Letters 231.1–234.8

You wished my reply to be the evidence that I received your letter gladly. Here I am replying, and yet I cannot show this by my reply, whether this one or any other, whether I write briefly or at great length; for what cannot be shown in words cannot be shown in few words or in many. I indeed speak little eloquently even when I speak much; but I would grant to no eloquent man at all that by any letter, of whatever kind or length, he could express the feeling your letter produced in me, which I cannot do, even if he could see it in my mind as I do. It remains, then, to show you what you wished to know in such a way that in my words you may feel even what they do not show. What, then, shall I say, except that I was delighted with your letter, very, very much? The repetition of this word is not repetition but as it were a perpetual saying; because it could not be said forever, it was at least repeated: for perhaps in this way what cannot be said can be said.

If someone here should ask what it was in your letter that delighted me so very much, whether its eloquence, I will answer: No. And he may answer: Then your praises. But to these too I will answer: No. And not because these are not in that letter: for there is so much eloquence there that it shines out most brilliantly that you were born with the finest talent and are well educated in such studies, and it is altogether full of my praises. “So,” someone says, “these things do not delight you?” Indeed they do; for my heart is not, as someone says, made of horn, so that I do not feel them or feel them without delight. These things too delight me; but compared with what I said delighted me very much, what are they? For your eloquence delights me because it is gravely sweet or sweetly grave. As for my praises, although I am certainly not delighted by all of them nor by everyone's, but by such as you thought me worthy of and from such men as you are, that is, those who love Christ's servants for Christ's sake, I cannot deny that I was delighted even by my praises in your letter.

Let grave and learned men decide what they think of that Themistocles, if I recall the man's name correctly, who, when at a banquet he refused to play the lyre, as the famous and learned men of Greece used to do, and was therefore thought rather uncultured, and had scorned that whole kind of pleasure, was asked: “What, then, do you enjoy hearing?” To which he is said to have answered: “My own praises.” Let them decide, then, with what aim and intention they believe he said it, or with what intention he did say it. For he was, by the standards of this world, a magnificent man; for when he had also been asked, “What, then, do you know?” he said, “How to make a small state great.” But as for what Ennius says, “All mortals long to be praised,” I think it partly to be approved and partly to be guarded against. For as truth is to be sought, which beyond doubt is alone praiseworthy even if it is not praised, so the vanity that easily creeps in with human praise is to be shunned. And this is it: when even the good things that are worthy of praise are not thought worth having unless a man is praised by men; or when each one wants to be much praised for things in himself that deserve little praise or even blame. Hence Horace, more watchful than Ennius, says: “Do you swell with love of praise? There are sure remedies that can restore you if you read the little book three times with purity.”

So he thought that the swelling from the love of human praise should be charmed away with healing words, like a serpent's bite. Accordingly the good Teacher taught us through his apostle that we should not live rightly and act rightly in order to be praised by men, that is, should not place the goal of our right conduct in men's praises, and yet should seek men's praise for the sake of those men themselves. For when the good are praised, it profits not those praised but those who praise. For the good, as far as they themselves are concerned, it is enough that they are good; but those for whom it is profitable to imitate the good are to be congratulated when they praise the good, since they thereby show that those whom they truly praise please them. So the apostle says in one place, “If I were pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ”; and the same man says in another place, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things,” but adding the reason: “not seeking what is profitable to me, but to many, that they may be saved.” See what he sought in the praise of men, where he also said: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is modest, whatever is chaste, whatever is holy, whatever is most lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any virtue, if there is any praise, think on these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” The other things he listed above he embraced under the name of virtue, saying “if there is any virtue”; but what he added, “whatever is of good repute,” he followed with another single fitting word, saying “if there is any praise.” So his saying, “If I were pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ,” must surely be taken as if he had said: “If I did the good things I do with human praise as their goal, I would be swelling with love of praise.” The apostle, then, wished to please all and rejoiced to please them, not those by whose praises he swelled in himself, but those whom, being praised, he built up in Christ. Why, then, should I not be delighted to be praised by you, since you are both a good man, so as not to deceive me, and you praise things that you love and that it is useful and wholesome to love, even if they are not in me? And this profits not only you but me too. For if they are not in me, I blush wholesomely and burn with desire that they may be. And so, the things I recognize as mine in your praise, I rejoice to have, and that they and I for their sake are loved by you; but the things I do not recognize, I long to attain, not only so that I may have them, but also so that those who love me sincerely may not always be deceived in praising me.

