Letters 208.1–210.2

I do not doubt that your mind is troubled, both for your own faith and for the weakness or wickedness of others, since the holy apostle, full of the heart of love, confesses and says: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” Hence I too, stung and anxious for your salvation in Christ, thought this letter of consolation or exhortation should be sent to Your Holiness, since in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is his Church and the unity of his members, you have become most truly a sister to us, you who are loved as an honorable member in its frame and live with us by his Holy Spirit.

So I warn you not to be too gravely disturbed by these scandals, which were foretold as coming for this reason, that when they came we might remember that they had been foretold and not be greatly shaken by them. For the Lord himself foretold them in the gospel thus: “Woe to the world because of scandals! Scandals must come; but woe to that man through whom the scandal comes!” Who are these men, if not those of whom the apostle says, “Seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ”? There are some, then, who hold pastoral chairs in order to care for Christ's flocks; but others who sit in them in order to enjoy their temporal honors and worldly advantages. These two kinds of pastors, some dying and others being born, must continue in the Catholic Church itself until the end of the age and until the Lord's judgment. For if in the times of the apostles there were such men, among whom the apostle groaned at false brothers and said, “In dangers among false brothers,” and did not separate them from himself by pride but bore with them by patience, how much more must there be such in our times, when of the time of this age, which is drawing near to the end, the Lord says most plainly: “Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold!” But what follows ought to console and exhort us: “He who perseveres to the end,” he says, “will be saved.”

And just as there are good and bad pastors, so in the flocks themselves too there are both good and bad. The good are signified by the name of sheep, while the bad are called goats. But they graze mixed together until the chief of pastors comes, who is called the one shepherd, and, as he himself promised, separates them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. For he commanded us to gather, but kept the separation for himself, because he who cannot err ought to do the separating. For those proud servants who rashly dared to separate before the time that the Lord kept for himself have rather been separated themselves from Catholic unity; for how could they, unclean by schism, have a clean flock?

So, that we may remain in unity and not desert the Lord's threshing floor offended by the scandals of the chaff, but may rather persevere as wheat until the end of the winnowing and bear the crushed straw by the firm weight of love, our shepherd himself in the gospel admonishes us concerning good pastors, that we should not, because of their good works, place our hope even in them, but glorify the Father in heaven who made them such; and concerning bad pastors, whom he chose to signify by the name of scribes and Pharisees, teaching good and doing evil;

for of good pastors he speaks thus: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden; nor do they light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, so that it gives light to all who are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” But concerning bad pastors he warns the sheep, saying: “They sit on the chair of Moses. Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” Having heard this, the sheep of Christ hear his voice even through bad teachers and do not leave his unity, because the good they hear them say is not theirs but his; and so the sheep graze safely, because even under bad pastors they are fed in the Lord's pastures. But they do not do the deeds of the bad pastors, because such works are not his but theirs. But those whom they see to be good they not only hear in the good things they say but also imitate in the good things they do. Of such was the apostle who said, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.” He was a light lit by the everlasting light, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and set on a lampstand, because he gloried in his cross; hence he says, “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And because he sought not his own interests but those of Jesus Christ, although he urges those whom he had begotten through the gospel to imitate him, he nevertheless sharply rebukes those who made schisms by the names of the apostles, and chides those who said, “I am of Paul.” “Was Paul crucified for you,” he says, “or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

From this we understand that good pastors seek not their own interests but those of Jesus Christ, and that good sheep, although they imitate the deeds of good pastors, nevertheless do not place their hope in those by whose ministry they were gathered, but rather in the Lord by whose blood they were redeemed; so that, when they happen to come upon bad pastors who preach his teaching and do their own evil works, they do what they say but do not do what they do, nor do they desert the pastures of unity because of the children of iniquity. For in the Catholic Church, which is not, like the party of Donatus, in Africa alone, but is spread and extended through all nations, as was promised, in the whole world, as the apostle says, bearing fruit and growing, there are both good and bad. But those separated from it, so long as they think against it, cannot be good, because, even if a seemingly praiseworthy way of life appears to show some of them to be good, the division itself makes them bad, as the Lord says: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.”

