Letters 220.1–224.3

I could never have found a more faithful man, or one with readier access to your ears, to carry a letter of mine than the one the Lord has now provided: the servant and minister of Christ, the deacon Paul, very dear to us both. So I may say something to you, not about your power and the rank you hold in this evil world, nor about the safety of your corruptible and mortal flesh, since that too is passing and how long it will last is always uncertain, but about that salvation which Christ promised us. For this reason he was dishonored and crucified here, to teach us to despise rather than love the goods of this world, and to love and hope from him for what he showed in his resurrection; for he has risen from the dead and “dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him.”

I know there is no lack of people who love you according to the life of this world and give you advice according to it, sometimes useful, sometimes useless, because they are human beings and are wise, as far as they can be, for the present, not knowing what will happen the next day. But according to God, so that your soul may not perish, no one easily gives you counsel; not because there are none who would do so, but because it is hard to find a time when they can speak of these things with you. For I too have always wished, and never found, the place or the time to do with you what I ought to do with a man whom I love dearly in Christ. You know in what state you saw me at Hippo when you deigned to come to me: I could hardly speak, worn out by bodily weakness. Now then, my son, listen to me at least as I talk with you by letter. In your times of danger I could never send you one, thinking of the danger to the bearer and taking care that my letter should not reach those I did not want it to reach. So I ask you to forgive me if you think I was more afraid than I should have been; still, I have said what I feared.

Listen to me, then, or rather to the Lord our God through the ministry of my weakness. Remember what you were like while your first wife, of religious memory, was still in the body, and how, at her recent death, the vanity of this world filled you with horror and how you longed for the service of God. We know, we are witnesses, what you said to us at Tubunae about your mind and purpose; only my brother Alypius and I were there with you. I do not think the earthly cares that now fill you have been strong enough to wipe this entirely from your memory. You wanted, of course, to give up all the public affairs that occupied you, to withdraw into holy leisure and to live the life that the servants of God, the monks, live. And what called you back from doing it, except that you considered, when we showed you, how much what you were doing would benefit the churches of Christ, if you did it with this sole intention: that they, defended from the attacks of the barbarians, might lead a quiet and peaceful life, as the apostle says, in all godliness and chastity, while you sought nothing from this world except what was necessary to sustain your life and that of your household, girded with the belt of the most chaste continence and, amid bodily arms, more safely and strongly protected by spiritual arms?

While we were rejoicing that you held to this purpose, you sailed and married a wife. The sailing was obedience, which according to the apostle you owed to the higher powers; but you would not have married, had you not abandoned the continence you had taken up and been overcome by desire. When I learned this, I confess, I was struck dumb with amazement. Yet my grief was in some measure consoled when I heard that you had refused to marry her unless she first became a Catholic. And yet the heresy of those who deny the true Son of God has prevailed so far in your house that your daughter was baptized by them. And now, if what has been reported to us is not false (would that it were!), that even maidservants dedicated to God have been rebaptized by those same heretics, with what fountains of tears must so great an evil be lamented! People also say that your wife was not enough for you, but that you have been defiled by intercourse with some concubines or other; and perhaps they are lying.

These evils, so many and so great, open to all, which have followed upon your marriage: what am I to say of them? You are a Christian, you have a heart, you fear God. Consider for yourself what I do not wish to say, and you will find how many evils you ought to do penance for. I believe it is for this that the Lord spares you and frees you from all dangers, so that you may do it as it should be done, if only you listen to what is written: “Do not delay to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to day.” You say indeed that you have a just cause. I am not its judge, since I cannot hear both sides; but whatever your cause may be, which there is no need to inquire into or argue about now, can you deny before God that you would not have come into this necessity had you not loved the goods of this world? As the servant of God whom we knew you to be before, you ought to have despised them altogether and counted them as nothing: to take them when offered, so as to use them for godliness, but not to seek them when refused or entrusted to others in such a way that for their sake you were brought into this necessity, where, while vain things are loved, evil deeds are done, few indeed by you but many because of you; and where, while things are feared that do harm for a short time, if indeed they harm at all, things are done that truly do harm for eternity.