See how much I have said, and I have not yet said what it was that delighted me in your letter far more than your eloquence, far more than my praises. What do you think it is, good man, except that I have made a man such as you my friend even without seeing you, if indeed I should say “without seeing” one whose mind, not body, I saw in your very letter, where I believed about you not my brothers, as before, but myself? For who you were I had already heard, but what you were toward me I did not yet know. From this friendship of yours I have no doubt that even my praises, with what aim they delight me I have said enough, will profit the Church of Christ much more richly, since you so possess, so read, so love and so commend my labors in defense of the gospel against the remnants of the impious demon-worshipers, that I become the better known in them the nobler you yourself are; for, illustrious and renowned as you are, you make them illustrious and renowned where they were hidden, and where you see they can be of use you will not let them be wholly unknown. If you ask how I know this, so you appeared to me in your letter. From this see how much that letter could delight me, if, thinking well of me, you consider how much the gains of Christ delight me. And now, when you tell me that you yourself, who, as you write, could receive the laws of Christ from your parents, from your grandfathers, and down to the latest offspring of your family, have nevertheless been helped against pagan rites by these same labors of mine as never before, do I think it a small thing how much good our writings, commended and spread by you, may bring to others, and to how many, how distinguished, how easily and how wholesomely, and through them to the rest whom such things suit? Or, thinking of this, can I be filled with the pleasure of small or middling joys?

Since, then, I could not explain in words how great a delight I took from your letter, I have said what delighted me in it. What I could not say adequately, that is, how much it delighted me, I leave you to guess. Take, then, my son, take, good man, and Christian not on the surface but in Christian love, take, I say, also the books of my Confessions that you wanted. There look at me, so that you may not praise me beyond what I am; there believe not others about me but me; there pay attention to me and see what I was in myself, through myself. And if anything in me pleases you, praise there with me him whom I wished to be praised for me, and not me; for he made us and not we ourselves; and we had ruined ourselves, but he who made us remade us. And when you find me there, pray for me, that I may not fail but be made perfect; pray, my son, pray. I feel what I am saying; I know what I am asking. Let it not seem unworthy of you and as if beyond your merits; you will cheat me of a great help if you do not do it. Not only you, but all who have come to love me from your mouth, pray for me. Tell them that I asked this, or, if you attribute much to us, consider that we commanded what we ask; and yet grant it to us asking, or obey us commanding. Pray for us. Read the letters of God, and you will find that our very rams, the apostles, asked this of their sons or commanded it of their hearers. For my part, since you asked this of me for yourself, how much I do it he sees who hears, who saw that I was doing it even before; but return love's exchange in this matter too. We are your leaders; you are God's flock. Consider and see that our dangers are greater than yours, and pray for us. For this benefits both us and you, that we may render a good account of ourselves to the chief of shepherds and head of us all, and may likewise escape the flatteries of this world, more dangerous than its troubles, unless its peace serves the end for which the apostle bade us pray, that is, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and love. For if godliness and love are lacking, what is tranquillity and quiet from those troubles and the other evils of the world but the material, or the enticement, or the aid of luxury and perdition? So that we may have a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and love, which I pray for you, pray for us, wherever you are, wherever we are; for there is nowhere that he is not whose we are.

