Letters 39.1–43.11

Last year, by our brother Asterius the subdeacon, I sent Your Worthiness a letter, readily paying the duty of greeting, and I think it was delivered to you. Now too, by my holy brother Praesidius the deacon, I beg you first to remember me, and then to hold the bearer of this letter commended, to know that he is very dear to me, and to cherish and support him in whatever necessity may require; not that by Christ's gift he lacks anything, but because he most eagerly seeks the friendship of good men and thinks that in forming such ties he has gained the greatest benefit. Why he has sailed to the West you will be able to learn from his own account.

We, settled in a monastery, are shaken by various waves on this side and that and endure the troubles of a sojourn in a foreign land. But we believe in him who said, 'Take courage; I have overcome the world,' that by his gift and protection we shall gain the victory against the enemy, the devil. I beg you to greet with my respects our holy and venerable brother, Pope Alypius. The holy brothers who are eager to serve the Lord with us in the monastery greet you warmly. May Christ our almighty God keep you safe and mindful of me, my lord, truly holy and revered pope.

I thank you that in return for a greeting written at the foot of a letter you have sent me a full letter, but much shorter than I would wish to receive from such a man as you, from whom no discourse is long, however much time it takes. And so, although we are surrounded by huge cares over the business of others, and secular business at that, I would not easily pardon the brevity of your letter, if I did not consider with how many fewer words of mine it was a reply. Therefore, I beg you, enter on this conversation by letter with us, so that bodily absence may not have much power to separate us, although we are joined in the Lord by unity of spirit, even if we rest from the pen and keep silent. And indeed the books you have produced from the Lord's granary show you to us almost entirely. For if we do not know you because we have not seen the face of your body, in that way you do not know yourself either, for you do not see it. But if you are known to yourself for no other reason than that you know your own mind, we too know it not slightly in your writings, in which we bless the Lord that he has given you, such as you are, to yourself and to us and to all the brothers who read your works.

Not long ago a certain book of yours came into our hands among other things. What its title is we do not yet know; for the codex itself did not display it on the first page, as is usual. But the brother with whom it was found said that it was called Epitaphium. We would believe that you were pleased to have this name given to it, if we had read there the lives or writings only of those already dead. But since the works of many who were living both when it was written and still now are mentioned there, we wonder why you either gave it this title or are believed to have given it. We fully approve the book itself as usefully written by you.

In your exposition of the apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians, too, we have found something that troubles us greatly. For if lies told as if from a sense of duty are admitted into the holy Scriptures, what authority will remain in them? What sentence will at last be brought forward from those Scriptures by whose weight the wickedness of contentious falsehood may be crushed? For as soon as you have brought it forward, if your opponent thinks otherwise, he will say that in the passage brought forward the writer lied from some honourable motive of duty. For where will this not be possible, if in that narrative which the apostle began by saying, 'What I am writing to you, behold, before God, I am not lying,' it could be believed and affirmed that he lied in the place where he said of Peter and Barnabas, 'When I saw that they were not walking straight toward the truth of the gospel'? For if they were walking straight, he lied; and if he lied there, where did he tell the truth? Or will he be thought to have told the truth where he says what the reader thinks, but when something meets the reader against his own opinion, it will be put down to a dutiful lie? For reasons will not be lacking why he may be thought not only to have been able, but even obliged, to lie, if place is granted to this rule. There is no need to argue this case at length, especially with you, to whose wise foresight a word is enough. Far be it from me to presume to try to enrich your talent, golden by divine gift, with my small coins; nor is anyone better fitted than you to correct that work.

