Letters 95.1–97.4

When our brothers, most closely united with us, whom you are accustomed, together with us, to long for when longed for and to greet in return when greeted, see you frequently, our good things are not so much increased as our ills are consoled. For the very business and necessities that compel them to seek lands overseas we do not love; indeed we even hate them and try to avoid them as far as we can; and yet somehow, I believe because of our deserts, they cannot be absent. But when they come to you and see you, what is written comes to pass: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul.” And so, as for this joy of brother Possidius being with you, when you hear from him what sad business compelled him, you will know that I say this most truly. And yet, if any of us were to go overseas for this reason alone, to enjoy your presence, what cause could be found more just, what more worthy? But our bonds would not allow it, by which we are tied to serving the infirmities of the weak and not leaving them in bodily presence, except when they compel it, the more imperiously the more dangerously they are ill. Whether we are being exercised by these things or rather punished, I do not know; except that he who mingles such great consolations with our sorrows does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities, and acts by a wonderful medicine so that we may not love the world and may not fail in the world.

In my former letter I asked you what you thought the eternal life of the saints will be like; but you answered me well that one must still take counsel about the state of the present life too, except that you wished to consult me about what you either do not know along with me, or know along with me, or perhaps know better than I; for you also said most truly that we must first die the Gospel death, “by which we forestall our bodily dissolution by a voluntary departure, withdrawing from the life of this world not by dying but by resolve.” This course of action is simple and wavers with no surge of doubt, since we judge that we ought so to live in this mortal life as to be in some way fitted to immortal life. But the whole question that troubles men like me, as we act and inquire, is this: how one should live among, or for the sake of, those who do not yet know how to live by dying, not by the dissolution of the body but by an affection of the mind turning itself away from bodily allurements. For it often seems to us that unless we conform ourselves a little to them in the very things from which we wish to draw them out, we can do nothing helpful with them. And when we do this, the delight of such things creeps into us too, so that we often even enjoy talking idly and lending an ear to those who talk, and not only smiling but even being overcome and dissolved by laughter. So, weighing down our souls with dusty or even muddy affections, we lift them to God with more labour and sluggishness, so as to live the Gospel life by dying the Gospel death. And if at some time this succeeds, at once it is suggested: “Well done, well done!”, not by men, for no man perceives such a state of mind in another, but in a kind of inner silence, from I know not where, the cry is raised, “Well done, well done!” Because of this kind of temptation so great an apostle confesses that he was buffeted by an angel. See why human life on earth is wholly temptation, when a man is tempted even where he is fitted, as far as he can be, to the likeness of the heavenly life.

What shall I say about punishing or not punishing, since we wish all this to serve the salvation of those whom we judge are to be punished or not punished? And what the measure of punishment should be, not only according to the kind or size of the faults but also according to certain strengths of souls, what each can bear and what he will refuse, lest he not only fail to improve but even fall away: how deep and obscure a matter that is! I do not know, too, whether more have been corrected than have gone to the worse through fear of impending punishment, the kind that is feared from men. What of when it often happens that if you punish someone he himself perishes, and if you leave him unpunished another perishes? I confess that I sin in these things daily, and do not know when or how to keep what is written, “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may have fear”, and what is written, “Reprove him between you and him alone”, and what is written, “Do not judge anyone before the time”, and what is written, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (for here he did not add “before the time”), and what is written, “Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls; but he will stand, for God is able to make him stand”; by which he makes clear that he speaks of those who are inside. And again he orders them to be judged, when he says, “For what have I to do with judging those outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? Remove the evil one from among yourselves.” And when this seems necessary to do, how far it should be done, what care and fear it requires, lest there happen what he is understood to warn must be guarded against concerning that very man in his second letter to the same church, that such a one be not swallowed up by excessive sorrow! And so that no one should think this need not much concern us, he says there: “So that we may not be possessed by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” What trembling in all these things, my Paulinus, holy man of God! What trembling, what darkness! Do we not think it was said of these things: “Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me; and I said: Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest? Behold, I have gone far off in flight and stayed in the wilderness”? Yet perhaps even in the wilderness itself he may have experienced what he adds: “I waited for him who would save me from faintheartedness and storm.” Surely, then, human life on earth is temptation.

