Against the Letters of Petilian 2.203–2.223

Augustine answered: To this passage, so copiously heaped up and set out by you, where you speak invidiously against us about the kings of the world, if I were to answer as is due and fitting, I fear you would accuse me too of having wanted to stir up the kings' anger against you. Although, since in your usual way you carry the force of this invective against all Catholics universally, you certainly do not pass me over. Still, I will try to show, if I can, that you have rather done this by saying such things than I by answering them. And first see how you contradict yourself. You certainly began this passage thus: “But what have you to do with the kings of the world, whom Christianity has never found anything but envious?” With these words you surely forbid us to approach the kings of the world. And a little later you say: “And he warned these same kings with these commands, so that they might not desire, as it were in ignorance or unknowing, to persecute Christians, lest they perish. Would that we could teach them these commands, since they do not know them; or at least that you would show them to them without doubt, if you wanted them to live!” How, then, do you want us to be teachers of kings? As for our people, if they have some friendship with Christian kings and use it well, they do not sin at all; but if any are puffed up by it, they sin much more lightly than you. For what had you, who so accuse us, to do with a pagan king, and, what is more serious, an apostate and enemy of the Christian name, Julian, whom you begged to have the basilicas returned to you as if yours, and in whose praise you set down that with him justice alone had a place? In these words (for I believe you understand Latin) both Julian's idolatry and his apostasy were called justice. The petition your forebears submitted is extant, the decree they obtained, the records in which they presented it. Wake up and pay attention: to the enemy of Christ, the apostate, the adversary of Christians, the servant of demons, that man, that very man, your own Pontius, made supplication in such words. Go now and say to us, “What have you to do with the kings of the world?”, so that, deaf, you may read to deaf peoples what you refuse to hear with them: “You see the speck in your brother's eye; you do not see the beam in your own eye.”

“What,” you say, “have you to do with the kings of the world, whom Christianity has never found anything but envious?” Having said this, you tried to list the kings whom the righteous found to be enemies, and did not consider that more could be listed whom they had as friends. Father Abraham was treated most kindly by a king who had been divinely warned not to touch his wife, and received a gift. His son Isaac likewise found a king most friendly. Jacob, received honourably by a king in Egypt, even blessed him. What shall I say of his son Joseph, who, after the trouble of prison, in which his chastity was tested as gold by fire, was raised by the king to great honours and even swore by Pharaoh's health, not puffed up with pride but not ungrateful for goodwill? A king's daughter adopted Moses. David, driven by the iniquity of the king of Israel, took refuge with a foreign king. Elijah ran before the chariot of a very wicked king, not at his command but of his own deference. Elisha thought he should even offer to his hostess, if she wished, anything she might want done for her by the king through his intercession. But let me come to the very times when God's people were held captive, where, to put it mildly, a remarkable forgetfulness crept over you. For, wishing to prove that Christianity has never found kings anything but envious, you mentioned the three boys and Daniel, and what they suffered from persecuting kings; and you could not be reminded by the facts, not neighbouring facts but the very same, of what that king himself became after the miracle of the harmless flames, both in praising and proclaiming God and in honouring the boys themselves; of how the king regarded Daniel and with what gifts he adorned him, who did not refuse them, since, paying due honour to the royal power, as is clear enough from his words, he did not withhold the gift of God with which he was endowed in revealing and interpreting the king's dream. Hence, when the king was compelled against his will, by those who envied the holy man and slandered him with sacrilegious madness, to throw him into the lions' den, though he did it sorrowfully, he was confident that Daniel would be safe through the help of his Lord. And so, when Daniel, the lions' rage restrained by God, had lived unharmed, after the anxious and friendly voice of the king himself had reached him first, he too answered from the den with a blessing: “O king, live forever.” Why, when your speech was dealing with these very matters, when you yourself were recalling the examples of these servants of God in whom these things were done, did you either not see these friendships of kings with saints, or not want to see them, or (which I do not know how you will excuse) keep silent about them, though you saw and knew them? But if the zeal for building up falsehood, as befits the defender of a very bad cause, did not hinder you and turn you, unwilling or unknowing, away from the light of truth, you would certainly recall without any difficulty that some kings were good and some bad, some friends of the saints and others enemies. And we wonder that your Circumcellions throw themselves down like this? Who was running after you, I beg you? What Macarius, what soldier was pursuing you? Certainly none of us drove you over the cliff of this falsehood. Why, then, did you go so headlong with your eyes shut that, having said, “What have you to do with the kings of the world,” you did not add, “whom Christianity has often found envious,” but did not hesitate to say, “whom Christianity has never found anything but envious”? Did you really neither think yourself nor suppose that those who would read your writings would think of so many examples of kings crying out against you: “He does not know what he is saying”?