Nor need I teach you how to understand what the same apostle says: 'To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win the Jews,' and the rest that is said there out of merciful compassion, not deceitful pretence. For one who nurses a sick man becomes as one sick, not when he falsely claims to have a fever, but when with a sympathizing mind he considers how he would wish to be served if he himself were sick. For he was certainly a Jew, and when he became a Christian he had not abandoned the sacraments of the Jews, which that people had received fittingly and lawfully at the time when it was right. And so he undertook to celebrate them even when he was already an apostle of Christ, but in order to teach that they were not harmful to those who wished to keep them as they had received them from their parents through the law, even when they had believed in Christ, provided they did not now place in them their hope of salvation, since through the Lord Jesus the very salvation signified by those sacraments had come. And for that reason he held that they were in no way to be imposed on the Gentiles, lest by a heavy and unnecessary burden they should turn back from the faith those who were unaccustomed to them.

So he did not correct Peter because he kept the traditions of his fathers; if Peter wished to do that, he would do it neither falsely nor unfittingly, for though they were now superfluous, being customary they did no harm. He corrected him because he was compelling the Gentiles to live like Jews, which he could not do unless he observed those things as though they were still necessary for salvation even after the Lord's coming. This the truth strongly opposed through the apostleship of Paul. Nor was the apostle Peter ignorant of this, but he did it fearing those who were of the circumcision. Thus he was truly corrected, and Paul narrated true things, lest holy Scripture, published for the faith of later generations, should, once the authority of a lie is admitted, totter and waver as wholly doubtful. For it neither can nor should be set out in a letter how great and how inextricable are the evils that follow if we grant this; but it could be shown conveniently and with less danger if we spoke together face to face.

This, then, of the Jews' Paul had given up, which was evil in them: first, that being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God; next, that after the passion and resurrection of Christ, when the sacrament of grace according to the order of Melchizedek had been given and made manifest, they still thought the old sacraments must be celebrated not by the custom of a festival but by necessity for salvation; and yet if they had never been necessary, the Maccabean martyrs would have died for them fruitlessly and in vain; lastly, that the Jews persecuted the Christian preachers of grace as enemies of the law. These and such errors and faults he says he counted loss and dung that he might gain Christ, not the observances of the law if they were celebrated by ancestral custom, as they were celebrated by him without any necessity for salvation, not as the Jews thought they must be celebrated, nor by deceitful pretence, which he had rebuked in Peter. For if he celebrated those sacraments because he pretended to be a Jew in order to win them, why did he not also sacrifice with the Gentiles, since to those too who were without law he became as without law, that he might win them also? Was it not because he did the one as a Jew by birth, and said the other not in order to pretend falsely to be what he was not, but because he felt that he must help them mercifully, as if he himself laboured under the same error, not with the cunning of a liar but with the feeling of one who suffers with them? So in that same place he added generally: 'To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak,' so that the conclusion which follows, 'I became all things to all men, that I might win all,' should be understood as referring to this, that he showed compassion for each one's weakness as if it were his own. For when he said, 'Who is weak, and I am not weak?' he did not wish it to be understood that he pretended another's weakness rather than shared his pain.

Therefore take up, I beg you, a frank and truly Christian severity joined with love to correct and amend that work, and 'sing a palinode,' as the saying is. For the truth of Christians is incomparably more beautiful than the Helen of the Greeks. For our martyrs fought for it more bravely against this Sodom than those heroes fought for her against Troy. I do not say this so that you may recover the eyes of your heart, which God forbid you should have lost, but that you may turn them to it; for though you have them sound and wakeful, by some dissembling or other you have turned them away so as not to attend to the adverse consequences that follow if it is once believed that the writer of the divine books could honourably and piously lie in any part of his work.

I had written you a letter from here once before, which was not delivered, because the person to whom I had given it to carry did not go. From it this occurred to me as I dictated this one, which I ought not to leave out here either: that if your opinion is different and better, you will gladly pardon my fear. For if you think otherwise and think truly (for unless it is true it cannot be better), then my error, if not no fault, is at least no great fault, since it favours truth, if truth can rightly favour a lie in anyone.

