Letters 140.12–143.2

'For all our days have passed away; in your fury we have spent our years like a word spoken.' The Seventy: 'For our days have failed; in your anger we have failed; our years have been thought on like a spider.' The shortness of human life, which is subject to God's sentence up to now, and which in the previous verse he compared to a dream, saying, 'When you strike them, they will be a dream,' he now compares to the word of those speaking: as the word that is in the mouth is cut off while it is uttered and ceases to be, so all our life passes and ceases, and this in the anger and fury of God, to which we are rightly subject, since, as we said above, God's sentence lives on in us. What the anger and fury of God are we have often said: not that God, being angry, takes vengeance, but that he seems angry to those who suffer punishment. For what in us comes from passion is in him from the truth of judgment. For 'the word of one speaking' the Seventy translated 'the thinking of a spider.' For as the word of one speaking flies past, so the spider's work is woven in vain. Of this it is written in Isaiah about the heretics: 'They weave a spider's web,' which can catch small and light creatures, such as flies, gnats, and the like, but is broken by stronger ones; like the light and simple in the church, who are deceived by their errors, while they cannot hold men who are strong in the truth of the faith.

'The days of our years in them are seventy years, but if much, eighty years; and what is more is toil and pain.' The Seventy: 'The days of our years in them are seventy years, but if in strength, eighty years; and more than these is their toil and pain.' Where we put 'in them', and the Hebrew has bahem, Symmachus translated more expressively with a Greek word which we can render, more by sense than by word, 'all together.' Whatever we live, then, and in which the life of mortals is pleasant, is comprised in the span of seventy years. But if much, and, as Symmachus translated, beyond expectation, it is eighty years; whatever is beyond that is passed in sickness and infirmity, the companion of old age, with the eyes growing dim, and the teeth, once very hard, aching or falling out; which the divine word describes more fully in Ecclesiastes: 'When the days of evil come, in which we say, "I have no pleasure"; when the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain; in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the men of strength are overturned, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look through the windows are darkened, and the doors in the street are shut when the sound of the grinder is low, and one rises at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; and they look from on high, and there is fear in the way, and the almond tree flowers, and the locust grows fat, and the caper-berry is split; because man has gone to his eternal home, and the mourners go about in the street; until the silver cord is snapped, and the golden ornament is broken, and the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes; all is vanity.' All these describe the miseries of human life and especially of old age, and what sense they have we have discussed in its place. There are some who, interpreting this passage allegorically, refer it to the mystery of the sabbath and of circumcision: that first we rest in the law, and afterward the sacraments of the true circumcision hold us in the Gospel; citing also that saying, 'Give a portion to seven and give a portion to eight,' and the seventy thousand and eighty thousand men by whom the temple under Solomon was built. But what has this to do with the present passage, for which a simple and pure explanation is enough, which should seek not the glory of learning in a multiplication of words but the understanding of the reader?

'For we have passed swiftly and flown away.' The Seventy: 'For gentleness has come upon us, and we shall be corrected.' For this in the Greek is written paideuthēsometha, which is an ambiguous word and means both correction and instruction and teaching. For 'whom the Lord loves he corrects' (or 'instructs') 'and scourges every son whom he receives.' This passage Symmachus translated thus: 'For we are suddenly cut down and fly away'; the fifth edition in this way: 'For we have passed quickly and are dissolved.' And the sense is: after seventy years, eighty at most, in which men's life is spent, when the soul has been separated from the body, we fly away like the wind; or, since above he compared man to green grass, to the beauty of flowers, and to dryness at evening, now for the dryness of evening he puts the cutting down of flowers. And when all that we live has passed, he says, we are dissolved by sudden death. But what the Seventy said, 'For gentleness has come and we shall be corrected,' has this sense: after seventy and eighty years, when the Lord's gentleness has come and the day of death has come upon us, we shall be judged not according to merit but according to mercy; and what is thought to be correction is instruction and teaching. And we wonder greatly why the Seventy, Theodotion, and the sixth edition chose to translate the Hebrew word as 'gentleness', when Aquila, Symmachus, and the fifth edition translated it 'haste' and 'suddenly' and 'swiftly.'