Or, because those I mentioned belonged to ancient times, do you think they do not tell against you at all, since you did not say, “whom righteousness has never found anything but envious,” but, “whom Christianity has never found anything but envious,” perhaps meaning that they have envied the righteous since the time they began to be called Christians? Then what is the point of the examples from ancient times, by which you wished still more imprudently to teach what you said imprudently? For did not the Maccabees, the three boys, and Daniel do or suffer those things before Christ was born on earth? Next, why did you supplicate Julian, whom I mentioned a little before, who truly envied Christianity? Why did you ask the basilicas from him? Why did you say that with him justice alone had a place? If one who envies Christianity hears these things, what are those from whom he hears them? But Constantine, who did not envy the Christian name at all but plainly gloried in it, mindful of the hope he bore in Christ, judging most justly for its unity, did not deserve to be accepted by you even when you had appealed to him. Both lived in Christian times, but both were not Christians. If both envied Christianity, why did you appeal so to one of them and supplicate the other so? For at your forebears' request Constantine had granted a judgment of bishops both at Rome and at Arles; at the first you accused before him, from the second you appealed to him. But if, as is true, one of them had believed in Christ and the other had apostatized from Christ, why is the Christian who sought unity despised, and the apostate who favoured division praised? Constantine ordered the basilicas taken from you, Julian restored: do you want to know which of these suits Christian peace? The one was done by him who had believed in Christ, the other by him who had abandoned Christ. O how you would like to say, “It was wrong that Julian was supplicated so; but what has that to do with us?” If you said that, the Catholic Church would win even by these words of yours, to whose saints spread through the whole world whatever you say about whomever you like, as you like, concerns much less. But you cannot say it was wrong that Julian was supplicated so. Your own authority blocks your throat and presses your tongue: Pontius did it, Pontius supplicated, Pontius called the apostate most just, Pontius proclaimed that with the apostate justice alone had a place. That Pontius supplicated him in these words Julian himself stated by name, without ambiguity, in his rescript. Your presentations are extant; not uncertain report but public records testify to these things. Or perhaps, because the apostate granted something to your petition against the unity of Christ, you think it true that with him justice alone had a place, while the Christian emperors, because they decree against your will what they judge to serve Christ's unity, are called envious of Christianity? So let all heretics lose their foolishness and come to their senses, so as not to be heretics.

“And where,” you will say, “was what the Lord says fulfilled: ‘The time will come when whoever kills you will think he is doing God a service’?” For this could not be said of the pagans, who persecuted Christians not for God but for idols. Do you not see that if this were said of those emperors who rejoice in the Christian name, they would certainly have ordered above all that you be killed? Which they never ordered at all; but your people, by resisting the laws in hostile fashion, pay the penalties due, and while they think their voluntary deaths odious for us, they do not think them ruinous for themselves. But if they think this was said by the Lord of kings who honour Christ's name, let them inquire what the Catholic Church suffered in the East when the Arian Valens was emperor. There I would have a way of understanding the fulfilment of the Lord's words, “The time will come when whoever kills you will think he is doing God a service,” so that heretics should not take it to the glory of their reputation if Catholic emperors had commanded anything against their error. Yet we recall that that time was fulfilled after the Lord's ascension; holy Scripture, known to all, is witness of this. The Jews thought they were doing God a service when they killed the apostles. Among those who thought they were offering God a service was also our Saul, not yet ours, so that he lists this among his past glories, to be forgotten: “A Hebrew,” he says, “of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church.” See one who thought he was doing God a service when he did what he himself soon suffered. For forty Jews had sworn to kill him, when he had it made known to the tribune, so that, surrounded by armed soldiers, he escaped their ambush. But there was not yet anyone to say to him, “What have you to do, not with kings, but with tribunes and royal arms?” There was no one to say to him, “Do you dare to seek protection through soldiers, when your Lord was led by them to his passion?” Those ravings did not yet exist; but against these future ravings those examples were already being prepared.

