, which
could not know even what you had done, or the names of the men whom you
branded with condemnation? Or is it so, that because Caecilianus gave
offence to Lucilla in Africa, the light of Christ is lost to the whole
world?(6)

   26. Let them at last become sensible of what they have done; for in the
lapse of years, by a just retribution, their work has recoiled upon
themselves. Ask by what woman's instigation Maximianus(1) (said to be a
kinsman of Donatus) withdrew himself from the communion of Primianus, and
how, having gathered a faction of bishops, he pronounced sentence against
Primianus in his absence, and had himself ordained as a rival bishop in his
place, -- precisely as Majorinus, under the influence of Lucilla, assembled
a faction of bishops, and, having condemned Caecilianus in his absence, was
ordained bishop in opposition to him. Do you admit, as I suppose you do,
that when Primianus was delivered by the other bishops of his communion in
Africa from the sentence pronounced by the faction of Maximianus, this
decision was valid and sufficient? And will you refuse to admit the same in
the case of Caecilianus, when he was released by the bishops of the same
one Church beyond the sea from the sentence pronounced by the faction of
Majorinus? Pray, my brethren, what great thing do I ask of you? What
difficulty is there in comprehending what I bring before you? The African
Church, if it be compared with the churches in other parts of the world, is
very different from them, and is left far behind both in numbers and in
influence; and even if it had retained its unity, is far smaller when
compared with the universal Church in other nations, than was the faction
of Maximianus when compared with that of Primianus. I ask, however, only
this -- and I believe it to be just -- that you give no more weight to the
Council of Secundus of Tigisis, which Lucilla stirred up against
Caecilianus when absent, and against an apostolic see and the whole world
in communion with Caecilianus, than you give to the Council of Maximianus,
which in like manner some other woman stirred l up against Primianus when
absent, and against the rest of the multitude throughout Africa which was
in communion with him. What case could be more transparent? what demand
more just?

   27. You see and know all these things, and you groan over them; and yet
God at the same time sees that nothing compels you to remain in such fatal
and impious schism, if you would but subdue the lust of the flesh in order
to win the spiritual kingdom; and in order to escape from eternal
punishment, have courage to forfeit the friendship of men, whose favour
will not avail at the bar of God. Go now, and take counsel together: find
what you can say in reply to that which I have written. If you bring
forward manuscripts on your side, we do the same; if your party say that
our documents are not to be trusted, let them not take it amiss if we
retort the charge. No one can erase from heaven the divine decree, no one
can efface from earth the Church of God. His decree has promised the whole
world, and the Church has filled it; and it includes both bad and good. On
earth it loses none but the bad, arid into heaven it admits none but the
good.

   In writing this discourse, God is my witness with what sincere love to
peace and to you I have taken and used that which He has given. It shall be
to you a means of correction if you be willing, and a testimony against you
whether you will or not.

LETTER XLIV. (A.D. 398.)

TO MY LORDS MOST BELOVED, AND BRETHREN WORTHY OF ALL PRAISE, ELEUSIUS,
GLORIUS, AND THE TWO FELIXES, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. In passing through Tubursi on my way to the church at
Cirta, though pressed for time, I visited Fortunius, your bishop there, and
found him to be, in truth, just such a man as you were wont most kindly to
lead me to expect. When I sent him notice of your conversation with me
concerning him, and expressed a desire to see him, he did not decline the
visit. I therefore went to him, because I thought it due to his age that I
should go to him, instead of insisting upon his first coming to me. I went,
therefore, accompanied by a considerable number of persons, who, as it
happened, were at that time beside me. When, however, we had taken our
seats in his house, the thing becoming known, a considerable addition was
made to the crowd assembled; but in that whole multitude there appeared to
me to be very few who desired the matter to be discussed in a sound and
profitable manner, or with the deliberation and solemnity which so great a
question demands. All the others had come rather in the mood of playgoers,
expecting a scene in our debates, than in Christian seriousness of spirit,
seeking instruction in regard to salvation. Accordingly they could neither
favour us with silence when we spoke, nor speak with care, or even with due
regard to decorum and order, --excepting, as I have said, those few persons
about whose pious and sincere interest in the matter there was no doubt.
Everything was therefore thrown into confusion by the noise of men speaking
loudly, and each according to the unchecked impulse of his own feelings;
and though both Fortunius and I used entreaty and remonstrance, we utterly
failed in persuading them to listen silently to what was spoken.

   2. The discussion of the question was opened notwithstanding, and for
some hours we persevered, speeches being delivered by each side in turn, so
far as was permitted by an occasional respite from the voices of the noisy
onlookers. In the beginning of the debate, perceiving that things which had
been spoken were liable to be forgotten by myself, or by those about whose
salvation I was deeply concerned; being desirous also that our debate
should be managed with caution and self-restraint, and that both you and
other brethren who were absent might be able to learn from a record what
passed in the discussion, I demanded that our words should be taken down by
reporters. This was for a long time resisted, either by Fortunius or by
those on his side. At length, however, he agreed to it; but the reporters
who were present, and were able to do the work thoroughly, declined, for
some reason unknown to me, to take notes. I urged them, that at least the
brethren who accompanied me, though not so expert in the work, should take
notes, and promised that I would leave the tablets on which the notes were
taken in the hands of the other party. This was agreed to. Some words of
mine were first taken down, and some statements on the other side were
dictated and recorded. After that, the reporters, not being able to endure
the disorderly interruptions vociferated by the opposing party, and the
increased vehemence with which under this pressure our side maintained the
debate, gave up their task. This, however, did not close the discussion,
many things being still said by each as he obtained an opportunity. This
discussion of the whole question, or at least so much of all that was said
as I can remember, I have resolved, my beloved friends, that you shall not
lose; and you may read this letter to Fortunius, that he may either confirm
my statements as true, or himself inform you, without hesitation, of
anything which his more accurate recollection suggests.

   CHAP. II. -- 3. He was pleased to begin with commending my manner of
life, which he said he had come to know through your statements (in which I
am sure there was more kindness than truth), adding that he had remarked to
you that I might have done well all the things which you had told him of
me, if I had done them within the Church. I thereupon asked him what was
the Church within which it was the duty of a man so to live; whether it was
that one which, as Sacred Scripture had long foretold, was spread over the
whole world, or that one which a small section of Africans, or a small part
of Africa, contained. To this he at first attempted to reply, that his
communion was in all parts of the earth. I asked him whether he was able to
issue letters of communion, which we call regular,(1) to places which I
might select; and I affirmed, what was obvious to all, that in this way the
question might be most simply settled. In the event of his agreeing to
this, my intention was that we should send such letters to those churches
which we both knew, on the authority of the apostles, to have been already
rounded in their time.

   4. As the falsity of his statement, however, was apparent, a hasty
retreat from it was made in a cloud of confused words, in the midst of
which he quoted the Lord's words: "Beware of false prophets, which come to
you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall
know them by their fruits."(2) When I said that these words of the Lord
might also be applied by us to them, he went on to magnify the persecution
which he affirmed that his party had often suffered; intending thereby to
prove that his party were Christians because they endured persecution. When
I was preparing, as he went on with this, to answer him from the Gospel, he
himself anticipated me in bringing forward the passage in which the Lord
says: "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven."(3) Thanking him for the apt quotation, I
immediately added that this behoved therefore to be inquired into, whether
they had indeed suffered persecution for righteousness' sake. In following
up this inquiry I wished this to be ascertained, though indeed it was
patent to all, whether the persecutions under Macarius(4) fell upon them
while they were within the unity of the Church, or after they had been
severed from it by schism; so that those who wished to see whether they had
suffered persecution for righteousness' sake might turn rather to the prior
question, whether they had done rightly in cutting themselves off from the
unity of the whole world. For if they were found in this to have done
wrong, it was manifest that they suffered persecution for unrighteousness'
sake rather than for righteousness' sake, and could not therefore be
numbered among those of whom it is said, "Blessed are they which are
persecuted for righteousness' sake." Thereupon mention was made of the
surrender of the sacred books, a matter about which much more has been
spoken than has ever been proved true. On our side it was said in reply,
that their leaders rather than ours had been traditors; but that if they
would not believe the documents with which we supported this charge, we
could not be compelled to accept those which they brought forward.

   CHAP. III. -- 5. Having therefore laid aside that question as one on
which there was a doubt, I asked how they could justify their separation of
themselves from all other Christians who had done them no wrong, who
throughout the world preserved the order of succession, and were
established in the most ancient churches, but had no knowledge whatever as
to who were traditors in Africa; and who assuredly could not hold communion
with others than those whom they had heard. of as occupying the episcopal
sees. He answered that the foreign churches had done them no wrong, up to
the time when they had consented to the death of those who, as he had said,
had suffered in the Macarian persecution. Here I might have said that it
was impossible for the innocence of the foreign churches to be affected by
the offence given in the time of Macarius, seeing that it could not be
proved that he had done with their sanction what he did. I preferred,
however, to save time by asking whether, supposing that the foreign
churches had, through the cruelties of Macarius, lost their innocence from
the time in which they were said to have approved of these, it could even
be proved that up to that time the Donatists had remained in unity with the
Eastern churches and other parts of the world.

   6. Thereupon he produced a certain volume, by which he wished to show
that a Council at Sardica had sent a letter to African bishops who belonged
to the party of Donatus. When this was read aloud, I heard the name Donatus
among the bishops to whom the writing had been sent. I therefore insisted
upon being told whether this was the Donatus from whom their faction takes
its name; as it was possible that they had written to some bishop named
Donatus belonging to another section [heresy], especially since in these
names no mention had been made of Africa. How then, I asked, could it be
proved that we must believe the Donatus here named to be the Donatist
bishop, when it could not even be proved that this letter had been
specially directed to bishops in Africa? For although Donatus is a common
African name, there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that either
some one in other countries should be found bearing an African name, or
that a native of Africa should be made a bishop there. We found, moreover,
no day or name of consul given in the letter, from which any certain light
might have been furnished by comparison of dates. I had indeed once heard
that the Arians, when they had separated from the Catholic communion, had
endeavoured to ally the Donatists in Africa with themselves; and my brother
Alypius recalled this to me at the time in a whisper. Having then taken up
the volume itself, and glancing over the decrees of the said Council, I
read that Athanasius, Catholic bishop of Alexandria, who was so conspicuous
as a debater in the keen controversies with the Arians, and Julius, bishop
of the Roman Church, also a Catholic, had been condemned by that Council of
Sardica; from which we were sure that it was a Council of Arians, against
which heretics these Catholic bishops had contended with singular fervour.
I therefore wished to take up and carry with me the volume, in order to
give more pains to find out the date of the Council. He refused it,
however, saying that I could get it there if I wished to study anything in
it. I asked also that he would allow me to mark the volume; for I feared, I
confess, lest, if perchance necessity arose for my asking to consult it,
another should be substituted in its room. This also he refused.

   CHAP. IV. -- 7. Thereafter he began to insist upon my answering
categorically this question: Whether I thought the persecutor or the
persecuted to be in the right? To which I answered, that the question was
not fairly sated: it might be that both were in the wrong, or that the
persecution might be made by the one who was the more righteous of the two
parties; and therefore it was not always right to infer that one is on the
better side because he suffers persecution, although that is almost always
the case. When I perceived that he still laid great stress upon this,
wishing to have the justice of the cause of his party acknowledged as
beyond dispute because they had suffered persecution, I asked him.whether
he believed Ambrose, bishop of the Church of Milan, to be a righteous man
and a Christian? He was compelled to deny expressly that that man was a
Christian and a righteous man; for if he had admitted this, I would at once
have objected to him that he esteemed it necessary for him to be
rebaptized. When, therefore, he was compelled to pronounce concerning
Ambrose that he was not a Christian nor a righteous man, I related the
persecution which he endured when his church was surrounded with soldiers.
I also asked whether Maximianus, who had made a schism from their party at
Carthage, was in his view a righteous man and a Christian. He could not but
deny this. I therefore reminded him that he had endured such persecution
that his church had been razed to the foundations. By these instances I
laboured to persuade him, if possible, to give up affirming that the
suffering of persecution is the most infallible mark of Christian
righteousness.

   8. He also related that, in the infancy of their schism, his
predecessors, being anxious to devise some way of hushing up the fault of
Caecilianus, lest a schism should take place, had appointed over the people
belonging to his communion in Carthage an interim bishop before Majorinus
was ordained in opposition to Caecilianus. He alleged that this interim
bishop was murdered in his own meeting house by our party. This, I confess,
I had never heard before, though so many charges brought by them against us
have been refuted and disproved, while by us greater and more numerous
crimes have been alleged against them. After having narrated this story, he
began again to insist on my answering whether in this case I thought the
murderer or the victim the more righteous man; as if he had already proved
that the event had taken place as he had stated. I therefore said that we
must first ascertain the truth of the story, for we ought not to believe
without examination all that is said: and that even were it true, it was
possible either that both were equally bad, or that one who was bad had
caused the death of another yet worse than himself. For, in truth, it is
possible that his guilt is more heinous who rebaptizes the whole man than
his who kills the body only.

   9. After this there was no occasion for the question which he
afterwards put to me. He affirmed that even a bad man should not be killed
by Christians and righteous men; as if we called those who in the Catholic
Church do such things righteous men: a statement, moreover, which it is
more easy for them to affirm than to prove to us, so long as they
themselves, with few exceptions, bishops, presbyters, and clergy of all
kinds, go on gathering mobs of most infatuated men, and causing, wherever
they are able, so many violent massacres, and devastations to the injury
not of Catholics only, but sometimes even of their own partisans. In spite
of these facts, Fortunius, affecting ignorance of the most villanous
doings, which were better known by him than by me, insisted upon my giving
an example of a righteous man putting even a bad man to death. This was, of
course, not relevant to the matter in hand; for I conceded that wherever
such crimes were committed by men having the name of Christians, they were
not the actions of good men. Nevertheless, in order to show him what was
the true question before us, I answered by inquiring whether Elijah seemed
to him to be a righteous man; to which he could not but assent. Thereupon I
reminded him how many false prophets Elijah slew with his own hand.(1) He
saw plainly herein, as indeed he could not but see, that such things were
then lawful to righteous men. For they did these things as prophets guided
by the Spirit and sanctioned by the authority of God, who knows infallibly
to whom it may be even a benefit to be put to death.(2) He therefore
required me to show him one who, being a righteous man, had in the New
Testament times put any one, even a criminal and impious man, to death.

   CHAP. V. -- 10. I then returned to the argument used in my former
letter,(3) in which I laboured to show that it was not right either for us
to reproach them with atrocities of which some of their party had been
guilty, or for them to reproach us if any such deeds were found by them to
have been done on our side. For I granted that no example could be produced
from the New Testament of a righteous man putting any one to death; but I
insisted that by the example of our Lord Himself, it could be proved that
the wicked had been tolerated by the innocent. For His own betrayer, who
had already received the price of His blood, He suffered to remain
undistinguished from the innocent who were with Him, even up to that last
kiss of peace. He did not conceal from the disciples the fact that in the
midst of them was one capable of such a crime; and, nevertheless, He
administered to them all alike, without excluding the traitor, the first
sacrament of His body and blood.(4) When almost all felt the force of this
argument, Fortunius attempted to meet it by saying, that before the Lord's
Passion that communion with a wicked man did no harm to the apostles,
because they had not as yet the baptism of Christ, but the baptism of John
only. When he said this, I asked him to explain how it was written that
Jesus baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus Himself baptized not,
but His disciples, that is to say, baptized by means of His disciples?(5)
How could they give what they had not received (a question often used by
the Donatists themselves)? Did Christ baptize with the baptism of John? I
was prepared to ask many other questions in connection with this opinion of
Fortunius; such as -- how John himself was interrogated as to the Lord's
baptizing, and replied that He had the bride, and was the Bridegroom?(6)
Was it, then, lawful for the Bridegroom to baptize with the baptism of him
who was but a friend or servant? Again, how could they receive the
Eucharist if not previously baptized? or how could the Lord in that case
have said in reply to Peter, who was willing to be wholly washed by Him,
"He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every
whit"?(7) For perfect cleansing is by the baptism, not of John, but of the
Lord, if the person receiving it be worthy; if, however, he be unworthy,
the sacraments abide in him, not to his salvation, but to his perdition.
When I was about to put these questions, Fortunius himself saw that he
ought not to have mooted the subject of the baptism of the disciples of the
Lord.