I have also sent other books, which you did not ask for, so as not to do only what you asked: On Faith in Things Not Seen, On Patience, On Continence, On Providence, and one large one On Faith, Hope and Love. If you read all of these while you are in Africa, send me your judgment on them; either send it to us, or leave it there to be sent to us by the aged lord Aurelius. Though wherever you may be, we hope for your letters from there, and you for ours from here, while we can. I received most gratefully what you sent, by which you deigned to help both my health, bodily though it is, since you surely want me to be free for God without the hindrance of ill health, and our library, so that there may be means to provide or restore books. May the Lord repay you both here and in the world to come with the good things he has prepared for such as he willed you to be. I ask you to greet again for me the pledge of peace deposited with you, most dear to us both, as I greeted it before.

If perhaps those among you who are Catholic Christians sent me such a letter, I only wonder that they did so not in their own name rather than in the name of the council. But if truly all or almost all the men of the council have deigned to write to me, I wonder that you wrote “to father” and “greeting in the Lord,” since your superstitious worship of idols is very well known to me, to my great grief, idols against which your temples are more easily shut than your hearts, or rather which are shut up not more in your temples than in your hearts; unless perhaps you are at last thinking with prudent consideration of that very salvation which is in the Lord, by which you wished to greet me. For if it is not so, I ask you, how have I hurt, how have I offended your goodwill, that you thought I should be mocked rather than honored by the heading of your letter, my praiseworthy lords and dearly beloved brothers?

For when I read what you wrote, “To father Augustine, eternal salvation in the Lord,” I was suddenly raised to such hope that I believed you had either already turned to the Lord himself and to that eternal salvation, or desired to be turned through our ministry. But when I read the rest, my mind grew cold. I asked the bearer of the letter, however, whether you were already Christians or wished to be. After I learned from his answer that you were in no way changed, I grieved the more deeply that you thought the name of Christ, to whom you see the whole world now subject, should not only be rejected by you but also mocked in us. For I could not think of any other lord according to whom a bishop could be called father by you except the Lord Christ; and if there were any doubt about the interpretation of your meaning here, it would be removed by the closing of the letter, where you plainly put: “We wish that you, lord, may always rejoice in God and his Christ for many years among your clergy.” When all this was read and examined, what else could occur to me, or can occur to anyone, but that these things were written either with a truthful or with a deceitful mind? But if you write these things with a truthful mind, who has barred your way to this truth? Who has strewn rough thorns in it? What enemy has set the steep rocks in your path? Finally, who has shut the door of the church to you who wish to enter, so that you will not have the same salvation with us in the same Lord through whom you greet us? But if you write these things deceitfully and mockingly, do you then lay your business on me to look after, and at the same time dare, not to exalt with due veneration the name of him through whom I can do anything, but to toss it about with flattering insult?

Know, dearest friends, that I say this with an unspeakable trembling of heart for you; for I know how much heavier and more ruinous a case you will have before God if I say these things to you in vain. All that our forebears remembered to have happened to the human race in past times and handed down to us, and all that we too see and hand down to posterity, insofar as it concerns seeking and holding the true religion, divine Scripture has not kept silent about; but everything passes exactly as it was foretold that it would pass. You certainly see the Jewish people torn from their homeland and scattered and spread over almost all lands; and the origin of that people, its growth, the loss of its kingdom and its dispersion everywhere happened as they were foretold. You certainly see that the word of God and the law, coming forth from that people through Christ, who was wonderfully born of them, has taken hold of and held the faith of all nations; we read all this foretold just as we see it. You certainly see many cut off from the root of the Christian fellowship, which is spread through the world by sure propagation through the sees of the apostles and the successions of bishops, glorying under the Christian name only in the appearance of their origin, like withering branches; these we call heresies and schisms. All was foreseen, foretold, written. You certainly see the temples of idols partly fallen without repair, partly torn down, partly closed, partly converted to other uses, and the idols themselves broken or burned or shut up or destroyed; and the very powers of this world which once persecuted the Christian people for the sake of idols conquered and tamed, not by Christians fighting back but by Christians dying, and turning their attacks and laws against those same idols for which they used to kill Christians; and the highest summit of the noblest empire laying down its diadem and making supplication at the tomb of Peter the fisherman.

