(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 99-123

The end of the Second Division, which consists of letters which were written
from the beginning of his episcopate to just before the time of and before
the conference held with the donatists at carthage, and the discovery of the
heresy of Pelagius in Africa (a.d. 396-410).

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


LETTER XCIX. (A.D. 408 OR BEGINNING OF 409.)

TO THE VERY DEVOUT ITALICA, AN HANDMAID OF GOD, PRAISED JUSTLY AND PIOUSLY
BY THE MEMBERS OF CHRIST, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. Up to the time of my writing this reply, I had received three
letters from your Grace, of which the first asked urgently a letter from
me, the second intimated that what I wrote in answer had reached you, and
the third, which conveyed the assurance of your most benevolent solicitude
for our interest in the matter of the house belonging to that most
illustrious and distinguished young man Julian, which is in immediate
contact with the walls of our Church. To this last letter, just now
received, I lose no time in promptly replying, because your Excellency's
agent has written to me that he can send my letter without delay to Rome.
By his letter we have been greatly distressed, because he has taken pains
to acquaint us (4) with the things which are taking place in the city
(Rome) or around its walls, so as to give us reliable information
concerning that which we were reluctant to believe on the authority of
vague rumours. In the letters which were sent to us previously by our
brethren, tidings were given to us of events, vexatious and grievous, it is
true, but much less calamitous than those of which we now hear. I am
surprised beyond expression that my brethren the holy bishops did not write
to me when so favourable an opportunity of sending a letter by your
messengers occurred, and that your own letter conveyed to us no information
concerning such painful tribulation as has befallen you, -- tribulation
which, by reason of the tender sympathies of Christian charity, is ours as
well as yours. I suppose, however, that you deemed it better not to mention
these sorrows, because you considered that this could do no good, or
because you did not wish to make us sad by your letter. But in my opinion,
it does some good to acquaint us even with such events as these: in the
first place, because it is not right to be ready to "rejoice with them that
rejoice," but refuse to "weep with them that weep;" and in the second
place, because "tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and
experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is
shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."(1)

   2. Far be it, therefore, from us to refuse to hear even of the bitter
and sorrowful things which befall those who are very dear to us! For in
some way which I cannot explain, the pain suffered by one member is
mitigated when all the other members suffer with it.(2) And this mitigation
is effected not by actual participation in the calamity, but by the
solacing power of love; for although only some suffer the actual burden of
the affliction, and the others share their suffering through knowing what
these have to bear, nevertheless the tribulation is borne in common by them
all, seeing that they have in common the same experience, hope, and love,
and the same Divine Spirit. Moreover, the Lord provides consolation for us
all, inasmuch as He hath both forewarned us of these temporal afflictions,
and promised to us after them eternal blessings; and the soldier who
desires to receive a crown when the conflict is over, ought not to lose
courage while the conflict lasts, since He who is preparing rewards
ineffable for those who overcome, does Himself minister strength to them
while they are on the field to baffle.

   3. Let not what I have now written take away your confidence in writing
to me, especially since the reason which may be pied for your endeavouring
to lessen our fears is one which cannot be condemned. We salute in return
your little children, and we desire that they may be spared to you, and may
grow up in Christ, since they discern even in their present tender age how
dangerous and baneful is the love of this world. God grant that the plants
which are small and still flexible may be bent in the right direction in a
time in which the great and hardy are being shaken. As to the house of
which you speak, what can I say beyond expressing my gratitude for ),our
very kind solicitude? For the house which we can give they do not wish; and
the house which they wish we cannot give, for it was not left to the church
by my predecessor, as they have been falsely informed, but is one of the
ancient properties of the church, and it is attached to the one ancient
church in the same way as the house about which this question has been
raised is attached to the other.(3)

LETTER C. (A.D, 409)

TO DONATUS HIS NOBLE AND DESERVEDLY HONOURABLE LORD, AND EMINENTLY
PRAISEWORTHY SON, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. I would indeed that the African Church were not placed in such
trying circumstances as to need the aid of any earthly power. But since, as
the apostle says, there is no power but of God,"(4) it is unquestionable
that, when by you the sincere sons of your Catholic Mother help is given to
her, our help is in the name of the Lord, "who made heaven and earth"(5)
For oh noble and deservedly honourable lord, and eminently praiseworthy
son, who does not perceive that in the midst of so great calamities no
small consolation has been bestowed upon us by God, in that you, such a
man, and so devoted to the name of Christ, have been raised to the dignity
of proconsul, so that power allied with your goodwill may restrain the
enemies of the Church from their wicked and sacrilegious attempts? In fact,
there is only one thing of which we are much afraid in your administration
of justice, viz., lest perchance, seeing that every injury done by impious
and ungrateful men against the Christian society is a more serious and
heinous crime than t if it had been done against others, you should on this
ground consider that it ought to be punished with a severity corresponding
to the enormity of the crime, and not with the moderation which is suitable
to Christian forbearance. We beseech you, in the name of Jesus Christ, not
to act in this manner. For we do not seek to revenge ourselves in this
world; nor ought the things which we suffer to reduce us to such distress
of mind as to leave no room in our memory for the precepts in regard to
this which we have received from Him for whose truth and in whose name we
suffer; we "love our enemies," and we "pray for them."(1) It is not their
death, but their deliverance from error, that we seek to accomplish by the
help of the terror of judges and of laws, whereby they may be preserved
from falling under the penalty of eternal judgment; we do not wish either
to see the exercise of discipline towards them neglected, or, on the other
hand, to see them subjected to the severer punishments which they deserve.
Do you, therefore, check their sins in such a way, that the sinners may be
spared to repent of their sins.

   2. We beg you, therefore, when you are pronouncing judgment in cases
affecting the Church, how wicked soever the injuries may be which you shall
ascertain to have been attempted or inflicted on the Church, to forget that
you have the power of capital punishment, and not to forget our request.
Nor let it appear to you an unimportant matter and beneath your notice, my
most beloved and honoured son, that we ask you to spare the lives of the
men on whose behalf we ask God to grant them repentance. For even granting
that we ought never to deviate from a fixed purpose of overcoming evil with
good, let your own wisdom take this also into consideration, that no person
beyond those who belong to the Church is at pains to bring before you cases
pertaining to her interests. If, therefore, your opinion be, that death
must be the punishment of men convicted of these crimes, you will deter us
from endeavouring to bring anything of this kind before your tribunal; and
this being discovered, they will proceed with more unrestrained boldness to
accomplish speedily our destruction, when upon us is imposed and enjoined
the necessity of choosing rather to suffer death at their hands, than to
bring them to death by accusing them at your bar. Disdain not, I beseech
you, to accept this suggestion, petition, and entreaty from me. For I do
not think that you are unmindful that I might have great boldness in
addressing you, even were I not a bishop, and even though your rank were
much above what you now hold. Meanwhile, let the Donatist heretics learn at
once through the edict of your Excellency that the laws passed against
their error, which they suppose and boastfully declare to be repealed, are
still in force, although even when they know this they may not be able to
refrain in the least degree from injuring us. You will, however, most
effectively help us to secure the fruit of our labours and dangers, if you
take care that the imperial laws for the restraining of their sect, which
is full of conceit and of impious pride, be so used that they may not
appear either to themselves or to others to be suffering hardship in any
form for the sake of truth and righteousness; but suffer them, when this is
requested at i your hands, to be convinced and instructed by
incontrovertible proofs of things which are most certain, in public
proceedings in the presence of your Excellency or of inferior judges, in
order that those who are arrested by your command may themselves incline
their stubborn will to the better part, and may read these things
profitably to others of their party. For the pains bestowed are burdensome
rather than really useful, when men are only compelled, not persuaded by
instruction, to forsake a great evil and lay hold upon a great benefit.

LETTER CI. (A.D. 409.)

TO MEMOR,(2) MY LORD MOST BLESSED, AND WITH ALL VENERATION MOST BELOVED, MY
BROTHER AND COLLEAGUE SINCERELY LONGED FOR, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE
LORD.

   1. I ought not to write any letter to your holy Charity, without
sending at the same time those books which by the irresistible plea of holy
love you have demanded from me, that at least by this act of obedience I
might reply to those letters by which you have put on me a high honour
indeed, but also a heavy load. Albeit, while I bend because of the load, I
am raised up because of your love. For it is not by an ordinary man that I
am loved and raised up and made to stand erect, but by a man who is a
priest of the Lord, and whom I know to be so accepted before Him, that when
you raise to the Lord your good heart, having me in your heart, you raise
me with yourself to Him. I ought, therefore, to have sent at this time
those books which I had promised to revise. The reason why I have not sent
them is that I have not revised them, and this not because I was unwilling,
but because I was unable, having been occupied with many very urgent cares.
But it would have shown inexcusable ingratitude and hardness of heart to
have permitted the bearer, my holy colleague and brother Possidius, in whom
you will find one who is very much the same as myself, either to miss
becoming acquainted with you, who love me so much, or to come to know you
without any letter from me. For he is one who has been by my labours
nourished, not in those studies which men who are the slaves of every kind
of passion call liberal, but with the Lord's bread, in so far as this could
be supplied to him from my scanty store.

   2. For to men who, though they are unjust and impious, imagine that
they are well educated in the liberal arts, what else ought we to say than
what we read in those writings which truly merit the name of liberal,--"if
the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."(1) For it is through
Him that men come to know, even in those studies which are termed liberal
by those who have not been called to this true liberty, anything in them
which deserves the name. For they have nothing which is consonant with
liberty, except that which in them is consonant with truth; for which
reason the Son Himself hath said: "The truth shall make you free."(2) The
freedom which is our privilege has therefore nothing in common with the
innumerable and impious fables with which the verses of silly poets are
full, nor with the fulsome and highly-polished falsehoods of their orators,
nor, in rifle, with the rambling subtleties of philosophers themselves, who
either did not know anything of God, or when they knew God, did not glorify
Him as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations,
and their foolish heart was darkened; so that, professing themselves to be
wise, they became fools, and. changed the glory of the incorruptible God
into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed
beasts, and to creeping things, or who, though not wholly or at all devoted
to the worship of images, nevertheless worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator.(3) Far be it, therefore, from us to admit that the
epithet liberal is justly bestowed on the lying vanities and
hallucinations, or empty trifles and conceited errors of those men- unhappy
men, who knew not the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, by which alone
we are "delivered from the body of this death," (4) and who did not even
perceive the measure of truth which was in the things which they knew.
Their historical works, the writers of which profess to be chiefly
concerned to be accurate in narrating events, may perhaps, I grant, contain
some things worthy of being known by "free" men, since the narration is
true, whether the subject described in it be the good or the evil in human
experience. At the same time, I can by no means see how men who were not
aided in their knowledge by the Holy Spirit, and who were obliged to gather
floating rumours under the limitations of human infirmity, could avoid
being misled in regard to very many things; nevertheless, if they have no
intention of deceiving, and do not mislead other men otherwise than so far
as they have themselves, through human infirmity, fallen into a mistake,
there is in such writings an approach to liberty.

   3. Forasmuch, however, as the powers belonging to numbers(5) in all
kinds of movements are most easily studied as they axe presented in sounds,
and this study furnishes a way of rising to the higher secrets of truth, by
paths gradually ascending, so to speak, in which Wisdom pleasantly reveals
herself, and in every step of providence meets those who love her,(6)
desired, when I began to have leisure for study, and my mind was not
engaged by greater and more important cares, to exercise myself by writing
those books which you have requested me to send. I then wrote six books on
rhythm alone, and proposed, I may add, to write other six on music,(7) as I
at that time expected to have leisure. But from the time that the burden of
ecclesiastical cares was laid upon me, all these recreations have passed
from my hand so completely, that now, when I cannot but respect your wish
and command, -- for it is more than a request, -- I have difficulty in even
finding what I had written. If, however, I had it in my power to send you
that treatise, it would occasion regret, not to me that I had obeyed your
command, but to you that you had so urgently insisted upon its being sent.
For five books of it are all but unintelligible, unless one be at hand who
can in reading not only distinguish the part belonging to each of those
between whom the discussion is maintained, but also mark by enunciation the
time which the syllables should occupy, so that their distinctive measures
may be expressed and strike the ear, especially because in some places
there occur pauses of measured length, which of course must escape notice,
unless the reader inform the hearer of them by intervals of silence where
they occur.

   The sixth book, however, which I have found already revised, and in
which the product of the other five is contained, I have not delayed to
send to your Charity; it may, perhaps, be not wholly unsuited to one of
your venerable age.(8) As to the other five books, they seem to me scarcely
worthy of being known and read by Julian,(9) our son, and now our
colleague, for, as a deacon, he is engaged in the same warfare with
ourselves. Of him I dare not say, for it would not be true, that I love him
more than I love you; yet this I may say, that I long for him more than for
you. It may seem strange, that when I love both equally, I long more
ardently for the one than the other; but the cause of the difference is,
that I have greater hope of seeing him; for I think that if ordered or sent
by you he come to us, he will both be doing what is suitable to one of his
years, especially as he is not yet hindered by weightier responsibilities,
and he will more speedily bring yourself to me.

   I have not stated in this treatise the kinds of metre in which the
lines of David's Psalms are composed, because I do not know them. For it
was not possible for any one, in translating these from the Hebrew (of
which language I know nothing), to preserve the metre at the same time,
lest by the exigencies of the measure he should be compelled to depart from
accurate translation further than was consistent with the meaning of the
sentences. Nevertheless, I believe, on the testimony of those who are
acquainted with that language, that they are composed in certain varieties
of metre; for that holy man loved sacred music, and has more than any other
kindled in me a passion for its study.

   May the shadow of the wings of the Most High be for ever the dwelling-
place(1) of you all, who with oneness of heart occupy one home,(2) father
and mother, bound in the same brotherhood with your sons, being all the
children of the one Father. Remember us.

LETTER CII. (A.D. 409.)

TO DEOGRATIAS, MY BROTHER IN ALL SINCERITY, AND MY FELLOW-PRESBYTER,
AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. In choosing to refer to me questions which were submitted to
yourself for solution, you have not done so, I suppose, from indolence, but
because, loving me more than I deserve, you prefer to hear through me even
those things which you already know quite well. I would rather, however,
that the answers were given by yourself, because the friend who proposed
the questions seems to be shy of following advice from me, if I may judge
from the fact that he has written no reply to a letter of mine, for what
reason he knows best. I suspect this, however, and there is neither ill-
will nor absurdity in the suspicion; for you also know very well how much I
love him, and how great is my grief that he is not yet a Christian; and it
is not unreasonable to think that one whom I see unwilling to answer my
letters is not willing to have anything written by me to him. I therefore
implore you to comply with a request of mine, seeing that I have been
obedient to you, and, notwithstanding most engrossing duties, have feared
to disappoint the wish of one so dear to me by declining to comply with
your request. What I ask is this, that you do not refuse yourself to give
an answer to all his questions, seeing that, as you have told me, he begged
this from you; and it is a task to which, even before receiving this
letter, you were competent; for when you have read this letter, you will
see that scarcely anything has been said by me which you did not already
know, or which you could not have come to know though I had been silent.
This work of mine, therefore, I beg you to keep for the use of yourself and
of all other persons whose desire for instruction you deem it suited to
satisfy. But as for the treatise of your own composition which I demand
from you, give it to him to whom this treatise is most specially adapted,
and not to him only, but also all others who find exceedingly acceptable
such statements concerning these things as you are able to make, among whom
I number myself. May you live always in Christ, and remember me.

   2. QUESTION I. Concerning the resurrection. This question perplexes
some, and they ask, Which of two kinds of resurrection corresponds to that
which is promised to us? is it that of Christ, or that of Lazarus? They
say, "If the former, how can this correspond with the resurrection of those
who have been born by ordinary generations, seeing that He was not thus
born? (3) If, on the other hand, the resurrection of Lazarus is said to
correspond to ours, here also there seems to be a discrepancy, since the
resurrection of Lazarus was accomplished in the case of a body not yet
dissolved, but the same body in which he was known by the name of Lazarus;
whereas ours is to be rescued after many centuries from the mass in which
it has ceased to be distinguishable from other things. Again, if our state
after the resurrection is one of blessedness, in which i the body shall be
exempt from every kind of wound, and from the pain of hunger, what is
:meant by the statement that Christ took food, and showed his wounds after
His resurrection? For if He did it to convince the doubting, when the
wounds were not real, He practised on them a deception; whereas, if He
showed them what was real, it follows that wounds received by the body
shall remain in the state which is to ensue after resurrection."

   3. To this I answer, that the resurrection of Christ and not of Lazarus
corresponds to that which is promised, because Lazarus was so raised that
he died a second time, whereas of Christ it is written: "Christ, being
raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over
Him."(4) The same is promised to those who shall rise at the end of the
world, and shall reign for ever with Christ. As to the difference in the
manner of Christ's generation and that of other men, this has no bearing
upon the nature of His resurrection, just as it had none upon the nature of
His death, so as to make it different from ours. His death was not the less
real because of His not having been begotten by an earthly father; just as
the difference between the' mode of the origination of the body of the
first man, who was formed immediately from the dust of the earth, and of
our bodies, which we derive from our parents, made no such difference as
that his death should be of another kind than ours. As, therefore,
difference in the mode of birth does not make any difference in the nature
of death, neither does it make any difference in the nature of
resurrection.

   4. But lest the men who doubt this should, with similar scepticism,
refuse to accept as true what is written concerning the first man's
creation, let them inquire or observe, if they can at least believe this,
how numerous are the species of animals which are born from the earth
without deriving their life from parents, but which by ordinary procreation
reproduce offspring like themselves, and in which, notwithstanding the
different mode of origination, the nature of the parents born from the
earth and of the offspring born from them is the same; for they live alike
and they die alike, although born in different ways. There is therefore no
absurdity in the statement that bodies dissimilar in their origination are
alike in their resurrection. But men of this kind, not being competent to
discern in what respect any diversity between things affects or does not
affect them, so soon as they discover any unlikeness between things in
their original formation, contend that in all that follows the same
unlikeness must still exist. Such men may as reasonably suppose that oil
made from fat should not float on the surface in water as olive oil does,
because the origin of the two oils is so different, the one being from the
fruit of a tree, the other from the flesh of an animal.

   5. Again, as to the alleged difference in regard to the resurrection of
Christ's body and of ours, that His was raised on the third day not
dissolved by decay and corruption, whereas ours shall be fashioned again
after a long time, and out of the mass into which undistinguished they
shall have been resolved, --both of these things are impossible for man to
do, but to divine power both are most easy. For as the glance' of the eye
does not come more quickly to objects which are at hand, and more slowly to
objects more remote, but darts to either distance with equal swiftness, so,
when the resurrection of the dead is accomplished "in the twinkling of an
eye,"(1) it is as easy for the omnipotence of God and for the ineffable
expression of His will (2) to raise again bodies which have by long lapse
of time been dissolved, as to raise 'those which have recently fallen under
the stroke of death. These things are to some men incredible because they
transcend their experience, although all nature 'is full of wonders so
numerous, that they do not seem to us to be wonderful, and are therefore
accounted unworthy of attentive study or investigation, not because our
faculties can easily comprehend them, but because we are so accustomed to
see them. For myself, and for all who along with me labour to understand
the invisible things of God by means of the things which are made,(3) I may
say that we are filled not less, perhaps even more, with wonder by the
fact, that in one grain of seed, so insignificant, there lies bound up as
it were all that we praise in the stately tree, than by the fact that the
bosom of this earth, so vast, shall restore entire and perfect to the
future resurrection all those elements of human bodies which it is now
receiving when they are dissolved.

   6. Again, what contradiction is there between the fact that Christ
partook of food after His resurrection, and the doctrine that in the
promised resurrection-state there shall be no need of food, when we read
that angels also have partaken of food of the same kind and in the same
way, not in empty and illusive simulation, but in unquestionable reality;
not, however, under the pressure of necessity, but in the free exercise of
their power? For water is absorbed in one way by the thirsting earth, in
another way by the glowing J sunbeams; in the former we see the effect of
poverty, in the latter of power Now the body of that future resurrection-
state shall be imperfect in its felicity if it be incapable of taking food;
imperfect, also, if, on the other hand, it be dependent on food. I might
here enter on a fuller discussion concerning the changes possible in the
qualities of bodies, and the dominion which belongs to higher bodies over
those which are of inferior nature; but I have resolved to make my reply
short, and I write this for mind so endowed that the simple suggestion of
the truth is enough for them.