   1(1). From this we passed to something else, many on both sides
discoursing to the best of their ability. Among other things it was alleged
that our party was still intending to persecute them; and he [Fortunius]
said that he would like to see how I would act in the event of such
persecution, whether I would consent to such cruelty, or withhold from it
all countenance. I said that God saw my heart, which was unseen by them;
also that they had hitherto had no ground for apprehending such
persecution, which if it did take place would be the work of bad men, who
were, however, not so bad as some of their own party; but that it was not
incumbent on us to withdraw ourselves from communion with the Catholic
Church on the ground of anything done against our will, and even in spite
of our opposition (if we had an opportunity of testifying against it),
seeing that we had learned that toleration for the sake of peace which the
apostle prescribes in the words: "Forbearing one another in love,
endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."(1) I
affirmed that they had not preserved this peace and forbearance, when they
had caused a schism, within which, moreover, the more moderate among them
now tolerated more serious evils, lest that which was already a fragment
should be broken again, although they did not, in order to preserve unity,
consent to exercise forbearance in smaller things. I also said that in the
ancient economy the peace of unity and forbearance had not been so fully
declared and commended as it is now by the example of the Lord and the
charity of the New Testament; and yet prophets and holy men were wont to
protest against the sins of the people, without endeavouring to separate
themselves from the unity of the Jewish people, and from communion in
partaking along with them of the sacraments then appointed.

   12. After that, mention was made, I know not in what connection, of
Genethlius of blessed memory, the predecessor of Aurelius in the see of
Carthage, because he had suppressed some edict granted against the
Donatists, and had not suffered it to be carried into effect. They were all
praising and commending him with the utmost kindness. I interrupted their
commendatory speeches with the remark that, for all this, if Genethlius
himself had fallen into their hands, it would have been declared necessary
to baptize him a second time. (We were by this time all standing, as the
time of our going away was at hand.) On this the old man said plainly, that
a rule had now been made, according to which every believer who went over
from us to them must be baptized; but he said this with the most manifest
reluctance and sincere regret. When he himself most frankly bewailed many
of the evil deeds of his party, making evident, as was further proved by
the testimony of the whole community, how far he was from sharing in such
transactions, and told us what he was wont to say in mild expostulation to
those of his own party; when also I had quoted the words of Ezekiel -- " As
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that
sinneth it shall die"(2) -- it which it is written that the son's fault is
not to be reckoned to his father, nor the father's fault reckoned to his
son, it was agreed by all that in such discussions the excesses of bad men
ought not to be brought forward by either party against the other. There
remained, therefore, only the question as to schism. I therefore exhorted
him again and again that he should with tranquil and undisturbed mind join
me in an effort to bring to a satisfactory end, by diligent research, the
examination i of so important a matter. When he kindly replied that I
myself sought this with a single eye, but that others who were on my side
were averse to such examination of the truth, I left him with this promise,
that I would bring to him more of my colleagues, ten at least, who desire
this question to be sifted with the same good-will and calmness and pious
care which I saw that he had discovered and now commended in myself. He
gave me a similar promise regarding a like number of his colleagues.

   CHAP. VI. -- 13. Wherefore I exhort you, and by the blood of the Lord
implore you, to put him in mind of his promise, and to insist urgently that
what has been begun, and is now, as you see, nearly finished, may be
concluded. For, in my opinion, you will have difficulty in finding among
your bishops another whose judgment and feelings are so sound as we have
seen that old man's to be. The next day he came to me himself, and we began
to discuss the matter again. I could not, however, remain long with him, as
the ordination of a bishop required my departing from the place. I had
already sent a messenger to the chief man of the Coelicolae,(3) of whom I
had heard that he had introduced a new' baptism among them, and had by this
impiety led many astray, intending, so far as my limited time permitted, to
confer with him. Fortunius, when he learned that he was coming, perceiving
that I was to be otherwise engaged, and having himself some other duty
calling him from home, bade me a kind and friendly farewell.

   14. It seems to me that if we would avoid the attendance of a noisy
crowd, rather hindering than helping the debate, and if we wish to complete
by the Lord's help so great a work begun in a spirit of unfeigned good-will
and peace, we ought to meet in some small village in which neither party
has a church, and which is inhabited by persons belonging to both churches,
such as Titia. Let this or any other such place be agreed upon in the
region of Tubursi or of Thagaste, and let us take care to have the
canonical books at hand for reference. Let any other documents be brought
thither which either party may judge useful; and laying all other things
aside, uninterrupted, if it please God, by other cares, devoting our time
for as many days as we can to this one work, and each imploring. in private
the Lord's guidance, we may, by the help of Him to whom Christian peace is
most sweet, bring to a happy termination the inquiry which has been in such
a good spirit opened. Do not fail to write in reply what you or Fortunius
think of this.

LETTER XLV.

A short letter to Paulinus and Therasia repeating the request made in
Letter XLII., and again complaining of the long silence of his friend.

LETTER XLVI. (A.D. 398.). A letter propounding several cases of conscience.

TO MY BELOVED AND VENERABLE FATHER THE BISHOP AUGUSTIN, PUBLICOLA SENDS
GREETING.

   It is written: "Ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and
they will tell thee."(1) I have therefore judged it right to "seek the law
at the mouth of the priest" in regard to a certain case which I shall state
in this letter, desiring at the same time to be instructed in regard to
several other matters. I have distinguished the several questions by
stating each in a separate paragraph, and I beg you kindly to give an
answer to each in order.

   I. In the country of the Arzuges it is customary, as I have heard, for
the barbarians to take an oath, swearing by their false gods, in the
presence of the decurion stationed on the frontier or of the tribune, when
they have come under engagement to carry baggage to any part, or to protect
the crops from depredation; and when the decurion certifies in writing that
this oath has been taken, the owners or farmers of land employ them as
watchmen of their crops; or travellers who have occasion to pass through
their country hire them, as if assured of their now being trustworthy. Now
a doubt has arisen in my mind whether the landowner who thus employs a
barbarian, of whose fidelity he is persuaded in consequence of such an
oath, does not make himself and the crops committed to that man's charge to
share the defilement of that sinful oath; and so also with the traveller
who may employ his services. I should mention, however, that in both cases
the barbarian is rewarded for his services with money. Nevertheless in both
transactions there comes in, besides the pecuniary remuneration, this oath
before the decurion or tribune involving mortal sin. I am concerned as to
whether this sin does not defile either him who accepts the oath of the
barbarian, or at least the things which are committed to the barbarian's
keeping. For whatever other terms be in the arrangement, even such as the
payment of gold, and giving of hostages in security, nevertheless this
sinful oath has been a real part of the transaction. Be pleased to resolve
my doubts definitely and positively. For if your answer indicate that you
are in doubt yourself, I may fall into greater perplexity than before.

   II. I have also heard that my own land-stewards receive from the
barbarians hired to protect the crops an oath in which they appeal to their
false gods. Does not this oath so defile these crops, that if a Christian
uses them or takes the money realized by their sale, he is himself defiled?
Do answer this.

   III. Again, I have heard from one person that no oath was taken by the
barbarian in making agreement with my steward, but another has said to me
that such an oath was taken. Suppose now that the latter statement were
false, tell me if I am bound to forbear from using these crops, or the
money obtained for them, merely because I have heard the statement made,
according to the scriptural rule: "If any man say unto you, This is offered
in sacrifice unto idols, eat not, for his sake that showed it."(2) Is this
case parallel to the case of meat offered to idols; and if it is, what am I
to do with the crops, or with the price of them ?

   IV. In this case ought I to examine both him who said that no oath was
taken before my steward, and the other who said that the oath was taken,
and bring witnesses to prove which of the two spoke truly, leaving the
crops or their price untouched so long as there is uncertainty in the
matter ?

   V. If the barbarian who swears this sinful oath were to require of the
steward or of the tribune stationed on the frontier, that he, being a
Christian, should give him assurance of his faithfulness to his part of the
engagement about watching the crops, by the same oath which he himself has
taken, involving mortal sin, does the oath pollute only that Christian man?
Does it not also pollute the things regarding which he took the oath? Or if
a pagan who has authority on the frontier thus give to a barbarian this
oath in token of acting faithfully to him, does he not involve in the
defilement of his own sin those in whose interest he swears? If I send a
man to the Arzuges, is it lawful for him to take from a barbarian that
sinful oath? Is not the Christian who takes such an oath from him also
defiled by his sin ?

   VI. Is it lawful for a Christian to use wheat or beans from the
threshing-floor, wine or oil from the press, if, with his knowledge, some
part of what has been taken thence was offered in sacrifice to a false god
?

   VII. May a Christian use for any purpose wood which he knows to have
been taken from one of their idols' groves ?

   VIII. If a Christian buy in the market meat which has not been offered
to idols, and have in his mind conflicting doubts as to whether it has been
offered to idols or not, but eventually adopt the opinion that it was not,
does he sin if he partake of this meat ?

   IX. If a man does an action good in itself, about which he has some
misgivings as to whether it is good or bad, can it be reckoned as a sin to
him if he does it believing it to be good, although formerly he may have
thought it bad ?

   X. If any one has falsely said that some meat has been offered to
idols, and afterwards confess that it was a falsehood, and this confession
is believed, may a Christian use the meat regarding which he heard that
statement, or sell it, and use the price obtained ?

   XI. If a Christian on a journey, overpowered by want, having fasted for
one, two, or several days, so that he can no longer endure the privation,
should by chance, when in the last extremity of hunger, and when he sees
death close at hand, find food placed in an idol's temple, where there is
no man near him, and no other food to be found; whether should he die or
partake of that food ?

   XII. If a Christian is on the point of being killed by a barbarian or a
Roman, ought he to kill the aggressor to save his own life? or ought he
even, without killing the assailant, to drive him back and fight with him,
seeing it has been said, "Resist not evil"?(1)

   XIII. May a Christian put a wall for defence against an enemy round his
property? and if some use that wall as a place from which to fight and kill
the enemy, is the Christian the cause of the homicide ?

   XIV. May a Christian drink at a fountain or well into which anything
from a sacrifice has been cast? May he drink from a well found in a
deserted temple? If there be in a temple where an idol is worshipped a well
or fountain which nothing has defiled, may he draw water thence, and drink
of it ?

   XV. May a Christian use baths(2) in places in which sacrifice is
offered to images? May he use baths which are used by pagans on a feast-
day, either while they are there or after they have left?

   XVI. May a Christian use the same sedan-chair(3) as has been used by
pagans coming down from their idols on a feastday, if in that chair they
have performed any part of their idolatrous service, and the Christian is
aware of this ?

   XVII. If a Christian, being the guest of another, has forborne from
using meat set before him, concerning which it was said to him that it had
been offered in sacrifice, but afterwards by some accident finds the same
meat for sale and buys it, or has it presented to him at another man's
table, and then eat of it, without knowing that it is the same, is he
guilty of sin ?

   XVIII. May a Christian buy and use vegetables or fruit which he knows
to have been brought from the garden of a temple or of the priests of an
idol ?

   That you may not be put to trouble in searching the Scriptures
concerning the oath of which I have spoken and the idols, I resolved to set
before you those texts which, by the Lord's help, I have found; but if you
have found anything better or more to the purpose in Scripture, be so good
as let me know. For example, when Laban said to Jacob, "The God of Abraham
and the God of Nahor judge betwixt us,"(4) Scripture does not declare which
god is meant. Again, when Abimelech came to Isaac, and he and those who
were with him sware to Isaac, we are not told what kind of oath it was.(5)
As to the idols, Gideon was commanded by the Lord to make a whole burnt-
offering of the bullock which he killed.(6) And in the book of Joshua the
son of Nun, it is said of Jericho that all the silver, and gold, and brass
should be brought into the treasures of the Lord, and the things found in
the accursed city were called sacred.(7) Also we read in Deuteronomy:(8)
"Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a
cursed thing like it."

   May the Lord preserve thee. I salute thee. Pray for me.

LETTER XLVII. (A.D. 398.)

TO THE HONOURABLE PUBLICOLA, MY MUCH BELOVED SON, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING
IN THE LORD.

   1. Your perplexities have, since I learned them by your letter, become
mine also, not because all those things by which you tell me that you are
disturbed, disturb my mind: but I have been much perplexed, I confess, by
the question how your perplexities were to be removed; especially since you
require me to give a conclusive answer, lest you should fall into greater
doubts than you had before you applied to me to have them resolved. For I
see that I cannot give this, since, though I may write things which appear
to me most certain, if I do not convince you, you must be beyond question
more at a loss than before; and though it is in my power to use arguments
which weigh with myself, I may fail of convincing another by these.
However, lest I should refuse the small service which your love claims, I
have resolved after some consideration to write in reply.

   2. One of your doubts is as to using the services of a man who has
guaranteed his fidelity by swearing by his false gods. In this matter I beg
you to consider whether, in the event of a man failing to keep his word
after having pledged himself by such an oath, you would not regard him as
guilty of a twofold sin. For if he kept the engagement which he had
confirmed by this oath, he would be pronounced guilty in this only, that he
swore by such deities; but no one would justly blame him for keeping his
engagement. But in the case supposed, seeing that he both swore by those
whom he should not worship, and did, notwithstanding his promise, what he
should not have done, he was guilty of two sins: whence it is obvious that
in using, not for an evil work, but for some good and lawful end, the
service of a man whose fidelity is known to have been confirmed by an oath
in the name of false gods, one participates, not in the sin of swearing by
the false gods, but in the good faith with which he keeps his promise. The
faith which I here speak of as kept is not that on account of which those
who are baptized in Christ are called faithful: that is entirely different
and far removed from the faith desiderated in regard to the arrangements
and compacts of men. Nevertheless it is, beyond all doubt, worse to swear
falsely by the true God than to swear truly by the false gods; for the
greater the holiness of that by which we swear, the greater is the sin of
perjury. It is therefore a different question whether he is not guilty who
requires another to pledge himself by taking an oath in the name of his
gods, seeing that he worships false gods. In answering this question, we
may accept as decisive those examples which you yourself quoted of Laban
and of Abimelech (if Abimelech did swear by his gods, as Laban swore by the
god of Nahor). This is, as I have said, another question, and one which
would perchance perplex me, were it not for those examples of Isaac and
Jacob, to which, for aught I know, others might be added. It may be that
some scruple might yet be suggested by the precept in the New Testament,
"Swear not at all;"(1) words which were in my opinion spoken, not because
it is a sin to swear a true oath, but because it is a heinous sin to
forswear oneself: from which crime our Lord would have us keep at a great
distance, when He charged us not to swear at all. I know, however, that our
opinion is different: wherefore it should not be discussed at present; let
us rather treat of that about which you have thought of asking my advice.
On the same ground on which you forbear from swearing yourself, you may, if
such be your opinion, regard it as forbidden to exact an oath from another,
although it is expressly said, Swear not; but I do not remember reading
anywhere in Holy Scripture that we are not to take another's oath. The
question whether we ought to take advantage of the concord which is
established between other parties by their exchange of oaths is entirely
different. If we answer this in the negative, I know not whether we could
find any place on earth in which we could live. For not only on the
frontier, but throughout all the provinces, the security of peace rests on
the oaths of barbarians. And from this it would follow, that not only the
crops which are guarded by men who have sworn fidelity in the name of their
false gods, but all things which enjoy the protection secured by the peace
which a similar oath has ratified, are defiled. If this be admitted by you
to be a complete absurdity, dismiss with it your doubts on the cases which
you named.