You even dared to put it forward menacingly and say: “But to say nothing of old things, notice in your own examples how many emperors and judges of yours perished in persecuting us.” When I read this in your letter I waited most intently to see what you would say and whom you would list, when lo, as if leaving them aside, you began to recall Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Geta, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Maximian. I admit they are many; but you have quite forgotten against whom you are speaking. Were not all these pagans, who persecuted the Christian name everywhere for the sake of their idols? Wake up, then; for these were not of our communion. They persecuted unity itself as a whole, the unity from which either we went out, as you think, or you went out, as Christ teaches. But you had proposed to show that our emperors and judges perished in persecuting you. Or do you not require us to count these either, since you mentioned them while leaving them aside, saying, “To leave aside Nero,” and under this leaving aside ran through the others? Then what need was there to mention men who have nothing to do with the matter? But what is that to me? I now leave these aside with you; now at least let those come forward whom you promised, “how many.” Unless perhaps they are not found because you said they perished.

For you go on and now name bishops whom you usually accuse of handing over the books. About them we too usually answer: either you do not prove it, and it concerns no one; or you prove it, and it does not concern us. For they carried their own load, good or bad; and we believe it good, but whatever it was, it was theirs; just as your wicked ones do not carry yours nor you theirs; but the common, very bad load of all of you is schism. We have said this often. So produce not the names of bishops but of our emperors and judges who perished in persecuting you. For this is what you had proposed, this is what you had promised, for this you had made us most attentive. Listen, you say: “Macarius perished, Ursatius perished, and all your counts likewise perished by God's vengeance.” You mentioned only two, neither of whom was an emperor. Whom would this please, I ask you? Are you not displeased with yourself? You promise to mention how many of our emperors and judges perished in persecuting you, and, keeping silent about emperors, you name two judges or counts. For what you add, “and all your counts likewise perished by God's vengeance,” is beside the point; in this way you could have finished the passage long ago by naming no one at all. Why, then, did you not mention our emperors, that is, those of our communion? Were you afraid of being accused of treason? Where is your Circumcellion courage? Next, what do you do about those many whom you named above, who could more rightly say to you, “Why did you want us?” For they did nothing to help your case, and yet they were named. Next, what sort of man are you, that you are afraid to name those whom you claim perished? At least you might have named more judges or counts, whom you seem not to have feared. But you stopped at Macarius and Ursatius. Are those two your “how many”? Or do you know what we learned as boys? For if you ask me whether two is a singular or a plural number, what should I answer but plural? But I have something to say even to this. I exclude Macarius; for you did not say how he perished. Or perhaps whoever persecutes you, unless he is immortal on this earth, will be thought to have died because of you when he dies? What if Constantine, who first enacted much against your error, had not lived in so long a reign and so long a prosperity, and what if Julian, who gave you the basilicas, had not been snatched so quickly from life, when would you keep silent with such chatter, when you will not keep silent even now? Yet we do not say that Julian died quickly because he gave you the basilicas. For we could be equally copious in these things, but we do not want to be equally empty. So, as I had begun to say, I separate Macarius from those two. For when you had put forward two, him and Ursatius, you repeated the name of Ursatius to show us what death he deserved, and said: “For Ursatius, laid low in a battle with barbarians, was torn apart by the cruel claws of birds and the greedy teeth of dogs.” From this it is clear enough that, since you usually stir up greater odium about Macarius, so that you call us Macarians, not Ursatians, you would most of all have spoken about him, if you could have said anything of the kind about his death. So of these two, where you used the plural number, with Macarius set apart, Ursatius remains, a proper name in the singular number. Where, then, is that so threatening and terrible promise of so many?

Now how ridiculous it is, I think all who know how to speak at all understand: that, having said, “Macarius perished, Ursatius perished, and all your counts likewise perished by God's vengeance,” as if we were demanding that you prove it (for in truth neither hearer nor reader would demand anything else), you at once attached a great proof by which to prove that all our counts likewise perished by God's vengeance: “For Ursatius,” you say, “laid low in a battle with barbarians, was torn apart by the cruel claws of birds and the greedy teeth of dogs.” In this way someone else, likewise not knowing what he says, could say that all your bishops wasted away in prison by God's vengeance, and when asked how he proves it, at once add: “For Optatus, accused of being Gildo's henchman, perished by that kind of death.” We are forced to hear, discuss, and refute such trifles; we fear only for the weak, lest through slower understanding they run quickly into your snares. As for that Ursatius, if perhaps he lived well and truly died so, he will be consoled by the promise of God, who says, “I will require the blood of your souls from the hands of all beasts.”