'Who knows the strength of your anger, and your indignation according to your fear?' The Seventy: 'Who knows the power of your anger, and to number your anger for fear of you?' The punctuation differs between the Hebrew and the Seventy. For the Seventy join the numbering to the fear and fury of the Lord, while the Hebrew fits it to the following verse, so that it continues, 'So show us, that our days may be numbered, and we shall come with a wise heart.' This seems to us to be briefly explained thus: who can know how long your anger, from which fear arises for the human race, will last? Only when you teach, who are God. So I beg you to show us the time of our life, in which we can prepare ourselves with a wise heart for your judgment. And his saying, 'Who knows the strength (or power) of your anger, and your indignation according to your fear?' shows that it is hard to know the secret and the reason of God's anger, fear, and indignation. Hence the prophet too prays tearfully, 'Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor correct me in your fury.' For he does not correct in order to kill and destroy, but to correct and amend. For this reason in Hosea too he says to the people of the Jews, with whom he is very angry, that he will by no means be angry, nor punish their daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; and through Ezekiel he says to Jerusalem, 'I will no longer be angry with you, and my jealousy has departed from you'; and in the Chronicles it is said, when Israel goes into battle against its enemies with a peaceful heart.

'So show us, that our days may be numbered, and we shall come with a wise heart.' The Seventy: 'So make known to me your right hand, and those instructed in heart in wisdom'; which Aquila, Symmachus, and the fifth edition translated thus: 'So show us our days, that we may come with a wise heart.' And the error is plain, why the Seventy said 'right hand' for 'days'; for iamenu is a compound word meaning 'our days.' If it is written in the singular, the last letter, called nun, expresses 'right hand', as in the name Benjamin, which is interpreted 'son of the right hand'; but if it has mem, it means 'day' or 'days.' The sense is: show us the number of the years and days that you have decreed we are to live in this world, so that we may prepare ourselves for your coming, and, despising the error of mortals, hasten to go to you, desire your presence, and hasten to you with a wise heart. For nothing so deceives the human race as that, not knowing the span of their life, they promise themselves a longer possession of this world. Hence that was excellently said: that no one is so old, or of such decrepit old age, as not to suppose that he will live one more year. To this sense belongs also that saying, 'Remember your death, and you will not sin.' For he who remembers that he is to die daily despises the present and hastens to the future. This is what David too prays in another place, saying, 'Do not take me away in the middle of my days, before I depart and am no more.' This is explained thus: do not make me die at a time when I still thought that I would live and correct my sins by repentance. For if you do this, I shall be found in my sins and cease to exist; not that he denies the hope of resurrection, but that he denies he can stand before God, with whom all who persist in vices are counted as nothing. Where we translated 'instructed in heart in wisdom', others translated 'fettered', deceived by the ambiguity of the word. For if you say pepedēmenous, it means 'fettered.'

'Return, Lord; how long? And be entreated concerning your servants.' The Seventy likewise. Since we do penance and, knowing the shortness of our life, desire to come to you with a wise heart, you too, Lord, return to us. For because of our sins you had withdrawn far away and had let us go, so that we walked according to our own will and thoughts. And his adding 'how long' has the meaning we gave in the twelfth psalm: 'How long, Lord, will you forget me for ever?' For to one who is in distress God's help seems late, and therefore he prays more earnestly that he may soon feel the Lord as a helper, and not as an angry judge but as one appeased.

'Fill us in the morning with your mercy, and we will praise and rejoice in all our days.' The Seventy: 'We were filled in the morning with your mercy, and we exulted and were delighted in all our days.' In almost all places the Seventy have this custom: what among the Hebrews is shown as future, they report as already done and past. Here, then, they do not say, as the Seventy would have it, that they have been filled with God's morning mercy and have rejoiced (otherwise, if this had been done, how do they afterward pray and say, 'Look upon your servants and upon your works'?); but they pray for all that they ask so that they may deserve his morning mercy, and when they have obtained it, may praise him and rejoice in all the days of their life. It seems to me that he is praying for the hope of the resurrection and the rewards of eternal life when he says, 'Fill us in the morning with your mercy.' The title of the twenty-(first) psalm also says this, which, belonging properly to the mystery of the Lord and his resurrection, is entitled, 'For the morning help.'

'Make us glad for the days in which you afflicted us, and the years in which we saw evils.' The Seventy: 'We rejoiced for the days in which you humbled us, the years in which we saw evils.' And Lazarus, because he had received evils in his life, rests in Abraham's bosom in eternal joy. By 'evils' he does not mean what is contrary to good, but uses the word for affliction and distress; with such evils Sarah afflicted Hagar, her maid, and of such it is written in the Gospel, 'Sufficient for the day is its own evil.' So the more we have been afflicted in this world by persecutions, poverty, the power of enemies, or the torments of sickness, the greater the rewards we shall obtain in the future after the resurrection. And he finely did not say 'we endured evils' but 'we saw.' For what man is there who lives and will not see death? This is to be referred not so much to the dissolution of the body as to the multitude of sins, in the sense in which it is said, 'The soul that sins, it shall die.'