   3. Again, if from the threshing-floor or wine-press of a Christian
anything be taken, with his knowledge, to be offered to false gods, he is
guilty in permitting this to be done, if it be in his power to prevent it.
If he finds that it has been done, or has not the power to prevent it, he
uses without scruple the rest of the grain or wine, as uncontaminated, just
as we use fountains from which we know that water has been taken to be used
in idol-worship. The same principle decides the question about baths. For
we have no scruple about inhaling the air into which we know that the smoke
from all the altars and incense of idolaters ascends. From which it is
manifest, that the thing forbidden is our devoting anything to the honour
of the false gods, or appearing to do this by so acting as to encourage in
such worship those who do not know our mind, although in our heart we
despise their idols. And when temples, idols, groves, etc., are thrown down
by permission from the authorities, although our taking part in this work
is a clear proof of our not honouring, but rather abhorring, these things,
we must nevertheless forbear from appropriating any of them to our own
personal and private use; so that it may be manifest that in overthrowing
these we are influenced, not by greed, but by piety. When, however, the
spoils of these places are applied to the benefit of the community or
devoted to the service of God, they are dealt with in the same manner as
the men themselves when they are turned from impiety and sacrilege to the
true religion. We understand this to be the will of God from the examples
quoted by yourself: the grove of the false gods from which He commanded
wood to be taken [by Gideon] for the burnt-offering; and Jericho, of which
all the gold, silver, and brass was to be brought into the Lord's treasury.
Hence also the precept in Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not desire the silver or
gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein;
for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God. Neither shalt thou bring an
abomination into thine house, lest thou become a cursed thing like it: but
thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a
cursed thing."(1) From which it appears plainly, that either the
appropriation of such spoils to their own private use was absolutely
forbidden, or they were forbidden to carry anything of that kind into their
own houses with the intention of giving to it honour; for then this would
be an abomination and accursed in the sight of God; whereas the honour
impiously given to such idols is, by their public destruction, utterly
abolished.

   4. As to meats offered to idols, I assure you we have no duty beyond
observing what the apostle taught concerning them. Study, therefore, his
words on the subject, which, if they were obscure to you, I would explain
as well as I could. He does not sin who, unwittingly, afterwards partakes
of food which he formerly refused because it had been offered to an idol. A
kitchen-herb, or any other fruit of the ground, belongs to Him who created
it; for "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," and "every
creature of God is good."(2) But if that which the earth has borne is
consecrated or offered to an idol, then we must reckon it among the things
offered to idols. We must beware lest, in pronouncing that we ought not to
eat the fruits of a garden belonging to an idol-temple, we be involved in
the inference that it was wrong for the apostle to take food in Athens,
since that city belonged to Minerva, and was consecrated to her as the
guardian deity. The same answer I would give as to the well or fountain
enclosed in a temple, though my scruples would be somewhat more awakened if
some part of the sacrifices be thrown into the said well or fountain. But
the case is, as I have said before, exactly parallel to our using of the
air which receives the smoke of these sacrifices; or, if this be thought to
make a difference, that the sacrifice, the smoke whereof mingles with the
air, is not offered to the air itself, but to some idol or false god,
whereas sometimes offerings are cast into the water with the intention of
sacrificing to the waters themselves, it is enough to say that the same
principle would preclude us from using the light of the sun, because wicked
men continually worship that luminary wherever they are tolerated in doing
so. Sacrifices are offered to the winds, which we nevertheless use for our
convenience, although they seem, as it were, to inhale and swallow greedily
the smoke of these sacrifices. If any one be in doubt regarding meat,
whether it has been offered to an idol or not, and the fact be that it has
not, when he eats that meat under the impression that it has not been
offered to an idol, he by no means does wrong; because neither in fact, nor
now in his judgment, is it food offered to an idol, although he formerly
thought it was. For surely it is lawful to correct false impressions by
others that are true. But if any one believes that to be good which is
evil, and acts accordingly, he sins in entertaining that belief; and these
are all sins of ignorance, in which one thinks that to be right which it is
wrong for him to do.

   5. As to killing others in order to defend one's own life, I do not
approve of this, unless one happen to be a soldier or public functionary
acting, not for himself, but in defence of others or of the city in which
he resides, if he act according to the commission lawfully given him, and
in the manner becoming his office.(3) When, however, men are prevented, by
being alarmed, from doing wrong, it may be said that a real service is done
to themselves. The precept, "Resist not evil,"(4) was given to prevent us
from taking pleasure in revenge, in which the mind is gratified by the
sufferings of others, but not to make us neglect the duty of restraining
men from sin. From this it follows that one is not guilty of homicide,
because he has put up a wall round his estate, if any one is killed by the
wall falling upon him when he is throwing it down. For a Christian is not
guilty of homicide though his ox may gore or his horse kick a man, so that
he dies. On such a principle, the oxen of a Christian should have no horns,
and his horses no hoofs, and his dogs no teeth. On such a principle, when
the Apostle Paul took care to inform the chief captain that an ambush was
laid for him by certain desperadoes, and received in consequence an armed
escort,(1) if the villains who plotted his death had thrown themselves on
the weapons of the soldiers, Paul would have had to acknowledge the
shedding of their blood as a crime with which he was chargeable. God forbid
that we should be blamed for accidents which, without our desire, happen to
others through things done by us or found in our possession, which are in
themselves good and lawful. In that event, we ought to have no iron
implements for the house or the field, lest some one should by them lose
his own life or take another's no tree or tone on our premises, lest some
one hang himself; no window in our house, lest some one throw himself down
from it. But why mention more in a list which must be interminable? For
what good and lawful thing is there in use among men which may not become
chargeable with being an instrument of destruction?

   6. I have now only to notice (unless I am mistaken) the case which you
mentioned of a Christian on a journey overcome by the extremity of hunger;
whether, if he could find nothing to eat but meat placed in an idol's
temple, and there was no man near to relieve him, it would be better for
him to die of starvation than to take that food for his nourishment? Since
in this question it is not assumed that the food thus found was offered to
the idol (for it might have been left by mistake or designedly by persons
who, on a journey, had turned aside there to take refreshment; or it might
have been put there for some other purpose), I answer briefly thus: Either
it is certain that this food was offered to the idol, or it is certain that
it was not, or neither of these things is known. If it is certain, it is
better to reject it with Christian fortitude. In either of the other
alternatives, it may be used for his necessity without any conscientious
scruple.

LETTER XLVIII. (A.D. 398.)

TO MY LORD EUDOXIUS, MY BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER, BELOVED AND LONGED
FOR, AND TO THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM,(2) AUGUSTIN AND THE BRETHREN WHO
ARE HERE SEND GREETING.

   1. When we reflect upon the undisturbed rest which you enjoy in Christ,
we also, although engaged in labours manifold and arduous, find rest with
you, beloved. We are one body under one Head, so that you share our toils,
and we share your repose: for "if one member suffer, all the members suffer
with it; or if one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it."(3)
Therefore we earnestly exhort and beseech you, by the deep humility and
most compassionate majesty of Christ, to be mindful of us in your holy
intercessions; for we believe you to be more lively and undistracted in
prayer than we can be, whose prayers are often marred and weakened by the
darkness and confusion arising from secular occupations: not that we have
these on our own account, but we can scarcely breathe for the pressure of
such duties imposed upon us by men compelling us, so to speak, to go with
them one mile, with whom we are commanded by our Lord to go farther than
they ask.(4) We believe, nevertheless, that He before whom the sighing of
the prisoner comes(5) will look on us persevering in the ministry in which
He was pleased to put us, with promise of reward, and, by the assistance of
your prayers, will set us free from all distress.

   2. We exhort you in the Lord, brethren, to be stedfast in your purpose,
and persevere to the end; and if the Church, your Mother, calls you to
active service, guard against accepting it, on the one hand, with too eager
elation of spirit, or declining it, on the other, under the solicitations
of indolence; and obey God with a lowly heart, submitting yourselves in
meekness to Him who governs you, who will guide the meek in judgment, and
will teach them His way.(6) Do not prefer your own ease to the claims of
the Church; for if no good men were willing to minister to her in her
bringing forth of her spiritual children, the beginning of your own
spiritual life would have been impossible. As men must keep the way
carefully in walking between fire and water, so as to be neither burned nor
drowned, so must we order our steps between the pinnacle of pride and the
whirlpool of indolence; as it is written, "declining neither to the right
hand nor to the left."(7) For some, while guarding too anxiously against
being lifted up and raised, as it were, to the dangerous heights on the
right hand, have  fallen and been engulphed in the depths on the left.
Again, others, while turning too eagerly from the danger on the left hand
of being immersed in the torpid effeminacy of inaction, are, on the other
hand, so destroyed and consumed by the extravagance of self-conceit, that
they vanish into ashes and smoke. See then, beloved, that in your love of
ease you restrain yourselves from all mere earthly delight, and remember
that there is no place where the fowler who fears lest we fly back to God
may not lay snares for us; let us account him whose captives we once were
to be the sworn enemy of all good men; let us never consider ourselves in
possession of perfect peace until iniquity shall have ceased, and "judgment
shall have returned unto righteousness."(1)

   3. Moreover, when you are exerting yourselves with energy and fervour,
whatever you do, whether labouring diligently in prayer, fasting, or
almsgiving, or distributing to the poor, or forgiving injuries, "as God
also for Christ's sake hath forgiven us,"(2) or subduing evil habits, and
chastening the body and bringing it into subjection,(3) or bearing
tribulation, and especially bearing with one another in love (for what can
he bear who is not patient with his brother?), or guarding against the
craft and wiles of the tempter, and by the shield of faith averting and
extinguishing his fiery darts,(4) or "singing and making melody to the Lord
in your hearts,"(5) or with voices in harmony with your hearts; -- whatever
you do, I say, "do all to the glory of God,"(6) who "worketh all in
all,"(7) and be so "fervent in Spirit "(8) that your "soul may make her
boast in the Lord."(9) Such is the course of those who walk in the
"straight way," whose "eyes are ever upon the Lord, for He shall pluck
their feet out of the net."(10) Such a course is neither interrupted by
business, nor benumbed by leisure, neither boisterous nor languid, neither
presumptuous nor desponding, neither reckless nor supine.  "These things
do, and the God of peace shall be with you."(11)

   4. Let your charity prevent you from accounting me forward in wishing
to address you by letter. I remind you of these things, not because I think
you come short in them, but because I thought that I would be much
commended unto God by you, if, in doing your duty to Him, you do it with a
remembrance of my exhortation. For good report, even before the coming of
the brethren Eustasius and Andreas from you, had brought to us, as they
did, the good savour of Christ, which is yielded by your holy conversation.
Of these, Eustasius has gone before us to that land of rest, on the shore
of which beat no rude waves such as those which encompass your island home,
and in which he does not regret Caprera, for the homely raiment(12) with
which it furnished him he wears no more.

LETTER XLIX.

This letter, written to Honoratus, a Donatist bishop, contains nothing on
the Donatist schism which is not already found in Letters XLIII and XLIV.,
or supplied in Letter LIII.

LETTER L.(13) (A.D. 399.)

TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEADING MEN, OR ELDERS, OF THE COLONY OF SUFFECTUM,
BISHOP AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING.

   Earth reels and heaven trembles at the report of the enormous crime and
unprecedented cruelty which has made your streets and temples run red with
blood, and ring with the shouts of murderers. You have buried the laws of
Rome ,in a dishonoured grave, and trampled in scorn the reverence due to
equitable enactments. The authority of emperors you neither respect nor
fear. In your city there has been shed the innocent blood of sixty of our
brethren; and whoever approved himself most active in the massacre, was
rewarded with your applause, and with a high place in your Council. Come
now, let us arrive at the chief pretext for this outrage. If you say that
Hercules belonged to you, by all means we will make good your loss: we have
metals at hand, and there is no lack of stone; nay, we have several
varieties of marble, and a host of artisans. Fear not, your god is in the
hands of his makers, and shall be with all diligence hewn out and polished
and ornamented. We will give in addition some red ochre, to make him blush
in such a way as may well harmonize with your devotions. Or if you say that
the Hercules must be of your own making, we will raise a subscription in
pennies,(14) and buy a god from a workman of your own for you. Only do you
at the same time make restitution to us; and as your god Hercules is given
back to you, let the lives of the many men whom your violence has destroyed
be given back to us.

LETTER LI. (A.D. 399 or 400.) An invitation to Crispinus, Donatist bishop
at Calama, to discuss the whole question of the Donatist schism. (No
salutation at the beginning of the letter.)

   1. I have adopted this plan in regard to the heading of this letter,
because your party are offended by the humility which I have shown in the
salutations prefixed to others. I might be supposed to have done it as an
insult to you, were it not that I trust that you will do the same in your
reply to me. Why should I say much regarding your promise at Carthage, and
my urgency to have it fulfilled? Let the manner in which we then acted to
each other be forgotten with the past, lest it should obstruct future
conference. Now, unless I am mistaken, there is, by the Lord's help, no
obstacle in the way: we are both in Numidia, and located at no great
distance from each other. I have heard it said that you are still willing
to examine, in debate with me, the question which separates us from
communion with each other. See how promptly all ambiguities may be cleared
away: send me an answer to this letter if you please, and perhaps that may
be enough, not only for us, but for those also who desire to hear us; or if
it is not, let us exchange letters again and again until the discussion is
exhausted. For what greater benefit could be secured to us by the
comparative nearness of the towns which we inhabit? I have resolved to
debate with you in no other way than by letters, in order both to prevent
anything that is said from escaping from our memory, and to secure that
others interested in the question, but unable to be present at a debate,
may not forfeit the instruction. You are accustomed, not with any intention
of falsehood, but by mistake, to reproach us with charges such as may suit
your purpose, concerning past transactions, which we repudiate as untrue.
Therefore, if you please, let us weigh the question in the light of the
present, and let the past alone. You are doubtless aware that in the Jewish
dispensation the sin of idolatry was committed by the people, and once the
book of the prophet of God was burned by a defiant king;(1) the punishment
of the sin of schism would not have been more severe than that with which
these two were visited, had not the guilt of it been greater. You remember,
of course, how the earth opening swallowed up alive the leaders of a
schism, and fire from heaven breaking forth destroyed their accomplices.(2)
Neither the making and worshipping of an idol, nor the burning of the Holy
Book, was deemed worthy of such punishment.