Hence I also exhort you, my lady, justly to be welcomed, and daughter to be honored among the members of Christ, to hold faithfully what the Lord has granted you, and to love with your whole heart him and his Church, who did not allow you to lose the fruit of your virginity with the lost, or to perish. For if you were to leave this world separated from the unity of the body of Christ, the integrity of your body preserved would profit you nothing. But God, who is rich in mercy, did in your case what is written in the gospel: when those invited to the householder's supper made excuses, among other things he said to his servants, “Go out into the roads and hedges, and whomever you find, compel them to come in.” So, although you owe the most sincere love also to his good servants, by whose ministry you were compelled to come in, you must nevertheless place your hope in him who prepared the banquet, by whom you too have been made eager for eternal and blessed life. For commending to him your heart and your purpose, your holy virginity, your faith, hope, and love, you will not be shaken by the scandals that will abound until the end, but by the stable strength of godliness you will be saved and glorious in the Lord, persevering in his unity to the end. And let me know by your reply how you have received this concern of mine for you, which I have taken care to convey to you in such a letter as I could. May God's mercy and grace always protect you.

First, I offer my congratulations on your merits, that the Lord our God has set you in that see without any division of his people, as we have heard. Next, I make known to Your Holiness what is happening around us, so that you may help us not only by praying for us but also by advising and assisting us. For I have sent this letter to Your Blessedness in great tribulation, because, in wishing to benefit some members of Christ in our neighborhood, I brought a great disaster upon them through lack of foresight and caution.

There is a fortified town called Fussala bordering on the territory of Hippo. Before, there had never been a bishop there, but together with the region next to it it belonged to the parish of the church of Hippo. That land had few Catholics; the error of the Donatists wretchedly held the other congregations there, made up of a great multitude of people, so that in that town itself there was no Catholic at all. By God's mercy it came about that all those places adhered to the unity of the Church; through how great labors and dangers of ours it would take long to explain, so that the presbyters first appointed by us there to gather them were robbed, beaten, maimed, blinded, and killed. Yet their sufferings were not useless and fruitless, since the security of unity there was made complete. But since the town I mentioned lies forty miles from Hippo, and I saw that in governing them and gathering their remnants, though small, who were wandering about in both sexes, no longer threatening but fleeing, I was stretched further than was right and could not apply the care that I saw with complete certainty ought to be applied, I arranged for a bishop to be ordained and established there.

To bring this about, I was looking for someone suited and fitting for that place, who was also trained in the Punic language. And I had a presbyter ready whom I had in mind; and in order to ordain him I asked the holy old man who then held the primacy of Numidia, by letter, to come from far away, and he agreed. When he was already present, and everyone's mind was in suspense in so great a matter, at the last hour the man who seemed to me ready deserted us, resisting in every way. But I, who certainly, as the outcome taught, ought rather to have postponed so dangerous a matter than rushed it, not wishing the most venerable and holy old man, wearied by his journey to us, to return home without accomplishing what he had come so far for, offered them, without their asking, a certain young man named Antoninus, who was with me then. He had indeed been brought up by us in the monastery from early childhood, but apart from the office of reader he was known by no grades or labors of the clergy. And those wretched people, not knowing what was to come, trusted me most obediently when I offered him. What more? It was done; he began to be their bishop.

What am I to do? I do not wish to burden him before Your Reverence, whom I took up to bring up; I do not wish to desert those whom I brought forth with fears and pains so that they might be gathered; and how I am to do both I cannot find. For the matter came to such a scandal that those who had obeyed us in accepting him as bishop, as though we were consulting their good, brought cases against him here before us. In these cases, when the capital charges of sexual immorality, which had been brought not by those whose bishop he was but by certain others, could not be proved at all, and he seemed cleared of the charges that were being hurled with the greatest malice, he became so pitiable both to us and to others that whatever was charged by the townspeople and the people of that region about his intolerable domination, his robberies, and various oppressions and extortions did not seem to us such that, because of it, or of all of it heaped together, we thought he should be deprived of the episcopate, but that whatever was proved to have been taken should be restored.