As for what you were good enough to write back about Origen, I already knew that not only in church writings but in all writings we should approve and praise what is right and true that we find, and disapprove and censure what is false and wrong. But what I desired, and still desire, from your wisdom and learning is that you make known to us the very errors by which that great man is shown to have departed from the true faith. In the book, too, in which you listed all the church writers you could remember and their writings, it would have been more convenient, I think, if, after naming those whom you knew to be heretics (since you did not wish to pass over even them), you had added in what respects they were to be avoided; although you have also passed over some, and I should like to know with what intention this was done. Or if you did not wish to overload that volume by adding, after naming the heretics, in what respects Catholic authority had condemned them, I ask that it not be burdensome to your literary labour, by which through the grace of our Lord you have kindled and helped not a little the studies of the saints in the Latin tongue, to do what brotherly love lays on you through my lowliness: that, if your occupations allow, you publish in one short book a summary of the perverse teachings of all the heretics who up to this time have tried to distort the straightness of the Christian faith by shamelessness or obstinacy, for the information of those who either have no leisure because of other business or are unable, because of a foreign tongue, to read and learn so much. I would ask you at length, if this were not usually a sign of one who presumes too little on love. Meanwhile I warmly commend to your kindness this Paul, our brother in Christ, to whose good reputation in our regions we bear good witness before God.

Our mouth has been filled with joy and our tongue with exultation, since your letter tells us that your holy plan has, with the help of the Lord who inspired it, been carried into effect concerning all our ordained brothers, and especially concerning the preaching of the presbyters, which is poured out to the people in your presence. Through their tongues your Charity cries with a louder voice in the hearts of men than they do in their ears. Thanks be to God! For what better can we bear in mind, utter with the mouth, or express with the pen than 'Thanks be to God'? Nothing can be said more briefly, heard more gladly, understood more grandly, or done more fruitfully. Thanks be to God, who has enriched you with so faithful a heart toward your sons, and has brought to light what you had in the depth of your soul, where the human eye does not penetrate, by granting you not only to will well but also the means by which what you willed could appear. So let it be, let it be. Let these works shine before men; let them see, rejoice, and glorify the Father who is in heaven; may you delight in such men in the Lord; may he deign to hear you praying for them, whom you do not disdain to hear speaking through them. Let them go, let them walk, let them run in the way of the Lord; let the small be blessed with the great, gladdened by those who say to them, 'We will go into the house of the Lord'; let those go before and these follow, imitators of them as they are of Christ; let the path of the holy ants be busy, let the works of the holy bees be fragrant; let fruit be borne in patience, with the saving gift of persevering to the end; and may the Lord not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear, but with the temptation also make a way of escape, that we may be able to endure it.

Pray for us, you who are worthy to be heard; for you draw near to God with so great a sacrifice of most sincere love and of his praise in your works. Pray that these things may shine for us too, since he to whom you pray knows with how great joy of ours they shine for you. These are our prayers; these, the multitude of comforts according to the multitude of sorrows in our heart, gladden our soul. So it is, because so it was promised; so it will be, what remains, as it was promised. We beseech you, by him who gave you these things and through you poured this blessing on the people you serve, to order that any particular sermons of theirs you choose be written down, corrected, and sent to us. For I too am not neglecting what you commanded; and I am waiting to know what you think of Tyconius's seven rules or keys, as I have often written already. We warmly commend brother Hilarinus, chief physician and leading citizen of Hippo. As for brother Romanus, we know what you are doing, and nothing need be asked except that the Lord help you on his behalf. Amen.

Could even this have been hoped for or expected: that through brother Severus we should have to demand a reply which your Charity has not returned to us, though we have waited so long and so ardently? Why are we forced to thirst through two summers, and those in Africa? What more shall I say? O you who give away your own goods daily, pay what you owe! Or perhaps, because I had heard that you were writing against the worshippers of demons and had shown that I greatly desired that work, you have put off sending us letters for so long because you wished to finish it and send it? If only, by so rich a table, you would at last receive my fast from your pen, which has now lasted a year! If it is not yet ready, we will not stop complaining unless, while you are completing that, you refresh us in the meantime. Greet the brothers, especially Romanus and Agilis. From here those who are with us greet you, and they are only a little angry with us if they love you only a little.