   2. You are wont to reproach us with a crime, not proved against us,
indeed, though proved beyond question against some of your own party,  --
the crime, namely, of yielding up, through fear of persecution, the
Scriptures(3) to be burned. Let me ask, therefore, why you have received
back men whom you condemned for the crime of schism by the "unerring voice
of your plenary Council" (I quote from the record), and replaced them in
the same episcopal sees as they were in at the time when you passed
sentence against them? I refer to Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of
Assuri.(4) These were not, as you would have the ignorant believe, included
among those to whom your Council appointed and intimated a certain time,
after the lapse of which, if they had not returned to your communion, the
sentence would become final; but they were included among the others whom
you condemned, without delay, on the day on which you gave to some, as I
have said, a respite. I can prove this, if you deny it. Your own Council is
witness. We have also the proconsular Acts, in which you have not once, but
often, affirmed this. Provide, therefore, some other line of defence if you
can, lest, denying what I can prove, you cause loss of time. If, then,
Felicianus and Praetextatus were innocent, why were they thus condemned? If
they were guilty, why were they thus restored? If you prove them to have
been innocent, can you object to our believing that it was possible for
innocent men, falsely charged with being traditors, to be condemned by a
much smaller number of your predecessors, if it is found possible for
innocent men, falsely charged with being schismatics, to be condemned by
three hundred and ten of their successors, whose decision is magniloquently
described as proceeding from "the unerring voice of a plenary Council"? If,
however, you prove them to have been justly condemned, what can you plead
in defence of their being restored to office in the same episcopal sees,
unless, magnifying the importance and benefit of peace, you maintain that
even such things as these should be tolerated in order to preserve unbroken
the I bond of unity? Would to God that you would urge this plea, not with
the lips only, but with the whole heart! You could not fail then to
perceive that no calumnies whatever could justify the breaking up of the
peace of Christ throughout the world, if it is lawful in Africa for men,
once condemned for impious schism, to be restored to the same office which
they held, rather than break up the peace of Donatus and his party.

   3. Again, you are wont to reproach us with persecuting you by the help
of the civil power. In regard to this, I do not draw an argument either
from the demerit involved in the enormity of so great an impiety, nor from
the Christian meekness moderating the severity of our measures. I take up
this position: if this be a crime, why have you harshly persecuted the
Maximianists by the help of judges appointed by those emperors whose
spiritual birth by the gospel was due to our Church? Why have you driven
them, by the din of controversy, the authority of edicts, and the violence
of soldiery, from those buildings for worship which they possessed, and in
which they were when they seceded from you? The wrongs endured by them in
that struggle in every place are attested by the existing traces of events
so recent. Documents declare the orders given. The deeds done are notorious
throughout regions in which also the sacred memory of your leader Optatus
is mentioned with honour.

   4. Again, you are wont to say that we have not the baptism of Christ,
and that beyond your communion it is not to be found. On this I would enter
into a more lengthened argument; but in dealing with you this is not
necessary, seeing that, along with Felicianus and Praetextatus, you
admitted also the baptism of the Maximianists as valid. For all whom these
bishops baptized so long as they were in communion with Maximianus, while
you were doing your utmost in a protracted contest in the civil courts to
expel these very men [Felicianus and Praetextatus] from their churches, as
the Acts testify, -- all those, I say, whom they baptized during that time,
they now have in fellowship with them and with you; and though these were
baptized by them when excommunicated and in the guilt of schism, not only
in cases of extremity through dangerous sickness, but also at the Easter
services, in the large number of churches belonging to their cities, and in
these important cities themselves, -- in the case of none of them has the
rite of baptism been repeated. And I wish you could prove that those whom
Felicianus and Praetextatus had baptized, as it were, in vain, when they
were excommunicated and in the guilt of schism, were satisfactorily
baptized again by them when they were restored. For if the renewal of
baptism was necessary for the people, the renewal of ordination was not
less necessary for the bishops. For they had forfeited their episcopal
office by leaving you, if they could not baptize beyond your communion;
because, if they had not forfeited their episcopal office by leaving you,
they could still baptize. But if they had forfeited their episcopal office,
they should have received ordination when they returned, so that what they
had lost might be restored. Let not this, however, alarm you. As it is
certain that they returned with the same standing as bishops with which
they had gone forth from you, so is it also certain that they brought back
with themselves to your communion, without any repetition of their baptism,
all those whom they had baptized in the schism of Maximianus.

   5. How can we weep enough when we see the baptism of the Maximianists
acknowledged by you, and the baptism of the Church universal despised?
Whether it was with or without hearing their defence, whether it was justly
or unjustly, that you condemned Felicianus and Praetextatus, I do not ask;
but tell me what bishop of the Corinthian Church ever defended himself at
your bar, or received sentence from you? or what bishop of the Galatians
has done so, or of the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Thessalonians,
or of any of the other cities included in the promise: "All the kindreds of
the nations shall worship before Thee " Yet you accept the baptism of the
former, while that of the latter is despised; whereas baptism belongs
neither to the one nor to the other, but to Him of whom it was said: "This
same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." I do not, however, dwell on
this in the meantime: take notice of the things which are beside us --
behold what might make an impression even on the blind! Where do we find
the baptism which you acknowledge? With those, forsooth, whom you have
condemned, but not with those who were never even tried at your bar! --
with those who were denounced by name, and cast forth from you for the
crime of schism, but not with those who, unknown to you, and dwelling in
remote lands, never were accused or condemned by you! --with those who are
but a fraction of the inhabitants of a fragment of Africa, but not with
those from whose country the gospel first came to Africa! Why should I add
to your burden? Let me have an answer to these things. Look to the charge
made by your Council against the Maximianists as guilty of impious schism:
look to the persecutions by the civil courts to which you appealed against
them: look to the fact that you restored some of them without re-
ordination, and accepted their baptism as valid: and answer, if you can,
whether it is in your power to hide, even from the ignorant, the question
why you have separated yourselves from the whole world, in a schism much
more heinous than that which you boast of having condemned in the
Maximianists? May the peace of Christ triumph in your heart! Then all shall
be well.(3)

LETTER LII.

This letter to his kinsman Severinus, exhorting him to withdraw from the
Donatists, contains no new argument.

LETTER LIII. (A.D. 400.)

TO GENEROSUS, OUR MOST LOVED AND HONOURABLE BROTHER, FORTUNATUS ALYPIUS AND
AUGUSTIN SEND GREETING IN THE LORD.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. Since you were pleased to acquaint us with the letter
sent to you by a Donatist presbyter, although, with the spirit of a true
Catholic, you regarded it with contempt, nevertheless, to aid you in
seeking his welfare if his folly be not incurable, we beg you to forward to
him the following reply. He wrote that an angel had enjoined him to declare
to you the episcopal succession(1) of the Christianity of your town; to
you, forsooth, who hold the Christianity not of your own town only, nor of
Africa only, but of the whole world, the Christianity which has been
published, and is now published to all nations. This proves that they think
it a small matter that they themselves are not ashamed of being cut off,
and are taking no measures, while they may, to be engrafted anew; they are
not content unless they do their utmost to cut others off, and bring them
to share their own fate, as withered branches fit for the flames.
Wherefore, even if you had yourself been visited by that angel whom he
affirms to have appeared to him, -- a statement which we regard as a
cunning fiction; and if the angel had said to you the very words which he,
on the warrant of the alleged command, repeated to you, -- even in that
case it would have been your duty to remember the words of the apostle:
"Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than
that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."(2) For to you it was
proclaimed by the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that His "gospel
shall be preached unto all nations, and then shall the end come."(3) To you
it has moreover been proclaimed by the writings of the prophets and of the
apostles, that the promises were given to Abraham and to his seed, which is
Christ,(4) when God said unto him: "In thy seed shall all nations of the
earth be blessed." Having then such promises, if an angel from heaven were
to say to thee, "Let go the Christianity of the whole earth, and cling to
the faction of Donatus, the episcopal succession of which is set forth in a
letter of their bishop in your town," he ought to be accursed in your
estimation; because he would be endeavouring to cut you off from the whole
Church, and thrust you into a small party, and make you forfeit your
interest in the promises of God.

   2. For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account,
with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back
till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole
Church,(5) the Lord said: "Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it !"(6) The successor of Peter was
Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these:  -- Clement,
Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus,
Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus,
Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix,
Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester,
Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the
present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop
is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent
to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of
a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of
"mountain men," or Cutzupits, by which they were known.

   3. Now, even although some traditor had in the course of these
centuries, through inadvertence, obtained a place in that order of bishops,
reaching from Peter himself to Anastasius, who now occupies that see, --
this fact would do no harm to the Church and to Christians having no share
in the guilt of another; for the Lord, providing against such a case, says,
concerning officers in the Church who are wicked: "All whatsoever they bid
you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they
say, and do not."(7) Thus the stability of the hope of the faithful is
secured, inasmuch as being fixed, not in man, but in the Lord, it never can
be swept away by the raging of impious schism; whereas they themselves are
swept away who read in the. Holy Scriptures the names of churches to which
the apostles wrote, and in which they have no bishop. For what could more
clearly prove their perversity and their folly, than their saying to their
clergy, when they read these letters, "Peace be with thee,"(8) at the very
time that they are themselves disjoined from the peace of those churches to
which the letters were originally written ?

   CHAP. II. -- 4. Lest, however, he should congratulate himself too much
on the succession of bishops in Constantina, your own city, read to him the
records of proceedings before Munatius Felix, the resident Flamen [heathen
priest], who was governor of your city in the consulship of Diocletian for
the eighth time, and Maximian for the seventh, on the eleventh day before
the calends of June. By these records it is proved that the bishop Paulus
was a traditor; the fact being that Sylvanus was then one of his sub-
deacons, and, along with him, produced and surrendered certain things
belonging to the Lord's house, which had been most carefully concealed,
namely a box(1) and a lamp of silver, upon seeing which a certain Victor is
reported to have said, "You would have been put to death if you had not
found these." Your Donatist priest makes great account of this Sylvanus,
this clearly convicted traditor, in the letter which he writes you,
mentioning him as then ordained to the office of bishop by the Primate
Secundus of Tigisis. Let them keep their proud tongues silent, let them
admit the charges which may truly be brought against themselves, and not
utter foolish calumnies against others. Read to him also, if he permits it,
the ecclesiastical records of the proceedings of this same Secundus of
Tigisis in the house of Urbanus Donatus, in which he remitted to God, as
judge, men who confessed themselves to have been traditors -- Donatus of
Masculi, Marinns of Aquae Tibilitanae, Donatus of Calama, with whom as his
colleagues, though they were confessed traditors, he ordained their bishop
Sylvanus, of whose guilt in the same matter I have given the history above.
Read to him also the proceedings before Zenophilus, a man of consular rank,
in the course of which a certain deacon of theirs, Nundinarius, being angry
with Sylvanus for having excommunicated him, brought all these facts into
court, proving them incontestably by authentic documents, and the
questioning of witnesses, and the reading of public records and many
letters.

   5. There are many other things which you might read in his hearing, if
he is disposed not to dispute angrily, but to listen prudently, such as:
the petition of the Donatists to Constantine, begging him to send from Gaul
bishops who should settle this controversy which divided the African
bishops; the Acts recording what took place in Rome, when the case was
taken up and decided by the bishops whom he sent thither: also you might
read in other letters how the Emperor aforesaid states that they had made a
complaint to him against the decision of their peers  -- the bishops,
namely, whom he had sent to Rome; how he appointed other bishops to try the
case over again at Arles; how they appealed from that tribunal also to the
Emperor again; how at last he himself investigated the matter; and how he
most emphatically declares that they were vanquisbed by the innocence of
Caecilianus. Let him listen to these things if he be willing, and he will
be silent and desist from plotting against the truth.

   CHAP. III. -- 6. We rely, however, not so much on these documents as on
the Holy Scriptures, wherein a dominion extending to the ends of the earth
among all nations is promised as the heritage of Christ, separated from
which by their sinful schism they reproach us with the crimes which belong
to the chaff in the Lord's threshingfloor, which must be permitted to
remain mixed with the good grain until the end come, until the whole be
winnowed in the final judgment. From which it is manifest that, whether
these charges be true or false, they do not belong to the Lord's wheat,(2)
which must grow until the end of the world throughout the whole field, i.e.
the whole earth; as we know, not by the testimony of a false angel such as
confirmed your correspondent in his error, but from the words of the Lord
in the Gospel. And because these unhappy Donatists have brought the
reproach of many false and empty accusations against Christians who were
blameless, but who are throughout the world mingled with the chaff or
tares, i.e. with Christians unworthy of the name, therefore God has, in
righteous retribution, appointed that they should, by their universal
Council, condemn as schismatics the Maximianists, because they bad
condemned Primianus, and baptized while not in communion with Primianus,
and rebaptized those whom he had baptized, and then after a short interval
should, under the coercion of Optatus the minion of Gildo, reinstate in the
honours of their office two of these, the bishops Felicianus of Musti and
Praetextatus of Assuri, and acknowledge the baptism of all whom they, while
under sentence and excommunicated, had baptized. If, therefore, they are
not defiled by communion with the men thus restored again to their office,
-- men whom with their own mouth they had condemned as wicked and impious,
and whom they compared to those first heretics whom the earth swallowed up
alive,(3) -- let them at last awake and consider how great is their
blindness and folly in pronouncing the whole world defiled by unknown
crimes of Africans, and the heritage of Christ (which according to the
promise has been shown unto all nations) destroyed through the sins of
these Africans by the maintenance of  communion with them; while they
refuse to acknowledge themselves to be destroyed and defiled by
communicating with men whose crimes they had both known and condemned.

   7. Wherefore, since the Apostle Paul says in another place, that even
Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, and that therefore it is
not strange that his servants should assume the guise of ministers of
righteousness:(1) if your correspondent did indeed see an angel teaching
him error, and desiring to separate Christians from the Catholic unity, he
has met with an angel of Satan transforming himself into an angel of light.
If, however, he has lied to you, and has seen no such vision, he is himself
a servant of Satan, assuming the guise of a minister of righteousness. And
yet, if he be not incorrigibly obstinate and perverse, he may, by
considering all the things now stated, be delivered both from misleading
others, and from being himself misled. For, embracing the opportunity which
you have given, we have met him without any rancour, remembering in regard
to him the words of the apostle: "The servant of the Lord must not strive;
but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient; in meekness instructing
those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance
to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out
of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will."(2)
If, therefore, we have said anything severe, let him know that it arises
not from the bitterness of controversy, but from love vehemently desiring
his return to the right path. May you live safe in Christ, most beloved and
honourable brother !

LETTER LIV. Styled also Book I. of Replies to Questions of Januarius. (A.D.
400.)

TO HIS BELOVED SON JANUARIUS, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   CHAP. I. -- 1. In regard to the questions which you have asked me, I
would like to have known what your own answers would have been; for thus I
might have made my reply in fewer words, and might most easily confirm or
correct your opinions, by approving or amending the answers which you had
given. This I would have greatly preferred. But desiring to answer you at
once, I think it better to write a long letter than incur loss of time. I
desire you therefore, in the first place, to hold fast this as the
fundamental principle in the present discussion, that our Lord Jesus Christ
has appointed to us a "light yoke" and an "easy burden," as He declares in
the Gospel:(3) in accordance with which He has bound His people under the
new dispensation together in fellowship by sacraments, which are in number
very few, in observance most easy, and in significance most excellent, as
baptism solemnized in the name of the Trinity, the communion of His body
and blood, and such other things as are prescribed in the canonical
Scriptures, with the exception of those enactments which were a yoke of
bondage to God's ancient people, suited to their state of heart and to the
times of the prophets, and which are found in the five books of Moses. As
to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but
of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be
understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the
apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church
is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of
the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the
Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by
the whole Church wherever it has been established.