All these things the divine Scriptures, which have now come into everyone's hands, testified long ages ago would happen; we rejoice that all these things are happening with a faith the firmer the greater the authority with which we find them foretold in the holy writings. Shall we then, I beg you, shall we think that the judgment of God alone, which we read in the same writings will come between believers and unbelievers, when all those other things have come as they were foretold, shall we think that God's judgment alone will not come? No indeed, it will come, as all those things have come. Nor will there be any man of our times who can defend himself at that judgment for his unbelief, since Christ is sung by the just man for fairness and the perjurer for fraud, by the king for rule and the soldier for battle, by the husband for governing and the wife for submission, by the father for commanding and the son for obedience, by the master for lordship and the slave for service, by the humble for devotion and the proud for rivalry, by the rich man to give and the poor man to receive, by the drunkard at his cup and the beggar at the door, by the good man to do good and the bad man to deceive, by the Christian as worshiper and the pagan as flatterer: all sing of Christ, and with what will and what mouth they sing, they will without doubt give account to him of whom they sing.

There is something invisible, from which as Creator and Beginning are all things that we see: highest, eternal, unchangeable, and utterable by none except itself. There is that by which the very summit of majesty utters and proclaims itself, the Word, not unequal to the one who begets and utters it, by which he who begets the Word is shown. There is a certain Holiness, sanctifier of all that is done in holiness, the inseparable and undivided communion of that unchangeable Word through which that Beginning is uttered and of the Beginning itself, which utters itself by an equal Word. But who could behold this whole, which I have tried to say without saying and not to say in saying, who could behold it with a most serene and pure mind, and draw happiness from that beholding, and, failing in some way into what it beholds, forget itself and pass into that by whose vision it is worthless in its own eyes, which is to be clothed with immortality and to obtain the eternal salvation with which you deign to greet me? Who could do this, except one who, confessing his sins, has leveled all the empty swellings of his pride and laid himself down meek and humble to receive God as teacher?

Since, then, we must first be brought down from the vanity of pride to humility, so that rising from there we may hold a solid height, this could not have been inspired in us more magnificently or more gently, so that our fierceness might be calmed not by force but by persuasion, unless that Word through which God the Father makes himself known to the angels, which is his power and wisdom, which could not be seen by a human heart blinded by desire for visible things, had deigned to act and show his person in a man, so that man might fear to be lifted up by human pride more than to be humbled by God's example. And so it is not Christ adorned with an earthly kingdom, nor Christ rich in earthly wealth, nor Christ shining with any earthly happiness, but Christ crucified who is preached through the whole world: at which the peoples of the proud first laughed, and the remnant still laughs; but at first a few believed, now whole peoples, because then, when Christ crucified was preached, to support the faith of the few and against the mockery of the peoples, the lame walked, the dumb spoke, the deaf heard, the blind saw, the dead rose. So at last earthly pride perceived that nothing on earth is more powerful than divine humility, so that even the most wholesome human humility might be protected against the pride that mocks it by the patronage of imitating God.

Wake up at last, my brothers and my fellow citizens of Madaura; God has given me this occasion of writing to you. In the business of brother Florentius, by whom you sent your letter, I have been present and helped as far as I could, as God willed; but it was a business that could easily have been completed even without my help, for almost all the people of his house who are at Hippo know Florentius and greatly grieve at his bereavement. But a letter was sent me by you, so that my letter would not be impudent if, taking the occasion from you, it said something about Christ to worshipers of idols. But I beg you, if you did not name him in vain in your letter to me, let me not have written this to you in vain. But if you wished to mock me, fear him whom the proud world first mocked when he was judged, and now, subjected, awaits as judge. For the love of my heart toward you, expressed as far as I could in this page, will be a witness; it will be a witness against you at the judgment of him who will confirm those who believe in him and confound unbelievers. May the one true God free you from all the vanity of this world and turn you to himself, my praiseworthy lords and dearly beloved brothers.