   7. Let him who proposed these questions know by all means that Christ
did, after His resurrection, show the scars of His wounds, not the wounds
themselves, to disciples who doubted; for whose sake, also, it pleased Him
to take food and drink more than once, lest they should suppose that His
body was not real, but that He was a spirit, appearing to them as a
phantom, and not a substantial form. These scars would indeed have been
mere illusive appearances if no wounds had gone before; yet even the scars
would not have remained if He had willed it otherwise. But it pleased Him
to retain them with a definite purpose, namely, that to those whom He was
building up in faith unfeigned He might show that one body had not been
substituted for another, but that the body which they had seen nailed to
the cross had risen again. What reason is there, then, for saying, "If He
did this to convince the doubting, He practised a deception "? Suppose that
a brave man, who had received many wounds in confronting the enemy when
fighting for his country, were to say to a physician of extraordinary
skill, who was able so to heal these wounds as to leave not a scar visible,
that he would prefer to be healed in such a way that the traces of the
wounds should remain on his body as tokens of the honours he had won, would
you, in such a case, say that the physician practised deception, because,
though he might by his art make the scars wholly disappear, he did by the
same art, for a definite reason, rather cause them to continue as they
were? The only ground upon which the scars could be proved to be a
deception would be, as I have already said, if no wounds had been healed in
the places where they were seen.

   8. QUESTION II. Concerning the epoch of the Christian religion, they
have advanced, moreover, some other things, which they might call a
selection of the more weighty arguments of Porphyry against the Christians:
"If Christ," they say, "declares Himself to be the Way of salvation, the
Grace and the Truth, and affirms that in Him alone, and only to souls
believing in Him, is the way of return to God,(1) what has become of men
who lived in the many centuries before Christ came? To pass over the time,"
he adds, "which preceded the rounding of the kingdom of Latium, let us take
the beginning of that power as if it were the beginning of the human race.
In Latium itself gods were worshipped before Alba was built; in Alba, also,
religious rites and forms of worship in the temples were maintained. Rome
itself was for a period of not less duration, even for a long succession of
centuries, unacquainted with Christian doctrine. What, then, has become of
such an innumerable multitude of souls, who were in no wise blameworthy,
seeing that He in whom alone saving faith can be exercised had not yet
favoured men with His advent? The whole world, moreover, was not less
zealous than Rome itself in the worship practised in the temples of the
gods. Why, then," he asks, "did He who is called the Saviour withhold
Himself for so many centuries of the world? And let it not be said," he
adds, "that provision had been made for the human race by the old Jewish
law. It was only after a long time that the Jewish law appeared and
flourished within the narrow limits of Syria, and after that, it gradually
crept onwards to the coasts of Italy; but this was not earlier than the end
of the reign of Caius, or, at the earliest, while he was on the throne.
What, then, became of the souls of men in Rome and Latium who lived before
the time of the Caesars, and were destitute of the grace of Christ, because
He had not then come ?"

   9. To these statements we answer by requiring those who make them to
tell us, in the first place, whether the sacred rites, which we know to
have been introduced into the worship of their gods at times which can be
ascertained, were or were not profitable to men. If they say that these
were of no service for the salvation of men, they unite with us in putting
them down, and confess that they were useless. We indeed prove that they
were baneful; but it is an important concession that by them it is at least
admitted that they were useless. If, on the other hand, they defend these
rites, and maintain that they were wise and profitable institutions, what,
I ask, has become of those who died before these were instituted? for they
were defrauded of the saving and profitable efficacy which these possessed.
If, however, it be said that they could be cleansed from guilt equally well
in another way, why did not the same way continue in force for their
posterity? What use was there for instituting novelties in worship.

   10. If, in answer to this, they say that the gods themselves have
indeed always existed, and were in all places alike powerful to give
liberty to their worshippers, but were pleased to regulate the
circumstances of time, place, and manner in which they were to be served,
according to the variety found among things temporal and terrestrial, in
such a way as they knew to be most suitable to certain ages and countries,
why do they urge against the Christian religion this question, which, if it
be asked in regard to their own gods, they either cannot themselves answer,
or, if they can, must do so in such a way as to answer for our religion not
less than their own? For what could they say but that the difference
between sacraments which are adapted to different times and places is of no
importance, if only that which is worshipped in them all be holy, just as
the difference between sounds of words belonging to different languages and
adapted to different hearers is of no importance, if only that which is
spoken be true; although in this respect there is a difference, that men
can, by agreement among themselves, arrange as to the sounds of language by
which they may communicate their thoughts to one another, but that those
who have discerned what is right have been guided only by the will of God
in regard to the sacred rites which were agreeable to the Divine Being.
This divine will has never been wanting to the justice and piety of mortals
for their salvation; and whatever varieties of worship there may have been
in different nations bound together by one and the same religion, the most
important thing to observe was this how far, on the one hand, human
infirmity was thereby encouraged to effort, or borne with while, on the
other hand, the divine authority was not assailed.

   11. Wherefore, since we affirm that Christ is the Word of God, by whom
all things were made and is the Son, because He is the Word, not a word
uttered and belonging to the past but abides unchangeably with the
unchangeable Father, Himself unchangeable, under whose rule the whole
universe, spiritual and material, is ordered in the way best adapted to
different times and places, and that He has perfect wisdom and knowledge as
to what should be done, and when and where everything should be done in the
controlling and ordering of the universe,--most certainly, both before He
gave being to the Hebrew nation, by which He was pleased, through
sacraments suited to the time, to prefigure the manifestation of Himself in
His advent, and during the time of the Jewish commonwealth, and, after
that, when He manifested Himself in the likeness of mortals to mortal men
in the body which He received from the Virgin, and thenceforward even to
our day, in which He is fulfilling all which He predicted of old by the
prophets, and from this present time on to the end of the world, when He
shall separate the holy from the wicked, and give to every man his due
recompense,- in all these successive ages He is the same Son of God, co-
eternal with the Father, and the unchangeable Wisdom by whom universal
nature was called into existence, and by participation in whom every
rational soul is made blessed.

   12. Therefore, from the beginning of the human race, whosoever believed
in Him, and in any way knew Him, and lived in a pious and just manner
according to His precepts, was undoubtedly saved by Him, in whatever time
and place he may have lived. For as we believe in Him both as dwelling with
the Father and as having come in the flesh, so the men of the former ages
believed in Him both as dwelling with the Father and as destined to come in
the flesh. And the nature of faith is not changed, nor is the salvation
made different, in our age, by the fact that, in consequence of the
difference between the two epochs, that which was then foretold as future
is now proclaimed as past. Moreover, we are not under necessity to suppose
different things and different kinds of salvation to be signified, when the
self-same thing is by different sacred words and rites of worship announced
in the one case as fulfilled, in the other as future. As to the manner and
time, however, in which anything that pertains to the one salvation common
to all believers and pious persons is brought to pass, let us ascribe
wisdom to God, and for our part exercise submission to His will. Wherefore
the true religion, although formerly set forth and practised under other
names and with other symbolical rites than it now has, and formerly more
obscurely revealed and known to fewer persons than now in the time of
clearer light and wider diffusion, is one and the same in both periods.

   13. Moreover, we do not raise any objection to their religion on the
ground of the difference between the institutions appointed by Numa
Pompilius for the worship of the gods. by the Romans, and those which were
up till that time practised in Rome or in other parts of Italy; nor on the
fact that in the age of Pythagoras that system of philosophy became
generally adopted which up to that time had no existence, or lay concealed,
perhaps, among a very small number whose views were the same, but 'whose
religious practice and worship was different: the question upon which we
join issue with them is, whether these gods were true gods, or worthy of
worship, and whether that philosophy was fitted to promote the salvation of
the souls of men. This is what we insist upon discussing; and in discussing
it we pluck up their sophistries by the root. Let them, therefore, desist
from bringing against us objections which are of equal force against every
sect, and against religion of every name. For since, as they admit, the
ages of the world do not roll on under the dominion of chance, but are
controlled by divine Providence, what may be fitting and expedient in each
successive age transcends the range of human understanding, and is
determined by the same wisdom by which Providence cares for the universe.

   14. For if they assert that the reason why the doctrine of Pythagoras
has not prevailed always and universally is, that Pythagoras was but a man,
and had not power to secure this, can they also affirm that in the age and
in the countries in which his philosophy flourished, all who had the
opportunity of hearing him were found willing to believe and follow him?
And therefore it is the more certain that, if Pythagoras had possessed the
power of publishing his doctrines where he pleased and when he pleased, and
if he had also possessed along with that power a perfect foreknowledge of
events, he would have presented himself only at those places and times in
which he foreknew that men would believe his teaching. Wherefore, since
they do not object to Christ on the ground of His doctrine not being
universally embraced,- for they feel that this would be a futile objection
if alleged either against the teaching of philosophers or against the
majesty of their own gods, --what answer, I ask, could they make, if,
leaving out of view that depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God within
which it may be that some other divine purpose lies much more deeply
hidden, and without prejudging the other reasons possibly existing, which
are fit subjects for patient study by the wise, we confine ourselves, for
the sake of brevity in this discussion, to the statement of this one
position, that it pleased Christ to appoint the time in which He would
appear and the persons among whom His doctrine was to be proclaimed,
according to His knowledge of the times and places in which men would
believe on Him?(1) For He foreknew, regarding those ages and places in
which His gospel has not been preached, that in them the gospel, if
preached, would meet with such treatment from all, without exception, as it
met with, not indeed from all, but from many, at the time of His personal
presence on earth, who would not believe in Him, even though men were
raised from the dead by Him; and such as we see it meet with in our day
from many who, although the predictions of the prophets concerning Him are
so manifestly fulfilled, still refuse to believe, and, misguided by the
perverse subtlety of the human heart, rather resist than yield to divine
authority, even when this is so clear and manifest, so glorious and so
gloriously published abroad. So long as the mind of man is limited in
capacity and in strength, it is his duty to yield to divine truth. Why,
then, should we wonder if Christ knew that the world was so full of
unbelievers in the former ages, that He righteously refused to manifest
Himself or to be preached to those of whom He foreknew that they would not
believe either His words or His miracles? For it is not incredible that all
may have been then such as, to our amazement, so many have been from the
time of His advent to the present time, and even now are.

   15. And yet, from the beginning of the human race, He never ceased to
speak by His prophets, at one time more obscurely, at another time more
plainly, as seemed to divine wisdom best adapted to the time i nor were
there ever wanting men who believed in Him, from Adam to Moses, and among
the people of Israel itself, which was by a special mysterious appointment
a prophetic nation, and among other nations before He came in the flesh.
For seeing that in the sacred Hebrew books some are mentioned, even from
Abraham's time, not belonging to his natural posterity nor to the people of
Israel, and not proselytes added to that people, who were nevertheless
partakers of this holy mystery,(2) why may we not believe that in other
nations also, here and there, some more were found, although we do not read
their names in these authoritative records? Thus the salvation provided by
this religion, by which alone, as alone true, true salvation is truly
promised, was never wanting to any one who was worthy of it, and he to whom
it was wanting was not worthy of it.(3) And from the beginning of the human
family, even to the end of time, it is preached, to some for their
advantage, to some for their condemnation. Accordingly, those to whom it
has not been preached at all are those who were foreknown as persons who
would not believe; those to whom, notwithstanding the certainty that they
would not believe, the salvation has been proclaimed are set forth as an
example of the class of unbelievers; and those to whom, as persons who
would believe, the truth is proclaimed are being prepared for the kingdom
of heaven and for the society of the holy angels.

   16. QUESTION III. Let us now look to the question which comes next in
order. "They find fault," he says, "with the sacred ceremonies, the
sacrificial victims, the burning of incense, and all the other parts of
worship in our temples; and yet the same kind of worship had its origin in
antiquity with themselves, or from the God whom they worship, for He is
represented by them as having been in need of the first-fruits."

   17. This question is obviously founded upon the passage in our
Scriptures in which it is written that Cain brought to God a gift from the
fruits of the earth, but Abel brought a gift from the firstlings of the
flock.(4) Our reply, therefore, is, that from this passage the more
suitable inference to be drawn is, how ancient is the ordinance of
sacrifice which the infallible and sacred writings declare to be due to no
other than to the one true God; not because God needs our offerings, seeing
that, in the same Scriptures, it is most clearly written, "I said unto the
Lord, Thou art my Lord, for Thou hast no need of my good,"(1) but because,
even in the acceptance or rejection or appropriation of these offerings, He
considers the advantage of men, and of them alone. For in worshipping God
we do good to ourselves, not to Him. When, therefore, He gives an inspired
revelation, and teaches how He is to be worshipped, He does this not only
from no sense of need on His part, but from a regard to our highest
advantage. For all such sacrifices are significant, being symbols of
certain things by which we ought to be roused to search or know or
recollect the things which they symbolize. To discuss this subject
satisfactorily would demand of us something more than the short discourse
in which we have resolved to give our reply at this time, more particularly
because in other treatises we have spoken of it fully.(2) Those also who
have before us expounded the divine oracles, have spoken largely of the
symbols of the sacrifices of the Old Testament as shadows and figures of
things then future.

   18. With all our desire, however, to be brief, this one thing we must
by no means omit to remark, that the false gods, that is to say, the
demons, which are lying angels, would never have required a temple,
priesthood, sacrifice, and the other things connected with these from their
worship-pets, whom they deceive, had they not known that these things were
due to the one true God. When, therefore, these things are presented to God
according to His inspiration and teaching, it is true religion; but when
they are given to demons in compliance with their impious pride, it is
baneful superstition. Accordingly, those who know the Christian Scriptures
of both the Old and the New Testaments do not blame the profane rites of
Pagans on the mere ground of their building temples, appointing priests,
and offering sacrifices, but on the ground of their doing all this for
idols and demons. As to idols, indeed, who entertains a doubt as to their
being wholly devoid of perception? And yet, when they are placed in these
temples and set on high upon thrones of honour, that they may be waited
upon by suppliants and worshippers praying and offering sacrifices, even
these idols, though devoid both of feeling and of life, do, by the mere
image of the members and senses of beings endowed with life, so affect weak
minds, that they appear to live and breathe, especially under the added
influence of the profound veneration with which the multitude freely
renders such costly service.

   19. To these morbid and pernicious affections of the mind divine
Scripture applies a remedy, by repeating, with the impressiveness of
wholesome admonition, a familiar fact, in the words, "Eyes have they, but
they see not; they have ears, but they hear not,"(3) etc. For these words,
by reason of their being so plain, and commending themselves to all people
as true, are the more effective in striking salutary shame into those who,
when they present divine worship before such images with religious fear,
and look upon their likeness to living beings while they are venerating and
worshipping them, and utter petitions, offer sacrifices, and perform vows
before them as if present, are so completely overcome, that they do not
presume to think of them as devoid of perception. Lest, moreover, these
worshippers should think that our Scriptures intend only to declare that
such affections of the human heart spring naturally from the worship of
idols, it is written in the plainest terms, "All the gods of the nations
are devils." (4) And therefore, also, the teaching of the apostles not only
declares, as we read in John, "Little children, keep yourselves from
idols,"(5) but also, in the words of Paul, "What say I then? that the idol
is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything?
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to
devils, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with
devils." (6) From which it may be clearly understood, that what is
condemned in heathen superstitions by the true religion is not the mere
offering of sacrifices (for the ancient saints offered these to the true
God), but the offering of sacrifices to false gods and to impious demons.
For as the truth counsels men to seek the fellowship of the holy angels, in
like manner impiety turns men aside to the fellowship of the wicked angels,
for whose associates everlasting fire is prepared, as the eternal kingdom
is prepared for the associates of the holy angels.

   20. The heathen find a plea for their profane rites and their idols in
the fact that they interpret with ingenuity what is signified by each of
them, but the plea is of no avail. For all this interpretation relates to
the creature, not to the Creator, to whom alone is due that religious
service which is in the Greek language distinguished by the word latrei'a.
Neither do we say that the earth, the seas, the heaven, the sun, the moon,
the stars, and any other celestial influences which may be beyond our ken
are demons; but since all created things are divided into material and
immaterial, the latter of which we also call spiritual, it is manifest that
what is done by us under the power of piety and religion proceeds from the
faculty of our souls known as the will, which belongs to the spiritual
creation, and is therefore to be preferred to all that is material. Whence
it is inferred that sacrifice must not be offered to anything material.
There remains, therefore, the spiritual part of creation, which is either
pious or impious,--the pious consisting of men and angels who are
righteous, and who duly serve God; the impious consisting of wicked men and
angels, whom we also call devils. Now, that sacrifice must not be offered
to a spiritual creature, though righteous, is obvious from this
consideration, that the more pious and submissive to God any creature is,
the less does he presume to aspire to that honour which he knows to be due
to God alone. How much worse, therefore, is it to sacrifice to devils, that
is, to a wicked spiritual creature, which, dwelling in this comparatively
dark heaven nearest to earth, as in the prison assigned to him in the air,
is doomed to eternal punishment. Wherefore, even when men say that they are
offering sacrifices to the higher celestial powers, which are not devils,
and imagine that the only difference between us and them is in a name,
because they call them gods and we call them angels, the only beings which
really present themselves to these men, who are given over to be the sport
of manifold deceptions, are the devils who find delight and, in a sense,
nourishment in the errors of mankind. For the holy angels do not approve of
any sacrifice except what is offered, agreeably to the teaching of true
wisdom and true religion, unto the one true God, whom in holy fellowship
they serve. Therefore, as impious presumption, whether in men or in angels,
commands or covets the rendering to itself of those honours which belong to
God, so, on the other hand, pious humility, whether in men or in holy
angels, declines these honours when offered, and declares to whom alone
they are due,! of which most notable examples are conspicuously set forth
in our sacred books.

   21. In the sacrifices appointed by the divine oracles there has been a
diversity of institution l corresponding to the age in which they were
observed. Some sacrifices were offered before the actual manifestation of
that new covenant, the benefits of which are provided by the one true
offering of the one Priest, namely, by the shed blood of Christ; and
another sacrifice, adapted to this manifestation, and offered in the:
present age by us who are called Christians after the name of Him who has
been revealed, is set before us not only in the gospels, but also in the
prophetic books. For a change, not of the God, who is worshipped, nor of
the religion itself, but of sacrifices and of sacraments, would seem to be
proclaimed without warrant now, if it had not been foretold in the earlier
dispensation. For just as when the same man brings to God in the morning
one kind of offering, and in the evening another, according to the time of
day, he does not thereby change either his God or his religion, any more
than he changes the nature of a salutation who uses one form of salutation
in the morning and another in the evening: so, in the complete cycle of the
ages, when one kind of offering is known to have been made by the ancient
saints, and another is presented by the saints in our time, this only shows
that these sacred mysteries are celebrated not according to human
presumption, but by divine authority, in the manner best adapted to the
times. There is here no change either in the Deity or in the religion.

   22. QUESTION IV. Let us, in the next place, consider what he has laid
down concerning the proportion between sin and punishment when,
misrepresenting the gospel, he says: "Christ threatens eternal punishment
to those who do not believe in Him;"(1) and yet He says in another place,
"With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."(2) "Here,"
he remarks, "is something sufficiently absurd and contradictory; for if He
is to award punishment according to measure, and all measure is limited by
the end of time, what mean these threats of eternal punishment ?"

   23. It is difficult to believe that this question has been put in the
form of objection by one claiming to be in any sense a philosopher; for he
says, "All measure is limited by time," as if men were accustomed to no
other measures than measures of time, such as hours and days and years, or
such as are referred to when we say that the time of a short syllable is
one-half of that of a long syllable.(3) For I suppose that bushels and
firkins, urns and amphorae, are not measures of time. How, then, is all
measure limited by time? Do not the heathen themselves affirm that the sun
is eternal? And yet they presume to calculate and pronounce on the basis of
geometrical measurements what is the proportion between it and the earth.
Whether this calculation be within or beyond their power, it is certain,
notwithstanding, that it has a disc of definite dimensions. For if they do
ascertain how large it is, they know its dimensions, and if they do not
succeed in their investigation, they do not know these; but the fact that
men cannot discover them is no proof that they do not exist. It is
possible, therefore, for something to be eternal, and nevertheless to have
a definite measure of its proportions. In this I have been speaking upon
the assumption of their own view as to the eternal duration of the sun, in
order that they may be convinced by one of their own tenets, and obliged to
admit that something may be eternal and at the same time measurable. And
therefore let them not think that the threatening of Christ concerning
eternal punishment is not to be believed because of His also saying, "In
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you."

   24. For if He had said, "That which you have measured shall be measured
unto you," even in that case it would not have been necessary to take the
clauses as referring to something which was in all respects the same. For
we may correctly say, That which you have planted you shall reap, although
men plant not fruit but trees, and reap not trees but fruit. We say it,
however, with reference to the kind of tree; for a man does not plant a
fig:tree, and expect to gather nuts from it. In like manner it might be
said, What you have done you shall suffer; not meaning that if one has
committed adultery, for example, he shall suffer the same, but that what he
has in that crime done to the law, the law shall do unto him, i.e.
forasmuch as he has removed from his life the law which prohibits such
things, the law shall requite him by removing him from that human life over
which it presides.