   CHAP. II. -- 2. There are other things, however, which are different in
different places and countries: e.g., some fast on Saturday, others do not;
some partake daily of the body and blood of Christ, others receive it on
stated days: in some places no day passes without the sacrifice being
offered; in others it is only on Saturday and the Lord's day, or it may be
only on the Lord's day. In regard to these and all other variable
observances which may be met anywhere, one is at liberty to comply with
them or not as he chooses; and there is no better rule for the wise and
serious Christian in this matter, than to conform to the practice which he
finds prevailing in the Church to which it may be his lot to come. For such
a custom, if it is clearly not contrary to the faith nor to sound morality,
is to be held as a thing indifferent, and ought to be observed for the sake
of fellowship with those among whom we live.

   3. I think you may have heard me relate before,(4) what I will
nevertheless now mention. When my mother followed me to Milan, she found
the Church there not fasting on Saturday. She began to be troubled, and to
hesitate as to what she should do; upon which I, though not taking a
personal interest then in such things, applied on her behalf to Ambrose, of
most blessed memory, for his advice. He answered that he could not teach me
anything but what he himself practised, because if he knew any better rule,
he would observe it himself. When I supposed that he intended, on the
ground of his authority alone, and without supporting it by any argument,
to recommend us to give up fasting on Saturday, he followed me, and said:
"When I visit Rome, I fast on Saturday; when I am here, I do not fast. On
the same principle, do you observe the custom prevailing in whatever Church
you come to, if you desire neither to give offence by your conduct, nor to
find cause of offence in another's." When I reported this to my mother, she
accepted it gladly; and for myself, after frequently reconsidering his
decision, I have always esteemed it as if I had received it by an oracle
from heaven. For often have I perceived, with extreme sorrow, many
disquietudes caused to weak brethren by the contentious pertinacity or
superstitious vacillation of some who, in matters of this kind, which do
not admit of final decision by the authority of Holy Scripture, or by the
tradition of the universal Church or by their manifest good influence on
manners raise questions, it may be, from some crotchet of their own, or
from attachment to the custom followed in one's own country, or from
preference for that which one has seen abroad, supposing that wisdom is
increased in proportion to the distance to which men travel from home, and
agitate these questions with such keenness, that they think all is wrong
except what they do themselves.

   CHAP. III. -- 4. Some one may say, "The Eucharist ought not to be taken
every day." You ask, "On what grounds ?" He answers, "Because, in order
that a man may approach worthily to so great a sacrament, he ought to
choose those days upon which he lives in more special purity and self-
restraint; for 'whosoever eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and
drinketh judgment to himself."(1) Another answers, "Certainly; if the wound
inflicted by sin and the violence of the soul's distemper be such that the
use of these remedies must be put off for a time, every man in this case
should be, by the authority of the bishop, forbidden to approach the altar,
and appointed to do penance,(2) and should be afterwards restored to
privileges by the same authority; for this would be partaking unworthily,
if one should partake of it at a time when he ought to be doing penance;
and it is not a matter to be left to one's own judgment to withdraw himself
from the communion of the Church, or restore himself, as he pleases. If,
however, his sins are not so great as to bring him justly under sentence of
excommunication, he ought not to withdraw himself from the daily use of the
Lord's body for the healing of his soul." Perhaps a third party interposes
with a more just decision of the question, reminding them that the
principal thing is to remain united in the peace of Christ, and that each
should be free to do what, according to his belief, he conscientiously
regards as his duty. For neither of them lightly esteems the body and blood
of the Lord; on the contrary, both are contending who shall most highly
honour the sacrament fraught with blessing. There was no controversy
between those two mentioned in the Gospel, Zacchaeus and the Centurion; nor
did either of them think himself better than the other, though, whereas the
former received the Lord joyfully into his house,(3) the latter said, "I am
not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof,"(4) -- both honouring
the Saviour, though in ways diverse and, as it were, mutually opposed; both
miserable through sin, and both obtaining the mercy they required. We may
further borrow an illustration here, from the fact that the manna given to
the ancient people of God tasted in each man's mouth as he desired that it
might.(5) It is the same with this world-sabduing sacrament in the heart of
each Christian. For he that dares not take it every day, and' he who dares
not omit it any day, are both alike moved by a desire to do it honour. That
sacred food will not submit to be despised, as the manna could not be
loathed with impunity. Hence the apostle says that it was unworthily
partaken of by those who did not distinguish between this and all other
meats, by yielding to it the special veneration which was due; for to the
words quoted already, "eateth and drinketh judgment to himself," he has
added these, "not discerning the Lord's body;" and this is apparent from
the whole of that passage in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, if it be
carefully studied.

   CHAP. IV. -- 5. Suppose some foreigner visit a place in which during
Lent it is customary to abstain from the use of the bath, and to continue
fasting on Thursday. "I will not fast today," he says. The reason being
asked, he says, "Such is not the custom in my own country." Is not he, by
such conduct, attempting to assert the superiority of his custom over
theirs? For he cannot quote a decisive passage on the subject from the Book
of God; nor can he prove his opinion to be right by the unanimous voice of
the universal Church, wherever spread abroad; nor can he demonstrate that
they act contrary to the faith, and he according to it, or that they are
doing what is prejudicial to sound morality, and he is defending its
interests. Those men injure their own tranquillity and peace by quarrelling
on an unnecessary question. I would rather recommend that, in matters of
this kind, each man should, when sojourning in a country in which he finds
a custom different from his own consent to do as others do. If, on the
other hand, a Christian, when travelling abroad in some region where the
people of God are more numerous, and more easily assembled together, and
more zealous in religion, has seen, e.g., the sacrifice twice offered, both
morning and evening, on the Thursday of the last week in Lent, and
therefore, on his coming back to his own country, where it is offered only
at the close of the day, protests against this as wrong and unlawful,
because he has himself seen another custom in another land, this would show
a childish weakness of judgment against which we should guard ourselves,
and which we must bear with in others, but correct in all who are under our
influence.

   CHAP. V. -- 6. Observe now to which of these three classes the first
question in your letter is to be referred. You ask, "What ought to be done
on the Thursday of the last week of Lent? Ought we to offer the sacrifice
in the morning, and again after supper, on account of the words in the
Gospel, 'Likewise also . . . after supper'?(1) Or ought we to fast and
offer the sacrifice only after supper? Or ought we to fast until the
offering has been made, and then take supper as we are accustomed to do ?"
I answer, therefore, that if the authority of Scripture has decided which
of these methods is right, there is no room for doubting that we should do
according to that which is written; and our discussion must be occupied
with a question, not of duty, but of interpretation as to the meaning of
the divine institution. In like manner, if the universal Church follows any
one! of these methods, there is no room for doubt as: to our duty; for it
would be the height of arrogant madness to discuss whether or not we should
comply with it. But the question which you propose is not decided either by
Scripture or by universal practice. It must therefore be referred to the
third class  -- as pertaining, namely, to things which are different in
different places and countries. Let every man, therefore, conform himself
to the usage prevailing in the Church to which he may come. For none of
these methods is contrary to the Christian faith or the interests of
morality, as favoured by the adoption of one custom more than the other. If
this were the case, that either the faith or sound morality were at stake,
it would be necessary either to change what was done amiss, or to appoint
the doing of what had been neglected. But mere change of custom, even
though it may be of advantage in some respects, unsettles men by reason of
the novelty: therefore, if it brings no advantage, it does much harm by
unprofitably disturbing the Church.

   7. Let me add, that it would be a mistake to suppose that the custom
prevalent in many places, of offering the sacrifice on that day after
partaking of food, is to be traced to the words, " Likewise after supper,"
etc. For the Lord might give the name of supper to what they had received,
in already partaking of His body, so that it was after this that they
partook of the cup: as the apostle says in another place, "When ye come
together into one place, this is not to eat(2) the Lord's Supper,"(3)
giving to the receiving of the Eucharist to that extent (i.e. the eating of
the bread) the name of the Lord's Supper.

   CHAP. VI. -- As to the question whether upon that day it is right to
partake of food before either offering or partaking of the Eucharist, these
words in the Gospel might go far to decide our minds, "As they were eating,
Jesus took bread and blessed it;" taken in connection with the words in the
preceding context, "When the even was come, He sat down with the twelve:
and as they did eat, He said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall
betray Me." For it was after that that He instituted the sacrament; and it
is clear that when the disciples first received the body and blood of the
Lord, they had not been fasting.

   8. Must we therefore censure the universal Church because the sacrament
is everywhere partaken of by persons fasting? Nay, verily, for from that
time it pleased the Holy Spirit to appoint, for the honour of so great a
sacrament, that the body of the Lord should take the precedence of all
other food entering the mouth of a Christian; and it is for this reason
that the custom referred to is universally observed. For the fact that the
Lord instituted the sacrament after other food had been partaken of, does
not prove that brethren should come together to partake of that sacrament
after having dined or supped, or imitate those whom the apostle reproved
and corrected for not distinguishing between the Lord's Supper and an
ordinary meal. The Saviour, indeed, in order to commend the depth of that
mystery more affectingly to His disciples, was pleased to impress it on
their hearts and memories by making its institution His last act before
going from them to His Passion. And therefore He did not prescribe the
order in which it was to be observed, reserving this to be done by the
apostles, through whom He intended to arrange all things pertaining to the
Churches. Had He appointed that the sacrament should be always partaken of
after other food, I believe that no one would have departed from that
practice. But when the apostle, speaking of this sacrament, says,
"Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for
another: and if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not
together unto condemnation," he immediately adds, "and the rest will I set
in order when I come."(1) Whence we are given to understand that, since it
was too much for him to prescribe completely in an epistle the method
observed by the universal Church throughout the world, it was one of the
things set in order by him in person, for we find its observance uniform
amid all the variety of other customs.

   CHAP. VII. -- 9. There are, indeed, some to whom it has seemed right
(and their view is not unreasonable), that it is lawful for the body and
blood of the Lord to be offered and received after other food has been
partaken of, on one fixed day of the year, the day on which the Lord
instituted the Supper, in order to give special solemnity to the service on
that anniversary. I think that, in this case, it would be more seemly to
have it celebrated at such an hour as would leave it in the power of any
who have fasted to attend the service(2) before the repast which is
customary at the ninth hour. Wherefore we neither compel nor do we dare to
forbid any one to break his fast before the Lord's Supper on that day. I
believe, however, that the real ground upon which this custom rests is,
that many, nay, almost all, are accustomed in most places to use the bath
on that day. And because some continue to fast, it is offered in the
morning, for those who take food, because they cannot bear fasting and the
use of the bath at the same time; and in: the evening, for those who have
fasted all day.

   10. If you ask me whence originated the custom of using the bath on
that day, nothing occurs to me, when I think of it, as more likely than
that it was to avoid the offence to decency which must have been given at
the baptismal font, if the bodies of those to whom that rite was to be
administered were not washed on some preceding day from the uncleanness
consequent upon their strict abstinence from ablutions during Lent; and
that this particular day was chosen for the purpose because of its being
the anniversary of the institution of the Supper. And this being granted to
those who were about to receive baptism, many others desired to join them
in the luxury of a bath, and in relaxation of their fast.

   Having discussed these questions to the best of my ability, I exhort
you to observe, in so far as you may be able, what I have laid down, as
becomes a wise and peace-loving son of the Church. The remainder of your
questions I purpose, if the Lord will, to answer at another time.

LETTER LV. or Book II. of Replies to Questions of Januarius. (A.D. 400.)

   CHAP. I. -- 1. Having read the letter in which you have put me in mind
of my obligation to give answers to the remainder of those questions which
you submitted to me a long time ago, I cannot bear to defer any longer the
gratification of that desire for instruction which it gives me so much
pleasure and comfort to see in you; and although encompassed by an
accumulation of engagements, I have given the first place to the work of
supplying you with the answers desired. I will make no further comment on
the contents of your letter, lest my doing so should prevent me from paying
at length what I owe.

   2. You ask, "Wherefore does the anniversary on which we celebrate the
Passion of the Lord not fall, like the day which tradition has handed down
as the day of His birth, on the same day every year?" and you add, "If the
reason of this is connected with the week and the month, what have we to do
with the day of the week or the state of the moon in this solemnity?" The
first thing which you must know and remember here is, that the observance
of the Lord's natal day is not sacramental, but only commemorative of His
birth, and that therefore no more was in this case necessary, than that the
return of the day on which the event took place should be marked by an
annual religious festival. The celebration of an event becomes sacramental
in its nature, only when the commemoration of the event is so ordered that
it is understood to be significant of something which is to be received
with reverence as sacred.(3) Therefore we observe Easter(4) in such a
manner as not only to recall the facts of the death and resurrection of
Christ to remembrance, but also to find a place for all the other things
which, in connection with these events, give evidence as to the import of
the sacrament. For since, as the apostle wrote, "He was delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our justification,"(5) a certain
transition from death to life has been consecrated in that Passion and
Resurrection of the Lord. For the word Pascha itself is not, as is commonly
thought, a Greek word: those who are acquainted with both languages affirm
it to be a Hebrew word. It is not derived, therefore, from the Passion,
because of the Greek word pa'schein, signifying to suffer, but it takes its
name from the transition, of which I have spoken, from death to life; the
meaning of the Hebrew word Pascha being, as those who are acquainted with
it assure us,(1) a passing over or transition. To this the Lord Himself
designed to allude, when He said," He that believeth in Me is passed from
death to life."(2) And the same evangelist who records that saying is to be
understood as desiring to give emphatic testimony to this, when, speaking
of the Lord as about to celebrate with His disciples the passover, at which
He instituted the sacramental supper, he says, "When Jesus knew that His
hour was come, that He should depart(3) from this world unto the
Father."(4) This passing over from this mortal life to the other, the
immortal life, that is, from death to life, is set forth in the Passion and
Resurrection of the Lord.