To say just one thing about these: who does not see that many men attach themselves to you to protect your power or safety, and that, even if all of them are faithful to you and no plots are feared from any of them, they still want to reach through you the goods that they too love not according to God but according to the world? And so you, who ought to have bridled and restrained your own desires, are forced to satisfy other people's. For this to happen, many things displeasing to God must be done. Nor even so are such desires satisfied; for they are more easily cut off in those who love God than they are ever satisfied in those who love the world. That is why divine Scripture says: “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away, and its desire; but whoever does the will of God abides forever, as God also abides forever.” When, then, will you be able, with so many armed men whose desire must be fostered and whose ferocity is feared, when, I say, will you be able, I do not say to satisfy the desire of those who love the world, which can in no way be done, but to feed it in some measure, so that all may not perish the more, unless you do what God forbids and threatens those who do it? Because of this you see so much laid waste that hardly anything of value can now be found to plunder.

And what shall I say of the devastation of Africa, which African barbarians are carrying out with no one resisting, while you, in your present state, are occupied with your own necessities and order nothing by which this calamity might be averted? Who would have believed, who would have feared, that with Boniface as count of the household troops and of Africa, stationed in Africa with so great an army and so much power, the man who as tribune with a few federate troops had pacified all those very peoples by fighting and frightening them, the barbarians would now have dared so much, advanced so far, laid waste so much, plundered so much, and turned so many places that were full of people into a desert? Who did not say that whenever you took up the power of count, the African barbarians would be not only subdued but even made tributaries of the Roman state? And now you see how far men's hope has been turned to its opposite. There is no need to speak with you longer about this, since you can think of more than we can say.

But perhaps you will answer that this should rather be laid to the charge of those who wronged you and repaid your dutiful virtues not with equal but with contrary treatment. These causes I cannot hear and examine; rather, look at and examine your own cause, which you know you have not with any men at all but with God. Since you live faithfully in Christ, you ought to fear offending him. For my part I look rather to higher causes: that Africa suffers such evils, men must lay to the charge of their own sins. Yet I do not want you to belong to the number of those, wicked and unjust, through whom God scourges with temporal punishments whom he wills. For to these unjust men themselves, if they are not corrected, he reserves eternal punishments, while justly using their malice to bring temporal evils on others. Look to God; consider Christ, who bestowed such great goods and endured such great evils. All who long to belong to his kingdom, and to live with him and under him always in happiness, love even their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and pray for those from whom they suffer persecution; and if ever they use painful severity for the sake of discipline, they do not lose the most sincere love. If, then, goods have been bestowed on you by the Roman Empire, though earthly and passing, because it too is earthly, not heavenly, and can bestow only what it has in its power, if, I say, goods have been conferred on you, do not repay evil for good; but if evils have been inflicted on you, do not repay evil for evil. Which of the two it is, I neither wish to discuss nor am able to judge; I speak to a Christian: do not repay either evil for good or evil for evil.

Perhaps you will say to me: “In such great necessity, what do you want me to do?” If you are asking my advice according to this world, how this passing safety of yours may be secure and your power and wealth either preserved as you now have them or even increased, I do not know what to answer you; for uncertain things cannot have certain counsel. But if you consult me according to God, so that your soul may not perish, and you fear the words of the Truth, who says, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul?”, then I certainly have something to say; I have counsel for you to hear from me. And what need is there for me to say anything other than what I said above: “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. For if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all things that are in the world are the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away, and its desire; but whoever does the will of God abides forever, as God also abides forever.” There is the counsel: seize it and act. Here let it be seen whether you are a brave man. Conquer the desires by which this world is loved; do penance for the past evils, when, conquered by those desires, you were dragged along by vain longings. If you accept this counsel, if you hold to it and keep it, you will both reach those certain goods and move among these uncertain things with the salvation of your soul.