What then? Are not the divine words of the Lord themselves rather felt for than handled by us, since in very many things we seek what we should think rather than think anything defined and fixed? And though that caution is full of anxiety, it is still much better than the rashness of asserting. In many matters, if a man does not think according to the flesh (which the apostle says is death), will he not be a great stumbling block to one who still thinks according to the flesh, where to say what you think is most dangerous, not to say it most burdensome, and to say other than you think most ruinous? What then? When we find in the speech or writings of those who are inside things we do not approve … and, thinking it belongs to the freedom of brotherly love, we do not hide our judgment, and are believed to do this not from goodwill but from envy, how much is sinned against us! And when we similarly suspect that those who criticize our opinions wish to wound rather than correct, how much we sin against others! Certainly from this arise enmities, very often even between the dearest and most intimate persons, when, beyond what is written, one is puffed up for one against another; and while they bite and devour one another, it is to be feared that they may be consumed by one another. “Who then will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” For whether because the dangers in which each is engaged are heavier than those not experienced, or because it really is so, any faintheartedness and storm of the wilderness seems to me less troublesome than what we either suffer or fear in crowds.

So I strongly approve your view that we should deal with the state of this life, or rather its course than its state. I add something else: that this must first be sought and held, before that other question of what that will be like to which this course carries us. I asked you about that, then, as if I were already quite secure about having kept and observed the right rule of this life, when in so many things, and especially in those I have briefly mentioned as best I could, I feel myself labouring most dangerously. But because all this ignorance and difficulty seems to me to arise from the fact that, amid a great variety of characters and minds and among the most hidden wills and weaknesses of men, we manage the affairs of a people not earthly and Roman but of the heavenly Jerusalem, I preferred to speak with you about what we shall be rather than what we are; for there, even if we do not know what good things will come, we are certain of no small thing, that these evils will not be there.

As to living this temporal life in the way by which one must come to the eternal, I know that carnal desires must be bridled, and that only so much indulgence must be given to the pleasures of the bodily senses as suffices for sustaining and living this life, and that all temporal troubles must be borne patiently and bravely for the truth of God and the eternal salvation of ourselves and our neighbour. I know also that we must care for our neighbour with every effort of love, so that he may live this life rightly for the sake of the eternal; that the spiritual must be preferred by us to the carnal, the unchangeable to the changeable; and that a man is more or less able to do all these things according as he is more or less helped by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But why this one is helped in this way, and that one in that way, or not helped, I do not know; yet I know that God does it with supreme justice, known to himself. But concerning the things I mentioned above, how one should live with men, if anything is clear and certain to you, teach me, I beg you. But if these things trouble you as they do me, discuss them with some meek physician of the heart, whether you find him there where you live or when you go to Rome on your yearly visit, and write to me what the Lord reveals through him speaking to you or through your conversing together.

As for the resurrection of bodies and the functions of the members in that incorruption and immortality, since you in turn asked me what I think, hear it briefly; if it is not enough, it can be discussed more fully, if the Lord helps. It must be held most firmly, since the truthful and clear teaching of holy Scripture says so, that these visible and earthly bodies, which are now called natural, will be spiritual in the resurrection of the faithful and righteous. But how the quality of a spiritual body, which we have not experienced, can be either grasped or conveyed, I do not know. Certainly there will be no corruption there, and therefore they will not then need this corruptible food which they now need; yet they will not be unable to take it and truly consume it, by power, not by necessity. Otherwise the Lord would not have taken it after his resurrection, he who gave us such an example of bodily resurrection that the apostle says from it: “If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen.” When he appeared with all his members and used their functions, he also showed the places of his wounds. I have always taken these to be scars, not the wounds themselves, and these too by power, not by necessity. The ease of this power he showed most of all when he either showed himself in another form or appeared, truly himself, to the disciples gathered in a house when the doors were shut.