   Again, if He had said, "As much as ye shall have measured, so much
shall be measured unto you," even from this statement it would not
necessarily follow that we must understand punishments to be in every
particular equal to the sins punished. Barley and wheat, for example, are
not equal in quality, and yet it might be said, "As much as ye shall have
measured, so much shall be measured unto you," meaning for so much wheat so
much barley. Or if the matter in question were pain, it might be said, "As
great pain shall be inflicted on you as you have inflicted on others;" this
might mean that the pain should be in severity equal, but in time more
protracted, and therefore by its continuance greater. For suppose I were to
say of two lamps, "The flame of this one was as hot as the flame of the
other," this would not be false, although, perchance, one of them was
earlier extinguished than the other. Wherefore, if things be equally great
in one respect, but not in another, the fact that they are not alike in all
respects does not invalidate the statement that in one respect, as
admitted, they are equally great.

   25. Seeing, however, that the words of Christ were these, "In what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you," and that beyond all
question the measure in which anything is measured is one thing, and that
which is measured in it is another, it is obviously possible that with the
same measure with which men have measured, say, a bushel of wheat, there
may be measured to them thousands of bushels, so that with no difference in
the measure there may be all that difference in the quantity, not to speak
of the difference of quality which might be in the things measured; for it
is not only possible that with the same measure with which one has measured
barley to others, wheat may be measured to him, but, moreover, with the
same measure with which he has measured grain, gold may be 'measured to
him, and of the grain there may have been one bushel, while there may be
very many of the gold. Thus, although there is a difference both in kind
and quantity, it may be nevertheless truly said in reference to things
which are thus unlike: "In the measure in which he measured to others it is
measured unto him."

   The reason, moreover, why Christ uttered this saying is sufficiently
plain from the immediately preceding context. "Judge not," He said, "that
ye be not judged; for in the judgment in which ye judge ye shall be
judged." Does this mean that if they have judged any one with injustice
the)' shall themselves be unjustly judged? Of course not; for there is no
unrighteousness with God. But it is thus expressed, "In the judgment in
which ye judge ye shall be judged," as if it were said, In the will in
which ye have dealt kindly with others ye shall be set at liberty, or in
the will in which ye have done evil to others ye shall be punished. As if
any one, for example, using his eyes for the gratification of base desires,
were ordered to be made blind, this would be a just sentence for him to
hear, "In those eyes by which thou hast sinned, in them hast thou deserved
to be punished." For every one uses the judgment of his own mind, according
as it is good or evil, for doing good or for doing evil. Wherefore it is
not unjust that he be judged in that in which he judges, that is to say,
that he suffer the penalty in the mind's faculty of judgment when he is
made to endure those evils which are the consequences of the sinful
judgment of his mind.

   26. For while other torments which are prepared to be hereafter
inflicted are visible torments occasioned by the same central cause,
namely, a depraved will,- it is also the fact that within the mind itself,
in which the appetite of the will is the measure of all human actions, sin
is followed immediately by punishment, which is for the most part increased
in proportion to the greater blindness of one by whom it is not felt.
Therefore when He had said, "With [or rather, as Augustin renders it, In]
what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged," He went on to add, "And in
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you." A good man, that is
to say, will measure out good actions in his own will, and in the same
shall blessedness be measured unto him; and in like manner, a bad man will
measure out bad actions in his own will, and in the same shall misery be
meted out to him; for in whatsoever any one is good when his will aims at
what is good, in the same he is evil when his will aims at what is evil.
And therefore it is also in this that he is made to experience bliss or
misery, viz. in the feeling experienced by his own will, which is the
measure both of all actions and of the recompenses of actions. For we
measure actions, whether good or bad, by the quality of the volitions which
produce them, not by the length of time which they occupy. Were it
otherwise, it would be regarded a greater crime to fell a tree than to kill
a man. For the former takes a long time and many strokes, the latter may be
done with one blow in a moment of time; and yet, if a man were punished
with no more than transportation for life for this great crime committed in
a moment, it would be said that he had been treated with more clemency than
he deserved, although, in regard to the duration of time, the protracted
punishment is not in any way to be compared with the sudden act of murder.
Where, then, is anything contradictory in the sentence objected to, if the
punishments shall be equally protracted or even alike eternal, but
differing in comparative gentleness and severity? The duration is the same;
the pain inflicted is different in degree, because that which constitutes
the measure of the sins l themselves is found not in the length of time]
which they occupy, but in the will of those who! commit them.

   27. Certainly the will itself endures the punishment, whether pain be
inflicted on the mind or on the body; so that the same thing which is
gratified by the sin is smitten by the penalty, and so that he who judgeth
without mercy is judged without mercy; for in this sentence also the
standard of measure is the same only in this point, that what he did not
give to others is denied to him, and therefore the judgment passed on him
shall be eternal, although the judgment pronounced by him cannot be
eternal. It is therefore in the sinner's own measure that punishments which
are eternal are measured out to him, though the sins thus punished were not
eternal; for as his wish was to have an eternal enjoyment of sin, so the
award which he finds is an eternal endurance of suffering.

   The brevity which I study in this reply precludes me from collecting
all, or at least as many as I could of the statements contained in our
sacred books as to sin and the punishment of sin, and deducing from these
one indisputable proposition on the subject; and perhaps, even if I
obtained the necessary leisure, I might not possess abilities competent to
the task. Nevertheless, I think that in the meantime I have proved that
there is no contradiction between the eternity of punishment and the
principle that sins shall be recompensed in the same measure in which men
have committed them.

   28. QUESTION V. The objector who has brought forward these questions
from Porphyry has added this one in the next place: Will you have the
goodness to instruct me as to whether Solomon said truly or not that God
has no Son ?

   29. The answer is brief: Solomon not only did not say this, but, on the
contrary, expressly said that God hath a Son. For in one of his writings
Wisdom saith: "Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was!
brought forth."(1) And what is Christ but the Wisdom of God? Again, in
another place in the book of Proverbs, he says: "God hath taught me wisdom,
and I have learned the knowledge of the holy.(2) Who hath ascended up into
heaven and descended? who hath gathered the winds in His fists? who hath
bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the
earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name?"(3) Of the two
questions concluding this quotation, the one referred to the Father,
namely, "What is His name ?"--with allusion to the foregoing words, "God
hath taught me wisdom,"--the other evidently to the Son, since he says, "or
what is His Son's name?"-- with allusion to the other statements, which are
more properly understood as pertaining to the Son, viz. "Who hath ascended
up into heaven and descended?"--a question brought to remembrance by the
words of Paul: "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far
above all heavens;"(4)--"Who hath gathered the winds in His fists?" i.e.
the souls of believers in a hidden and secret place, to whom, accordingly,
it is said, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God;"(5)--
"Who hath bound the waters in a garment?"(6) whence it could be said, "As
many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;"(7) --
"Who hath established all the ends of the earth?" the same who said to His
disciples, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."(8)

   30. QUESTION VI. The last question proposed is concerning Jonah, and it
is put as if it were not from. Porphyry, but as being a standing subject of
ridicule among the Pagans; for his words are: "In the next place, what are
we to believe concerning Jonah, who is said to have been three days in a
whale's belly? The thing is utterly improbable and incredible, that a man
swallowed with his clothes on should have existed in the inside of a fish.
If, however, the story is figurative, be pleased to explain it. Again, what
is meant by the story that a gourd sprang up above the head of Jonah after
he was vomited by the fish? What was the cause of this gourd's growth ?"
Questions such as these I have seen discussed by Pagans amidst loud:
laughter, and with great scorn.

   31. To this I reply, that either all the miracles wrought by divine
power may be treated as incredible, or there is no reason why the story of
this miracle should not be believed. The resurrection of Christ Himself
upon the third day would not be believed by us, if the Christian faith was
afraid to encounter Pagan ridicule. Since, however, our friend did not on
this ground ask whether it is to be believed that Lazarus was raised on the
fourth day, or that Christ rose on the third day, I am much surprised that
he reckoned what was done with Jonah to be incredible; unless, perchance,
he thinks it easier for a dead man to be raised in life from his sepulchre,
than for a living man to be kept in life in the spacious belly of a sea
monster. For without mentioning the great size of sea monsters which is
reported to us by those who have knowledge of them, let me ask how many men
could be contained in the belly which was fenced round with those huge ribs
which are fixed in a public place in Carthage, and are well known to all
men there? Who can be at a loss to conjecture how wide an entrance must
have been given by the opening of the mouth which was the gateway of that
vast cavern? unless, perchance, as our friend stated it, the clothing of
Jonah stood in the way of his being swallowed without injury, as if he had
required to squeeze himself through a narrow passage, instead of being, as:
was the case, thrown headlong through the air, and so caught by the sea
monster as to be received into its belly before he was wounded by its
teeth. At the same time, the Scripture does not say whether he had his
clothes on or not when he was cast down into that cavern, so that it may
without contradiction be understood that he made that swift descent
unclothed, if perchance it was necessary that his garment should be taken
from him, as the shell is taken from an egg, to make him more easily
swallowed. For men are as much concerned about the raiment of this prophet
as would be reasonable if it were stated that he had crept through a very
small window, or had been going into a bath; and yet, even though it were
necessary in such circumstances to enter without parting with one's
clothes, this would be only inconvenient, not miraculous.

   32. But perhaps our objectors find it impossible to believe in regard
to this divine miracle that the heated moist air of the belly, whereby food
is dissolved, could be so moderated in temperature as to preserve the life
of a man. If so, with how much greater force might they pronounce it
incredible that the three young men cast into the furnace by the impious
king walked unharmed in the midst of the flames! If, there:' fore, these
objectors refuse to believe any narrative of a divine miracle, they must be
refuted by another line of argument. For it is incumbent on them in that
case not to single out some one to be objected to, and called in question
as incredible, but to denounce as incredible all narratives in which
miracles of the same kind or more remarkable are recorded. And yet, if this
which is written concerning Jonah were said to have been done by Apuleius
of Madaura or Apollonius of Tyana, by whom they boast, though unsupported
by reliable testimony, that many wonders were performed (albeit even the
devils do some works like those done by the holy angels, not in truth, but
in appearance, not by wisdom, but manifestly by subtlety), --if, I say, any
such event were narrated in connection with these men to whom they give the
flattering name of magicians or philosophers, we should hear from their
mouths sounds not of derision, but of triumph. Be it so, then; let them
laugh at our Scriptures; let them laugh as much as they can, when they see
themselves daily becoming fewer in number, while some are removed by death,
and others by their embracing the Christian faith, and when all those
things are being fulfilled which were predicted by the prophets who long
ago laughed at them, and said that they would fight and bark against the
truth in vain, and would gradually come over to our side; and who not only
transmitted these statements to us, their descendants, for our learning,
but promised that they should be fulfilled in our experience.

   33. It is neither unreasonable nor unprofitable to inquire what these
miracles signify, so that, after their significance has been explained, men
may believe not only that they really occurred, but also that they have
been recorded, because of their possessing symbolical meaning. Let him,
therefore, who proposes to inquire why the prophet Jonah was three days in
the capacious belly of a sea monster, begin by dismissing doubts as to the
fact itself; for this did actually occur, and did not occur in vain. For if
figures which are expressed in words only, and not in actions, aid our
faith, how much more should our faith be helped by figures expressed not
only in words, but also in actions! Now men are wont to speak by words; but
divine power speaks by actions as well as by words. And as words which are
new or somewhat unfamiliar lend brilliancy to a human discourse when they
are scattered through it in a moderate and judicious manner, so the
eloquence of divine revelation receives, so to speak, additional lustre
from actions which are at once marvellous in themselves and skilfully
designed to impart spiritual instruction.

   34. As to the question, What was prefigured by the sea monster
restoring alive on the third day the prophet whom it swallowed? why is this
asked of us, when Christ Himself has given the answer, saying, "An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be
given it but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and
three nights in the whale's belly, so must the Son of man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth"(1)? In regard to the three days in
which the Lord Christ was under the power of death, it would take long to
explain how they are reckoned to be three whole days, that is, days along
with their nights, because of the whole of the first day and of the third
day being understood as represented on the part of each; moreover, this has
been already stated very often in other discourses. As, therefore, Jonah
passed from the ship to the belly of the whale, so Christ passed from the
cross to the sepulchre, or into' the abyss of death. And as Jonah suffered
this for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ
suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this world.
And as the command was given at first that the word of God should be
preached to the Nine-rites by Jonah, but the preaching of Jonah did not
come to them until after the whale had vomited him forth, so prophetic
teaching was Addressed early to the Gentiles, but did not actually come to
the Gentiles until after the resurrection of Christ from the grave.

   35. In the next place, as to Jonah's building for himself a booth, and
sitting down over against Nineveh, waiting to see what would befall the
city, the prophet was here in his own person the symbol of another fact. He
prefigured the carnal people of Israel. For he also was grieved at the
salvation of the Ninevites, that is, at the redemption and deliverance of
the Gentiles, from among whom Christ came to call, not righteous men, but
sinners to repentance.(2) Wherefore the shadow of that gourd over his head
prefigured the promises of the Old Testament, or rather the privileges
already enjoyed in it, in which there was, as the apostle says, "a shadow
of things to come,"(3) furnishing, as it were, a refuge from the heat of
temporal calamities in the land of promise. Moreover, in that morning-
worm,(4) which by its gnawing tooth made the gourd wither away, Christ
Himself is again prefigured, forasmuch as, by the publication of the gospel
from His mouth, all those things which flourished among the Israelites for
a time, or with a shadowy. symbolical meaning in that earlier dispensation,
are now deprived of their significance, and have withered away. And now
that nation, having lost the kingdom, the priesthood, and the sacrifices
formerly established in Jerusalem, all which privileges were a shadow of
things to come, is burned with grievous heat of tribulation in its
condition of dispersion and captivity, as Jonah was, according to the
history, scorched with the heat of the sun, and is overwhelmed with sorrow;
and notwithstanding, the salvation of the Gentiles and of the penitent is
of more importance in the sight of God than this sorrow of Israel and the
"shadow" of which the Jewish nation was so glad.

   36. Again, let the Pagans laugh, and let them treat with proud and
senseless ridicule Christ the Worm and this interpretation of the prophetic
symbol, provided that He gradually and surely, nevertheless, consume them.
For concerning all such Isaiah prophesies, when by him God says to us,
"Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is
my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their
revilings: for the moth shall eat them up as a garment, and the worm shall
eat them like wool; but my righteousness shall be for ever."(5) Let us
therefore acknowledge Christ to be the morning-worm, because, moreover, in
that psalm which bears the title, "Upon the hind of the morning," (6) He
has been pleased to call Himself by this very name: "I am," He says, "a
worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people." This
reproach is one of those reproaches which we are commanded not to fear in
the words of Isaiah, "Fear ye not the reproach of men." By that Worm, as by
a moth, they are being consumed who under the tooth of His gospel are made
to wonder daily at the diminution of their numbers, which is caused by
desertion from their party. Let us therefore acknowledge this symbol of
Christ; and because of the salvation of God, let us bear patiently the
reproaches of men. He is a Worm because of the lowliness of the flesh which
He assumed--perhaps, also, because of His being born of a virgin; for the
worm is generally not begotten, but spontaneously originated in flesh or
any vegetable product [sine concubitu nascitur]. He is the morning-worm,
because He rose from the grave before the dawn of day. That gourd might, of
course, have withered without any worm at its root; and finally, if God
regarded the worm as necessary for this work, what need was there to add
the epithet morning-worm, if not to secure that He should be recognised as
the Worm who in the psalm, "pro susceptione matutina," sings, "I am a worm,
and no man"?

   37. What, then, could be more palpable than the fulfilment of this
prophecy in the accomplishment of the things foretold? That Worm was indeed
despised when He hung upon the cross, as is written in the same psalm:
"They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the
Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in
him;"(1) and again, when this was fulfilled which the psalm foretold, "They
pierced my hands and my feet. They have told all my bones: they look and
stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my
vesture,"(2)--circumstances which are in that ancient book described when
future by the prophet with as great plainness as they are now recorded in
the gospel history after their occurrence. But if in His humiliation that
Worm was despised, is He to be still despised when we behold the
accomplishment of those things which are predicted in the latter part of
the same psalm: "All the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto
the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship in His
presence. For the kingdom is the Lord's; and He shall govern among the
nations"?(3) Thus the Ninevites "remembered, and turned unto the Lord." The
salvation granted to the Gentiles on their repentance, which was thus so
long before prefigured, Israel then, as represented by Jonah, regarded with
grief, as now their nation grieves, bereft of their shadow, and vexed with
the heat of their tribulations. Any one is at liberty to open up with a
different interpretation, if only it be in harmony with the rule of faith,
all the other particulars which are hidden in the symbolical history of the
prophet Jonah; but it is obvious that it is not lawful to interpret the
three days which he passed in the belly of the whale otherwise than as it
has been revealed by the heavenly Master Himself in the gospel, as quoted
above.

   38. I have answered to the best of my power the questions proposed; but
let him who proposed them become now a Christian at once, lest, if he delay
until he has finished the discussion of all difficulties connected with the
sacred books, he come to the end of this life before he pass from death to
life. For it is reasonable that he inquire as to the resurrection of the
dead before he is admitted to the Christian sacraments. Perhaps he ought
also to be allowed to insist on preliminary discussion of the question
proposed concerning Christ--why He came so late in the world's history, and
of a few great questions besides, to which all others are subordinate. But
to think of finishing all such questions as those concerning the words, "In
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you," and concerning Jonah,
before he becomes a Christian, is to betray great unmindfulness of man's
limited capacities, and of the shortness of the life which remains to him.
For there are innumerable questions the solution of which is not to be
demanded before we believe, lest life be finished by us in unbelief. When,
however, the Christian faith has been thoroughly received, these questions
behove to be studied with the utmost diligence for the pious satisfaction
of the minds of believers. Whatever is discovered by such study ought to be
imparted to others without vain self-complacency; if anything still remain
hidden, we must bear with patience an . imperfection of knowledge which is
not prejudicial to salvation.

LETTER CIII. (A.D. 409.)

TO MY LORD AND BROTHER, AUGUSTIN, RIGHTLY AND JUSTLY WORTHY OF ESTEEM AND
OF ALL POSSIBLE HONOUR, NECTARIUS SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. In reading the letter of your Excellency, in which you have
overthrown the worship of idols and the ritual of their temples,(4) I
seemed to myself to hear the voice of a philosopher, not of such a
philosopher as the academician of whom they say, that having neither new
doctrine to propound nor earlier statements of his own to defend, he was
wont to sit in gloomy corners on the ground absorbed in some deep reverie,
with his knees drawn back to his forehead, and his head buried between
them, contriving how he might as a detractor assail the discoveries or
cavil at the statements by which others had earned renown; nay, the form
which rose under the spell of your eloquence and stood before my eyes was
rather that of the great statesman Cicero, who, having been crowned with
laurels for saving the lives of many of his countrymen, carried the
trophies won in his forensic victories into the wondering schools of Greek
philosophy, when, as one pausing for breath, he laid down the trumpet of
sonorous voice and language which he had blown with blast of just
indignation against those who had broken the laws and conspired against the
life of the republic, and, adopting the fashion of the Grecian mantle,
unfastened and threw back over his shoulders the toga's ample folds.

   2. I therefore listened with pleasure when you urged us to the worship
and religion of the only supreme God; and when you counselled us to look to
our heavenly fatherland, I received the exhortation with joy. For you were
obviously speaking to me not of any city confined by encircling ramparts,
nor of that commonwealth on this earth which the writings of philosophers
have mentioned and declared to have all mankind as its citizens, but of
that City which is inhabited and possessed by the great God, and by the
spirits which have earned this recompense from Him, to which, by diverse
roads and pathways, all religions aspire,--the City which we are not able
in language to describe, but which perhaps we might by thinking apprehend.
But while this City ought therefore to be, above all others, desired and
loved, I am nevertheless of opinion that we are bound not to prove
unfaithful to our own native land, -- the land which first imparted to us
the enjoyment of the light of day, in which we were nursed and educated,
and (to pass to what is specially relevant in this case) the land by
rendering services to which men obtain a home prepared for them in heaven
after the death of the body; for, in the opinion of the most learned,
promotion to that celestial City is granted to those men who have deserved
well of the cities which gave them birth, and a higher experience of
fellowship with God is the portion of those who are proved to have
contributed by their counsels or by their labours to the welfare of their
native land.

   As to the remark which you were pleased wittily to make regarding our
town, that it has been made conspicuous not so much by the achievements of
warriors as by the conflagrations of incendiaries, and that it has produced
thorns rather than flowers, this is not the severest reproof that might
have been given, for we know that flowers are for the most part borne on
thorny bushes. For who does not know that even roses grow on briars, and
that in the bearded heads of grain the ears are guarded by spikes, and
that, in general, pleasant and painful things are found blended together ?