As for your slander that we stir up the kings of the world to anger against you, not teaching them the divine Scripture but rather suggesting our own malice, I do not think they are so deaf to the very words of the holy books that you should not rather fear that they know them. But whether you like it or not, they come into the church, and even if we are silent they turn their ears to the readers, and, to say nothing of other things, they very often listen most attentively to this very psalm which you mentioned. For you said that we do not teach them, and do not allow them, though willing, to know what is written: “And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear and rejoice in him with trembling. Lay hold of discipline, lest the Lord be angry,” and the rest. Believe that these words are sung and that they hear them; but certainly they also hear what comes earlier in the same psalm, which, unless I am mistaken, you chose not to pass over so as not to be understood to have feared it. So they also hear this: “The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.” When they hear it, they surely wonder that there are some who contradict this inheritance of Christ and try to reduce it to a tiny part of the earth; and wondering, they perhaps ask, because of what they hear next, “Serve the Lord in fear,” in what way they can serve him insofar as they are kings. For all men ought to serve God: in one way by the common condition by which they are men, in another by different gifts, since one man does one thing in human affairs and another another. For no private person could order idols to be removed from the earth, which was foretold so long before. So kings, apart from their membership in the human race, have, by the very fact that they are kings, the means of serving the Lord in a way that those who are not kings cannot.

So when they consider these things, they also hear what you yourself mentioned about the three boys, and they hear it at a wonderful solemnity. For that very scripture is sung in church above all at the time when the festival itself makes even those more fervent who are more sluggish the rest of the year. What mind, then, do you think Christian emperors have when they hear that the three boys were sent into the furnace of burning fire because they would not consent to the king's iniquity of worshipping an image, except to think that the godly freedom of the saints could be overcome neither by royal power nor by the monstrousness of punishment, and to rejoice that they are not of the number of such kings, who punished the despisers of idols as sacrilegious? And further, when they hear in what follows that the same king, terrified by so great a miracle, in which not only the boys but even the flames served God, himself began to serve God in fear and rejoice with trembling and to lay hold of discipline, do they not understand that these things were written and are read with such solemnity in order to set examples both before the servants of God, that they may not yield to kings for sacrilege, and before kings themselves, that they may believe God for religion? So these men, wishing, by the admonition of that very psalm which you too inserted in your writings, to understand and be instructed and serve the Lord in fear and rejoice with trembling and lay hold of discipline, listen intently to what that king said afterward. For he said that he would issue a decree to all the peoples he ruled, that whoever spoke blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should perish and their houses be scattered. And if they learn that he decreed this so that God, the tamer of fire and deliverer of the three boys, might not be blasphemed, they surely consider what they ought to decree in their own kingdom, so that the same God, the forgiver of sins and now the deliverer of the whole world, may not be exsufflated in his faithful.

So see, when Christian kings enact something against you for Catholic unity, whether you do not perhaps accuse them with your lips as ignorant of the divine Scriptures, while grieving in your heart that they are learned enough. For who could bear this sacrilegious and odious deceit of yours, in the single case of Daniel, to accuse kings because he was sent into the lions' den, and not to praise kings because he was honoured on high, when even at the time he was sent the king himself believed he would be saved rather than die, and, anxious for him, did not eat? Then you dare to say to Christians, “What have you to do with the kings of the world?” because Daniel suffered persecution from a king, and not to look at Daniel himself faithfully interpreting dreams to kings, calling the king lord, receiving gifts and honours; and likewise, in the case of the three boys, to stir up flames of odium about kings because, refusing to worship the statue, they were sent into the flames, but to keep silent and hide the fact that they were so proclaimed and so honoured by the king. See, the king was a persecutor when he threw Daniel to the lions; what of when, rejoicing and congratulating at receiving him safe, he sent his enemies to be torn and devoured by the same lions: was he a persecutor or not? I want you to answer. If he was, why did Daniel himself not resist him, especially since with so great an intimacy he could most easily have done so? And you tell us to call kings back from persecuting men! But if he was not a persecutor because he most justly avenged a crime committed against a holy man, how should kings avenge the exsufflation of Christ's sacraments, if the limbs of a prophet, because they were put in danger, deserved to be avenged so? Likewise, I grant, and it is plain, that the king was a persecutor when he sent the three boys into the flame for refusing to worship the image; but I ask whether he was a persecutor when he issued the decree that those who blasphemed the one true God should perish and their houses be laid waste. For if he was a persecutor, why do you answer “Amen” to a persecutor's words? But if he was not, why do you call those persecutors who deter you from the fury of blasphemy? For if they compel you to pray to an idol, they are like the ungodly king, and you like the three boys; but if they forbid you to fight against Christ, you are ungodly if you do it. What they are, if they forbid it with terrors, I do not say; you find something else to say, if you will not call them godly emperors.