From this arises the question about angels, whether they have bodies suited to their functions and ways of life, or are only spirits. For if we say they have bodies, we meet: “Who makes his angels spirits”; but if we say they do not, there is more difficulty in how it is written that they presented themselves without a body to men's bodily senses, were received as guests, had their feet washed, and were served as they ate and drank. For it can more easily seem that angels are called spirits in the way men are called souls, as it is written that so many souls went down with Jacob into Egypt (for they were not without bodies), than that all those things should be believed to have been done without bodies. Again, in the Apocalypse a certain definite stature of an angel is defined by a measure which can belong only to bodies; and that they appeared to men should be referred not to falsehood but to that power and ease of spiritual bodies. But whether angels have bodies, or someone can show how they could do all those things without having bodies, in that city of the saints, where those redeemed through Christ from this generation for ever will be joined to the thousands of angels, bodily voices will express minds that are not hidden, since in that divine society no thought can be hidden from one's neighbour; but there will be a harmonious concord in God's praise, expressed not only in spirit but also in the spiritual body.

This is how it seems to me for the present. If you either already hold something more consistent with the truth or can hear it from more learned men, I await most eagerly to learn it through you. Do go over my letter again: since you pleaded the deacon's haste as the reason why you replied to it in great haste, I do not complain, but rather remind you, so that what was then omitted may now be supplied. Look again and see what I asked to know from you, both what you think about Christian leisure for learning or discussing Christian wisdom, and about your own leisure, as I supposed it, though I have been told of your incredible occupations. [And in another hand:] Remember us and live happily, our great joys and consolations, saints of God.

Whatever you may be according to the course of this world, we write with complete confidence to our dearest and most sincere fellow servant Olympius, a Christian; for we know that this is to you more glorious than any glory and more exalted than any eminence. For report has brought us word that you have obtained a higher office; whether this was true had not yet been confirmed among us when this opportunity of writing came. But since we know that you have learned from the Lord not to mind high things but to agree with the humble, we presume that, to whatever height you have been raised, you will receive our letter no differently from your usual way, my most beloved lord and son, to be embraced with honour among the members of Christ. Nor do we at all doubt that you will use your temporal good fortune wisely for eternal gains, so that the more power you have in this earthly commonwealth, the more you will spend for that heavenly city which has given birth to you in Christ, that it may be repaid to you more richly in the land of the living and in the true peace of those secure in joys without end.

I commend again to your Charity the petition of my holy brother and fellow bishop Boniface, in case what could not be done before can be done now. For although he could perhaps, without any question, have kept as a matter of course what his predecessor had bought, though under another's name, and had already begun to possess under the name of the church, we do not wish him, since that man was a debtor to the treasury, to have this scruple on his conscience. For that fraud was not the less a fraud because it was done against the treasury. That Paul, after he was made bishop, being about to give up all his property because of the immense heap of debts he owed the treasury, having called in a certain bond under which a fixed weight of silver was owed to him, bought these small plots of land, from which to support himself, as if for the church, under the name of a household that was then very powerful, so that, following his custom even in these, he might suffer no trouble from the tax collectors while not paying the treasury. But this man, who was ordained for the same church after his death, was afraid to take over these lands; and though he could have asked for an imperial remission for the treasury debts alone which the other had incurred on the said little properties, he preferred to confess everything: that Paul had bought them at public auction with his own silver while he was liable to the treasury; so that the church may possess them, if it can be done, not through the hidden iniquity of a bishop but through the open liberality of a Christian emperor. If that cannot be done, the servants of God would rather endure the hardship of poverty than obtain the means of necessities with a conscience of fraud.