   3. The last statement in your Excellency's letter was, that neither
capital punishment nor bloodshed is demanded in order to compensate for the
wrong done to the Church, but that the offenders must be deprived of the
possessions which they most fear to lose. But in my deliberate judgment,
though, of course, I may be mistaken, it is a more grievous thing to be
deprived of one's property than to be deprived of life. For, as you know,
it is an observation frequently recurring in the whole range of literature,
that death terminates the experience of all evils, but that a life of
indigence only confers upon us an eternity of wretchedness; for it is worse
to live miserably than to put an end to our miseries by death. This fact,
also, is declared by the whole nature and method of your work, in which you
support the poor, minister healing to the diseased, and apply remedies to
the bodies of those who are in pain, and, in short, make it your business
to prevent the afflicted from feeling the protracted continuance of their
sufferings.

   Again, as to the degree of demerit in the faults of some as compared
with others, it is of no importance what the quality of the fault may seem
to be in a case in which forgiveness is craved. For, in the first place, if
penitence procures forgiveness and expiates the crime-and surely he is
penitent who begs pardon and humbly embraces the feet of the party whom he
has offended -- and if, moreover, as is the opinion of some philosophers,
all faults are alike, pardon ought to be bestowed upon all without
distinction. One of our citizens may have spoken somewhat rudely: this was
a fault; another may have perpetrated an insult or an injury: this was
equally a fault; another may have violently taken what was not his own:
this is reckoned a crime; another may have attacked buildings devoted to
secular or to sacred purposes: he ought not to be for this crime placed
beyond the reach of pardon. Finally, there would be no occasion for pardon
if there were no foregoing faults.

   4. Having now replied to your letter, not as the letter deserved, but
to the best of my ability, such as it is, I beg and implore you (oh that I
were in your presence, that you might also see my tears!) to consider again
and again who you are, what is your professed character, and what is the
business to which your life is devoted. Reflect upon the appearance
presented by a town from which men doomed to torture are dragged forth;
think of the lamentations of mothers and wives, of sons and of fathers;
think of the shame felt by those who may return, set at liberty indeed, but
having undergone the torture; think what sorrow and groaning the sight of
their wounds and scars must renew. And when you have pondered all these
things, first think of God, and think of your good name among men; or
rather think of what friendly charity and the bonds of common humanity
require at your hands, and seek to be praised not by punishing but by
pardoning the offenders. And such things may indeed be said regarding ),our
treatment of those whom actual guilt condemns on their own confession: to
these persons you have, out of regard to your religion, granted pardon; and
for this I shall always praise you.. But now it is scarcely possible to
express the greatness of that cruelty which pursues the innocent, and
summons those to stand trial on a capital charge of whom it is certain that
they had no share in the crimes alleged. If it so happen that they are
acquitted, consider, I beseech you, with what ill-will their acquittal must
be regarded by their accusers who of their own accord dismissed the guilty
from the bar, but let the innocent go only when they were defeated in their
attempts against them.

   May the supreme God be your keeper, and preserve you as a bulwark of
His religion and an ornament to our country.

LETTER CIV. (A.D. 409.)

TO NECTARIUS, MY NOBLE LORD AND BROTHER, JUSTLY WORTHY OF ALL HONOUR AND
ESTEEM AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   CHAP. I.--1. I have read the letter which you kindly sent in answer to
mine. Your reply comes at a very long interval after the time when I
despatched my letter to you. For I had written an answer to you(1) when my
holy brother and colleague Possidius was still with us, before he had
entered on his voyage; but the letter which you have been pleased to
entrust to him for me I received on March 27th, about eight months after I
had written to you. The reason why my communication was so late in reaching
you, or yours so late in being sent to me, I do not know. Perhaps your
prudence has only now dictated the reply which your pride formerly
disdained. If this be the explanation, I wonder what has occasioned the
change. Have you perchance heard some report, which is as yet unknown to
us, that my brother Possidius had obtained authority for proceedings of
greater severity against your citizens, whom --you must excuse me for
saying this--he loves in a way more likely to promote their welfare than
you do yourself? For your letter shows that you apprehended something of
this kind when you charge me to set before my eyes "the appearance
presented by a town from which men doomed to torture are dragged forth,"
and to "think of the lamentations of mothers and wives, of sons and of
fathers; of the shame felt by those who may return, set at liberty indeed,
but having undergone the torture; and of the sorrow and groaning which the
sight of their wounds and scars must renew."(2) Far be it from us to demand
the infliction, either by ourselves or by any one, of such hardships upon
any of our enemies! But, as I have said, if report has brought any such
measures of severity to your ears, give us a more clear and particular
account of the things reported, that we may know either what to do in order
to prevent these things from being done, or what 'answer we must make in
order to disabuse the minds of those who believe the rumour.

   2. Examine more carefully my letter, to which you have so reluctantly
sent a reply, for I have in it made my views sufficiently plain; but
through not remembering, as I suppose, what I had written, you have in your
reply made reference to sentiments widely differing from mine, and wholly
unlike them. For, as if quoting from memory what I had written, you have
inserted in your letter what I never said at all in mine. You say that the
concluding sentence of my letter was, "that neither capital punishment nor
bloodshed is demanded in order to compensate for the wrong done to the
Church, but that the offenders must be deprived of that which they most
fear to lose;" and then, in showing how great a calamity this imports, you
add and connect with my words that you "deliberately judge--though you may
perhaps be mistaken --that it is a more grievous thing to be deprived of
one's possessions than to be deprived of life." And in order to expound
more clearly the kind of possessions to which you refer, you go on to say
that. it must be known to me, "as an observation frequently recurring in
the whole range of literature, that death terminates the experience of all
evils, but that a life of indigence only confers upon us an eternity of
wretchedness." From which you have drawn the conclusion that it is "worse
to live miserably than to put an end to our miseries by death."

   3. Now I for my part do not recollect reading anywhere- either in our
[Christian] literature, to which I confess that I was later of applying my
mind than I could now wish that I had been, or in your [Pagan] literature,
which I studied from my childhood--that "a life of indigence only confers
upon us an eternity of wretchedness." For the poverty of the industrious is
never in itself a crime; nay, it is to some extent a means of withdrawing
and restraining men from sin. And therefore the circumstance that a man has
lived in poverty here is no ground for apprehending that this shall procure
for him after this brief life "an eternity of wretchedness ;" and in this
life which we spend on earth it is utterly impossible for any misery to be
eternal, seeing that this life cannot be eternal, nay, is not of long
duration even in those who attain to the most advanced old age. In the
writings referred to, I for my part have read, not that in this life -- as
you think, and as you allege that these writings frequently affirm -- there
can be an eternity of wretchedness, but rather that this life itself which
we here enjoy is short. Some, indeed but not all, of your authors have said
that death is the end of all evils: that is indeed the opinion of the
Epicureans, and of such others as believe the soul to be mortal. But those
philosophers whom Cicero designates "consulates" in a certain sense,
because he attaches great weight to their authority, are of opinion that
when our last hour on earth comes the soul is not annihilated, but removes
from its tenement, and continues in existence for a state of blessedness or
of misery, according to that which a man's actions, whether good or bad,
claim as their due recompense. This agrees with the teaching of our sacred
writings, with which I wish that I were more fully conversant. Death is
therefore the end of all evils- but only in the case of those whose life
is, pure, religious, upright, and blameless; not in the case of those who,
inflamed with passionate desire for the trifles and vanities of time, are
proved to be miserable by the utter perversion of their desires, though
meanwhile they esteem themselves happy, and are after death compelled not
only to accept as their lot, but to realize in their experience far greater
miseries.

   4. These sentiments, therefore, being frequently expressed both in some
of your own authors, whom you deem worthy of greater esteem, and in all our
Scriptures, be it yours, O worthy lover of the country which is on earth
your fatherland, to dread on behalf of your countrymen a life of luxurious
indulgence rather than a life of indigence; or if you fear a life of
indigence, warn them that the poverty which is to be more studiously
shunned is that of the man who, though surrounded with abundance of worldly
possessions, is, through the insatiable eagerness wherewith he covets
these, kept always in a state of want, which, to use the words of your own
authors, neither plenty nor scarcity can relieve. In the letter, however,
to which you reply, I did not say that those of your citizens who are
enemies to the Church were to be corrected by being reduced to that
extremity of indigence in which the necessaries of life are wanting, and to
which succour is brought by that compassion of which you have thought it
incumbent on you to point out to me that it is professed by us in the whole
plan of those labours wherein we "support the poor, minister healing to the
diseased, and apply remedies to the bodies of those who are in pain;"
albeit, even such extremity of want as this would be more profitable than
abundance of all things, if abused to the gratification of evil passions.
But far be it from me to think that those about whom we are treating should
be reduced to such destitution by the measures of coercion proposed.

   CHAP. II.--5. Though you did not consider it worth while to read my
letter over when it was to be answered, perhaps you have at least so far
esteemed it as to preserve it, in order to its being brought to you when
you at any time might desire it and call for it; if this be the case, look
over it again, and mark carefully my words: you will assuredly find in it
one thing to which, in my opinion, you must admit that you have made no
reply. For in that letter occur the words which I now quote: "We do not
desire to gratify our anger by vindictive retribution for the past, but we
are concerned to make provision in a truly merciful spirit for the future.
Now wicked men have something in respect to which they may be punished, and
that by Christians, in a merciful way, and so as to promote their own
profit and well-being. For they have these three things -- life and health
of the body, the means of supporting that life, and the means and
opportunities of living a wicked life. Let the two former remain untouched
in the possession of those who repent of their crime; this we desire, and
this we spare no pains to secure. But as to the third, if it please God to
deal with it as a decaying or diseased part, which must be removed with the
pruning-knife, He will in such punishment prove the greatness of his
compassion."(1) If you had read over these words of mine again, when you
were pleased to write your reply, you would have looked upon it rather as
an unkind insinuation than as a necessary duty to address to me a petition
not only for deliverance from death, but also for exemption from torture,
on behalf of those regarding whom I said that we wished to leave unimpaired
their possession of bodily life and health. Neither was there any ground
for your apprehending our inflicting a life of indigence and of dependence
upon others for daily bread on those regarding whom I had said that we
desired to secure to them the second of the possessions named above, viz.
the means of supporting life. But as to their third possession, viz. the
means and opportunities of living wickedly, that is to say- passing over
other things -- their silver with which they constructed those images of
their false gods, in whose protection or adoration or unhallowed worship an
attempt was made even to destroy the church of God by fire, and the
provision made for relieving the poverty of very pious persons was given up
to become the spoil of a wretched mob, and blood was freely shed -- why, I
ask, does your patriotic heart dread the stroke which shall cut this away,
in order to prevent a fatal boldness from being in everything fostered and
confirmed by impunity? This I beg you to discuss fully, and to show me in
well-considered arguments what wrong there is in this; mark carefully what
I say, lest under the form of a petition in regard to what I am saying you
appear to bring against us an indirect accusation.

   6. Let your countrymen be well reported of for their virtuous manners,
not for their superfluous wealth; we do not wish them to be reduced through
coercive measures on our account to the plough of Quintius [Cincinnatus],
or to the hearth of Fabricius. Yet by such extreme poverty these statesmen
of the Roman republic not only did not incur the contempt of their fellow-
citizens, but were on that very account peculiarly dear to them, and
esteemed the more qualified to administer the resources of their country.
We neither desire nor endeavour to reduce the estates of your rich men, so
that in their possession should remain no more than ten pounds of silver,
as was the case with Ruffinus, who twice held the consulship, which amount
the stern censorship of that time laudably required to be still further
reduced as culpably large. So much are we influenced by the prevailing
sentiments of a degenerate age in dealing more tenderly with minds that are
very feeble, that to Christian clemency the measure which seemed just to
the censors of that time appears unduly Severe; yet you see how great is
the. difference between the two cases, the question being in the one,
whether the mere fact of possessing ten pounds of silver should be dealt
with as a punishable crime, and in the other, whether any one, after
committing other very great crimes, should be permitted to retain the sum
aforesaid in his possession; we only ask that what in those days was itself
a crime be in our' days made the punishment of crime. There is, however,
one thing which can be done, and ought to be done, in order that, on the
one hand, severity may not be pushed even so far as I have mentioned, and
that, on the other, men may not, presuming on impunity, run into excess of
exultation and rioting, and thus furnish to other unhappy men an example by
following which they would become liable to the severest and most unheard
of punishments. Let this at least be granted by you, that those who attempt
with fire and sword to destroy what are necessaries to us be made afraid of
losing those luxuries of which they have a pernicious abundance. Permit us
also to confer upon our enemies this benefit, that we prevent them, by
their fears about that which it would do them no harm to forfeit, from
attempting to that which would bring harm to themselves. For this is to be
termed prudent prevention, not punishment of crime; this is not to impose
penalties, but to protect men from becoming liable to penalties.

   7. When any one uses measures involving the infliction of some pain, in
order to prevent an inconsiderate person from incurring the most dreadful
punishments by becoming accustomed to crimes which yield him no advantage,
he is like one who pulls a boy's hair in order to prevent him from
provoking serpents by clapping his hands at them; in both cases, while the
acting of love is vexatious to its object, no member of the body is
injured, whereas safety and life are endangered by that from which the
person is deterred. We confer a benefit upon others, not in every case in
which we do what is requested, but when we do that which is not hurtful to
our petitioners For in most cases we J serve others best by not giving, and
would injure them by giving, what they desire. Hence the proverb, "Do not
put a sword in a child's hand." "Nay," says Cicero, "refuse it even to your
only son. For the more we love any one, the more are we bound to avoid
entrusting to him things which are the occasion of very dangerous faults."
He was referring to riches, if I am not mistaken, when he made these
observations. Wherefore it is for the most part an advantage to themselves
when certain things are removed from persons in whose keeping it is
hazardous to leave them, lest they abuse them. When surgeons see that a
gangrene must be cut away or cauterized, they often, out of compassion,
turn a deaf ear to many cries. If we had been indulgently forgiven by our
parents and teachers in our tender years on every occasion on which, being
found in a fault, we begged to be let off, which of us would not have grown
up intolerable? which of us would have learned any useful thing? Such
punishments are administered by wise care, not by wanton cruelty. Do not, I
beseech you, in this matter think only how to accomplish that which you are
requested by your countrymen to do, but carefully consider the matter in
all its bearings. If you overlook the past, which cannot now be undone,
consider the future; wisely give heed, not to the desire, I but to the real
interests of the petitioners who have applied to you. We are convicted of
unfaithfulness towards those whom we profess to love, if our only care is
lest, by refusing to do what they ask of us, their love towards us be
diminished. And what becomes of that virtue r which even your .own
literature commends, in the ruler of his country who studies not so much
the wishes as the welfare of his people ?

   CHAP. III. -- 8. You say "it is of no importance what the quality of
the fault may be in any case in which forgiveness is craved." In this you
would state the truth if the matter in question were the punishment and not
the correction of men. Far be it from a Christian heart to be carried away
by the lust of revenge to inflict punishment on any one. Far be it , from a
Christian, when forgiving any one his fault, to do otherwise than either
anticipate or at least promptly answer the petition of him who asks
forgiveness; but let his purpose in doing this be, that he may overcome the
temptation to hate the man who has offended him, and to render evil for
evil, and to be inflamed with rage prompting him, if not to do an injury,
at least to desire to see the infliction of the penalties appointed by law;
let it not be that he may relieve himself from considering the offender's
interest, exercising foresight on his behalf, and restraining him from evil
actions. For it is possible, on the one hand, that, moved by more vehement
hostility, one may neglect the correction of a man whom he hates bitterly,
and, on the other hand, that by correction involving the infliction of some
pain one may secure the improvement of another whom he dearly loves.

   9. I grant that, as you write, "penitence procures forgiveness, and
blots out the offence," but it is that penitence which is practised under
the influence of the true religion, and which has regard to the future
judgment of God; not that penitence which is for the time professed or
pretended before men, not to secure the cleansing of the soul for ever from
the fault, but only to deliver from present apprehension of pain the life
which is so soon to perish. This is the reason why in the case of some
Christians who confessed their fault, and asked forgiveness for having been
involved in the guilt of that crime, -- either by their not protecting the
church when in danger of being burned, or by their appropriating a portion
of the property which the miscreants carried off,--we believed that the
pain of repentance had borne fruit, and considered it sufficient for their
correction, because in their hearts is found that faith by which they could
realize what they ought to fear from the judgment of God for their sin. But
how can there be any healing virtue in the repentance of those who not only
fail to acknowledge, but even persist in mocking and blaspheming Him who is
the fountain of forgiveness? At the same time, towards these men we do not
cherish any feeling of enmity in our hearts, which are naked and opened
unto the eyes of Him whose judgment both in this life and in the life to
come we dread, and in whose help we place our hope. But we think that we
are even taking measures for the benefit of these men, if, seeing that they
do not fear God, we inspire fear in them by doing something whereby their
folly is chastened, while their real interests suffer no wrong. We thus
prevent that God whom they despise from being more grievously provoked by
their greater crimes, to which they would be emboldened by a disastrous
assurance of impunity, and we prevent their assurance of impunity from
being set' forth with even more mischievous effect as an encouragement to
others to imitate their example. In fine, on behalf of those for whom you
make intercession to us, we intercede before God, beseeching Him to turn
them to Himself, and to teach them the exercise of genuine and salutary
repentance, purifying their hearts by faith.

   10. Behold, then, how we love those men against whom you suppose us to
be full of anger, -- loving them, you must permit me to say, with a love
more prudent and profitable than you yourself cherish towards them; for we
plead on their behalf that they may escape much greater afflictions, and
obtain much greater blessings. If you also loved these men, not in the mere
earthly affections of men, but with that love which is the heavenly gift of
God, and if you were sincere in writing to me that you gave ear with
pleasure to me when I was recommending :to you the worship and religion of
the Supreme God, you would not only wish for your countrymen the blessings
which we seek on their behalf, but you would yourself by your example lead
them to their possession. Thus would the whole business of your interceding
with us be concluded with abundant and most reasonable joy. Thus would your
title to that heavenly fatherland, in regard to which you say that you
welcomed my counsel that you should fix your eye upon it, be earned by a
true and pious exercise of your love for the country which gave you birth,
when seeking to make sure to your fellow-citizens, not the vain dream of
temporal happiness, nor a most perilous exemption from the due punishment
of their faults, but the gracious gift of eternal blessedness.

   11. You have here a frank avowal of the thoughts and desires of my
heart in this matter. As to what lies concealed in the counsels of God, I
confess it is unknown to me; I am but a man; but whatever it be, His
counsel stands most sure, and incomparably excels in equity and in wisdom
all that can be conceived by the minds of men. With truth is it said in our
books, "There are many devices in a man's heart; but the counsel of the
Lord, that shall stand."(1) Wherefore, as to what time may bring forth, as
to what may arise to simplify or complicate our procedure, in short, as to
what desire may suddenly be awakened by the fear of losing or the hope of
retaining present possessions; whether God shall show Himself so displeased
by what they have done that they shall be punished with the more weighty
and severe sentence of a disastrous impunity, or shall appoint that they
shall be compassionately corrected in the manner which we propose, or shall
avert whatever terrible doom was being prepared for them, and convert it
into joy by some more stern but more salutary correction, leading to their
turning unfeignedly to seek mercy not from men but from Himself, m all this
He knoweth; we know not. Why, then, should your Excellency and I be
spending toil in vain over this matter before the time? Let us for a little
while lay aside a care the hour of which has not yet come, and, if you
please, let us occupy ourselves with that which is always pressing. For
there is no time at which it is not both suitable and necessary for us to
consider in what way we can please God; because! for a man to attain
completely in this life to such perfection that no sin whatever shall
remain in him is either impossible or (if perchance I any attain to it)
extremely difficult: wherefore without delay we ought to flee at once to
the] grace of Him to whom we may address with perfect truth the words which
were addressed to some illustrious man by a poet, who declared that he had
borrowed the lines from a Cumaean oracle, or ode of prophetic inspiration:
"With thee as our leader, the obliteration of all remaining traces of our
sin shall deliver the earth from perpetual alarm."(1) For with Him as our
leader, all sins are blotted out and forgiven; and by His way we are
brought to that heavenly fatherland, the thought of which as a dwelling-
place pleased you greatly when I was to the utmost of my power commending
it to your affection and desire.