   CHAP. II. -- 3. This passing from death to life is meanwhile wrought in
us by faith, which we have for the pardon of our sins and the hope of
eternal life, when we love God and our neighbour; "for faith worketh by
love,"(5) and "the just shall live by his faith;"(6) "and hope that is seen
is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope
for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."(7) According to
this faith and hope and love, by which we have begun to be "under grace,"
we are already dead together with Christ, and buried together with Him by
baptism into death;(8) as the apostle hath said, "Our old man is crucified
with Him ;"(9) and we have risen with Him, for "He hath raised us up
together, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places."(10) Whence also he
gives this exhortation: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things
which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your
affection on things above, not on things on the earth."(11) In the next
words, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him
in glory,"(12) he plainly gives us to understand that our passing in this
present time from death to life by faith is accomplished in the hope of
that future final resurrection and glory, when "this corruptible," that is,
this flesh in which we now groan, "shall put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall put on immortality."(13) For now, indeed, we have by faith
"the first-fruits of the Spirit;" but still we "groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body: for we are
saved by hope." While we are in this hope, "the body indeed is dead because
of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness." Now mark what
follows: "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell
in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your
mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you."(14) The whole Church,
therefore, while here in the conditions of pilgrimage and mortality,
expects that to be accomplished in her at the end of the world which has
been shown first in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is "the first-
begotten from the dead," seeing that the body of which He is the Head is
none other than the Church.(15)

   CHAP. III. -- 4. Some, indeed, studying the words so frequently used by
the apostle, about our being dead with Christ and raised together with Him,
and misunderstanding the sense in which they are used, have thought that
the resurrection is already past, and that no other is to be hoped for at
the end of time: "Of whom," he says, "are Hymenaeus and Philetus; who
concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past
already; and overthrow the faith of some."(16) The same apostle who thus
reproves and testifies against them, teaches nevertheless that we are risen
with Christ. How is the apparent contradiction to be removed, unless he
means that this is accomplished in us by faith and hope and love, according
to the first-fruits of the Spirit? But because "hope which is seen is not
hope," and therefore "if we hope for that we see not, we do with patience
wait for it," it is beyond question that there remains, as still future,
the redemption of the body, in longing for which we "groan within
ourselves." Hence also that saying, "Rejoicing in hope, patient in
tribulation."(17)

   5. This renewal, therefore, of our life is a kind of transition from
death to life which is made first by faith, so that we rejoice in hope and
are patient in tribulation, while still "our outward man perisheth, but the
inward man is renewed day by day."(18) It is because of this beginning of a
new life, because of the new man which we are commanded to put on, putting
off the old man,(19) "purging out the old leaven, that we may be a new
lump, because Christ our passover is sacrificed for us;"(20) it is, I say,
because of this newness of life in us, that the first of the months of the
year has been appointed as the season of this solemnity. This very name is
given to it, the month Abib, or beginning of months.(1) Again, the
resurrection of the Lord was upon the third day, because with it the third
epoch of the world began. The first Epoch was before the Law, the second
under the Law, the third under Grace, in which there is now the
manifestation of the mystery,(2) which was formerly hidden under dark
prophetic sayings. This is accordingly signified also in the part of the
month appointed for the celebration; for, since the number seven is usually
employed in Scripture as a mystical number, indicating perfection of some
kind, the day of the celebration of Easter is within the third week of the
month, namely, between the fourteenth and the twenty-first day.

   CHAP. IV. -- 6. There is in this another mystery, and you are not to be
distressed if perhaps it be not so readily perceived by you, because of
your being less versed in such studies; nor are you to think me any better
than you, because I learned these things in early years: for the Lord
saith, "Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
knoweth Me, that I am the Lord."(3) Some men who give attention to such
studies, have investigated many things concerning the numbers and motions
of the heavenly bodies. And those who have done this most ably have found
that the waxing and waning of the moon are due to the turning of its globe,
and not to any such actual addition to or diminution of its substance as is
supposed by the foolish Manichaeans, who say that as a ship is filled, so
the moon is filled with a fugitive portion of the Divine Being, which they,
with impious heart and lips, do not hesitate to believe and to declare to
have become mingled with the rulers of darkness, and contaminated with
their pollution. And they account for the waxing of the moon by saying that
it takes place when that lost portion of the Deity, being purified from
contamination by great labours, escaping from the whole world,(4) and from
all foul abominations,(5) is restored to the Deity, who mourns till it
returns; that by this the moon is filled up till the middle of the month,
and that in the latter half of the month this is poured back into the sun
as into another ship. Amid these execrable blasphemies, they have never
succeeded in devising any way of explaining why the moon in the beginning
or end of its brightness shines with its light in the shape of a horn, or
why it begins at the middle of the month to wane, and does not go on full
until it pour back its increase into the sun.

   7. Those, however, to whom I refer have inquired into these things with
trustworthy calculations, so that they can not only state the reason of
eclipses, both solar and lunar, but also predict their occurrence long
before they take place, and are able to determine by mathematical
computation the precise intervals at which these must happen, and to state
the results in treatises, by reading and understanding which any others may
foretell as well as they the coming of these eclipses, and find their
prediction verified by the event. Such men, -- and they deserve censure, as
Holy Scripture teaches, because "though they had wisdom enough to measure
the periods of this world, they did not much more easily come," as by
humble piety they might have done, "to the knowledge of its Lord,"(6) --
such men, I say, have inferred from the horns of the moon, which both in
waxing and in waning are turned from the sun, either that the moon is
illuminated by the sun, and that the farther it recedes from the sun the
more fully does it lie exposed to its rays on the side which is visible
from the earth; but that the more it approaches the sun, after the middle
of the month, on the other half of its orbit, it becomes more fully
illuminated on the upper part, and less and less open to receive the sun's
rays on the side which is turned to the earth, and seems to us accordingly
to decrease: or, that if the moon has light in itself, it has this light in
the hemisphere on one side only, which side it gradually turns more to the
earth as it recedes from the sun, until it is fully displayed, thereby
exhibiting an apparent increase, not by the addition of what was deficient,
but by disclosing what was already there; and that, in like manner, going
towards the sun, the moon again gradually turns from our view that which
had been disclosed, and so appears to decrease. Whichever of these two
theories be correct, this at least is plain, and is easily discovered by
any careful observer, that the moon does not to our eyes increase except
when it is receding from the sun, nor decrease except when returning
towards the sun.

   CHAP. V. -- 8. Now mark what is said in Proverbs: "The wise man is
fixed like the sun; but the fool changes like the moon."(7) And who is the
wise that has no changes, but that Sun of Righteousness of whom it is said,
"The Sun of righteousness has risen upon me," and of which the wicked shall
say, when mourning in the day of judgment that it has not risen upon them,
"The light of righteousness hath not shone upon us, and the sun hath not
risen upon us "?(8) For that sun which is visible to the eye of sense, God
makes to rise upon the evil and the good alike, as He sendeth rain upon the
just and the unjust;(9) but apt similitudes are often borrowed from things
visible to explain things invisible. Again, who is the "fool" who "changes
like the moon," if not Adam, in whom all have sinned? For the soul of man,
receding from the Sun of righteousness, that is to say, from the internal
contemplation of unchangeable truth, turns all its strength towards
external things, and becomes more and more darkened in its deeper and
nobler powers; but when the soul begins to return to that unchangeable
wisdom, the more it draws near to it with pious desire, the more does the
outward man perish, but the inward man is renewed day by day, and all that
light of the soul which was inclining to things that are beneath is turned
to the things that are above, and is thus withdrawn from the things of
earth; so that it dies more and more to this world, and its life is hid
with Christ in God.

   9. It is therefore for the worse that the soul is changed when it moves
in the direction of external things, and throws aside that which pertains
to the inner life; and to the earth, i.e. to those who mind earthly things,
the soul looks better in such a case, for by them the wicked is commended
for his heart's desire, and the unrighteous is blessed.(1) But it is for
the better that the soul is changed, when it gradually turns away its aims
and ambition from earthly things, which appear important in this world, and
directs them to things nobler and unseen; and to the earth, i.e. to men who
mind earthly things, the soul in such a case seems worse. Hence those
wicked men who at last shall in vain repent of their sins, will say this
among other things: "These are the men whom once we derided and reproached;
we in our folly esteemed their way of life to be madness."(2) Now the Holy
Spirit, drawing a comparison from things visible to things invisible, from
things corporeal to spiritual mysteries, has been pleased to appoint that
the feast symbolical of the passing from the old life to the new, which is
signified by the name Pascha, should be observed between the 14th and 21st
days of the month, -- after the 14th, in order that a twofold illustration
of spiritual realities might be gained, both with respect to the third
epoch of the world, which is the reason of its occurrence in the third
week, as I have already said, and with respect to the turning of the soul
from external to internal things, -- a change corresponding to the change
in the moon when on the wane; not later than the 21st, because of the
number 7 itself, which is often used to represent the notion of the
universe, and is also applied to the Church on the ground of her likeness
to the universe.

   CHAP. VI.-- 10. For this reason the Apostle John writes in the
Apocalypse to seven churches. The Church, moreover, while it remains under
the conditions of our mortal life in the flesh, is, on account of her
liability to change, spoken of Scripture by the name of the moon; e.g.,
"They have made ready their arrows in the quiver, that they may, while the
moon is obscured, wound those who are upright in heart."(3) For before that
comes to pass of which the apostle says, "When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory,"(4) the Church
seems in the time of her pilgrimage obscured, groaning under many
iniquities; and at such a time, the snares of those who deceive and lead
astray are to be feared, and these are intended by the word "arrows" in
this passage. Again, we have another instance in Psalm lxxxix.,(5) where,
because of the faithful witnesses which she everywhere brings forth on the
side of truth, the Church is called "the moon, a faithful witness in
heaven." And when the Psalmist sang of the Lord's kingdom, he said, "In His
days shall be righteousness and abundance of peace, until the moon be
destroyed;" i.e. abundance of peace shall increase so greatly, until He
shall at length take away all the changeableness incidental to this mortal
condition. Then shall death, the last enemy, be destroyed; and whatever
obstacle to the perfection of our peace is due to the infirmity of our
flesh shall be utterly consumed when this corruptible shall have put on
incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality.(7) We have
another instance in this, that the walls of the town named Jericho -- which
in the Hebrew tongue is said to signify "moon " -- fell when they had been
compassed for the seventh time by the ark of the covenant borne round the
city. For what else is conveyed by the promise of the coming of the
heavenly kingdom, which was symbolized in the carrying of the ark round
Jericho, than that all the strongholds of this mortal life, i.e. every hope
pertaining to this world which resists the hope of the world to come, must
be destroyed, with the soul's free consent, by the sevenfold gift of the
Holy Spirit. Therefore it was, that when the ark was going round, those
walls fell, not by violent assault, but of themselves. There are, besides
these, other passages in Scripture which, speaking of the moon, impress
upon us under that figure the condition of the Church while here, amid
cares and labours, she is a pilgrim under the lot of mortality, and far
from that Jerusalem of which the holy angels are the citizens.

   11. These foolish men who refuse to be changed for the better have no
reason, however, to imagine that worship is due to those heavenly
luminaries because a similitude is occasionally borrowed from them for the
representation of divine mysteries; for such are borrowed from every
created thing. Nor is there any reason for our incurring the sentence of
condemnation which is pronounced by the apostle on some who worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.(1) We
do not adore sheep or cattle, although Christ is called both a Lamb,(2) and
by the prophet a young bullock; (3) nor any beast of prey, though He is
called the Lion of the tribe of Judah; (4) nor a stone, although Christ is
called a Rock;(5) nor Mount Zion, though in it there was a type of the
Church.(6) And, in like manner, we do not adore the sun or the moon,
although, in order to convey instruction in holy mysteries, figures of
sacred things are borrowed from these celestial works of the Creator, as
they are also from many of the things which He hath made on earth.

   CHAP. VII. -- 12. We are therefore bound to denounce with abhorrence
and contempt the ravings of the astrologers, who, when we find fault with
the empty inventions by which they cast other men down into the delusions
where-into they themselves have fallen, imagine that they answer well when
they say, "Why, then, do you regulate the time of the observance of Easter
by calculation of the positions of the sun and moon?"--as if that with
which we find fault was the arrangements of the heavenly bodies, or the
succession of the seasons, which are appointed by God in His infinite power
and goodness, and not their perversity in abusing, for the support of the
most absurd opinions, those things which God has ordered in perfect wisdom.
If the astrologer may on this ground forbid us from drawing comparisons
from the heavenly bodies for the mystical representation of sacramental
realities, then the augurs may with equal reason prevent the use of these
words of Scripture, "Be harmless as doves;" and the snake-charmers may
forbid that other exhortation, "Be wise as serpents; "(7) while the play-
actors may interfere with our mentioning the harp in the book of Psalms.
Let them therefore say, if they please, that, because similitudes for the
exhibition of the mysteries of God's word are taken from the things which I
have named, we are chargeable either with consulting the omens given by the
flight of birds, or with concocting the poisons of the charmer, or with
taking pleasure in the excesses of the theatre, -- a statement which would
be the clime of absurdity.

   13. We do not forecast the issues of our enterprises by studying the
sun and moon, and the times of the year or of the month, lest in the most
trying emergencies of life, we, being dashed against the rocks of a
wretched bondage, shall make shipwreck of our freedom of will; but with
'the most pious devoutness of spirit, we accept similitudes adapted to the
illustration of holy things, which these heavenly bodies furnish, just as
from all other works of creation, the winds, the sea, the land, birds,
fishes, cattle, trees, men, etc., we borrow in our discourses manifold
figures; and in the celebration of sacraments, the very few things which
the comparative liberty of the Christian dispensation has prescribed, such
as water, bread, wine, and oil. Under the bondage, however, of the ancient
dispensation many rites were prescribed, which are made known to us only
for our instruction as to their meaning. We do not now observe years, and
months, and seasons, lest the words of the apostle apply to us, "I am
afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon your labour in vain."(8). For he
blames those who say, "I will not set out to-day, because it is an unlucky
day, or because the moon is so and so;" or, "I will go to-day, that things
may prosper with me, because the position of the stars is this or that; I
will do no business this month, because a particular star rules it;" or, "I
will do [business, because another star has succeeded in its place; I will
not plant a vineyard this year, 'because it is leap year." No man of
ordinary 'sense would, however, suppose that those men . deserve reproof
for studying the seasons, who say, e.g., "I will not set out to-day,
because a storm has begun;" or, "I will not put to sea, because the winter
is not yet past;" or, "It is time to sow my seed, for the earth has been
saturated with the showers of autumn;" and so on, in regard to any other
natural effects of the motion and moisture of the atmosphere which have
been observed in connection with that consummately ordered revolution of
the heavenly bodies concerning which it was said when they were made, "Let
them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years."(9) And in
like .manner, whensoever illustrative symbols are borrowed,. for the
declaration of spiritual mysteries, from created things, not only from the
heaven and its orbs, but also from meaner creatures, this is done to give
to the doctrine of salvation an eloquence adapted to raise the affections
of those who receive it from things seen, corporeal and temporal, to things
unseen, spiritual and eternal.

   Chap. VIII.--14. None of us gives any consideration to the circumstance
that, at the time at which we observe Easter, the sun is in the Ram, as
they call a certain region of the heavenly bodies, in which the sun is, in
fact, found at the beginning of the months; but whether they, choose to
call that part of the heavens the Ram: or anything else, we have learned
this from the Sacred Scriptures, that God made all the heavenly bodies, and
appointed their places as it pleased Him; and whatever the parts may be
into which astronomers divide the regions set apart and ordained for the
different constellations, and whatever the names by which they distinguish
them, the place occupied by the sun in the first month is that in which the
celebration of this sacrament behoved to find that luminary, because of the
illustration of a holy mystery in the renovation of life, of which I have
already spoken sufficiently. If, however, the name of Ram could be given to
that portion of the heavenly bodies because of some correspondence between
their form and the name, the word of God would not hesitate to borrow from
anything of this kind an illustration of a holy mystery, as it has done not
only from other celestial bodies, but also from terrestrial things, e.g.
from Orion and the Pleiades, Mount Zion, Mount Sinai, and the rivers of
which the names are given, Gihon, Pison, Tigris, Euphrates, and
particularly from the river Jordan, which is so often named in the sacred
mysteries.

   15. But who can fail to perceive how great is the difference between
useful observations of the heavenly bodies in connection with the weather,
such as farmers or sailors make; or in order to mark the part of the world
in which they are, and the course which they should follow, such as are
made by pilots of ships or men going through I the trackless sandy deserts
of southern Africa; or in order to present some useful doctrine under' a
figure borrowed from some facts concerning heavenly bodies; -- and the vain
hallucinations j of men who observe the heavens not to know the weather, or
their course, or to make scientific calculations, or to find illustrations
of spiritual things, but merely to pry into the future and learn now what
fate has decreed ?