For this we ask you to be so good as to grant your support, since he did not wish to present what was obtained at first, lest he shut himself off from the possibility of petitioning again; for it was not an answer to what he desired. But now that you are of the same kindness as usual, but greater in power, we do not despair that, with the Lord's help, this can easily be granted through your merits. For even if you asked for the same lands in your own name and gave them yourself to the said church, who would blame you, or who would not highly praise your petition as serving not earthly greed but Christian piety? May the mercy of the Lord our God keep you ever happier in Christ, my lord son.

As soon as we heard that you had been deservedly raised to high office, though the report itself was not yet quite certain to us, we believed nothing else of your mind toward the church of God, whose son we rejoice that you truly are, than what you soon revealed in your letter. Yet, having read that letter too, in which you deigned of your own accord to send us a most kindly exhortation, even if we were sluggish and hesitant, that, with our lowliness instructing you, the Lord, by whose gift you are what you are, might through your devout obedience come at once to the help of his church, we write to you with greater confidence, my excellent lord and deservedly most distinguished son, much to be honoured in the love of Christ.

Many brothers, my holy colleagues, set out, almost fleeing, to the most glorious court, because the church has been gravely disturbed. Whether you have already seen them or have received their letters from the city of Rome through some convenient opportunity, I nevertheless, though I could share no counsel with them, could not fail, through this brother and fellow presbyter of mine, who by urgent necessity for the safety of a fellow citizen has been compelled to come to those parts somehow even in mid-winter, both to greet and to admonish your Charity, which you have in Christ Jesus our Lord, that your good work be hastened with most diligent urgency: so that the enemies of the church may know that those laws which were sent to Africa while Stilicho was alive, about breaking idols and correcting heretics, were established by the will of the most pious and faithful emperor. They either cunningly spread it about, or gladly believe, that this was done without his knowledge or against his will, and in this way they make the minds of the ignorant most turbulent and dangerously and violently hostile to us.

And this which I urge on your Excellency by asking or suggesting I do not doubt is the will of all my colleagues throughout Africa. I think it can and should very easily be hastened on whatever occasion first arises, so that, as I said, vain men, whose salvation we seek even when they oppose us, may know that the laws sent for the church of Christ were sent by the care of the son of Theodosius rather than of Stilicho. That is why the said presbyter, the bearer of this letter, though he is from the region of Milevis, was ordered by his bishop, my venerable brother Severus, who greets your most sincere Affection warmly together with me, to pass through Hippo Regius, where I am; for, when we happened to be together in great tribulations and disturbances of the church, we were looking for an opportunity of writing to your Excellency and did not find one. I had indeed already sent one letter on the business of my holy brother and colleague Boniface, bishop of Cataqua; but the graver matters, which disturbed us more violently, had not yet reached us. How these may be repressed or corrected with better counsel according to the way of Christ will be more suitably dealt with, with the great kindness of your heart, by the bishops who sailed for that purpose, who were able, by common counsel, to bring something more carefully deliberated, as far as the shortness of time allowed. But that by which the province may know the mind of the most clement and religious emperor toward the church must in no way be delayed; rather, even before you see the bishops who have set out, I suggest, ask, beseech and implore that it be hastened as soon as your most excellent vigilance can manage, for the members of Christ placed in the greatest tribulation. For the Lord has offered no small consolation in these evils, in that he willed you to have much more power than you had when we were already rejoicing over your many great good works.

We rejoice greatly over the firm and steadfast faith of some, and those not few, who, on the occasion of these very laws, have been converted to the Christian religion or to Catholic peace; for whose eternal salvation we are glad to be in danger even in this temporal life. For it is chiefly for this reason that we now endure the heavier attacks of enmity from men who are excessively and harshly perverse, attacks which some of them endure most patiently with us; but we greatly fear for their weakness, until they learn and become able, with the help of the most merciful grace of the Lord, to despise the present world and the day of man with a stronger heart. Let the memorandum I have sent to the brother bishops be handed to them by your Excellency when they come, if, as I think, they are not yet there. For we have such confidence in your most sincere heart that, with the help of the Lord our God, we wish you to be not only a giver of help but also a sharer in counsel.