But perhaps you will ask me again how you can do this when entangled in such great necessities of this world. Pray earnestly and say to God what you have in the psalm: “From my necessities deliver me.” For these necessities end when those desires are conquered. He who heard you, and us on your behalf, so that you were freed from so many and so great dangers of visible and bodily wars, where only this life, which must end some day, is in danger, while the soul does not perish unless it is held captive by evil desires, he will hear you so that you may conquer, invisibly and spiritually, the inner and invisible enemies, that is, those desires themselves; and so use this world as though not using it, to do good things with its goods, not to become evil. For they too are goods, and they are given to men only by him who has power over all things in heaven and on earth. But lest they be thought evil, they are given also to the good; lest they be thought great or supreme goods, they are given also to the wicked; and likewise they are taken away both from the good, to test them, and from the wicked, to torment them.

For who does not know, who is so foolish as not to see, that the health of this mortal body, the strength of corruptible limbs, victory over human enemies, temporal honor and power, and the other earthly goods of this kind are given both to the good and to the wicked, and are taken away both from the good and from the wicked? But the salvation of the soul with the immortality of the body, the virtue of righteousness, victory over hostile desires, and glory and honor and peace forever are given only to the good. Love these things, then; desire these; seek these in every way. To acquire and keep them, give alms, pour out prayers, practice fasting as far as you can without harm to your body. But do not love those earthly goods, however abundant they may be for you. Use them so as to do much good with them and no evil for their sake. For all such things will perish, but good works do not perish, even those done with perishing goods.

If you did not have a wife, I would tell you what we told you at Tubunae as well: to live in the chastity of continence. I would add what we then forbade: that you should now, as far as you could with the peace of human affairs kept safe, withdraw from these military matters and devote yourself, in the company of the saints, to the life you then longed to devote yourself to, where the soldiers of Christ fight in silence, not to kill men, but to overcome the principalities and powers and spiritual forces of wickedness, that is, the devil and his angels. For the saints conquer these enemies, whom they cannot see; and yet they conquer those they do not see by conquering the things they feel. But your wife is the obstacle that keeps me from urging you to that life, since without her consent you may not live in continence. For although you ought not to have married her after those words of yours at Tubunae, she, knowing nothing of them, married you innocently and simply. And would that you could persuade her to continence, so that you might render to God without hindrance what you know you owe! But if you cannot settle this with her, at least keep conjugal chastity, and ask God, who delivers you from your necessities, that what you cannot do now you may be able to do some day. Yet a wife does not hinder, or ought not to hinder, your loving God and not loving the world; your keeping faith in the very wars, if you must still be engaged in them, and seeking peace; your doing good works with the goods of the world and not doing evil works for the sake of the goods of the world. Love, by which I love you according to God and not according to this world, commanded me to write this to you, my dearly beloved son. And thinking of what is written, “Rebuke a wise man and he will love you; rebuke a fool and he will hate you the more,” I was surely bound to think of you not as a fool but as a wise man.

For a long time I was fearful and several times put off this venture of mine. But what chiefly gave me courage, as the saying goes, was Your Blessedness's kindness, proven to all; and as I considered it, I feared the more that I might be judged by the Lord proud for not asking, idle for not seeking, lazy for not knocking. I would have thought the mere wish of this kind enough for me, if I could not obtain its fruit. But since I know for certain that your holy mind, which Christ possesses, is ready not only to open the door of the divine word, which heavenly grace has opened to Your Reverence, to all who wish it, but even to persuade the unwilling not to be reluctant to enter, I will not delay Your Reverence's busy life with superfluous talk, but will briefly state the desire of my petition.

From my own case I infer that some of the clergy even of this very great city are unlearned; and how useful what I ask will be to that whole order I offer for Your Holiness to consider. For I presume that I too, unworthy as I am, will gain the privilege of all who earn this from your spiritual labors, my lord justly venerable and truly most blessed father. I beg your goodness, therefore, to deign to set out what heresies there have been and are since the Christian religion received the name of the promised inheritance; what errors they have introduced and introduce; what they have held and hold against the Catholic Church concerning the faith, the Trinity, baptism, penance, Christ as man, Christ as God, the resurrection, the New and Old Testaments, and absolutely everything in which they dissent from the truth; which of them even have baptism and which do not, and after whose baptism the Church does not rebaptize; how she receives those who come over; and what she answers to each by law, authority and reason.