   Chap. IX. -- 16. Let us now direct our minds to observe the reason why,
in the celebration of Easter, care is taken to appoint the day so: that
Saturday precedes it: for this is peculiar to the Christian religion. The
Jews keep the Passover from the 14th to the 21st of the first month, on
whatever day that week begins. But since at the Passover at which the Lord
suffered, it was the case that the Jewish Sabbath came in between His death
and His resurrection, our fathers have judged it right to add this
specialty to their celebration of Easter, both that our feast might be
distinguished from the Jewish Passover, and that succeeding generations
might retain in their annual commemoration of His Passion that which we
must believe to have been done for some good reason, by Him who is before
the times, by whom also the times have been made, and who came in the
fulness of the times, and who when He said, Mine hour is not yet come, had
the power of laying down His life and taking it again, and was therefore
waiting for an hour not fixed by blind fate, but suitable to the holy
mystery which He had resolved to commend i to our observation.

   17. That which we here hold in faith and hope, and to which by love we
labour to come, is, as I have said above, a certain holy and perpetual rest
from the whole burden of every kind of care; and from this life unto that
rest we make a transition which our Lord Jesus Christ condescended to
exemplify and consecrate in His Passion. This rest, however, is not a
slothful inaction, but a certain ineffable tranquillity caused by work in
which there is no painful effort. For the repose on which one enters at the
end of the toils of this life is of such a nature as consists with lively
joy in the active exercises of the better life. Forasmuch, however, as this
activity is exercised in praising God without bodily toil or mental
anxiety, the transition to that activity is not made through a repose which
is to be followed by labour, i.e. a repose which, at the point where
activity begins, ceases to be repose: for in these exercises there is no
return to toil and care; but that which constitutes rest --namely,
exemption from weariness in work and from uncertainty in thought--is always
found in them. Now, since through rest we get back to that original life
which the soul lost by sin, the emblem of this rest is the seventh day of
the week. But that original life itself which is restored to those who
return from their wanderings, and receive in token of welcome the robe
which they had at first,(1) is represented by the first day of the week,
which we call the Lord s day. If, in reading Genesis, you search the record
of the seven days, you will find that there was no evening of the seventh
day, which signified that the rest of which it was a type was eternal. The
life originally bestowed was not eternal, because man sinned; but the final
rest, of which the seventh day was an emblem, its eternal, and hence the
eighth day also will have eternal blessedness, because that rest, being
eternal, is taken up by the eighth day, not destoyed by it; for if it were
thus destroyed, it would not be eternal. Accordingly the eighth day, which
is the first day of the week, represents to us that original life, not
taken away, but made eternal.

   CHAP. X. -- 18. Nevertheless the seventh day was appointed to the
Jewish nation as a day to be observed by rest of the body, that it might be
a type of sanctification to which men attain through rest in the Holy
Spirit. We do no read of sanctification in the history given h Genesis of
all the earlier days: of the Sabbath alone it is said that "God blessed the
seventh day, and sanctified it."(1) Now the souls o men, whether good or
bad, love rest, but how t{ attain to that which they love is to the greater
part unknown: and that which bodies seek for their weight, is precisely
what souls seek for their love, namely, a resting-place. For as, according
to its specific gravity, a body descends or rise,, until it reaches a place
where it can rest,-- oil, for example, falling if poured into the air, but
rising if poured into water, --so the soul of man struggles towards the
things which it loves, in order that, by reaching them, it may rest. There
are indeed many things which please the soul through the body, but its rest
in these is not eternal, nor even long continued; and therefore they rather
debase the soul and weigh it down, so as to be a drag upon that pure
imponderability by which it tends towards higher things. When the soul
finds pleasure from itself, it is not yet seeking delight in that which is
unchangeable; and therefore it is still proud, because it is giving to
itself the highest place, whereas God is higher. In such sin the soul is
not left unpunished, for "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the
humble."(2) When, however, the soul delights in God, there it finds the
true, sure, and eternal rest, which in all other objects was sought in
vain. Therefore the admonition is given in the book of Psalms, "Delight
thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart."
(3)

   19. Because, therefore, "the love of God(4) is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us," (5) sanctification was
associated with the seventh day, the day in which rest was enjoined. But
inasmuch as we neither are able to do any good work, except as helped by
the gift of God, as the apostle says, "For it is God that worketh in you
both to will and to do of His good pleasure," (6) nor will be able to rest,
after all the good works which engage us in this life, except as sanctified
and perfected by the same gift to eternity; for this reason it .s said of
God Himself, that when He had made all things "very good," He rested "on
the seventh day from all His works which He had made? (7) For He, in so
doing, presented a type of that future rest which He purposed to bestow on
us men after our good works are done; For as in our good works He is said
to work in us, by whose gift we are enabled to work what is good, so in our
rest He is said to rest by whose gift we rest.

   CHAP. XI.-- 20. This, moreover, is the reason why the law of the
Sabbath is placed third among the three commandments of the Decalogue which
declare our duty to God (for the other seven relate to our neighbour, that
is, to man; the whole law hanging on these two commandments) .(8) The first
commandment, in which we are forbidden to worship any likeness of God made
by human contrivance, we are to understand as referring to the Father: this
prohibition being made, not because God has no image, but because no image
of Him but that One which is the same with Himself, ought to be worshipped;
and this One not in His stead, but along with Him. Then, because a creature
is mutable, and therefore it is said, "The whole creation is subject to
vanity," (9) since the nature of the whole is manifested also in any part
of it, lest any one should think that the Son of God, the Word by whom all
things were made, is a creature, the second commandment is, "Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."(10) And because God sanctified
the seventh day, on which He rested, the Holy Spirit- in whom is given to
us that rest which we love everywhere, but find only in loving God, when
"His love is shed abroad in us, by the Holy Ghost given unto us"(11)--is
presented to our minds in the third commandment, which was written
concerning the observance of the Sabbath, not to make us suppose that we
attain to rest in this present life, but that all our labours in what is
good may point towards nothing else than that eternal rest. For I would
specially charge you to remember the passage quoted above: "We are saved by
hope; but hope that is seen is not hope.(12)

   21. For the feeding and fanning of that ardent love by which, under a
law like that of gravitation, we are borne upwards or inwards to rest, the
presentation of truth by emblems has a great power: for, thus presented,
things move and kindle our affection much more than if they were set forth
in bald statements, not clothed with sacramental symbols. Why this should
be, it is hard to say; but it is the fact that anything which we are taught
by allegory or emblem affects and pleases us more, and is more highly
esteemed by us, than it would be if most clearly stated in plain terms. I
believe that the emotions are less easily kindled while the soul is wholly
involved in earthly things; but if it be brought to those corporeal things
which are emblems of spiritual things, and then taken from these to the
spiritual realities which they represent, it gathers strength by the mere
act of passing from the one to the other, and, like the flame of a lighted
torch, is made by the motion to burn more brightly, and is carried away to
rest by a more intensely glowing love.

   CHAP. XII. --22. It is also for this reason, that of all the ten
commandments, that which related to the Sabbath was the only one in which
the thing commanded was typical;(1) the bodily rest enjoined being a type
which we have received as a means of our instruction, but not as a duty
binding also upon us. For while in the Sabbath a figure is presented of the
spiritual rest, of which it is said in the Psalm, "Be still, and know that
I am God," (2) and unto which men are invited by the Lord Himself in the
words, "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[ unto your souls;"(3) as to all the
things enjoined in the other commandments, we are to yield to[ them an
obedience in which there is nothing typical. For we have been taught
literally not J to worship idols; and the precepts enjoining us not to take
God's name in vain, to honour our father and mother, not to commit
adultery, or kill, or steal, or bear false witness, or covet our
neighbour's wife, or covet anything that is our neighbour's,(4) are all
devoid of typical or mystical meaning, and are to be literally observed.
But we are not commanded to observe the day of the Sabbath literally, in
resting from bodily labour, as it is observed by the Jews; and even their
observance of the rest as prescribed is to be deemed worthy of contempt,
except as signifying another, namely, spiritual rest. From this we may
reasonably conclude, that all those things which are figuratively set forth
in Scripture, are powerful in stimulating that love by which we tend
towards rest; since the only figurative or typical precept in the Decalogue
is the one in which that rest is commended to us, which is desired
everywhere, but is found sure and sacred in God alone.

   CHAP. XIII.--23. The Lord's day, however, has been made known not to
the Jews, but to Christians, by the resurrection of the Lord, and from Him
it began to have the festive character which is proper to it.(5) For the
souls of the pious dead are, indeed, in a state of repose before the
resurrection of the body, but they are not engaged in the same active
exercises as shall engage the strength of their bodies when restored. Now,
of this condition of active exercise the eighth day (which is also the
first of the week) is a type, because it does not put an end to that
repose, but glorifies it. For with the reunion of the body no hindrance of
the soul's rest returns, because in the restored body there is no
corruption: for "this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal
must put on immortality." (6) Wherefore, although the sacramental import of
the 8th number, as signifying the resurrection, was by no means concealed
from the holy men of old who were filled with the spirit of prophecy (for
in the title of Psalms [vi. and xii.l we find the words "for the eighth,"
and infants were: circumcised on the eighth day; and in Ecclesiastes it is
said, with allusion to the two covenants, "Give a portion to seven, and
also to eight"(7)); nevertheless before the resurrection of the Lord, it
was reserved and hidden, and the Sabbath alone was appointed to be
observed, because before that event there was indeed the repose of the dead
(of which the Sabbath rest was a type), but there was not any instance of
the resurrection of one who, rising from the dead, was no more to die, and
over whom death should no longer have dominion; this being done in order
that, from the time when such a resurrection did take place in the Lord's
own body (the Head of the Church being the first to experience that which
His body, the Church, expects at the end of time), the day upon which He
rose, the eighth day namely (which is the same with the first of the week),
should begin to be observed as the Lord's day. The same reason enables us
to understand why, in regard to the day of keeping the passover, on which
the Jews were commanded to kill and eat a lamb, which was most clearly a
foreshadowing of the Lord's Passion, there was no injunction given to them
that they should take the day of-the week into account, waiting until the
Sabbath was past, and making the beginning of the third week of the moon
coincide with the beginning of the third week of the first month; the
reason being, that the Lord might rather in His own Passion declare the
significance of that day, as He had come also to declare the mystery of the
day now known as the Lord's day, the eighth namely, which is also the first
of the week.

   CHAP. XIV.-- 24. Consider now with attention these three most sacred
days, the days signalized by the Lord's crucifixion, rest in the grave, and
resurrection. Of these three, that of which the cross is the symbol is the
business of our present life: those things which are symbolized by His rest
in the grave and His resurrection we hold by faith and hope. For now the
command is given to each man, "Take up thy cross, and follow me."(1) But
the flesh is crucified, when our members which are upon the earth are
mortified, such as fornication, uncleanness, luxury, avarice, etc., of
which the apostle says in another' passage: "If ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body,
ye shall live."(2) Hence also he says of himself: "The world is crucified
unto me, and I unto the world." (3) And again: "Knowing this, that our old
man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin."(4) The period during which our labours
tend to the weakening and destruction of the body of sin, during which the
outward man is perishing, that the inward man may be renewed day by day,-
that is the period of the cross.

   25. These are, it is true, good works, having rest for their
recompense, but they are meanwhile laborious and painful: therefore we are
told to be "rejoicing in hope," that while we contemplate the future rest,
we may labour with cheerfulness in present toil. Of this cheerfulness the
breadth of the cross in the transverse beam to which the hands were nailed
is an emblem: for the hands we understand to be symbolical of working, and
the breadth to be symbolical of cheerfulness in him who works, for sadness
straitens the spirit. In the height of the cross, against which the head is
placed, we have an emblem of the expectation of recompense from the sublime
justice of God, "who will render to every man according to his deeds; to
them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honour,
and immortality, eternal life."(5) Therefore the length of the cross, along
which the whole body is extended, is an emblem of that patient continuance
in the will of God, on account of which those who are patient are said to
be long-suffering. The depth also, i.e. the part which is fixed in the
ground, represents the occult nature of the holy mystery. For you remember,
I suppose, the words of the apostle, which in this description of the cross
I aim at expounding: "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height." (6)

   Those things which we do not yet see or possess, but hold in faith and
hope, are the things represented in the events by which the second and
third of the three memorable days above mentioned were signalized [viz. the
Lord's rest in the .grave, and His resurrection]. But the things which keep
us occupied in this present life, while we are held fast in the fear of God
by the commandments, as by nails driven through the flesh (as it is
written, "Make my flesh fast with nails by fear of Thee "(7)), are to be
reckoned among things necessary, not among those which are for their own
sakes to be desired and coveted. Hence Paul says that he desired, as
something far better, to depart and to be with Christ: "nevertheless," he
adds, "to remain in the flesh is expedient for you"(8)--necessary for your
welfare. This departing and being with Christ is the beginning of the rest
which is not interrupted, but glorified by the resurrection; and this rest
is now enjoyed by faith, "for the just shall live by faith."(9) "Know ye
not," saith the same apostle, "that so many of us as were baptized into
Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with
Him by baptism unto death."(10) How? By faith. For this is not actually
completed in us so long as we are still "groaning within ourselves, and
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body: for we are
saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth why
doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
patience wait for it."(11)

   26. Remember how often I repeat this to you, that we are not to think
that we ought to be made happy and free from all difficulties in this
present life, and are therefore at liberty to murmur profanely against God
when we are straitened in the things of this world, as if He were not
performing what He promised. He hath indeed promised the things which are
necessary for this life, but the consolations which mitigate the misery of
our present lot are very different from the joys of those who are perfect
in blessedness. "In the multitude of my thoughts within me," saith the
believer, "Thy comforts, O Lord, delight my soul."(12) Let us not therefore
murmur because of difficulties; let us not lose that breadth of
cheerfulness, of which it is written, "Rejoicing in hope," because this
follows,-" patient in tribulation." (13) The new life, therefore, is
meanwhile begun in faith, and maintained by hope: for it shall only then be
perfect when this mortal shall be swallowed up. in life, and death
swallowed up in victory; when the last enemy, death, shah be destroyed;
when we shall be changed, and made like the angels: for "we shall all rise
again, but we shall not all be changed."(1) Again, the Lord saith, "They
shall! be equal unto the angels."(2) We now are apprehended by Him in fear
by faith: then we shall apprehend Him in love by sight. For "whilst we are
at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not
by sight."(3) Hence the apostle himself, who says, "I follow after, if that
I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,"
confesses frankly that he has not attained to it. "Brethren," he says, "I
count not myself to have apprehended."(4) Since, however, our hope is sure,
because of the truth of the promise, when he said elsewhere, "Therefore we
are buried with Him by baptism into death," he adds these words, "that like
as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so
we also should walk in newness of life."(5) We walk, therefore, in actual
labour, but in hope of rest, in the flesh of the old life, but in faith of
the new. For he says again: "The body is dead because of sin; but the
spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth
in you."

   27. Both the authority of the Divine Scriptures and the consent of the
whole Church spread throughout the world have combined to ordain the annual
commemoration of these things at Easter, by observances which are, as you
now see, full of spiritual significance. From the Old Testament Scriptures
we are not taught as to the precise day of holding Easter, beyond the
limitation to the period between the 14th and 21st days of the first month;
but because we know from the Gospel beyond doubt which days of the week
were signalized in succession by the Lord's crucifixion, His resting in the
grave, and His resurrection, the observance of these days has been enjoined
in addition by Councils of the Fathers, and the whole Christian world has
arrived unanimously at the persuasion that this is the proper mode of
observing Easter.