The apostle Paul indeed said: 'Avoid a heretic after one rebuke, knowing that such a man is perverted and sins and is condemned by himself.' But those who defend their opinion, however false and perverse, with no stubborn animosity, especially an opinion which they did not produce by their own presumptuous boldness but received from parents who had been led astray and fallen into error, and who seek the truth with careful concern, ready to be corrected when they find it, are by no means to be counted among heretics. If I did not believe you to be such, I would perhaps send you no letter; although, while we warn that even the heretic himself, however swollen with hateful pride and mad with the obstinacy of evil contention, is to be avoided lest he deceive the weak and the little ones, we do not refuse to correct him by whatever means we can. Hence it is that we have written even to some of the leading Donatists, not letters of communion, which for a long time now, because of their perversity, they do not receive from the Catholic unity spread throughout the whole world, but private letters such as we may use even toward pagans. Though they have sometimes read them, they have either been unwilling or, as is more likely, unable to answer them. In this we thought we had sufficiently fulfilled the duty of love, which the Holy Spirit teaches that we owe not only to our own but to all, saying to us through the apostle: 'May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.' He also warns in another place that those who think otherwise should be corrected in gentleness: 'In case,' he says, 'God may grant them repentance to know the truth, and they may come to their senses out of the snares of the devil, by whom they have been taken captive to do his will.'

I have said this first, so that no one may think I have sent you a letter with more impudence than prudence, and have wished in this way to treat with you about the business of your soul because you are not of our communion; though if I wrote to you about the business of a farm or the settling of some money dispute, no one perhaps would blame me. So dear is this world to men, and so cheap have they become to themselves! This letter, then, will be a witness for my defence at the judgement of God, who knows with what intention I have acted, and who said: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.'

As you will be good enough to remember, then, when we were in your city and were discussing with you some matters concerning the communion of Christian unity, certain records were produced by your party, in which it was read out that about seventy bishops once condemned Caecilian, bishop of the church of Carthage, of our communion, together with his colleagues and those who ordained him. There the case of Felix of Aptunga was also aired with much more ill will and accusation than the rest. When all these had been read through, we answered that it was not surprising if the men who then made that schism thought that those against whom they had been stirred up by rivals and abandoned men should be rashly condemned in their absence, without a hearing, and not without drawing up records; but that we had other church records, in which Secundus of Tigisis, who then held the primacy in Numidia, left to God's judgement traitors who were present and confessed, and allowed them to remain in their episcopal sees as they were; and their names are counted among the condemners of Caecilian, while Secundus himself presided over that same council, where, through the votes of those whom he had pardoned when they were present and confessed, he condemned absent men as traitors.

We then said that some time after the ordination of Majorinus, whom they set up against Caecilian with wicked crime, raising altar against altar and tearing apart the unity of Christ with frenzied discord, they asked Constantine, then emperor, for bishops as judges, to judge as impartial arbiters their disputes which had arisen in Africa and were breaking the bond of peace. After this was done, in the presence of Caecilian and of those who had sailed to accuse him, with Miltiades, then bishop of the city of Rome, as judge, together with his colleagues whom the emperor had sent at the Donatists' request, nothing could be proved against Caecilian; and so he was confirmed in the episcopate, and Donatus, who was then present against him, was condemned. When this was done, and they all persisted in the obstinacy of a most criminal schism, the emperor afterwards had the same case examined more carefully and settled at Arles; but they appealed from the church's judgement for Constantine to hear the case. When it came to that, with both parties present, Caecilian was judged innocent, and they withdrew defeated, and yet remained in the same perversity. Nor was the case of Felix of Aptunga neglected, but at the same emperor's command he too was cleared by proconsular records.