Let Your Blessedness not think me so foolish as not to see how many huge volumes would be needed to refute all this. But that is not what I ask, for I do not doubt it has been done in many ways. Rather, I ask that the opinions of each heresy be set out briefly, concisely and in summary, and that what the Catholic Church holds against them be added, as much as suffices for instruction, so that, as from a kind of memorandum drawn from them all, anyone who wishes to know some objection or refutation more fully, completely and clearly may be sent on to the rich and magnificent volumes which, as is well known, various writers, and above all Your Reverence, have produced on this very matter. Such a reminder will suffice, I think, for the learned and the unlearned, the leisured and the busy, and for those promoted from anywhere to the ministry of the Church in any grade: the one who has read much will recall the same things briefly, and the ignorant will be instructed in summary, so that he may know what to hold, what to avoid, what to turn from; that he may not do what he should not, and may attain what he should do. And perhaps, if what I think is true, this small work, among your other magnificent ones, will not fail to bear witness to your crown even against the malicious minds and deceitful lips of slanderers, so that those who have a wider field for slander, hemmed in by strong boundaries of faith closed on every side, surrounded by every kind of weapon of truth, and struck down suddenly even by one many-formed javelin, may not dare to breathe out their deadly spirits.

I see how burdensome I am to a holy old man who is thinking of better things, planning greater ones, and bearing the complaints of the body. But I beg you by Christ the Lord, who granted you to share his wisdom without envy, to give this gift to the untaught of the Church, since you acknowledge yourself a debtor to the wise and the foolish, and can rightly and justly say: “See that I have not labored for myself alone but for all who seek the truth.” I could still offer many humble prayers and gather the ranks of the unlearned with me, but I preferred to rejoice already in you dictating rather than to occupy you any longer in reading.

When I received the letter of Your Charity, in which you asked me with most ardent zeal to write something brief on all the heresies that have sprung up against the teaching of the Lord and Savior since his coming, I wrote back at once at the first opportunity, through my son Philocalus, a leading citizen of Hippo, how difficult this is. Soon another opportunity has offered, by which I now write back and briefly show the difficulty of the task.

A certain Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, whom I myself saw with Saint Ambrose at Milan, wrote a book on this, not omitting the heresies that existed among the Jewish people before the Lord's coming; he listed twenty-eight of these, and after the Lord's coming one hundred and twenty-eight. Epiphanius, a bishop of Cyprus, widely and deservedly praised for his teaching of the Catholic faith, also wrote on this in Greek. He too collected the heresies of both periods, and included eighty. Since both wished to do what you ask of me, you see how far they differ from each other in the mere number of sects. This would surely not have happened unless one of them thought one thing a heresy and the other another. For we must not suppose that Epiphanius was ignorant of any that Philastrius knew, since Epiphanius stood out as far more learned than Philastrius; so that we should rather have to say that very many escaped Philastrius if he had included so many more and Epiphanius fewer. But without doubt, on the question of what a heresy is, the two did not think alike. And in truth it is altogether hard to define, and so, when we try to bring them all into a count, we must take care not to omit some although they are heresies, or to count some although they are not. Consider, then, whether I should perhaps send you Saint Epiphanius's book, for I think he spoke on this more learnedly than Philastrius. It could be translated into Latin more easily and conveniently at Carthage, so that you might rather provide us with what you ask of us.

I warmly commend the bearer. He is a subdeacon of our diocese, from the estate of the distinguished Orontius, a man very dear to us. I have also written to Orontius himself on his behalf and on behalf of his father, by whom he was adopted. When your Christian kindness has read that letter, I ask you to deign to support it with your intercession before the man I mentioned. I have also sent a man of the church with him, so that he may not find access to Your Holiness difficult; for I am not a little anxious about him, an anxiety from which the Lord, I hope, will free me through Your Charity's earnestness. I ask you also not to mind writing back to me how that Theodosius stands in the Catholic faith, through whom some Manichees were exposed, and how those stand whom we think were corrected after he exposed them. And if you have perhaps heard anything about the departure of the holy bishops, let me know. May you live to God.