   CHAP. IV. -- 12. But since you said that all religions by diverse roads
and pathways aspire to that one dwelling-place, I fear lest, perchance,
while supposing that the way in which you are now found tends thither, you
should be somewhat reluctant to embrace the way which alone leads men to
heaven. Observing, however, more carefully the word which you used, I think
that it is not presumptuous for me to expound its meaning somewhat
differently; for you did not! say that all religions by diverse roads and
pathways reach heaven, or reveal, or find, or enter,' or secure that
blessed land, but by saying in a, phrase deliberately weighed and chosen
that all: religions aspire to it, you have indicated, not the: fruition,
but the desire of heaven as common to all religions. You have in these
words neither shut out the one religion which is true, nor admitted other
religions which are false; for certainly the way which brings us to the
goal aspires thitherward, but not every way which aspires thitherward
brings us to the place .wherein all who are brought thither are
unquestionably blest. Now we all wish, that is, we aspire, to be blest; but
we cannot all achieve what we wish, that is, we do not all obtain what we
aspire to. That man, therefore, obtains heaven who walks in the way which
not only aspires thitherward, but actually brings him thither, separating
himself from others who keep to the ways which aspire heavenward without
finally reaching heaven. For there would be no wandering if men were
content to aspire to nothing, or if the truth which men aspire to were
obtained. If, however, in using the expression "diverse ways," you meant me
not to understand contrary ways, but different ways, in the sense in which
we speak of diverse precepts, which all tend to build up a holy life, --
one enjoining chastity, another patience or faith or mercy, and the like, -
- in roads and pathways which are only in this sense diverse, that country
is not only aspired unto but actually found. For in Holy Scripture we read
both of ways and of a way, --of ways, e.g. in the words, "I will teach
transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee;"(2) of a
way, e.g. in the prayer, "Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy
truth."(3) Those ways and this way are not different; but in one way are
comprehended all those of which in another place the Holy Scripture saith,
"All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth."(4) The careful study of
these ways furnishes theme for a long discourse, and for most delightful
meditation; but this I shall defer to another time if it be required.

   13. In the meantime, however, -- and this, I think, may suffice in the
present reply to your Excellency, -- seeing that Christ has said, "I am the
way,"(5) it is in Him that mercy and truth are to be sought: if we seek
these in any other way, we must go astray, following a path which aspires
to the true goal, but does not lead men thither. For example, if we
resolved to follow the way indicated in the maxim which you mentioned, "All
sins are alike,"(6) would it not lead us into hopeless exile from that
fatherland of truth and blessedness? For could anything more absurd and
senseless be said, than that the man who has laughed too rudely, and the
man who has furiously set his city on fire, should be judged as having
committed equal crimes? This opinion, which is not one of many diverse ways
leading to the heavenly dwelling-place, but a perverse way leading
inevitably to most fatal error, you have judged it necessary to quote from
certain philosophers, not because you concurred in the sentiment, but
because it might help your plea for your fellow-citizens--that we might
forgive those whose rage set our church in flames on the same terms as we
would forgive those who may have assailed us with some insolent reproach.

   14. But reconsider with me the reasoning by which you supported your
position. You say, "If, as is the opinion of some philosophers, all faults
are alike, pardon ought to be bestowed upon all without distinction."
Thereafter, labouring apparently to prove that all faults are alike, you go
on to say, "One of our citizens may have spoken somewhat rudely: this was a
fault; another may have perpetrated an insult or an injury: this was
equally a fault." This is not teaching truth, but advancing, without any
evidence in its support, a perversion of truth. For to your statement,
"this was equally a fault," we at once give direct contradiction. You
demand, perhaps, proof; but I reply, What proof have you given of your
statement? Are we to hear as evidence your next sentence, "Another may have
violently taken away what was not his own: this is reckoned a misdemeanour
"? Here you own yourself to be ashamed of the maxim which you quoted; you
had not the assurance to say that this was equally a fault, but you say "it
is reckoned a misdemeanour." But the question here is not whether this also
is reckoned a misdemeanour, but whether this offence and the others which
you mentioned are faults equal in demerit, unless, of course, they are to
be pronounced equal because they are both offences; in which case the mouse
and the elephant must be pronounced equal because they are both animals,
and the fly and the eagle because they both have wings.

   15. You go still further, and make this proposition: "Another may have
attacked buildings devoted to secular or to sacred purposes: he ought not
for this crime to be placed beyond the reach of pardon." In this sentence
you have indeed come to the most flagrant crime of your fellow-citizens, in
speaking of injury done to sacred buildings; but even you have not affirmed
that this is a crime equal only to the utterance of an insolent word. You
have contented yourself with asking, on behalf of those who were guilty of
this, that forgiveness which is rightly asked from Christians on the ground
of their overflowing compassion, not on the ground of an alleged equality
of all offences. I have already quoted a sentence of Scripture, "All the
ways of the Lord are mercy and truth." They shall therefore find mercy if
they do not hate truth. This mercy is granted, not as if it were due on the
ground of the faults of all being only equal to the fault of those who have
uttered rude words, but because the law of Christ claims pardon for those
who are penitent, however inhuman and impious their crime may have been. I
beg you, esteemed sir, not to propound these paradoxes of the Stoics as
rules of conduct for your son Paradoxus, whom we wish to see grow up in
piety and in prosperity, to your satisfaction. For what could be worse for
himself, yea, what more dangerous for yourself, than that your ingenuous
boy should imbibe an error which would make the guilt, I shall not say of
parricide, but of insolence to his father, equal only to that of some rude
word inconsiderately spoken to a stranger?

   16. You are wise, therefore, to insist, when pleading with us for your
countrymen on the compassion of Christians, not on the stern doctrines of
the Stoical philosophy, which in no wise help, but much rather hinder, the
cause which you have undertaken to support. For a merciful disposition,
which we must have if it be possible for us to be moved either by your
intercession or by their entreaties, is pronounced by the Stoics to be an
unworthy weakness, and they expel it utterly from the mind of the wise man,
whose perfection, in their opinion, is to be as impassive and inflexible as
iron. With more reason, therefore, might it have occurred to you to quote
from your own Cicero that sentence in which, praising Caesar, he says, "Of
all your virtues, none is more worthy of admiration, none more graceful,
than your clemency."(1) How much more ought this merciful disposition to
prevail in the churches which follow Him who said, "I am the way," and
which learn from His word, "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth"!
Fear not, then, that we will try to bring innocent persons to death, when
in truth we do not even wish the guilty to experience the punishment which
they deserve, being moved by that mercy which, joined with truth, we love
in Christ. But the man who, from fear of painfully crossing the will of the
guilty, spares and indulges vices which must thereby gather more strength,
is less merciful than the man who, lest he should hear his little boy
crying, will not take from him a dangerous knife, and is unmoved by fear of
the wounds or death which he may have to bewail as the consequence of his
weakness. Reserve, therefore, until the proper time the work of interceding
with us for those men, in loving whom (excuse my saying so) you not only do
not go beyond us, but are even hitherto refusing to follow our steps; and
write rather in your reply what influences you to shun the way which we
follow, and in which we beseech you to go along with us towards that
fatherland above, in which we rejoice to know that you take great delight.

   17. As to those who are by birth your fellow-citizens, you have said
indeed that some of them, though not all, were innocent; but, as you must
see if you read over again my other letter, you have not made out a defence
for them. When, in answer to your remark that you wished to leave your
country flourishing, I said that we had felt thorns rather than found
flowers in your countrymen, you thought that I wrote in jest. As if,
forsooth, in the midst of evils of such magnitude we were in a mood for
mirth. Certainly not. While the smoke was ascending from the ruins of our
church consumed by fire, were we likely to joke on the subject? Although,
indeed, none in your city appeared in my opinion innocent, but those who
were absent, or were sufferers, or were destitute both of strength and of
authority to prevent the tumult, I nevertheless distinguished in my reply
those whose guilt was greater from those who were less to blame, and stated
that there was a difference between the cases of those who were moved by
fear of offending powerful enemies of the Church. and of those who desired
these outrages to be committed; also between those who committed them and
those who instigated others to their commission; resolving, however, not to
institute inquiry in regard to the instigators, because these, perhaps,
could not be ascertained without recourse to the use of tortures, from
which we shrink with abhorrence, as utterly inconsistent with our aims.
Your friends the Stoics, who hold that all faults are alike, must, however,
if they were the judges, pronounce them all equally guilty; and if to this
opinion they join that inflexible sternness wherewith they disparage
clemency as a vice, their sentence would necessarily be, not that all
should be pardoned alike, but that all should be punished alike. Dismiss,
therefore, these philosophers altogether from the position of advocates in
this case, and rather desire that we may act as Christians, so that, as we
desire, we may gain in Christ those whom we forgive, and may not spare them
by such indulgence as would be ruinous to themselves. May God, whose ways
are mercy and truth, be pleased to enrich you with true felicity !

LETTER CXI (NOVEMBER, A.D. 409.)

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

   1. My heart has been filled with great sorrow by your letter. You asked
me to discuss certain things at great length in my reply; but such
calamities as you narrate claim rather many groans and tears than prolix
treatises. The whole world, indeed, is afflicted with such portentous
misfortunes, that there is scarcely any place where such things as you
describe are not being committed and complained of. A short time ago some
brethren were massacred by the barbarians even in those deserts of Egypt in
which, in order to perfect security, they had chosen places remote from all
disturbance as the sites of their monasteries. I suppose, moreover, that
the outrages which they have perpetrated in the regions of Italy and Gaul
are known to you also; and now similar events begin to be announced to us
from many provinces of Spain, which for long seemed exempt from these
evils. But why go to a distance for examples? Behold! in our own county of
Hippo, which the barbarians have not yet touched, the ravages of the
Donatist clergy and Circumcelliones make such havoc in our churches, that
perhaps the cruelties of barbarians would be light in comparison. For what
barbarian could ever have devised what these have done, viz. casting lime
and vinegar into the eyes of our clergymen, besides atrociously beating and
wounding every part of their bodies? They also sometimes plunder and burn
houses, rob granaries, and pour out oil and wine; and by threatening to do
this to all others in the district, they compel many even to be re-
baptized. Only yesterday, tidings came to me of forty-eight souls in one
place having submitted, under fear of such things, to be rebaptized.

   2. These things should make us weep, but not wonder; and we ought to
cry unto God that not for our merit, but according to His mercy, He may
deliver us from so great evils. For what else was to be expected by the
human race, seeing that these things were so long ago foretold both by the
prophets and in the Gospels? We ought not, therefore, to be so inconsistent
as to believe these Scriptures when they are read by us, and to complain
when they are fulfilled; rather, surely, ought even those who had refused
to believe when they read or heard these things in Scripture to become
believers now when they behold the word fulfilled; so that under this;
great pressure, as it were, in the olive-press of the Lord our God,
although there be the dregs: of unbelieving murmurs and blasphemies, there
is also a steady out flowing of pure oil in the confessions and prayers of
believers. For unto those men who incessantly reproach the Christian faith,
impiously saying that the human race did not suffer such grievous
calamities before the Christian doctrine was promulgated throughout the
world, it is easy to find a reply in the Lord's own words in the gospel,
"That servant which knew not his lord's will, and did commit things worthy
of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes; but the servant which knew
his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his
will, shall be beaten with many stripes."(1) What is there to excite
surprise, if, in the Christian dispensation, the world, like that servant,
knowing the will of the Lord, and refusing to do it, is beaten with many
stripes? These men remark the rapidity with which the gospel is proclaimed:
they do not remark the perversity with which by many it is despised. But
the meek and pious servants of God, who l have to bear a double portion of
temporal calamities, since they suffer both at the hands of wicked men and
along with them, have also consolations peculiarly their own, and the hope
of the world to come; for which reason the apostle says, "The sufferings of
this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall
hereafter be revealed in us."(1)

   3. Wherefore, my beloved, even when you meet those whose words you say
you cannot bear, because they say, "If we have deserved these things for
our sins, how comes it that the servants of God are cut off not less than
ourselves by the sword of the barbarians, and the handmaids of God are led
away into captivity ?" -- answer them humbly, truly, and piously in such
words as these: However carefully we keep the way of righteousness, and
yield obedience to our Lord, can we be better than those three men who were
cast into the fiery furnace for keeping the law of God? And yet, read what
Azarias, one of those three, said, opening his lips in the midst of the
fire: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord God of our fathers: Thy name is worthy to
be praised and glorified for evermore; for Thou art righteous in all the
things that Thou hast done to us; yea, true are all Thy works: Thy ways are
right, and all Thy judgments truth. In all the things which Thou hast
brought upon us, and upon the holy city of our fathers, even Jerusalem,
Thou hast executed true judgment; for according to truth and judgment didst
Thou bring all these things upon us because of our sins. For we have sinned
and committed iniquity, departing from Thee. In all things have we
trespassed, and not obeyed Thy commandments, nor kept them, neither done as
Thou hast commanded us, that it might go well with us. Wherefore all that
Thou hast brought upon us, and everything that Thou hast done to us, Thou
hast done in true judgment. And Thou didst deliver us into the hands of
lawless enemies, most hateful forsakers of God, and to an unjust king, and
the most wicked in all the world. And now we cannot open our mouths: we are
become a shame and reproach to Thy servants, and to them that worship Thee.
Yet deliver us not up wholly, for Thy name's sake, neither disannul Thou
Thy covenant; and cause not Thy mercy to depart from us, for Thy beloved
Abraham's sake, for Thy servant Isaac's sake, and for Thy holy Israel's
sake, to whom Thou hast spoken, and promised that Thou wouldst multiply
their seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that lieth upon the sea-
shore. For we, O Lord, are become less than any nation, and be kept under
this day in all the world because of our sins."(2) Here, my brother, thou
mayest surely see how men such as they, men of holiness, men of courage in
the midst of tribulation, -- from which, however, they were delivered, the
flame itself fearing to consume them,were not silent about their sins, but
confessed them, knowing that because of these sins they were deservedly and
justly brought low.

   4. Nay, can we be better men than Daniel himself, concerning whom God,
speaking to the prince of Tyre, says by the prophet Ezekiel, "Art thou
wiser than Daniel?"(3) who also is placed among the three righteous men to
whom alone God saith that He would grant deliverance, -- pointing,
doubtless, in them to three representative righteous men, -- declaring that
he would deliver only Noah, Daniel, and Job, and that they should save
along with themselves neither son nor daughter, but only their own souls?
(4) Nevertheless, read also the prayer of Daniel, and see how, when in
captivity, he confesses not only the sins of his people, but his own also,
and acknowledges that because of these the justice of God has visited them
with the punishment of captivity and with reproach. For it is thus written:
"And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications,
with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: and I prayed unto the Lord my God,
and made my confession, and said: O Lord, the great and dreadful God,
keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep
His commandments; we have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have
done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from Thy precepts and
from Thy judgments: neither have we hearkened unto Thy servants the
prophets, which spake in Thy name to our kings, our princes, and our
fathers, and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongeth
unto Thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of
Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are
near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither Thou hast
driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against
Thee. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our
princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee. To the
Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled
against Him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord, to walk in His
laws which He set before us by His servants the prophets. Yea, all Israel
have transgressed Thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey Thy
voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written
in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against
them. And He hath confirmed His words which He spake against us, and
against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil; for
under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem.
As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet
made we not our prayer before the Lord our God,' that we might turn from
our iniquities and understand Thy truth. Therefore hath the Lord watched
upon the evil, and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is righteous in
all His works which He doeth; for we obeyed not His voice. And now, O Lord
our God, that hast brought Thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a
mighty hand, and hast gotten Thee renown as at this day; we have sinned, we
have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech
Thee, let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away from Thy city Jerusalem,
Thy holy mountain, because, for our sins, and for the iniquities of our
fathers, Jerusalem and Thy people are become a reproach to all that are
about us. Now, therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of Thy servant, and
His supplications, and cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary which is
desolate, for the Lord's sake. O my God, incline Thine ear, and hear; open
Thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by Thy
name; for we do not present our supplications before Thee for our
righteousnesses, but for Thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive;
O Lord, hearken and do: defer not, for Thine own sake, O my God; for Thy
city and Thy people are called by Thy name. And while I was speaking, and
praying, and confessing my sin, and the sin of my people..."(1) Observe how
he spoke first of his own sins, and then of the sins of his people. And he
extols the righteousness of God, and gives praise to God for this, that He
visits even His saints with the rod, not unjustly, but because of their
sins. If, therefore, this be the language of men who by reason of their
eminent sanctity found even encompassing flames and lions harmless, what
language would befit men standing on a level so low as we occupy, seeing
that, whatever righteousness we may seem to practise, we are very far from
being worthy of comparison with them ?

   5. Lest, however, any one should think that those servants of God,
whose death at the hand of barbarians you relate, ought to have been
delivered from them in the same manner as the three young men were
delivered from the fire, and Daniel from the lions, let such an one know
that these miracles were performed in order that the kings by whom they
were delivered to these punishments might believe that they worshipped the
true God. For in His hidden counsel and mercy God was in this manner making
provision for the salvation of these kings. It pleased Him, however, to
make no such provision in the case of Antiochus the king, who cruelly put
the Maccabees to death; but He punished the heart of the obdurate king with
sharper severity through their most glorious sufferings. Yet read what was
said by even one of them -- the sixth who suffered: "After him they brought
also the sixth, who, being ready to die, said, ' Be not deceived without
cause; for we suffer these things for ourselves, having sinned against God:
therefore marvellous things are done unto us; but think not thou that
takest in hand to strive against God and His law that thou shalt escape
unpunished.'"(2) You see how these also are wise in the exercise of
humility and sincerity, confessing that they are chastened because of their
sins by the Lord, of whom it is written: "Whom the Lord loveth He
correcteth," (3) and "He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth;"(4)
wherefore the Apostle says also, "If we would judge ourselves, we should
not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that
we should not be condemned with the world."(5)

   6. These things read faithfully, and proclaim faithfully; and to the
utmost of your power beware, and teach others that they must beware, of
murmuring against God in these trials and tribulations. You tell me that
good, faithful, and holy servants of God have been cut off by the sword of
the barbarians. But what matters it whether it is by sickness or by sword
that they have been set free from the body? The Lord is careful as to the
character with which His servants go from this world -- not as to the mere
circumstances of their departure, excepting this, that lingering weakness
involves more suffering than a sudden death; and yet we read of this same
protracted and dreadful weakness as the lot of that Job to whose
righteousness God Himself, who cannot be deceived, bears such testimony.

   7. Most calamitous, and much to be bewailed, is the captivity of chaste
and holy women; but their God is not in the power of their captors, nor
does He forsake those captives whom He knows indeed to be His own. For
those holy men, the record of whose sufferings and confessions I have
quoted from the Holy Scriptures, being held in captivity by enemies who had
carried them away, uttered those words, which, preserved in writing, we can
read for ourselves, in order to make us understand that servants of God,
even when they are in captivity, are not forsaken by their Lord. Nay, more,
do we know what wonders of power and grace the almighty and merciful God
may please to accomplish by means of these captive women even in the land
of the barbarians? Be that as it may, cease not to intercede with groanings
on their behalf before God, and to seek, so far as your power and His
providence permits you, to do for them whetever can be done, and to give
them whatever consolation can be given, as time and opportunity may be
granted. A few years ago, a nun, a grand-daughter of Bishop Severus, was
carried off by barbarians from the neighbourhood of Sitifa, and was by the
marvellous mercy of God restored with great honour to her parents. For at
the very time when the maiden entered the house of her barbarian captors,
it became the scene of much distress through the sudden illness of its
owners, all the barbarians -three brothers, if I mistake not, or more --
being attacked with most dangerous disease. Their mother observed that the
maiden was dedicated to God, and believed that by her prayers her sons
might be delivered from the danger of death, which was imminent. She begged
her to intercede for them, promising that if they were healed she should be
restored to her parents. She fasted and prayed, and straightway was heard;
for, as the result showed, the event had been appointed that this might
take place. They therefore, having recovered health by this unexpected
favour from God, regarded her with admiration and respect, and fulfilled
the promise which their mother had made.

   8. Pray, therefore, to God for them, and beseech Him to enable them to
say such things as the holy Azariah, whom we have mentioned, poured forth
along with other expressions in his prayer and confession before God. For
in the land of their captivity these women are in circumstances similar to
those of the three Hebrew youths in that land in which they could not
sacrifice to the Lord their God in the manner prescribed: they cannot
either bring an oblation to the altar of God, or find a priest by whom
their oblation may be presented to God. May God therefore grant them grace
to say to Him what Azariah said in the following sentences of his prayer:
"Neither is there at this time prince, or prophet, or leader, or burnt-
offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, or place to sacrifice
before Thee, and to find mercy: nevertheless, in a contrite heart and
humble spirit let us be accepted. Like as in the burnt-offerings of rams
and bullocks, and like as in ten thousands of fat lambs, so let our
sacrifice be in Thy sight this day. And grant that we may wholly go after
Thee; for they shall not be confounded that put their trust in Thee. And
now we follow Thee with all our heart: we fear Thee and seek Thy face. Put
us not to shame, but deal with us after Thy loving-kindness, and according
to the multitude of Thy mercies. Deliver us also according to Thy
marvellous works, and give glory to Thy name, O Lord; and let all them that
do Thy servants hurt be ashamed: and let them be confounded in all their
power and might, and let their strength be broken: and let them know that
Thou art Lord, the only God, and glorious over the whole world."(1)

   9. When His servants use these words, and pray fervently to God, He
will stand by them, as He has been wont ever to stand by His own, and will
either not permit their chaste bodies to suffer any wrong from the lust of
their enemies, or if He permit this, He will not lay sin to their charge in
the matter. For when the soul is not defiled by any impurity of consent to
such wrong, the body also is thereby protected from all participation in
the guilt; and in so far as nothing was committed or permitted by lust on
the part of her who suffers, the whole blame lies with him who did the
wrong, and all the violence done to the sufferer will be regarded not as
implying the baseness of wanton compliance, but as a wound blamelessly
endured. For such is the worth of unblemished purity in the soul, that
while it remains intact, the body also retains its purity unsullied, even
although by violence its members may be overpowered.