They say one of the ancients used to say that for those who were fully persuaded that they wished to be nothing other than good men, the rest of learning was easy. This saying (for, if I recall correctly, it is Socratic) had long been preceded by a much more ancient prophetic one, which teaches men briefly and at once not only that one should wish to be nothing other than good, but also how one becomes good: “You shall love,” it says, “the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Whoever is persuaded of this has not the rest of learning easy, but has the whole of it, at least of what is useful and wholesome. For there are many teachings, if indeed they should be called teachings, either superfluous or harmful. Christ, bearing witness to the books of the ancients, says: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Therefore, since I seem to have seen, as in a mirror of your conversation with me, that you wish to be nothing other than a good man, I venture to ask how you believe God, than whom nothing is better and from whom the human mind draws its goodness, is to be worshiped; for that you believe he is to be worshiped I already know. I also ask what you think of Christ. That you do not hold him cheap I have noticed; but I want to know, not, I think, impudently, whether you think the happy life can be reached by that way alone which he showed, and for some reason do not neglect but postpone going on it, or whether you think there is another way or ways to so rich a possession, desirable above all, and believe you are already entering on one of them. For I love you for the reason I gave above, and I think, not rashly, that I am loved by you; and among those who know each other with goodwill no conversation is more fruitful to spend, to ask for, to receive or to return than on how we may be good and happy.

I am blessed and greatly illumined by the pure light of your shining virtue, since you have thought me worthy to be honored with your divine address. But you lay on me a heavy burden and a most difficult task of replying, venerable lord, especially by your questions, and at this time, in explaining such questions by the judgment of my opinion, that is, from a pagan man. For indeed it is abundantly clear what has partly long since been agreed between us, or is now again agreed more and more by letters: by precepts, I will not say only Socratic, nor yours, truly best of Romans, the prophetic or the few from Jerusalem, but also Orphic, Agetic and Trismegistic, born far earlier in those more ancient and almost still rude ages with the gods as their authors, and divinely shown to the whole world, divided into three by sure boundaries, before Europe took its name, or Asia received it, or Libya possessed it, that a good man, such as, by heaven, you will be and have been, unless you grant me Xenophon's fiction as the pattern of a composed story, I have still heard of, read of, seen no one since the memory of men, or certainly after one none (I say this with God as witness, safely and surely), except you, who strive always to acknowledge God, and are able most easily to follow him in purity of mind and body, the heaviness cast away, and to hold him in the hope of a perfect conscience with no doubtful belief.

But by what way this can be accomplished, it is more fitting that you should not be ignorant of it and discourse on it to me, without anything brought in from outside, than that you should learn it from me, most esteemed lord, since, I confess, I am not yet sufficient to set out for the seat of this good, as my priesthoods require; I am still gathering provisions for the journey, if indeed I can. But what has been handed down holily and anciently, which I hold and guard as best I can, I will tell in a few words. The better way to God is that by which a good man, proved by pious, just, pure, chaste, true words and deeds without any boasting sought from changing times, and surrounded by the company of the gods, the powers of God having been earned, that is, the virtues of that one, universal, incomprehensible, ineffable and untiring Creator having been fulfilled, whom, as is your custom, you call angels, or something else after God or with God, either from God or toward God, hastens to go with the intention of soul and mind. It is the way, I say, by which those who are purified by the pious precepts of the ancient rites and by most pure expiations, and refined by abstinent observances, hasten on, steadfast in soul and body.

But about Christ, the God of the flesh and the spirit of your belief, through whom you are confident of going to that highest, blessed, true Father of all, most esteemed lord father, I do not dare and am not able to express what I think, because I believe it most difficult to define what I do not know. But as you once deigned to make known to me, the admirer of your virtues, what you love, I have enough as testimony of a good life, which I keep so as not to displease you, who daily commend yourself to God through yourself and your soul. You surely understand that I too love with delight, since I take and hold the rule and line of the judgment you have formed of me. But above all I ask you to grant pardon to my very slight opinion, and readily to indulge my speech to you, slack and perhaps unfitting, since you compelled it; and, if I deserve it, to deign to instruct me on what you think of these things, or what you feel, by your holy writings, sweeter, as someone says, no longer than honey but than nectar. May you enjoy the goodness of God, lord father, and please God with perpetual holiness, as must be.