I have received the one memorandum that Your Reverence deigned to send by the church's messenger; the one Your Blessedness said had been sent earlier by the honorable Philocalus has not yet reached me. Though I have always been conscious of my own sins, I now plainly recognize that my person is an obstacle to the whole Church in obtaining the gift I begged for. But I trust completely that he who deigned to blot out the crimes of the human race through the grace of his only Son will not let my sins prevail to the ruin of all, but rather, where sin abounded, will make grace abound the more, my lord justly venerable and truly most blessed holy father. I knew, and said beforehand, how difficult is the work that I humbly begged your kindness to provide for the instruction of us most unlearned people; but I trusted with a sincere heart in the abundance of the divine fountain that the Lord has given you.

For although Philastrius and Epiphanius, venerable bishops, are shown to have written something of this kind, which, among other things, or rather like everything, is no doubt unknown to me, I do not think they took the care and diligence to add to each opinion the answers against it and to set out the Church's rites; and then the work of each, whatever it is, perhaps does not have the brevity I desire. It is also useless to refer Greek eloquence to a man who has not even learned Latin well, since I asked not only for advice but also for help. And why should I remind Your Reverence of the difficulty, and even the obscurity, of translators, when you yourself judge this better and fully? Add to this that some heresies are known to have arisen even since their deaths, of which they made no mention.

For these reasons I take refuge in the special protection of your goodness, and with my voice, but with the desire of all, I appeal to that holy heart of goodness ever ready for mercy. Set aside foreign flavors, consider the text of my former letter, and do not refuse African bread, which our province usually has as its finest, seasoned too with heavenly manna, to one who knocks late but suffers hunger. For I certainly will not stop knocking until you grant that what the privilege of merit, which is none, does not obtain, at least untiring importunity may earn.

Since this opportunity of writing offered itself through the presbyter of Fussala, whom I commend to Your Charity, I reread your letter in which you ask me to write something about the heresies that have been able to arise since the Lord's coming in the flesh began to be proclaimed. I did this to see whether I ought now to undertake the work itself and send you something of it, in which you would see that it is the harder the shorter you want it done. But I could not do even this, hindered by cares that came upon me which I could not ignore at all; for they turned me aside even from what I had in hand.

This is where I am answering the books of Julian which he published, eight in number, after the four I answered before. When brother Alypius received them at Rome, he had not yet copied all of them when he did not want to miss an opportunity that offered, and by it sent me five, promising to send the other three soon and pressing me hard not to delay my reply. Compelled by his urging, I have had to slacken what I was doing so as not to fail either work, giving one the days and the other the nights, as far as I was spared by other business that keeps coming from every side. And I was doing something very necessary: I was revising my works, and if anything in them offended me or could offend others, I was setting out, partly by correcting and partly by defending, what could and should be read. I had already finished two volumes, having revised all my books, whose number I did not know, and I found them to be two hundred and thirty-two. The letters remained, then the sermons to the people, which the Greeks call homilies. I had already read most of the letters, but had dictated nothing on them yet, when these books of Julian began to occupy me as well; I have now begun to answer the fourth of them. When I have finished it and answered the fifth, if the other three have not arrived, I plan, if the Lord wills, to begin what you ask too, doing both together, this and the revision of my works, dividing the night and day hours between them.

I tell Your Holiness this so that, the more you desire to receive what you ask, the more ardently you may ask the Lord for help for me, by which I may serve your praiseworthy zeal and the benefit of those you think it will profit, my lord, sincerely most beloved brother. I commend the bearer again and the business for which he has gone there. When you learn with whom it must be handled, please do not mind helping; for we cannot abandon the needs of such men, who are not our tenants but, what is more, our brothers, and who belong to our care in the love of Christ. May you live to God.