   I beg your Charity to be satisfied with this letter, which is very long
considering my other work (although too short to meet your wishes), and is
somewhat hurriedly written, because the bearer is in haste to be gone. The
Lord will furnish you with much more abundant consolation if you read
attentively His holy word.

LETTER CXV. (A.D. 410.)

TO FORTUNATUS, MY COLLEAGUE IN THE PRIESTHOOD, MY LORD MOST BLESSED, AND MY
BROTHER BELOVED WITH PROFOUND ESTEEM, AND TO THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH
THEE, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   Your Holiness is well acquainted with Faventius, a tenant on the estate
of the Paratian forest, He, apprehending some injury or other at the hands
of the owner of that estate, took refuge in the church at Hippo, and was
there, as fugitives are wont to do, waiting till he could get the matter
settled through my mediation. Becoming every day, as often happens, less
and less alarmed, and in fact completely off his guard, as if his adversary
had desisted from his, enmity, he was, when leaving the house of a friend
after supper, suddenly carried off by one Florentinus, an officer of the
Count, who used in this act of violence a band of armed men sufficient for
the purpose. When this was made known to me, and as yet it was unknown by
whose orders or by whose hands he had been carried off, though suspicion
naturally fell on the man from whose apprehended injury he had claimed the
protection of the Church, I at once communicated with the tribune who is in
command of the coast-guard. He sent out soldiers, but no one could be
found. But in the morning we learned in what house he had passed the night,
and also that he had left it after cock-crowing, with the man who had him
in custody. I sent also to the place to which it was reported that he had
been removed: there the officer above-named was found, but refused to allow
the presbyter whom I had sent to have even a sight of his prisoner. On the
following day I sent a letter requesting that he should be allowed the
privilege which the Emperor appointed in cases such as his, namely, that
persons summoned to appear to be tried should in the municipal court be
interrogated whether they desired to spend thirty days under adequate
surveillance in the town, in order to arrange their affairs, or find funds
for the expense of their trial,. my expectation being that within that
period of time we might perhaps bring his matters to some amicable
settlement. Already, however, he had gone farther under charge of the
officer Florentinus; but my fear is, lest perchance, if he be brought
before the tribunal of the magistrate,(1) he suffer some injustice. For
although the integrity of that judge is widely famed as incorruptible,
Faventius has for his adversary a man of very great wealth. To secure that
money may not prevail in that court, I beg your Holiness, my beloved lord
and venerable brother, to have the kindness to give the accompanying letter
to the honourable magistrate, a man very much beloved by us, and to read
this letter also to him; for I have not thought it necessary to write twice
the same statement of the case. I trust that he will delay the hearing of
the case, because I do not know whether the man is innocent or guilty. I
trust also that he will not overlook the fact that the laws have been
violated in his having been suddenly carried off, without being brought, as
was enacted by the Emperor, before the municipal court, in order to his
being asked whether he wished to accept the benefit of the delay of thirty
days, so that in this way we may get the affair settled between him and his
adversary.

LETTER CXVI. (ENCLOSED IN THE FOREGOING LETTER.)

TO GENEROSUS, MY NOBLE AND JUSTLY DISTINGUISHED LORD, MY HONOURED AND MUCH-
LOVED SON, AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   Although the praises and favourable report of your administration and
your own illustrious good name always give me the greatest pleasure because
of the love which we feel due to your merit and to your benevolence, on no
occasion have I hitherto been burdensome to your Excellency as an
intercessor requesting any favour from you, my much-loved lord and justly-
honoured son. When, however, your Excellency has learned from the letters
which I have sent to my venerable brother and colleague, Fortunatus, what
has occurred in the town in which I serve the Church of God, your kind
heart will at once perceive the necessity under which I have been
constrained to trespass by this petition on your time, already fully
occupied. I am perfectly assured that, cherishing towards us the feeling
which, in the name of Christ, we are fully warranted to expect, you will
act in this matter as becomes not only an upright, but also a Christian
magistrate.

LETTER CXVII. (A.D. 410.)

FROM DIOSCORUS TO AUGUSTIN.

   To you, who esteem the substance, not the style of expression, as
important, any formal preamble to this letter would be not only
unnecessary, but irksome. Therefore, without further preface, I beg your
attention. The aged Alypius had often promised, in answer to my request,
that he would, with your help, furnish a reply to a very few brief
questions of mine in regard to the Dialogues of Cicero; and as he is said
to be at present in Mauritania, I ask and earnestly entreat you to
condescend to give, without his assistance, those answers which, even had
your brother been present, it would doubtless have fallen to you to
furnish. What I require is not money, it is not gold; though, if you
possessed these, you would, I am sure, be willing to give them to me for
any fit object. This request of mine you can grant without effort, by
merely speaking. I might importune you at a greater length, and through
many of your dear friends; but I know your disposition, that you do not
desire to be solicited, but show kindness readily to all, if only there be
nothing improper in the thing requested: and there is absolutely nothing
improper in what I ask. Be this, however, as it may, I beg you to do me
this kindness, for I am on the point of embarking on a voyage. You know how
very painful it is to me to be burdensome to any one, and much more to one
of your frank disposition; but God alone knows how irresistible is the
pressure of the necessity under which I have made this application. For,
taking leave of you, and committing myself to divine protection, I am about
to undertake a voyage; and you know the ways of men, how prone they are to
censure, and you see how any one will be regarded as illiterate and stupid
who, when questions are addressed to him, can return no answer. Therefore,
I implore you, answer all my queries without delay. Send me not away
downcast. I ask this that so I may see my parents; for on this one errand I
have sent Cerdo to you, and I now delay only till he return. My brother
Zenobius has been appointed imperial remembrancer,(1) and has sent me a
free pass for my journey, with provisions. If I am not worthy of your
reply, let at least the fear of my forfeiting these provisions by delay
move you to give answers to my little questions.(2)

   May the most high God spare you long to us in health! Papas salutes
your excellency most cordially.

LETTER CXVIII. (A.D. 410.)

AUGUSTIN TO DIOSCORUS.

   CHAP. I.--1. YOU have sent suddenly upon me a countless multitude of
questions, by which you must have purposed to blockade me on every side, or
rather bury me completely, even if you were under the impression that I was
otherwise unoccupied and at leisure; for how could I, even though wholly at
leisure, furnish the solution of so many questions to one in such haste as
you are, and, in fact, as you write, on the eve of a journey? I would,
indeed, be prevented by the mere number of the questions to be resolved,
even if their solution were easy. But they are so perplexingly intricate,
and so hard, that even if they were few in number, and engaging me when
otherwise wholly at leisure, they would, by the mere time required, exhaust
my powers of application, and wear out my strength. I would, however, fain
snatch you forcibly away from the midst of those inquiries in which you so
much delight, and fix you down among the cares which engage my attention,
in order that you may either learn not to be unprofitably curious, or
desist from presuming to impose the task of feeding and fostering your
curiosity upon men among whose cares one of the greatest is to repress and
curb those who are too inquisitive. For if time and pains are devoted to
writing anything to you, how much better and more profitably are these
employed in endeavours to cut off those vain and treacherous passions
(which are to be guarded against with a caution proportioned to the ease
with which they impose upon us, by their being disguised and cloaked under
the semblance of virtue and the name of liberal studies), rather than in
causing them to be, by our service, or rather obsequiousness, so to speak,
roused to a more vehement assertion of the despotism under which they so
oppress your excellent spirit.

   2. For tell me what good purpose is served by the many Dialogues which
you have read, if they have in no way helped you towards the discovery and
attainment of the end of all your actions? For by your letter you indicate
plainly enough what you have proposed to yourself as the end to be attained
by all this most ardent study of yours, which is at once useless to
yourself and troublesome to me. For when you were in your letter using
every means to persuade me to answer the questions which you sent, you
wrote these words: "I might importune you at greater length, and through
many of your dear friends; but I know your disposition, that you do not
desire to be solicited, but show kindness readily to all, if only there be
nothing improper in the thing requested: and there is absolutely nothing
improper in what I ask. Be this, however, as it may, I beg you to do me
this kindness, for I am on the point of embarking on a voyage." In these
words of your letter you are indeed right in your opinion as to myself,
that I am desirous .of showing kindness to all, if only there be nothing
improper in the request made; but it is not my opinion that there is
nothing improper in what you ask. For when I consider how a bishop is
distracted and overwrought by the cares of his office clamouring on every
side, it does not seem to me proper for him suddenly, as if deaf, to
withdraw himself from all these, and devote himself to the work of
expounding to a single student some unimportant questions in the Dialogues
of Cicero. The impropriety of this you yourself apprehend, although,
carried away with zeal in the pursuit of your studies, you will by no means
give heed to it. For what other construction can I put on the fact that,
after saying that in this matter there is absolutely !nothing improper, you
have immediately subjoined: "Be this, however, as it may, I beg you to do
me this kindness, for I am on the point of embarking on a voyage "? For
this intimates !that in your view, at least, there is no impropriety in
your request, but that whatever impropriety may be in it, you nevertheless
ask me to  do what you ask, because you are about to go on  a voyage. Now
what is the force of this supplementary plea--"I am on the point of
embarking on a voyage "? Do you mean that, unless you were in these
circumstances, I ought not to do you service in which anything improper may
be involved? You think, forsooth, that the impropriety can be washed away
by salt water. But even were it so, my share at least of the fault would
remain unexpiated, because I do not propose undertaking a voyage.'

   3. You write, further, that I know how very painful it is to you to be
burdensome to any one, and you solemnly protest that God alone knows how
irresistible is the necessity under which you make the application. When I
came to this statement in your letter, I turned my attention eagerly to
learn the nature of the necessity; and, behold, you bring it before me in
these words: "You know the ways of men, how prone they are to censure, and
how any one will be regarded as illiterate and stupid who, when questions
are addressed to him, can return no answer." On reading this sentence, I
felt a burning desire to reply to your letter; for, by the morbid weakness
of mind which this indicated, you pierced my inmost heart, and forced your
way into the midst of my cares, so that I could not refuse to minister to
your relief, so far as God might enable me--not by devising a solution of
your difficulties, but by breaking the connection between your happiness
and the wretched support on which it now insecurely hangs, viz. the
opinions of men, and fastening it to a hold which is firm and immovable. Do
you not, O Dioscorus, remember an ingenious line of your favourite Persius,
in which he not only rebukes your folly, but administers to your boyish
head, if you have only sense to feel it, a deserved correction, restraining
your vanity with the words, "To know is nothing in your eyes unless another
knows that you know"?(1) You have, as I said before, read so many
Dialogues, and devoted your attention to so many discussions of
philosophers--tell me which of them has placed the chief end of his actions
in the applause of the vulgar, or in the opinion even of good and wise men?
But you,--and what should make you the more ashamed, -- you, when on the
eve of sailing away from Africa, give evidence of your having made signal
progress, forsooth, in your studies here, when you affirm that the only
reason why you impose the task of expounding Cicero to you upon bishops,
who are already oppressed with work and engrossed with matters of a very
different nature, is, that you fear that if, whoa questioned by men prone
to censure, you cannot answer, you will be regarded by them as illiterate
and stupid. O cause well worthy to occupy the hours which bishops devote to
study while other men sleep !

   4. You seem to me to be prompted to mental effort night and day by no
other motive than ambition to be praised by men for your industry and
acquisitions in learning. Although I have ever regarded this as fraught
with danger to persons who are striving after the true and the right, I am
now, by your case, more convinced of the danger than before. For it is due
to no [other cause than this same pernicious habit that you have failed to
see by what motive we might be induced to grant to you what you asked; for
as by a perverted judgment you yourself are urged on to acquire a knowledge
of the things about which you put questions, from no other motive than that
you may receive praise or escape censure from men, you imagine that we, by
a like perversity of judgment, are to be influenced by the considerations
alleged in your request. Would that, when we declare to you that by your
writing such things concerning yourself we are moved, not to grant your
request, but to reprove and correct you, we might be able to effect for you
also complete emancipation from the influence of a boon so worthless and
deceitful as the applause of men! "It is the manner of men," you say, "to
be prone to censure." What then? "Any one who can make no reply when
questions are addressed to him," you say, "will be regarded as illiterate
and stupid." Behold, then, I ask you a question not concerning something in
the books of Cicero, whose meaning, perchance, his readers may not be able
to find, but concerning your own letter and the meaning of your own words.
My question is: Why did you not say, "Any one who can make no reply will be
proved to be illiterate and stupid," but prefer to say, "He will be
regarded as illiterate and stupid "? Why, if not for this reason, that you
yourself already understand well enough that the person who fails to answer
such questions is not in reality, but only in the opinion of some,
illiterate and stupid? But I warn you that he who fears to be subjected to
the edge of the pruning-hook by the tongues of such men is a sapless log,
and is therefore not only regarded as illiterate and stupid, but is
actually such, and proved to be so.

   5. Perhaps you will say, "But seeing that I am not stupid, and that I
am specially earnest in striving not to be stupid, I am reluctant even to
be regarded as stupid." And rightly so; but I ask, What is your motive in
this reluctance? For in stating why you did not hesitate to burden us with
those questions which you wish to have solved and explained, you said that
this was the reason, and that this was the end, and an end so necessary in
your estimation that you said it was of overwhelming urgency, -- lest,
forsooth, if you were posed with these questions and gave no answer, you
should be regarded as illiterate and stupid by men prone to censure. Now, I
ask, is this [jealousy as to your own reputation'] the whole reason why you
beg this from us, or is it because of some ulterior object that you are
unwilling to be thought illiterate and stupid? If this be the whole reason,
you see, as I think, that this one thing [the praise of mend is the end
pursued by that vehement zeal of yours, by which, as you admit, a burden is
imposed on us. But, from Dioscorus, what can be to us a burden, except that
burden which Dioscorus himself unconsciously bears, -- a burden which he
will begin to feel only when he attempts to rise, --a burden of which I
would fain believe that it is not so bound to him as to defy his efforts to
shake his shoulders free? And this I say not because these questions engage
your studies, but because they are studied by you for such an end. For
surely you by this time feel that this end is trivial, unsubstantial, and
light as air. It is also apt to produce in the soul what may be likened to
a dangerous swelling, beneath which lurk the germs of decay, and by it the
eye of the mind becomes suffused, so that it cannot discern the riches of
truth. Believe this, my Dioscorus, it is true: so shall I enjoy thee in
unfeigned longing for truth, and in that essential dignity of truth by the
shadow of which you are turned aside. If I have failed to convince you of
this by the method which I have now used, I know no other that I can use.
For you do not see it; nor can you possibly see it so long as you build
your joys on the crumbling foundation of human applause.

   6. If, however, this be not the end aimed at in these actions and by
this zeal of yours, but there is some other ulterior reason for your
unwillingness to be regarded as illiterate and stupid, I ask what that
reason is. If it be to remove impediments to the acquisition of temporal
riches, or the obtaining of a wife, or the grasping of honours, and other
things of that kind which are flowing past with a headlong current, and
dragging to the bottom those who fall into them, it is assuredly not our
duty to help you towards that end, nay, rather we ought to turn you away
from it. For we do not so forbid your fixing the aim of your studies in the
precarious possession of renown as to make you leave, as it were, the
waters of the Mincius and enter the Eridanus, into which, perchance, the
Mincius would carry you even without yourself making the change. For when
the vanity of human applause has failed to satisfy the soul, because it
furnishes for its nourishment nothing real and substantial, this same eager
desire compels the mind to go on to something else as more rich and
productive; and if, nevertheless, this also belong to the things which pass
away with time, it is as when one river leads us into another, so that
there can be no rest from our miseries so long as the end aimed at in our
discharge of duty is placed in that which is unstable. We desire,
therefore, that in some firm and immutable good you should fix the home of
your most stedfast efforts, and the perfectly secure resting-place of all
your good and honourable activity. Is it, perchance, your intention, if you
succeed by the breath of propitious fame, or even by spreading 'our sails
for its fitful gusts, in reaching that earthly happiness of which I have
spoken, to make it subservient to the acquisition of the other--the sure
and true and satisfying good? But to me it does not seem probable -- and
truth itself forbids the supposition -- that it should be reached either by
such a circuitous way when it is at hand, or at such cost when it is freely
given.

   7. Perhaps you think that we ought to turn the praise of men itself to
good account as an instrument for making others accessible to counsels
regarding that which is good and useful; and perhaps you are anxious lest,
if men regard you as illiterate and stupid, they think you unworthy to
receive their earnest or patient attention, if you were either exhorting
any one to do well, or reproving the malice and wickedness of an evil-doer.
If, in proposing these questions, you contemplated this righteous and
beneficent end, we have certainly been wronged by your not giving the
preference to this in your letter as the consideration by which we might be
moved either to grant willingly what you asked, or, if declining your
request, to do so on the ground of some other cause which might perchance
prevent us, but not on the ground of our being ashamed to accept the
position of serving or even not resisting the aspirations of your vanity.
For, I pray you, consider how much better and more profitable it is for you
to receive from us with far more certainty and with less loss of time those
principles of truth by which you can for yourself refute all that is false,
and by so doing be prevented from cherishing an opinion so false and
contemptible as this -- that you are learned and intelligent if you have
studied with a zeal in which there is more pride than prudence the worn-out
errors of many writers of a bygone age. But this opinion I do not suppose
you now to hold, for surely I have not in vain spoken so long to Dioscorus
things so manifestly true; and from this, as understood, I proceed with my
letter.

   Chap. II--8. Wherefore, seeing that you do not consider a man
illiterate and stupid merely on the ground of ignorance of these things,
but only if he be ignorant of the truth itself, and that, consequently, the
opinions of any one who has written or may have written on these subjects
are either true, and therefore are already held by you, or false, and
therefore you may be content not to know them, and need not be consumed
with vain solicitude about knowing the variety of the opinions of other men
under the fear of otherwise remaining illiterate and stupid, --seeing, I
say, that this is the case, let us now, if you please, consider whether, in
the event of other men, who are, as you say, prone to censure, finding you
ignorant of these things, and therefore regarding you, though falsely, as
an illiterate and stupid person, this mistake of theirs ought to have so
much weight with you as to make it not unseemly for you to apply to bishops
for instruction in these things. I propose this on the assumption that we
now believe you to be seeking this instruction in order that by it you may
be helped in recommending the truth to men, and in reclaiming men who, if
they supposed you to be illiterate and stupid in regard to those books of
Cicero, would regard you as a person from whom they considered it unworthy
of them to receive any useful or profitable instruction. Believe me, you
are under a mistake.

   9. For, in the first place, I do not at all see that, in the countries
in which you are so afraid of being esteemed deficient in education and
acuteness, there are any persons who will ask you a single question about
these matters. Both in this country, to which you came to learn these
things, and at Rome, you know by experience how little they are esteemed,
and that, in consequence, they are neither taught nor learned; and
throughout all Africa, so far are you from being troubled by any such
questioner, that you cannot find any one who will be troubled with your
questions, and are compelled by the dearth of such persons to send your
questions to bishops to be solved by them: as if, indeed, these bishops,
although in their youth, under the influence of the same ardour--let me
rather say error--which carries you away, they were at pains to learn these
things as matters of great moment, permitted them still to remain in memory
now that their heads are white with age and they are burdened with the
responsibilities of episcopal office; or as if, supposing them to desire to
retain these things in memory, greater and graver cares would not in spite
of their desire banish them from their hearts; or as if, in the event of
some of these things lingering in recollection by the force of long habit,
they would not wish rather to bury in utter oblivion what was] thus
remembered, than to answer senseless questions at a time when, even amidst
the comparative leisure enjoyed in the schools and in the lecture-rooms of
rhetoricians, they seem to have so lost both voice and vigour that, in
order to have instruction imparted concerning them, it is deemed necessary
to send from Carthage to Hippo,- a place in which all such things are so
unwonted and so wholly foreign, that if, in taking the trouble of writing
an answer to your question, I wished to look at any passage to discover the
order of thought in the context preceding or following the words requiring
exposition, I would be utterly unable to find a manuscript of the works of
Cicero. However, these teachers of rhetoric in Carthage who have failed to
satisfy you in this matter are not only not blamed, but, on the contrary,
commended by me, if, as I suppose, they have not forgotten that the scene
of these contests was wont to be, not the Roman forum, but the Greek
gymnasia. But when you have applied your mind to these gymnasia, and have
found even them to be in such things bare and cold, the church of the
Christians of Hippo occurred to you as a place where you might lay down
your cares, because the bishop now occupying that see at one time took fees
for instructing boys in these things. But, on the one hand, I do not wish
you to be still a boy, and, on the other hand, it is not becoming for me,
either for a fee or as a favour, to be dealing now in childish things.
This, therefore, being the case-seeing, that is to say, that these two
great cities, Rome and Carthage, the living centres of Latin literature,
neither try your patience by asking you such questions as you speak of, nor
care patiently to listen to you when you propound them, I am amazed in a
degree beyond all expression that a young man of your good sense should be
afraid lest you should be afflicted with any questioner on these subjects
in the cities of Greece and of the East. You are much more likely to hear
jackdaws(1) in Africa than this manner of conversation in those lands.