   CHAP. XV. -- 28.(6) The Fast of Forty Days has its warrant both in the
Old Testament, from the fasting of Moses (7) and of Elijah,(8) and in the
Gospel from the fact that our Lord fasted the same number of days; (9)
proving thereby that the Gospel is not at variance with the Law and the
Prophets. For the Law and the Prophets are represented in the persons of
Moses and Elijah respectively i between whom also He appeared in glory on
the Mount, that what the apostle says of Him, that He is "witnessed unto
both by the Law and the Prophets,"(10) might be made more clearly manifest.
Now, in what part of the year could the observance of the Fast of Forty
Days be more appropriately placed, than in that which immediately precedes
and borders  on the time of the Lord's Passion? For by it is signified this
life of toil, the chief work in which is to exercise self-control, in
abstaining , from the world's friendship, which never ceases deceitfully
caressing us, and scattering profusely around us its bewitching
allurements. As to the reason why this life of toil and self-control is
symbolized by the number 40, it seems to me that the number ten (in which
is the perfection of our blessedness, as in the number eight, because it
returns to the unit) has a like place in this number [as the unit has in
giving its significance to eight];(11) and therefore I regard the number
forty as a fit symbol for this life, because in it the creature (of which
the symbolical number is seven) cleaves to the Creator, in whom is revealed
that unity of the Trinity which is to be published while time lasts
throughout this whole world, --a world swept by four winds, constituted of
four elements, and experiencing the changes of four seasons in the year.
Now four times ten [seven added to three] are forty; but the number forty
reckoned in along with [one of] its parts adds the number ten, [as seven
reckoned in along with one of its parts adds the unit,] and the total is
fifty, -- the symbol, as it were, of the reward of the toil and self-
control.(12) For it is not without reason that the Lord Himself con!tinned
for forty days on this earth and in this life in fellowship with His
disciples after His resurrection, and, when He ascended into heaven, sent
the promised Holy Spirit, after an interval of ten days more, when the day
of Pentecost was fully come. This fiftieth day, moreover, has wrapped up in
it another holy mystery:(13) for 7 times 7 days are 49. And when we return
to the beginning of another seven, and add the eighth, which is also the
first day of the week, we have the 50 days complete; which period of fifty
days we celebrate after the Lord's resurrection, as representing not toil,
but rest and gladness. For this reason we do not fast in them; and in
praying we stand upright, which is an emblem of resurrection. Hence, also,
every Lord's day during the fifty days, this usage is observed at the
altar, and the Alleluia is sung, which signifies that our future exercise
shall consist wholly in praising God, as it is written: "Blessed are they
who dwell in Thy house, O Lord: they will be still (i.e. eternally)
praising Thee."(1)

   CHAP. XVI. -- 29. The fiftieth day is also commended to us in
Scripture; and not only in the Gospel, by the fact that on that day the
Holy Spirit descended, but also in the books of the Old Testament. For in
them we learn, that after the Jews observed the first passover with the
slaying of the lamb as appointed, 50 days intervened between that day and
the day on which upon Mount Sinai there was given to Moses the Law written
with the finger of God; a and this "finger of God"(2) is in the Gospels
most plainly declared to signify the Holy Spirit: for where one evangelist
quotes our Lord's words thus, "I with the finger of God cast out
devils,"(3) another quotes them thus, "I cast out devils by the Spirit of
God." (4) Who would not prefer the joy which these divine mysteries impart,
when the light of healing truth beams from them on the soul to all the
kingdoms of this world, even though these were held in perfect prosperity
and peace? May we not say, that as the two seraphim answer each other in
singing the praise of the Most High, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of
Hosts,"(5) so the Old Testament and the New, in perfect harmony, give forth
their testimony to sacred truth? The lamb is slain, the passover is
celebrated, and after 50 days the Law is given, which inspires fear,
written by the finger of God. Christ is slain, being led as a lamb to the
slaughter as Isaiah testifies; (6) the true Passover is celebrated; and
after 50 days is given the Holy Spirit, who is the finger of God, and whose
fruit is love, and who is therefore opposed to men who seek their own, and
consequently bear a grievous yoke and heavy burden, and find no, rest for
their souls; for love "seeketh not her own." (7) Therefore there is no rest
in the unloving spirit of heretics, whom the apostle declares guilty of
conduct like that of the magicians of Pharaoh, saying, "Now as Jannes and
Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt
minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further:
for their folly shall be manifest to all men, as theirs also was."(8) For
because through this corruptness of mind they were utterly disquieted, they
failed at the third miracle, confessing that the Spirit of God which was in
Moses was opposed to them: for in owning their failure, they said, "This is
the finger of God." (9) The , Holy Spirit, who shows Himself reconciled and
gracious to the meek and lowly in heart, and gives them rest, shows Himself
an inexorable adversary to the proud and haughty, and vexes them with
disquiet. Of this disquiet those despicable insects were a figure, under
which Pharaoh's magicians owned themselves foiled, saying, "This is the
finger of God."

   30. Read the book of Exodus, and observe the number of days between the
first passover and the giving of the Law. God speaks to Moses in the desert
of Sinai on the first day of the third month. Mark, then, this as one day
of the month, and then observe what (among other things) the Lord said on
that day: "Go unto the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and
let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day; for the
third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount
Sinai."(10) The Law was accordingly given on the third day of the month.
Now reckon the days between the 14th day of the first month, the day of the
passover, and the 3d day of the third month, and you have 17 days of the
first month, 30 of the second, and 3 of the third- 50 in all. The Law in
the Ark of the Testimony represents holiness in the Lord's body, by whose
resurrection is promised to us the future rest; for our receiving of which,
love is breathed into us by the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit had not then
been given, for Jesus had not yet been glorified.(11) Hence that prophetic
song," Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the ark of Thy strength"
[holiness, LXX.].(12) Where there is rest, there is holiness. Wherefore we
have now received a pledge of it, that we may love and desire it. For to
the rest belonging to the other life, whereunto we are brought by that
transition from this life of which the passover is a symbol, all are now
invited in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   CHAP. XVII.--31. Hence also, in the number of the large fishes which
our Lord after His resurrection, showing this new life, commanded to be
taken on the right side of the ship, there is found the number 50 three
times multiplied, with the addition of three more [the symbol of the
Trinity] to make the holy mystery more apparent; and the disciples' nets
were not broken,(1) because in that new life there shall be no schism
caused by the disquiet of heretics. Then [in this new life] man, made
perfect and at rest, purified in body and in soul by the pure words of God,
which are like silver purged from its dross, seven times refined,(2) shall
receive his reward, the denarius;(3) so that with that reward the numbers
10 and 7 meet in him. For in this number [17] there is found, as in other
numbers representing a combination of symbols, a wonderful mystery. Nor is
it without good reason that the seventeenth Psalm(4) is the only one which
is given complete in the book of Kings,s because it signifies that kingdom
in which we shall have no enemy. For its title is, "A Psalm of David, in
the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and
from the hand of Saul." For of whom is I)avid the type, but of Him who,
according to the flesh, was born of the seed of David?(6) He in His Church,
that is, in His body, still endures the malice of enemies. Therefore the
words which from heaven fell upon the ear of that persecutor whom Jesus
slew by His voice, and whom He transformed into a part of His body (as the
food which we use becomes a part of ourselves), were these, "Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou Me? "(7) And when shall this His body be finally
delivered from enemies? Is it not when the last enemy, Death, shall be
destroyed? It is to that time that the number of the 153 fishes pertains.
For if the number 17 itself be the side of an arithmetical triangle,(8)
formed by placing above each other rows of units, increasing in number from
1 to 17, the whole sum of these units is 153: since 1 and 2 make 3; 3 and
3, 6; 6 and 4, 10; 10 and 5, 15; 15 and 6, 21; and so on: continue this up
to 17, the total is 153.

   32. The celebration of Easter and Pentecost is therefore most firmly
based on Scripture. As to the observance of the forty days before Easter,
this has been confirmed by the practice of the Church; as also the
separation of the eight days of the neophytes, in such order that. the
eighth of these coincides with the first. The custom of singing the
Alleluia on those 50 days only in the Church is not universal; for in other
places it is sung also at various other times, but on these days it is sung
everywhere. Whether the custom of standing at prayer on these days and on
all the Lord's days, is everywhere observed or not, I do not know;
nevertheless, I have told you what guides the Church in this usage, and it
is in my opinion sufficiently obvious.(9)

   CHAP. XVIII.--33. As to the feet-washing, since the Lord recommended
this because of its being an example of that humility which He came to
teach, as He Himself afterwards explained, the question has arisen at what
time it is best, by literal performance of this work, to give public
instruction in the important duty which it illustrates, and this time [of
Lent] was suggested in order that the lesson taught by it might make a
deeper and more serious impression. Many, however, have not accepted this
as a custom, lest it should be thought to belong to the ordinance of
baptism; and some have not hesitated to deny it any place among our
ceremonies. Some, however, in order to connect its observance with the more
sacred associations of this solemn season, and at the same time to prevent
its being confounded with baptism in any way, have selected for this
ceremony either the eighth day itself, or that on which the third eighth
day occurs, because of the great significance of the number three in many
holy mysteries.

   34. I am surprised at your expressing a desire that I should write
anything in regard to those ceremonies which are found different in
different countries, because there is no necessity for my doing this; and,
moreover, one most excellent rule must be observed in regard to these
customs, when they do not in any way oppose either true doctrine or sound
morality, but contain some incentives to the better life, viz., that
wherever we see them observed, or know them to be established, we should
not only refrain from finding fault with them, but even recommend them by
our approval and imitation, unless restrained by fear of doing greater harm
than good by this course, through the infirmity of others. We are not,
however, to be restrained by this, if more good is to be expected from our
consenting with those who are zealous for the ceremony, than loss to be
feared from our displeasing those who protest against it. In such a case we
ought by all means to adopt it, especially if it be something in defence of
which Scripture can be alleged: as in the singing of hymns and psalms, for
which we have on record both the example and the precepts of the Lord and
of His apostles. In this religious exercise, so useful for inducing a
devotional frame of mind and inflaming the strength of love to God, there
is diversity of usage, and in Africa the members of the Church are rather
too indifferent in regard to it; on which account the Donstists reproach us
with our grave chanting of the divine songs of the prophets in our
churches, while they inflame their passions in their revels by the singing
of psalms of human composition, which rouse them like the stirring notes of
the trumpet on the battle-field. But when brethren are assembled in the
church, why should not the time be devoted to singing of sacred songs,
excepting of course while reading or preaching(1) is going on, or while the
presiding minister prays aloud, or the united prayer of the congregation is
led by the deacon's voice? At the other intervals not thus occupied, I do
not see what could be a more excellent, useful, and holy exercise for a
Christian congregation.

   CHAP. XIX.(2)-- 35. I cannot, however, sanction with my approbation
those ceremonies which are departures from the custom of the Church, and
are instituted on the pretext of being symbolical of some holy mystery;
although, for the sake of avoiding offence to the piety of some and the
pugnacity of others, I do not venture to condemn severely many things of
this kind. But this I deplore, and have too much occasion to do so, that
comparatively little attention is paid to many of the most wholesome rites
which Scripture has enjoined; and that so many false notions everywhere
prevail, that more severe rebuke would be administered to a man who should
touch the ground with his feet bare during the octaves (before his
baptism), than to one who drowned his intellect in drunkenness. My opinion
therefore is, that wherever it is possible, all those things should be
abolished without hesitation, which neither have warrant in Holy Scripture,
nor are found to have been appointed by councils of bishops, nor are
confirmed by the practice of the universal Church, but are so infinitely
various, according to the different customs of different places, that it is
with difficulty, if at all, that the reasons which guided men in appointing
them can be discovered. For even although nothing be found, perhaps, in
which they are against the true faith; yet the Christian religion, which
God in His mercy made free, appointing to her sacraments very few in
number, and very easily observed, is by these burdensome ceremonies so
oppressed, that the condition of the Jewish Church itself is preferable:
for although they have not known the time of their freedom, they are
subjected to burdens imposed by the law of God, not by the vain conceits of
men. The Church of God, however, being meanwhile so constituted as to
enclose much chaff and many tares, bears with many things; yet if anything
be contrary to faith or to holy life, she does not approve of it either by
silence or by practice.

   CHAP. XX.- 36. Accordingly, that which you wrote as to certain brethren
abstaining from the use of animal food, on the ground of its being
ceremonially unclean, is most clearly contrary to the faith and to sound
doctrine. If I were to enter on anything like a full discussion of this
matter, it might be thought by some that there was some obscurity in the
precepts of the apostle in this matter whereas he, among many other things
which he said on this subject, expressed his abhorrence of this opinion of
the heretics in these words: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in
the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their
conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to
abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving
of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is
good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for
it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." (3) Again, in another
place, he says, concerning these things: "Unto the pure all things are
pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but
even their mind and conscience is defiled." (4) Read the rest for yourself,
and read these passages to others--to as many as you can--in order that,
seeing that they have been called to liberty, they may not make void the
grace of God toward them; only let them not use their liberty for an
occasion to serve the flesh: let them not refuse to practise the purpose of
curbing carnal appetite, abstinence from some kinds of food, on the pretext
that it is unlawful to do so under the promptings of superstition or
unbelief.

   37. As to those who read futurity by taking at random a text from the
pages of the Gospels, although it is better that they should do this than
go to consult spirits of divination, nevertheless it is, in my opinion, a
censurable practice to try to turn to secular affairs and the vanity of
this life those divine oracles which were intended to teach us concerning
the higher life.

   CHAP. XXI. -- 38. If you do not consider that I have now written enough
in answer to your questions, you must have little knowledge of my
capacities or of my engagements. For so far am I from being, as you have
thought, acquainted with everything, that I read nothing in your letter
with more sadness than this statement, both because it is most manifestly
untrue, and because I am surprised that you should not be aware, that not
only are many things unknown to me in countless other departments, but that
even in the Scriptures themselves the things which I do not know are many
more than the things which I know. But I cherish a hope in the name of
Christ, which is not without its reward, because I have not only believed
the testimony of my God that "on these two commandments hang all the Law
and the Prophets; "(1) but I have myself proved it, and daily prove it, by
experience. For there is no holy mystery, and no difficult passage of the
word of God, in which, when it is opened up to me, I do not find these same
commandments: for "the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure
heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned;"(2) and "love is
the fulfilling of the law."(3)

   39. I beseech you therefore also, my dearly beloved, whether studying
these or other writings, so to read and so to learn as to bear in mind what
hath been most truly said, "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth;"(4)
but charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Let knowledge therefore
be used as a kind of scaffolding by which may be erected the building of
charity, which shall endure for ever when knowledge faileth.(5) Knowledge,
if applied as a means to charity, is most useful; but apart from this high
end, it has been proved not only superfluous, but even pernicious. I know,
however, how holy meditation keeps you safe under the shadow of the wings
of our God. These things I have stated, though briefly, because I know that
this same charity of yours, which "vaunteth not itself," will prompt you to
lend and read this letter to many.

LETTERS LVI. AND LVII

are addressed (A.D. 400) to Celer, exhorting him to forsake the Donatist
schismatics. They may be omitted being brief, and containing no new argument.


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

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