If I had brought up these examples of Daniel and the three boys, you might perhaps resist and cry out that they should not have been taken from those times into ours. Thanks be to God that you yourself put them forward, indeed for what you wanted; but you see they have rather served what you did not want. Or is this not deceit on your part but human error? Would that it were so! Then correct it. Do not fear; you will not be the less for it; indeed it takes a greater mind to put out the flames of animosity by confessing than to avoid the fogs of falsehood by understanding.

Petilian said: “Where is the law of God, where is your Christianity, if you commit and order slaughters and deaths?”

Augustine answered: To this see what the fellow heirs of Christ throughout the whole world say: we neither commit nor order slaughters and deaths; and you rage much more wickedly than those who do these things, since you commit them in men's minds against eternal life.

Petilian said: “If you want us as friends, why do you drag us unwilling? But if you pretend we are enemies, why do you kill enemies?”

Augustine answered: We neither drag the unwilling nor kill enemies; but whatever we do with you, even though we do it against your will, we do it from love, so that you may correct yourselves willingly and, corrected, live. For no one avoids vices unwillingly; and yet a boy is beaten against his will so that he may learn this willingly, and often by someone very dear to him. And kings would say this to you if they struck you; for their power was ordained by God for this. But even when they do not strike, you cry out.

Petilian said: “What reason is there, or what inconsistency of vanity, that while you call us heretics by a false name, you greatly desire our communion?”

Augustine answered: If we greatly desired the communion of heretics, we would not want you corrected from heretical error; but since what we are doing with you is that you may not be heretics, how do we greatly desire the communion of heretics? For dissension and division make you heretics, but peace and unity make Catholics. So when you come here from there, you cease to be what we hate and begin to be what we love.

Petilian said: “Choose at last one of the two things to say. If you have innocence, why do you pursue us with the sword? Or if you say we are guilty, why do you seek us, being innocent?”

Augustine answered: O most acute dilemma, or rather most inept garrulity! Is not one of two answers usually proposed to be chosen where both cannot be chosen? For if you proposed that I choose one of two things to say, whether we are innocent or guilty, or again of two others, whether you are guilty or not, I could choose only one to say. But now you propose these two, whether we are innocent or you are guilty, and you want me to choose one of these two to answer. But I do not want to say one, because I say both: that we are innocent and you guilty. We say we are innocent of your false and slanderous accusations, all of us in the Catholic Church who can say with a safe conscience that we did not hand over the holy books, nor consent to the worship of idols, nor kill anyone, nor whatever other evil you usually charge; and that those who perhaps did these things (which you have not proved even of them) shut the kingdom of heaven not against us but against themselves, because each of us carries his own load: there you have one. And we say that you are all guilty and criminal, not some by the crimes of others which are committed by some among you and blamed by others, but by the crime of schism, from which most monstrous sacrilege none of you can call himself free as long as he is not in communion with the unity of all nations, unless he is compelled to say that Christ lied about the church that is spread through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem: there you have the other. See, I have given you the two, of which you wanted us to say one. You surely ought to have noticed that both could be said by us, and at least, if you wanted this, have asked us to say one, when you saw that we could say both.

“But if you have innocence,” you say, “why do you pursue us with the sword?” Look a little at your own bands, which are armed not, in the old fashion of their fathers, with clubs alone, but have added axes and lances and swords, and recognize whose voice should rather be, “Why do you pursue us with the sword?” “Or if you say we are guilty,” you say, “why do you seek us, being innocent?” Here I answer briefly: you, the guilty, are sought by the innocent so that you may cease to be guilty and begin to be innocent. See, I have chosen both of ours and answered both of yours. Now you choose one of two: are you innocent or guilty? You cannot say both; but say both, if you like. For surely you cannot be innocent in the same case in which you are guilty. So if you are innocent, do not wonder that you are sought for peace by your brothers; but if guilty, do not wonder that you are sought for punishment by kings. But since of these two you claim one for yourselves and hear the other from us (for you claim innocence for yourselves, and hear from us that you live impiously), hear again what I say of both. If you are innocent, why do you contradict Christ's testimony? But if guilty, why do you not take refuge in his mercy? For his testimony concerns the unity of the world, and his mercy is in brotherly love.

Petilian said: “Finally, as we have often said, what is this presumption of yours, to presume upon kings, when David says, ‘It is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in man; it is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in princes’?”