Then we so tempered our sentences that, while his episcopate was preserved, things were nevertheless not left entirely unpunished which ought not to be held out either to him to do again hereafter or to others to imitate. So we preserved his rank intact for the young man to be corrected, but by rebuking him we reduced his power, namely that he should no longer be over those with whom he had so dealt that in their just grief they could not bear at all to have him over them, and showed an impatience of their grief that might perhaps break out into some crime, to their danger and his. Their state of mind was clearly evident even then, when the bishops dealt with them about him, although the eminent Celer, of whose overbearing administration against him he complained, now holds no office in Africa or anywhere.

But why should I delay you long? Work with us, I beg you, my most blessed lord, venerable for your piety, and holy pope, to be revered with the love due to you, and have everything that has been sent to you read out to you. See how he conducted his episcopate; how far he agreed to our judgment that he should be deprived of communion unless everything was first restored to the people of Fussala; how afterward, outside the official proceedings, he set aside a sum of solidi, after the property had been valued, so that communion might be restored to him; by what cunning persuasion he induced our holy old primate, a most venerable man, to believe him in everything and to commend him to the venerable Pope Boniface as entirely blameless; and the rest, which there is no need for me to recall, since the venerable old man I mentioned has reported everything to Your Holiness.

In those many proceedings in which our judgment about him is contained, I ought rather to fear that we may seem to you to have judged less severely than we should, did I not know that you are so inclined to mercy that you think mercy should be shown not only to us, because we spared him, but also to him. But what was done by us either kindly or leniently he tries to turn into a legal claim and to seize upon; he cries out: “Either I ought to sit in my own chair, or I ought not to be a bishop,” as though he were now sitting anywhere but in his own. For the places left and allowed to him were precisely those in which he was bishop before, so that it should not be said that he had been unlawfully transferred to another's chair against the statutes of the fathers. Or ought anyone to be such an enforcer of either severity or leniency that those who are not judged worthy of being deprived of episcopal rank should in no way be punished in anything, or that those in whom something is judged worthy of punishment should be deprived of episcopal rank?

There are examples, with the apostolic see itself judging or confirming the judgments of others, of some who for certain faults were neither stripped of episcopal rank nor left entirely unpunished. Not to look for those most remote from our times, I will mention recent ones. Let Priscus, a bishop of the province of Caesarea, cry out: “Either the way to the primacy ought to have been open to me as to the others, or the episcopate ought not to have remained to me.” Let another bishop of the same province, Victor, cry out, who, left under the same penalty as Priscus, is received in communion by no bishop anywhere except in his own diocese; let him cry out, I say: “Either I ought to have communion everywhere, or I ought not to have communion even in my own places.” Let a third bishop of the same province, Laurentius, cry out, and cry out in exactly this man's words: “Either I ought to sit in the chair to which I was ordained, or I ought not to be a bishop.” But who would find fault with these decisions, except someone who pays too little attention to the fact that neither should everything be left unpunished nor everything punished in one way?

Since, then, the most blessed Pope Boniface, with pastoral and watchful caution, wrote in his letter, speaking of Bishop Antoninus, “if he has faithfully told us the order of events,” receive now the order of events that he kept quiet in his petition, and then what was done in Africa after the letter of that man of holy memory was read, and help, in the mercy of Christ, the people who beg your aid much more eagerly than he does, from whose restlessness they long to be freed. For either he himself or very frequent rumors threaten them with courts and public authorities and military forces, as though about to execute the sentence of the apostolic see, so that the wretched people, Catholic Christians, fear worse things from a Catholic bishop than they feared, when they were heretics, from the laws of the Catholic emperors. Do not let these things happen, I beg you by the blood of Christ, by the memory of the apostle Peter, who warned those set over Christian peoples not to lord it violently over the brothers. I commend both to the kindness of Your Holiness's love, the Catholic people of Fussala, my sons in Christ, and Bishop Antoninus, my son in Christ, because I love both. I am not angry with the people of Fussala because they bring to your ears a just complaint against me, that I inflicted on them a man not yet proved by me, not yet even matured by age, by whom they were so afflicted; nor do I wish harm to be done to him, to whose depraved desire I am the more opposed, the more sincere my love for him. Let both deserve your mercy: they, that they may not suffer evils; he, that he may not do them; they, that they may not hate the Catholic Church if they receive no help against a Catholic bishop from Catholic bishops, and above all from the apostolic see itself; he, that he may not bind himself with so great a crime as to make strangers to Christ those whom he is striving to make his own against their will.