But because we were only saying all this and not also reading it, we seemed to you to be doing less than you expected of our insistence. When we perceived this, we did not delay sending for the documents we had promised to read. All of them arrived during an interval of less than two days, while we went over to the church of Geliza, intending to return from there to your town; and, as you know, as far as time allowed, they were read to you in one day: first, the record where Secundus of Tigisis did not dare to remove from his body of colleagues confessed traitors, with whom he afterwards dared to condemn Caecilian and other colleagues of his, who had not confessed and were absent; then the proconsular records, where Felix was proved innocent after the most careful examination. You remember that these were read to you before noon. After noon we read their petitions to Constantine and the church records of the proceedings held in the city of Rome by the judges he appointed, in which they were condemned and Caecilian confirmed in his episcopal rank; lastly, the letter of the emperor Constantine, in which everything became clear with the fullest attestation.

What more do you want, men? What more do you want? It is not your gold and silver that is at stake; not land, not estates, not even the health of your body is put in danger. We are appealing to your souls about gaining eternal life and fleeing eternal death. Wake up at last! We are not dealing with some obscure question, nor probing hidden secrets which no human hearts, or few, are able to penetrate. The matter is in the open. What stands out more clearly? What is seen more quickly? We say that innocent and absent men were condemned by a rash council, however numerous. We prove this by the proconsular records, in which that man was judged free of every charge of handing over whom the records of the council produced by your side proclaimed the most guilty. We say that sentences were pronounced by confessed traitors against those who were called traitors. We prove this by church records, in which the names are declared of those in whose case Secundus of Tigisis pardoned, as if out of regard for peace, things he had investigated, and with whom he afterwards, breaking the peace, condemned men whose case he had not investigated. From this it became clear that even at first he did not consult for peace, but feared for himself. For Purpurius of Limata had charged him with the fact that he too, when he had been held by the curator and the town council to make him hand over the Scriptures, had been released, certainly not for nothing, unless because he had handed them over or ordered something to be handed over. Fearing this quite probable suspicion, he took advice from the younger Secundus, his kinsman, consulted the other bishops who were with him, and left the plainest crimes to God's judgement; and so he seemed to have looked to peace, which was false, since he looked to himself.

For if the thought of peace dwelt in his heart, he would not afterwards at Carthage, with the traitors whom he had left to God when they were present and confessed, have condemned for the crime of handing over men whom no one had convicted before him in their absence. He ought to have feared the more that the peace of unity would be violated, the larger and more illustrious a city Carthage was, so that an evil arising there would pour itself out, as from a head, over the whole body of Africa. It was also near the lands overseas and renowned by widespread fame. Hence it certainly had a bishop of no slight authority, who could disregard the conspiring multitude of his enemies, since he saw himself joined by letters of communion both to the Roman church, in which the primacy of the apostolic chair has always flourished, and to the other lands from which the gospel came to Africa itself, where he was ready to plead his case if his adversaries tried to estrange those churches from him. Since, then, he was unwilling to come to the lodging of colleagues who he felt or suspected, or, as they themselves assert, pretended, had been turned against the truth of his case by his enemies, all the more ought Secundus, if he had wished to be a guardian of true peace, to have taken care that men should not be condemned in their absence who were wholly unwilling to attend their tribunal. For the matter concerned not presbyters or deacons or clergy of a lower order, but colleagues, who could reserve their case entire for the judgement of other colleagues, especially those of the apostolic churches, where sentences pronounced against them in their absence would be of no force at all, since they did not first approach their tribunal and afterwards desert it, but always held it suspect and never wished to approach it.