   10. Suppose, however, in the next place, that I am wrong, and that
perchance some one should arise putting questions like these,- a phenomenon
the more unwelcome because in those parts peculiarly absurd,- are you not
much more afraid lest far more readily men arise who, being Greeks, and
finding you settled in Greece, and acquainted with the Greek language as
your mother tongue, may ask you some things in the original works of their
philosophers which Cicero may not have put into his treatises? If this
happen, what reply will you make? Will you say that you preferred to learn
these things from the books of Latin rather than of Greek authors? By such
an answer you will, in the first place, put an affront upon Greece; and you
know how men of. that nation resent this. And in the next place, they being
now wounded and angry, how readily will you find what you are too anxious
to avoid, that they will count you on the one hand stupid, because you
preferred to learn the opinions of the Greek philosophers, or, more
properly speaking, some isolated and scattered tenets of their philosophy,
in Latin dialogues, rather than to study the complete and connected system
of their opinions in the Greek originals, and, on the other hand,
illiterate, because, although ignorant of so many things written in your
language, you have unsuccessfully laboured to gather some of them together
from writings in a foreign tongue. Or will you perhaps reply that you did
not despise the Greek writings on these subjects, but that you devoted your
attention first to the study of Latin works, and now, proficient in these,
are beginning to inquire after Greek learning? If this does not make you
blush, to confess that you, being a Greek, have in your boyhood learned
Latin, and are now, like a man of some foreign nation,(1) desirous of
studying Greek literature, surely you will not blush to own that in the
department of Latin literature you are ignorant of some things, of which
you may perceive how many versed in Latin learning are equally ignorant, if
you will only consider that, although living in the midst of so many
learned men in Carthage, you assure me that it is under the pressure of
necessity that you impose this burden on me.

   11. Finally, suppose that you, being asked all those questions which
you have submitted to me, have been able to answer them all. Behold! you
are now spoken of as most learned and most acute; behold! now this
insignificant breath of Greek laudation raises you to heaven. Be it yours
now to remember your responsibilities and the end for which you coveted
these praises, namely, that to men who have been easily won to admire you
by these trifles, and who are now hanging most affectionately and eagerly
on your lips, you may impart some truly important and wholesome
instruction; and I should like to know whether you possess, and can rightly
impart to others, that which is truly most important and wholesome. For it
is absurd if, after learning many unnecessary things with a view to
preparing the ears of men to receive what is necessary, you be found not to
possess those necessary things for the reception of which you have by these
unnecessary things prepared the way; it is absurd if, while busying
yourself with learning things by which you may win men's attention, you
refuse to learn that which may be poured into their minds when their
attention is secured. But if you reply that you have already learned this,
and say that the truth supremely necessary is Christian doctrine, which I
know that you esteem above all other things, placing in it alone your hope
of everlasting salvation, then surely this does not demand a knowledge of
the Dialogues of Cicero, and a collection of the beggarly and divided
opinions of other men, in order to your persuading men to give it a
hearing. Let your character and manner of life command the attention of
those who are to receive any such teaching from you. I would not have you
open the way for teaching truth by first teaching what must be afterwards
unlearned.

   12. For if the knowledge of the discordant and mutually contradictory
opinions of others is of any service to him who would obtain an entrance
for Christian truth in overthrowing the opposition of error, it is useful
only in the way of preventing the assailant of the truth from i being at
liberty to fix his eye solely on the work of controverting your tenets,
while carefully hiding his own from view. For the knowledge of the truth is
of itself sufficient both to detect and 'to subvert all errors, even those
which may not have been heard before, if only they are brought ' forward.
If, however, in order to secure not only the demolition of open errors, but
also the rooting out of those which lurk in darkness, it is necessary for
you to be acquainted with the erroneous opinions which others have
advanced, let both eye and ear be wakeful, I beseech you, --look well and
listen well whether any of our assailants bring forward a single argument
from Anaximenes and from Anaxagoras, when, though the Stoic and Epicurean
philosophies were more recent and taught largely, even their ashes are not
so warm as that a single spark can be struck out from them against the
Christian faith. The i din which resounds in the battle-field of
controversy now comes from innumerable small companies and cliques of
sectaries, some of them easily discomfited, others presuming to make bold
resistance,- such as the partisans of Donatus, Maximian, and Manichaeus
here, or the unruly herds of Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and
Cataphrygians and other pests which abound in the countries to which you
are on your way. If you shrink from the task of acquainting yourself with
the errors of all these sects, what occasion have we in defending the
Christian religion to inquire after the tenets of Anaximenes, and with idle
curiosity to awaken anew controversies which have slept for ages, when
already the cavillings and arguments even of some of the heretics who
claimed the glory of the Christian name, such as the Marcionites and the
Sabellians, and man), more, have been put to silence? Nevertheless, if it
be necessary, as I have said, to know beforehand some of the opinions which
war against the truth, and become thoroughly conversant with these, it is
our i duty to give a place in such study to the heretics who call
themselves Christians, much rather than to Anaxagoras and Democritus.

   CHAP. III.--13. Again, whoever may put to you the questions which you
have propounded to us, let him understand that, under the guidance of
deeper erudition and greater wisdom, you are ignorant of things like these.
For if Themistocles regarded it as a small matter that he was looked upon
as imperfectly educated when he had declined to play on the lyre at a
banquet, and at the same time, when, after he had confessed ignorance of
this accomplishment, one said, "What, then, do you know?" gave as his
reply, "The art of making a small republic great "--are you to hesitate
about admitting ignorance in trifles like these, when it is in your power
to answer any one who may ask, "What, then, do you know?"--"The secret by
which without such knowledge a man may be blessed"? And if you do not yet
possess this secret, you act in searching into those other matters with as
blind perversity as if, when labouring under some dangerous disease of the
body, you eagerly sought after dainties in food and finery in dress,
instead of physic and physicians. For this attainment ought not to be put
off upon any pretext whatever, and no other knowledge ought, especially in
our age, to receive a prior place in your studies. And now see how easily
you may have this knowledge if you desire it. He who inquires how he may
attain a blessed life is assuredly inquiring after nothing else than this:
where is the highest good? in other words, wherein resides man's supreme
good, not according to the perverted and hasty opinions of men, but
according to the sure and immovable truth? Now its residence is not found
by any one except in the body, or in the mind, or on God, or in two of
these, or in the three combined. If, then, you have learned that neither
the supreme good nor any part whatever of the Supreme good is in the body,
the remaining alternatives are, that it is in the mind, or in God, or in
both combined. And if now you have also learned that what is true of the
body in this respect is equally true of the mind, what now remains but God
Himself as the One in whom resides man's supreme good?--not that there are
no other goods, but that good is called the supreme good to which all
others are related. For every one is blessed when he enjoys that for the
sake of which he desires to have all other things, seeing that it is loved
for its own sake, and not on account of something else. And the supreme
good is said to be there because at this point nothing is found towards l
which the supreme good can go forth, or to which it is related. In it is
the resting-place of desire; in it is assured fruition; in it the most
tranquil satisfaction of a will morally perfect.

   14. Give me a man who sees at once that the body is not the good of the
mind, but that the mind is rather the good of the body: with such a man we
would, of course, forbear from inquiring whether the highest good of which
we speak, or any part of it, is in the body. For that the mind is better
than the body is a truth which it would be utter folly to deny. Equally
absurd would it be to deny that that which gives a happy life, or any part
of a happy life, is better than that which receives the boon. The mind,
therefore, does not receive from the body either the supreme good or any
part of the supreme good. Men who do not see this have been blinded by that
sweetness of carnal pleasures which they do not discern to be a consequence
of imperfect health Now, perfect health of body shall be the consummation
of the immortality of the whole man. For God has endowed the soul with a
nature so powerful, that from that consummate fulness of joy which is
promised to the saints in the end of time, some portion overflows also upon
the lower part of our nature, the body,- not the blessedness which is
proper to the part which enjoys and understands, but the plenitude of
health, that is, the vigour of incorruption. Men who, as I have said, do
not see this war with each other in unsatisfactory debates, each
maintaining the view which may please his own fancy, but all placing the
supreme good of man in the body, and so stir up crowds of disorderly carnal
minds, of whom the Epicureans have flourished in pre-eminent estimation
with the unlearned multitude.

   15. Give me a man who sees at once, moreover, that when the mind is
happy, it is happy not by good which belongs to itself, else it would never
be unhappy: and with such a man we would, of course, forbear from inquiring
whether that highest and, so to speak, bliss-bestowing good, or any part of
it, is in the mind. For when the mind is elated with joy in itself, as if
in good which belongs to itself, it is proud. But when the mind perceives
itself to be mutable, a fact which may be learned from this, even though
nothing else proved it, that the mind from being foolish may be made wise,-
and apprehends that wisdom is unchangeable, it must at the same time
apprehend that wisdom is superior to its own nature, and that it finds more
abundant and abiding joy in the communications and light of wisdom than in
itself. Thus desisting and subsiding from boasting and self-conceit, it
strives to cling to God, and to be recruited and reformed by Him who is
unchangeable; whom it now understands to be the Author not only of every
species of all things with which it comes in contact, either by the bodily
senses or by intellectual faculties, but also of even the very capacity of
taking form before any form has been taken, since the formless is defined
to be that which can receive a form. Therefore it feels its own instability
more, just in proportion as it clings less to God, whose being is perfect:
it discerns also that the perfection of His being is consummate because He
is immutable, and therefore neither gains nor loses, but that in itself
every change by which it gains capacity for perfect clinging to God is
advantageous, but every change by which it loses is pernicious, and
further, that all loss tends towards destruction; and although it is not
manifest whether any thing is ultimately destroyed, it is manifest to every
one that the loss brings destruction so far that the object no longer is
what it was. Whence the mind infers that the one reason why things suffer
loss, or are liable to suffer loss, is, that they were made out of nothing;
so that their property of being, and of permanence, and the arrangement
whereby each finds even according to its imperfections its own place in the
complex whole, all depend on the goodness and omnipotence of Him whose
being is perfect,(1) and who is the Creator able to make out of nothing not
only something, but something great; and that the first sin, i.e. the first
voluntary loss, is rejoicing in its own power: for it rejoices in something
less than would be the source of its joy if it rejoiced in the power of
God, which is unquestionably greater. Not perceiving this, and looking only
to the capacities of the human mind, and the great beauty of its
achievements in word and deed, some, who would have been ashamed to place
man's supreme good in the body, have, by placing it in the mind, assigned
to it unquestionably a lower sphere than that assigned to it by
unsophisticated reason. Among Greek philosophers who hold these views, the
chief place both in number of adherents and in subtlety of disputation has
been held by the Stoics, who have, however, in consequence of their opinion
that in nature everything is material, succeeded in turning the mind rather
from carnal than material objects.

   16. Among those, again, who say that our supreme and only good is to
enjoy God, by whom both we ourselves and all things were made, the most
eminent have been the Platonists, who not unreasonably judged it to belong
to their duty to confute the Stoics and Epicureans--the latter especially,
and almost exclusively. The Academic School is identical with the
Platonists, as is shown plainly enough by the links of unbroken succession
connecting the schools. For if you ask who was the predecessor of
Arcesilas, the first who, announcing no doctrine of his own, set himself to
the one work of refuting the Stoics and Epicureans, you will find that it
was Polemo; ask who preceded Polemo, it was Xenocrates; but Xenocrates was
Plato's disciple, and by him appointed his successor in the academy.
Wherefore, as to this question concerning the supreme good, if we set aside
the representatives of conflicting views, and consider the abstract
question, you find at once that two errors confront each other as
diametrically opposed --the one declaring the body, and the other declaring
the mind to be the seat of the supreme good of men. You find also that
truly enlightened reason, by which God is perceived to be our supreme good,
is opposed to both of these errors, but does not impart the knowledge of
what is true until it has first made men unlearn what is false. If now you
consider the question in connection with the advocates of different views,
you will find the Epicureans and Stoics most keenly contending with each
other, and the Platonists, on the other hand, endeavouring to decide the
controversy between them, concealing the truth which they held, and
devoting themselves only to prove and overthrow the vain confidence with
which the others adhered to error.

   17. It was not in the power of the Platonists, however, to be so
efficient in supporting the side of reason enlightened by truth, as the
others were in supporting their own errors. For from them all there was
then withheld that example of divine humility, which, in the fullness of
time,(2) was furnished by our Lord Jesus Christ,- that one example before
which, even in the mind of the most headstrong and arrogant, all pride
bends, breaks, and dies. And therefore the Platonists, not being able by
their authority to lead the mass of mankind, blinded by love of earthly
things, into faith in things invisible, --although they saw them moved,
especially by the arguments of the Epicureans, not only to drink freely the
cup of the pleasures of the body to which they were naturally inclined, but
even to plead for these, affirming that they constitute man's highest good;
although, moreover, they saw that those who were moved to abstinence from
these pleasures by the praise of virtue found it easier to regard pleasure
as having its true seat in the soul, whence the good actions, concerning
which they were able, in some measure, to form an opinion, proceeded,- at
the same time, saw that if they attempted to introduce into the minds of
men the notion of something divine and supremely immutable, which cannot be
reached by any one of the bodily senses, but is apprehensible only by
reason, which, nevertheless, surpasses in its nature the mind itself, and
were to teach that this is God, set before the human soul to be enjoyed by
it when purged from all stains of human desires, [in whom alone every
longing after happiness finds rest, and in whom alone we ought to find the
consummation of all good,--men would not understand them, and would much
more readily award the palm to their antagonists, whether Epicureans or
Stoics; the result of which would be a thing most disastrous to the human
race, namely, that the doctrine, which is true and profitable, would become
sullied by the contempt of the uneducated masses. So much in regard to
Ethical questions.

   18. As to Physics, if the Platonists taught that the originating cause
of all natures is immaterial wisdom, and if, on the other hand, the rival
sects of philosophers never got above material things, while the beginning
of all things was attributed by some to atoms, by others to the four
elements, in which fire was of special power in the construction of all
things, --who could fail to see to which opinion a favourable verdict would
be given, when the great mass of unthinking men are enthralled by material
things, and can in no wise comprehend that an immaterial power could form
the universe ?

   19. The department of dialectic questions remains to be discussed; for,
as you are aware, all questions in the pursuit of wisdom are classified
under three heads, --Ethics, Physics, and Dialectics. When, therefore, the
Epicureans said that the senses are never deceived, and, though the Stoics
admitted that they sometimes are mistaken, both placed in the senses the
standard by which truth is to be comprehended, who would listen to the
Platonists when both of these sects opposed them? Who would look upon them
as entitled to be esteemed men at all, and much less wise men, if, without
hesitation or qualification, they affirmed not only that there is something
which cannot be discerned by touch, or smell, or taste, or hearing, or
sight, and which cannot be conceived of by any image borrowed from the
things with which the senses acquaint us, but that this alone truly exists,
and is alone capable of being perceived, because it is alone unchangeable
and eternal, but is perceived only[ by reason, the faculty whereby alone
truth, in so: far as it can be discovered by us, is found ?

   20. Seeing, therefore, that the Platonists held opinions which they
could not impart to men: enthralled by the flesh; seeing also that they
were not of such authority among the common people as to persuade them to
accept what they ought to believe until the mind should be trained to that
condition in which these things can be understood,- they chose to hide
their own opinions, and to content themselves with arguing against those
who, although they affirmed that the discovery of truth is made through the
senses of the body, boasted that they had found the truth. And truly, what
occasion have we to inquire as to the nature of' their teaching? We know
that it was not divine, nor invested with any divine authority. But this
one fact merits our attention, that whereas Plato is in many ways most
clearly proved by Cicero to have placed both the supreme good and the
causes of things, and the certainty of the processes of reason, in Wisdom,
not human, but divine, whence in some way the light of human wisdom is
derived -- in Wisdom which is wholly immutable, and in Truth always
consistent with itself; and whereas we also learn from Cicero that the
followers of Plato laboured to overthrow the philosophers known as
Epicureans and Stoics, who placed the supreme good, the causes of things,
and the certainty of the processes of reason, in the nature either of body
or of mind, -- the controversy had continued rolling on with successive
centuries, so that even at the commencement of the Christian era, when the
faith of things invisible and eternal was with saving power preached by
means of visible miracles to men, who could neither see nor imagine
anything beyond things material, these same Epicureans and Stoics are found
in the Acts of the Apostles to have opposed themselves to the blessed
Apostle Paul, who was beginning to scatter the seeds of that faith among
the Gentiles.

   21. By which thing it seems to me to be sufficiently proved that the
errors of the Gentiles in ethics, physics, and the mode of seeking truth,
errors many and manifold, but conspicuously represented in these two
schools of philosophy, continued even down to the Christian era,
notwithstanding the fact that the learned assailed them most vehemently,
and employed both remarkable skill and abundant labour in subverting them.
Yet these errors we see in our time to have been already so completely
silenced, that now in our schools of rhetoric the question what their
opinions were is scarcely ever mentioned; and these controversies have been
now so completely eradicated or suppressed in even the Greek gymnasia,
notably fond of discussion, that whenever now any school of error lifts up
its head against the truth, i.e. against the Church of Christ, it does not
venture to leap into the arena except under the shield of the Christian
name. Whence it is obvious that the Platonist school of philosophers felt
it necessary, having changed those few things in their opinions which
Christian teaching condemned, to submit with pious homage to Christ, the
only King who is invincible, and to apprehend the Incarnate Word of God, at
whose command the truth which they had even feared to publish was
immediately believed.

   22. To Him, my Dioscorus, I desire you to submit yourself with
unreserved piety, and I wish you to prepare for yourself no other way of
seizing and holding the truth than that which has been prepared by Him who,
as God, saw the weakness of our goings. In that way the first part is
humility; the second, humility; the third, humility: and this I would
continue to repeat as often as you might ask direction, not that there are
no other instructions which may be given, but because, unless humility
precede, accompany, and follow every good action which we perform, being at
once the object which we keep before our eyes, the support to which we
cling, and the monitor by which we are restrained, pride wrests wholly from
our hand any good work on which we are congratulating ourselves.(1) All
other vices are to be apprehended when we are doing wrong; but pride is to
be feared even when we do right actions, test those things which are done
in a praiseworthy manner be spoiled by the desire for praise itself.
Wherefore, as that most illustrious orator, on being asked what seemed to
him the first thing to be observed in the art of eloquence, is said to have
replied, Delivery; and when he was asked what was the second thing, replied
again, Delivery; and when asked what was the third thing, still gave no
other reply than this, Delivery; so if you were to ask me, however often
you might repeat the question, what are the instructions of the Christian
religion, I would be disposed to answer always and only, "Humility,"
although, perchance, necessity might constrain me to speak also of other
things.

   CHAP. IV. -- 23. To this most wholesome humility, in which our Lord
Jesus Christ is our teacher --having submitted to humiliation that He might
instruct us in this- to this humility, I say, the most formidable adversary
is a certain kind of most unenlightened knowledge, if I may so call it, in
which we congratulate ourselves on knowing what may have been the views of
Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Democritus, and others of the same
kind, imagining that by this we become learned men and scholars, although
such attainments are far removed from true learning and erudition. For the
man who has learned that God is not extended or diffused through space,
either finite or infinite, so as to be greater in one part and less in
another, but that He is wholly present everywhere, as the Truth is, of
which no one in his senses will affirm that it is partly in one place,
partly in another --and the Truth is God Himself--such a man will not be
moved by the opinions of any philosopher soever who believes [like
Anaximenes] that the infinite air around us is the true God. What matters
it to such a man though he be ignorant what bodily form they speak of,
since they speak of a form which is bounded on all sides? What matters it
to him whether it was only as an Academician, and merely for the purpose of
confuting Anaximenes, who had said that God is a material existence, -- for
air is material, -- that Cicero objected that God must have form and
beauty?(2) or himself perceived that truth has immaterial form and beauty,
by which the mind itself is moulded, and by which we judge all the deeds of
the wise man to be beautiful, and therefore affirmed that God must be of
the most perfect beauty, not merely for the purpose of confuting an
antagonist, but with profound [insight into the fact that nothing is more
beautiful than truth itself, which is cognisable by the understanding
alone, and is immutable? Moreover, as to the opinion of Anaximenes, who
held that the air is generated, and at the same time believed it to be God,
it does not in the least move the man who understands that, since the air
is certainly not God, there is no likeness between the manner in which the
air is generated, that is to say, produced by some cause, and the manner,
understood by none except through divine inspiration, in which He was
begotten who is the Word of God, God with God. Moreover, who does not see
that even in regard to material things he speaks most foolishly in
affirming that air is generated, and is at the same time God, while he
refuses to give the name of God to that by which the air has been
generated, -- for it is impossible that it could be generated by no power?
Yet once more, his saying that the air is always in motion will have no
disturbing influence as proof that the air is God upon the man who knows
that all movements of body are of a lower order than movements of the soul,
but that even the movements of the soul are infinitely slow compared with
His who is supreme and immutable Wisdom.