For my part, I must confess to Your Blessedness, in this danger to both sides such fear and grief torment me that I am thinking of withdrawing from the office of bishop and giving myself up to laments befitting my error, if I see the Church of God laid waste through the man whose episcopate I supported through imprudence, and (may God himself avert it) perishing even with the ruin of the one who lays it waste. For, recalling what the apostle says, “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord,” I will judge myself, so that he who is to judge the living and the dead may spare me. But if you restore the members of Christ in that region from deadly fear and sorrow, and console my old age with this merciful justice, he who through you helps us in this tribulation, and who set you in that see, will repay you good for good both in the present life and in the life to come.

The Lord is good, and his mercy is spread everywhere, and it consoles us in his heart concerning your love. For how much he loves those who believe and hope in him and love him and one another, and what he keeps for them hereafter, he shows above all in this: that to the unbelieving, the despairing, and the perverse, whom he threatens with eternal fire with the devil if they persevere in their evil will to the end, he nevertheless bestows such great goods in this world, he who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust. This is said briefly so that more may be thought of; for who can count how many gifts and free favors the ungodly have in this life from him whom they despise? Among these is that great one, that by the examples of tribulations interposed, which like a good physician he mixes with the sweetness of this world, he warns them, if they are willing to heed, to flee from the wrath to come, and, while they are on the way, that is, in this life, to come to agreement with the word of God, which they have made their adversary by living badly. What, then, is not granted mercifully to men by the Lord God, from whom even tribulation is a benefit? For prosperity is the gift of God consoling, and adversity the gift of God warning. And if he grants these things, as I said, even to the wicked, what does he prepare for those who wait for him? Rejoice that by his grace you have been gathered into their number, bearing with one another in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. For there will not fail to be something for you to bear in one another, until the Lord so carries you, when death has been swallowed up in victory, that God may be all in all.

Dissensions ought never to be loved; yet sometimes they either arise from love or test love. For who is easily found who wishes to be rebuked? And where is that wise man of whom it was said, “Rebuke a wise man and he will love you”? Ought we, then, for that reason not to rebuke and correct a brother, lest he go securely toward death? For it often happens that he is saddened for the moment when he is rebuked, and resists and argues, and yet afterward considers within himself in silence, where there is no one but God and himself, and does not fear displeasing men because he is corrected, but fears displeasing God because he is not corrected; and thereafter he does not do what he was justly rebuked for, and loves the brother whom he perceived to be the enemy of his sin as much as he hates his sin. But if he is of the number of whom it was said, “Rebuke a fool and he will go on to hate you,” the dissension does not arise from his love, but it nevertheless exercises and tests the love of the one who rebukes him, because hatred is not paid back to him, but the love that compels the rebuke remains undisturbed, even when the one who was rebuked hates. But if the one who corrects wishes to return evil for evil to the one who is indignant at being corrected, he was not worthy to correct, but plainly worthy to be corrected himself. Do this, so that resentments may not arise among you, or, if they arise, may be destroyed at once by a very speedy peace. Take more pains to agree with one another than to refute one another; for just as vinegar corrupts the vessel if it stays there too long, so anger corrupts the heart if it lasts into another day. Do these things, then, and the God of peace will be with us; praying at the same time for us too, that we may eagerly fulfil the good things we advise.