This matter ought above all to have concerned Secundus, who was then primate, if he presided over the council in order to consult for peace. For perhaps he could easily have calmed or curbed the mouths raging against an absent man, had he said: 'You see, brothers, that after so great a slaughter of persecution, by the mercy of God, peace has been granted by the rulers of the world. We Christians and bishops ought not to break apart Christian unity, which the pagan enemy no longer persecutes. Therefore let us either leave to God as judge all these cases which the disaster of a most turbulent time has inflicted on the church; or, if there are some among you who know the crimes of these men so certainly that they can easily prove them and convict them if they deny them, and who dread communion with such men, let them go to our brothers and colleagues, the bishops of the churches overseas, and there first complain of their deeds and contumacy, that, conscious of guilt, they refused to come to the judgement of their African colleagues; so that from there they may be summoned to come and answer the charges there. If they do not, their depravity and perversity will become known there too, and when a circular letter has been sent concerning their names through the whole world, wherever the church of Christ has now spread, their communion will be cut off by all the churches, lest any error arise in the chair of the church of Carthage. Then at last we shall safely ordain another bishop for the people of Carthage, when these men have been separated from the whole church; lest perhaps, if another is ordained now, the church overseas should not communicate with him, because this man will not be seen to have been deposed from his rank, whose ordination report has already made famous and has caused letters of communion to pass to him; and so a great scandal of schism arise in the unity of Christ in times now peaceful, while we are in too great haste to rush out our sentences, and dare to raise another altar not against Caecilian but against the whole world, which communicates with him in ignorance.'

If any unbridled man had refused to obey such sound and right counsel, what could he have done, or how could he have condemned any of his absent colleagues, when he did not have the acts of the council in his power, with the primate opposing? And if so great a sedition arose even against the first see that some wished to condemn at once those whom he wished to be deferred, how much better it would have been to dissent from such men, who were plotting restless and unpeaceful things, than from the communion of the whole world! But because there was nothing that could be proved against Caecilian and his ordainers before a tribunal overseas, they were unwilling either to defer before pronouncing sentence on him, or, after they had pronounced it, to work persistently to bring to the knowledge of the churches overseas the names of the traitors condemned in Africa whose communion they ought to avoid; because, if they had tried to do so, Caecilian and the others would have been present and would have cleared their case against the deceitful accusers before the church judges overseas by a most careful inquiry.

And so that perverse and wicked plan was chiefly, it is believed, that of the traitors whom Secundus of Tigisis had pardoned when they confessed: since rumour about handing over had spread widely, by defaming others they might turn suspicion away from themselves; and while men throughout Africa, believing the bishops, said false things about innocent men, that traitors had been condemned at Carthage, those who had truly handed over might hide as in the fog of a most lying rumour. From this you see, dearly beloved, that what some of you said was not likely could happen: that those who had confessed their handing over and had obtained the decision that their case should be left to God afterwards sat as judges and condemners of absent men as traitors. For they the more eagerly seized an opportunity by which they could cover others with false accusation and in this way, when men's tongues were turned against those others, avoid inquiry into their own crimes. Otherwise, if it were impossible for anyone to judge in another the evils he himself committed, the apostle Paul would not say to certain people: 'Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are who judge; for in judging another you condemn yourself, for you do the same things that you judge.' This they did entirely, so that these apostolic words fit them fully and aptly.

So Secundus did not consult for peace and unity when he left their crimes to God; otherwise he would rather have taken care at Carthage that no schism should arise, where there was no one present whose confessed crime he was compelled to pardon, but where, what was easiest of all, the whole preservation of peace lay in refusing to condemn absent men. Indeed they would have done the innocent a wrong even if they had chosen to pardon them when they were neither convicted nor confessed nor present at all; for he receives pardon whose guilt is most certain. How much more monstrous and blind, then, were those who thought they could condemn what, without investigation, they could not even have pardoned! There, things investigated were left to God so that other things might not be inquired into; here, things uninvestigated were condemned so that those might be covered. But someone will say: 'They did investigate.' Even if I grant this, even so the absent ought certainly to have been spared. For they had not deserted a tribunal before which they had never stood at all; nor was the church to be found in those African bishops alone, so that those who refused to present themselves to their judgement should seem to have avoided all church judgement. Thousands of colleagues remained overseas, where it was evident that those could be judged who seemed to hold their African or Numidian colleagues suspect. For where is what Scripture cries out: 'Before you inquire, blame no one; and when you have inquired, rebuke justly'? If, then, the Holy Spirit willed that no one be blamed or rebuked unless he had been questioned, how much more wickedly were those not blamed or rebuked but wholly condemned, who, being absent, could not be questioned about their crimes at all!