   24. In like manner, if Anaxagoras or any other affirm that the mind is
essential truth and wisdom,(3) what call have I to debate with a man about
a word? For it is manifest that mind gives being to the order and mode of
all things, and that it may be suitably called infinite with respect not to
its extension in space, but to its power, the range of which transcends all
human thought. Nor [shall I dispute his assertion] that this essential
wisdom is formless; for this is a property of material things, that
whatever bodies are infinite are also formless. Cicero, however, from his
desire to confute such opinions, as I suppose, in contending with
adversaries who believed in nothing immaterial, denies that anything can be
annexed to that which is infinite, because in things material there must be
a boundary at the part to which anything is annexed. Therefore he says that
Anaxagoras "did not see that motion joined to sensation and to it" (i.e.
linked to it in unbroken connection) "is impossible in the infinite "(that
is, a substance which is infinite), as if treating of material substances,
to which nothing can be joined except at their boundaries. Moreover, in the
succeeding words--"and that sensation of which the whole system of nature
is not sensible when struck is an impossibility"(1)--Cicero speaks as if
Anaxagoras had said that mind-to which he ascribed the power of ordering
and fashioning all things -- had sensation such as the soul has by means of
the body. For it is manifest that the whole soul has sensation when it
feels anything by means of the body; for whatever is perceived by sensation
is not concealed from the whole soul. Now, Cicero's design in saying that
the whole system of nature must be conscious of every sensation was, that
he might, as it were, take from the philosopher that mind which he affirms
to be infinite. For how does: the whole of nature experience sensation if
it be infinite? Bodily sensation begins at some point, and does not pervade
the whole of any substance unless it be one in which it can reach an end;
but this, of course, cannot be said of that which is infinite. Anaxagoras,
however had not said anything about bodily sensation. The word "whole,"
moreover, is used differently when we speak of that which is immaterial,
because it is understood to be without boundaries in space, so that it may
be spoken of as a whole and at the same time as infinite --the former
because of its completeness, the latter because of its not being limited by
boundaries in space.

   25. "Furthermore," says Cicero, "if he will affirm that the mind itself
is, so to speak, some kind of animal, there must be some principle from
within from which it receives the name' animal,' "-- so that mind,
according to Anaxagoras, is a kind of body, and has within it an animating,
principle, because of which it is called "animal." Observe how he speaks in
language which we are accustomed to apply to things corporeal,animals being
in the ordinary sense of the word visible substances,- adapting himself, as
I suppose, to the blunted perceptions of those against whom he argues; and
yet he has uttered a thing which, if they could awake to perceive it, might
suffice to teach them that everything which presents itself to our minds as
a living body must be thought of not as itself a soul, but as an animal
having a soul. For having said, "There must be something within from which
it receives the name animal," he adds, "But what is deeper within than mind
?" The mind, therefore, cannot have any inner soul, by possessing which it
is an animal; for it is itself that which is inner! most. If, then, it is
an animal, let it have some i external body in relation to which it may be
within; for this is what he means by saying, "It is therefore girt round by
an exterior body," as if Anaxagoras had said that mind cannot be otherwise
than as belonging to some animal. And yet Anaxagoras held the opinion that
essential supreme Wisdom is mind, although it is not the peculiar property
of any living being, so to speak, since Truth is near to all souls alike
that are able to enjoy it. Observe, therefore, how wittily he concludes the
argument: "Since this is not the opinion of Anaxagoras" (i.e. seeing that
he does not hold that that mind which he calls God is girt about with an
external body, through its relation to which it could be an animal), "we
must say that mind pure and simple, without the addition of anything" (i.e.
of any body) "through which it may exercise sensation, seems to be beyond
the range and conceptions of our intelligence."(2)

   26. Nothing is more certain than that this lies beyond the range and
conception of the intelligence of Stoics and Epicureans, who cannot think
of and, thing which is not material. But by the word "our" intelligence he
means "human" intelligence; and he very properly does not say, "it lies
beyond our intelligence," but "it seems to lie beyond." For their opinion
is, that this lies beyond the understanding of all men, and therefore they
think that nothing of the kind can be. But there are some whose
intelligence apprehends, in so far as this is given to man, the fact that
there is pure and simple Wisdom and Truth, which is the peculiar property
of no living being, but which imparts wisdom and truth to all souls alike
which are susceptible of its influence. If Anaxagoras perceived the
existence of this supreme Wisdom, and apprehended it to be God, and called
it Mind, it is not by the mere name of this philosopher-with whom, on
account of his place in the remote antiquity of erudition, all raw recruits
in literature(3) (to adopt a military phrase) delight to boast an
acquaintance- that we are made learned and wise; nor is it even by our
having the knowledge through which he knew this truth. For truth ought to
be dear to me not merely because it was not unknown to Anaxagoras, but
because, even though none of these philosophers had known it, it is the
truth.

   27. If, therefore, it is unbecoming for us to be elated either by the
knowledge of the man who peradventure apprehended the truth, by which
knowledge we obtain, as it were, the appearance of learning, or even by the
solid possession of the truth itself, whereby we obtain real acquisitions
in learning, how much less can the names and tenets of those men who were
in error assist us in Christian learning and in making known things
obscure? For if we be men, it would be more fitting that we should grieve
on account of the errors into which so many famous men fell, if we happen
to hear of them, than that we should studiously investigate them, in order
that, among men who are ignorant of them, we may enjoy the gratification of
a most contemptible conceit of knowledge. For how much better would it be
that I should never have heard the name of Democritus, than that I should
now with sorrow ponder the fact that a man was highly esteemed in his own
age who thought that the gods were images which emanated from solid bodies,
but were not solid themselves; and that these, circling this way and that
way by their independent motion, and gliding into the minds of men, make
the divine power enter into the region of their thoughts, although,
certainly, that body from which the image emanated may be rightly judged to
surpass the image in excellence and proportion, as it surpasses it in
solidity. Hence his opinion wavered, as they say, and oscillated, so that
sometimes he said that the deity was some kind of nature from which images
emanate, and which nevertheless can be thought of only by means of those
images which he pours forth and sends out, that is, which from that nature
(which he considered to be something material and eternal, and on this very
account divine) were borne as by a kind of evaporation or continuous
emanation, and came and entered into our   minds, so that we could form the
thought of a god or gods. For these philosophers conceive of no cause of
thought in our minds, except when images from those bodies which are the
object of our thoughts come and enter into our! minds; as if, forsooth,
there were not many things, yea, more than we can number, which, without
any material form, and yet intelligible, are apprehended by those who know
how to apprehend such things. Take as an example essential Wisdom and
Truth, of which if they can frame no idea, I wonder why they dispute
concerning it at all; if, however, they do frame some idea of it in
thought, I wish they would tell me either from what body the image of truth
comes into their minds, or of what kind it is.

   28. Democritus, however, is said to differ here also in his doctrine on
physics from Epicurus; for he holds that there is in the concourse of atoms
a certain vital and breathing power, by which power (I believe) he affirms
that the images themselves (not all images of all things, but images of the
gods) are endued with divine attributes, and that the first beginnings of
the mind are in those universal elements to which he ascribed divinity, and
that the images possess life, inasmuch as they are wont either to benefit
or to hurt us. Epicurus, however, does not assume anything in the first
beginnings of things but atoms, that is, certain corpuscles, so minute that
they cannot be divided or perceived either by sight or by touch; and his
doctrine is, that by the fortuitous concourse (clashing) of these atoms,
existence is given both to innumerable worlds and to living things, and to
the souls which animate them, and to the gods whom, in human form, he has
located, not in any world, but outside of the worlds, and in the spaces
which separate them; and he will not allow of any object of thought beyond
things material. But in order to these becoming an object of thought, he
says that from those things which he represents as formed of atoms, images
more subtle than those which come to our eyes flow down and enter into the
mind. For according to him, the cause of our seeing is to be found in
certain images so huge that they embrace the whole outer world. But I
suppose that you already understand their opinions regarding these images.

   29. I wonder that Democritus was not convinced of the error of his
philosophy even by this fact, that such huge images coming into our minds,
which are so small (if being, as they affirm, material, the soul is
confined within the body's dimensions), could not possibly, in the entirety
of their size, come into contact with it. For when a small body is brought
into contact with a large one, it cannot in any wise be touched at the same
moment by all points of the larger. How, then, are these images at the same
moment in their whole extent objects of thought, if they become objects of
thought only in so far as, coming and entering into the mind, they touch
it, seeing that they cannot in their whole extent either find entrance into
so small a body or come in contact with so small a mind? Bear in mind, of
course, that I am speaking now after their manner; for I do not hold the
mind to be such as they affirm. It is true that Epicurus alone can be
assailed with this argument, if Democritus holds that the mind is
immaterial; but we may ask him in turn why he did not perceive that it is
at once unnecessary and impossible for the mind, being immaterial, to think
through the approach and contact of material images. Both philosophers
alike are certainly confuted by the facts of vision; for images so great
cannot possibly touch in their entirety eyes so small.

   30. Moreover, when the question is put to them, how it comes that one
image is seen of a body from which images emanate in countless multitudes,
their answer is, that just because the images are emanating and passing in
such multitudes, the effect produced by their being crowded and massed
together is, that out of the many one is seen. The absurdity of this Cicero
exposes by saying that their deity cannot be thought of as eternal, for
this very reason, that he is thought of through images which are in
countless multitudes flowing forth and passing away. And when they say that
the forms of the gods are rendered eternal by the innumerable hosts of
atoms supplying constant reinforcements, so that other corpuscles
immediately take the place of those which depart from the divine substance,
and by the same succession prevent the nature of the gods from being
dissolved, Cicero replies, "On this ground all things would be eternal as
well as the gods," since there is nothing which has not the same boundless
store of atoms by which it may repair its perpetual decays. Again, he asks
how their god could be otherwise than afraid of coming to destruction,
seeing that he is without a moment's intermission beaten and shaken by an
unceasing incursion of atoms, beaten, inasmuch as he is struck by atoms
rushing upon him, and shaken, inasmuch as he is penetrated by atoms rushing
through him. Nay, more; seeing that from himself there emanate continually
images (of which we have said enough), what good ground can he have for
persuasion of his own immortality?(1)

   31. As to all these ravings of the men who entertain such opinions, it
is especially deplorable that the mere statement of them does not suffice
to secure their rejection without any one controverting them in discussion;
instead of, which, the minds of men most gifted with acuteness have
accepted the task of copiously refuting opinions which, as soon as they
were enunciated Ought to have been rejected with contempt even by the
slowest intellects. For even granting that there are atoms, and that these
strike and shake each other by clashing together as chance may guide them,
is it lawful for us to grant also that atoms thus meeting in fortuitous
concourse can so make anything as to fashion its distinctive forms,
determine its figure, polish its surface, enliven it with color, or quicken
it by imparting to it a spirit? -- all which things every one sees to be
accomplished in no other way than by the providence of God, if only he
loves to see with the mind rather than with the eye alone, and asks this
faculty of intelligent perception from the Author of his being. Nay, more;
we are not at liberty even to grant the existence of atoms themselves, for,
without discussing the subtle theories of the learned as to the
divisibility of matter, observe how easily the absurdity of atoms may be
proved from their own opinions. For they, as is well known, affirm that
there is nothing else in nature but bodies and empty space, and the
accidents of these, by which I believe that they mean motion and striking,
and the forms which result from these. Let them tell us, then, under which
category they reckon the images which they suppose to flow from the more
solid bodies, but which, if indeed they are bodies, possess so little
solidity that they are not discernible except by their contact with the
eyes when we see them, and with the mind when we think of them. For the
opinion of these philosophers is, that these images can proceed from the
material object and , come to the eyes or to the mind, which, nevertheless,
they affirm to be material. Now, I ask, Ho these images flow from atoms
themselves? If they do, how can these be atoms from which some bodily
particles are in this process separated? If they do not, either something
can be the object of thought without such images, which they vehemently
deny, or we ask, whence have they acquired a knowledge of atoms, seeing
that they can in nowise become objects of thought to us? But I blush to
have even thus far refuted these opinions, although they did not blush to
hold them. When, however, I consider that they have even dared to defend
them, I blush not on their account, but for the race of mankind itself
whose ears could tolerate such nonsense.

   CHAP. V.--32. Wherefore, seeing that the minds of men are, through the
pollution of sin and the lust of the flesh, so blinded that even these
monstrous errors could waste in discussion concerning them the leisure of
learned men, will you, Dioscorus, or will any man of an servant mind,
hesitate to affirm that in no way could better provision have been made for
the pursuit of truth by mankind than that a Man, assumed into ineffable and
miraculous union by the Truth Himself, and being the manifestation of His
Person on the earth, should by perfect .teaching and divine acts move men
to saving faith in that which could not as yet be intellectually
apprehended? To the glory of Him who has done this we give our service; and
we exhort you to believe immoveably and stedfastly in Him through whom it
has come ta pass that not a select few, but whole peoples, unable to
discern these things by reason, do accept them in faith, until, upheld by
instruction in saving truth, they escape from these perplexities into the'
atmosphere of perfectly pure and simple truth. It becomes us, moreover, to
field submission to His authority all the more unreservedly, when we see
that in our day no error dares to lift up itself to rally round it the
uninstructed crowd without seeking the shelter of the Christian name, and
that of all who, belonging to an earlier age, now remain outside of the
Christian name, those alone continue to have in their obscure assemblies a
considerable attendance who retain the Scriptures by which, however they
may pretend not to see or understand it, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself was
prophetically announced. Moreover, those who, though they are not within
the Catholic unity and communion, boast of the name of Christians, are
compelled to oppose them that believe, and presume' to mislead the ignorant
by a pretence of appealing to reason, since the Lord came with this remedy
above all others, that He enjoined on the nations the duty of faith. But
they are compelled, as I have said, to adopt this policy because they feel
themselves most miserably overthrown if their authority is compared with
the Catholic authority. They attempt, accordingly, to prevail against the
firmly-settled authority of the immoveable Church by the name and the
promises of a pretended appeal to reason This kind of effrontery is, we
may, say, characteristic of all heretics. But He who is the most merciful
Lord of faith has both secured the Church in the citadel of authority by
most famous oecumenical Councils and the Apostolic sees themselves, and
furnished her with the abundant armour of equally invincible reason by
means of a few men of pious erudition and unfeigned spirituality. The
perfection of method in training disciples is, that those who are weak be
encouraged to the utmost to enter the citadel of authority, in order that
when they have been safely placed.. there, the conflict necessary for their
defence may be maintained with the most strenuous use of reason.

   33. The Platonists, however, who, amidst the errors of false
philosophies assailing them at that time on all sides, rather concealed
their own doctrine to be searched for than brought it into the light to be
vilified, as they had no divine personage to command faith, began to
exhibit and unfold the doctrines of Plato after the name of Christ had
become widely known to the wondering and troubled kingdoms of this world.
Then flourished at Rome the school of Plotinus, which had as scholars many
men of great acuteness and ability. But some of them were corrupted by
curious inquiries into magic, and others, recognising in the Lord Jesus
Christ the impersonation of that essential and immutable Truth and Wisdom
which they were endeavouring to reach, passed into His service. Thus the
whole supremacy of authority and light of reason for regenerating and
reforming the human race has been made to reside in the one saving Name,
and in His one Church.

   34. I do not at all regret that I have stated these things at great
length in this letter, although perhaps you would have preferred that I had
taken another course; for the more progress that you make in the truth, the
more will you approve what I have written, and you will then approve of my
counsel, though now you do not think it helpful to your studies. At the
same time, I have, to the best of my ability, given answers to your
questions,- to some of them in this letter, and to almost all the rest by
brief annotations on the parchments on which you had sent them. If in these
answers you think I have done too little, or done something else than you
expected, you do not duly consider, my Dioscorus, to whom you addressed
your questions. I have passed without reply all the questions concerning
the orator and the books of Cicero de Oratore. I would have seemed to
myself a contemptible trifler if I had entered on the exposition of these
topics. For I might with propriety be questioned on all the other subjects,
if any one desired me to handle and expound them, not in connection with
the works of Cicero, but by themselves; but in these questions the subjects
themselves are not in harmony with my profession now. I would not, however,
have done all that I have done in this letter had I not removed from Hippo
for a time after the illness under which I laboured when your messenger
came to me. Even in these days I have been visited again with interruption
of health and with fever, on which account there has been more delay than
might otherwise have been in sending these to you. I earnestly beg you to
write and let me know how you receive them.

LETTER CXXII. (A.D. 410.)

TO HIS WELL-BELOVED BRETHREN THE CLERGY, AND TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE [OF
HIPPO], AUGUSTIN SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

   1. In the first place, I beseech you, my friends, and implore you, for
Christ's sake, not to let my bodily absence grieve you. For I suppose you
do not imagine that I could by any means be separated in spirit and in
unfeigned love from you, although perchance it is even a greater grief to
me than to you that my weakness unfits me for bearing all the cares which
are i laid on me by those members of Christ to whose service both fear of
Him and love to them constrain me to devote myself. For you know this, my
beloved, that I have never absented myself from you through self-indulgent
taking of ease, but only when compelled by such duties as have made it
necessary for some of my holy colleagues and brethren to endure, both on
the sea and in countries beyond the sea, labours from which I was exempted,
not because of reluctance of spirit, but by reason of imperfect bodily
health. Wherefore, my dearly-beloved brethren, act so that, as the apostle
says, "whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your
affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together
for the faith of the gospel."(1) If any vexation pertaining to time causes
you distress, this itself ought the more to remind you how you should
occupy your thoughts with that life in which you may live without any
burden, escaping not the annoying hardships of this short life, but the
dread flames of eternal fire. For if ye strive with so much anxiety, so
much earnestness, and so much labour, to save yourselves from failing into
some transient sufferings in this world, how solicitous ought you to be to
escape everlasting misery! And if the death which puts an end to the
labours of time is so feared, how ought we to fear the death which ushers
men into eternal pain! And if the short-lived and sordid pleasures of this
world are so loved, with how much greater earnestness ought we to seek the
pure and infinite joys of the world to come! Meaditating upon these things,
be not slothful in good works, that ye may come in due season to reap what
you have sown.

   2. It has been reported to me that you have forgotten your custom of
providing raiment for the poor, to which work of charity I exhorted you
when I was present with you; and I now exhort you not to allow yourselves
to be overcome and made slothful by the tribulation of this world, which
you see now visited with such calamities as were foretold by our Lord and
Redeemer, who cannot lie. You ought in present circumstances not to be less
diligent in works of charity, but rather to be more abundant in these than
you were wont to be. For as men betake then{selves !n greater haste to a
place of greater security when they see in the shaking of their walls the
ruin of their house impending, so ought Christians, the more that they
perceive, from the increasing frequency of their afflictions, that the
destruction of this world is at hand, to be the more prompt and active in
transferring to the treasury of heaven the goods which they were proposing
to store up on earth, in order that, if any accident common to the lot of
men occur, he may rejoice who has escaped from a dwelling doomed to ruin;
and if, on the other hand, nothing of this kind happen, he may be exempt
from painful solicitude who, die when he may, has committed his possessions
to the keeping of the ever-living Lord, to whom he is about to go.
Wherefore, my dearly-beloved brethren, let every one of you, according to
his ability, of which he himself is the best judge, do with a portion of
his substance as ye were wont to do; do it also with a more willing mind
than ye were wont i and amid all the vexations of this life bear in your
hearts the apostolic exhortation: "The Lord is at hand: be careful for
nothing."(2) Let such things be reported to me concerning you as may make
me understand that it is not through my presence with you, but from
obedience to the precept of God, who is never absent, that you follow that
good practice which for many years while I was with you, and for some time
after my departure, you observed.

   May the Lord preserve you in peace! And, dearly-beloved brethren, pray
for us.

LETTER CXXIII (A.D. 410.)

[FROM JEROME TO AUGUSTIN.]

   There are many who go halting upon both feet, and refuse to bend their
heads even when their necks are broken, persisting in adherence to their
former errors, even though they have not their former liberty of
proclaiming them.

   Respectful salutations are sent to you by the holy brethren who are
with your humble servant, and especially by your pious and venerable
daughters.(3) I beg your Excellency to salute in my name your brethren my
lord Alypius and my lord Evodius. Jerusalem is held captive by
Nebuchadnezzar, and refuses to listen to the counsels of Jeremiah,
preferring to look wistfully towards Egypt, that it may die in Tahpanhes,
and perish there in eternal bondage.(4)


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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