'Let your work appear to your servants, and your glory upon their children.' So the Lord himself works his own work in his servants; and he who prays is not content with his own salvation, but asks what the glory of the children, that is, of the servants of God, may be. By 'children' we should understand not so much those born of their stock as disciples, of whom Paul too spoke: 'My little children, of whom I am again in travail.' Hence the apostle John too, according to the merits of his children and the progress of each one's works, writes to little children, writes to young men, writes to fathers.

'And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and make the work of our hands firm upon us, and confirm the work of our hands.' The Seventy: 'And let the splendour of the Lord our God be upon us, and direct the works of our hands upon us, and direct the work of our hands.' Where are those who, applauding themselves for the power of free choice, think they have obtained God's grace in this, that they have the power of doing or not doing good or evil? See, here blessed Moses, after the resurrection for which he had prayed, saying, 'Fill us in the morning with your mercy, and we will praise and rejoice in all our days,' is by no means content to have risen and obtained the rewards of eternal life, but asks that the beauty of the Lord his God may be upon those who have risen and shine in the souls and hearts of the saints, and that he himself may direct the works of their hands and make them everlasting, and himself confirm whatever good is seen in the saints. For as the humility of one who prays deserves rewards, so the pride of one who trusts in himself will be abandoned by God's help.

Jerome to the holy lord and most blessed father Augustine. At all times I have revered your blessedness with the honour that is fitting and have loved the Lord our Saviour dwelling in you; but now, if it is possible, we add something to the heap and fill up what is full, so that we do not allow even one hour to pass without mention of your name, since you have stood firm against the blowing winds with the ardour of faith, and have preferred, as far as it lay with you, to be delivered alone from Sodom rather than to stay with those who were perishing.

Your wisdom knows what I mean. Well done! You are celebrated throughout the world. Catholics revere and receive you as the founder anew of the ancient faith, and (which is the sign of greater glory) all heretics detest you, and they persecute me with equal hatred, so that those whom they cannot kill with swords they kill in wish. May the mercy of Christ the Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, venerable lord and most blessed father.

Many limp on both feet, and do not bow even with their necks broken, keeping their love of their former error even though they do not have the same freedom to preach it. The holy brothers who are with our littleness, especially your holy and venerable daughters, greet you humbly.

I beg your crown to greet in my name your brothers, my lord Alypius and my lord Evodius. Jerusalem is taken and held by Nebuchadnezzar, and will not listen to the counsels of Jeremiah, but rather longs for Egypt, to die in Tahpanhes and perish there in everlasting slavery.

The holy presbyter Innocent, who is the bearer of this letter, did not take my letter to your esteem last year, as if he were never going to return to Africa. Yet we thank God that it so happened that you overcame our silence with your letters. For every opportunity of writing to your reverence is most welcome to me, and I call God to witness that, if it were possible, I would take the wings of a dove and be enfolded in your embraces; always, indeed, for the merit of your virtues, but now most of all, because with you as co-workers and leaders the Caelestian heresy has been strangled, which has so infected the hearts of many that, though they feel themselves overcome and condemned, they still do not give up the poison of their minds, and, which is all they can do, they hate us, through whom they think they have lost the freedom of teaching.

As for your asking whether I have written a reply against the books of Anianus, the pseudo-deacon of Celeda, who is most lavishly fed so that he may supply frivolous words for another's blasphemy, know that I received those very books, sent in sheets by our holy brother the presbyter Eusebius, not long ago; and since then, either because of the illnesses that have come on me or because of the falling asleep of your holy and venerable daughter Eustochium, I have grieved so much that I almost thought them to be despised. For he sticks in the same mud, and apart from jingling and borrowed words he says nothing else. Yet we have achieved much, in that, while he tries to answer my letter, he has betrayed himself more openly and laid bare his blasphemies to all. For whatever he denies having said at that wretched synod of Diospolis he professes in this work; and it is no great thing to answer the silliest dirges. But if the Lord grants life and we have a supply of secretaries, we will answer in a few night-labours, not to refute a heresy that is dead, but to confute ignorance and blasphemy with our words. And your holiness would do this better, so that we may not be compelled to praise our own writings against a heretic. Our common holy children Albina, Pinianus, and Melania greet you warmly. I have handed this little letter to the holy presbyter Innocent to deliver from holy Bethlehem. Your granddaughter Paula begs you piteously to remember her and greets you warmly. May the mercy of Christ our Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, truly holy lords and fathers venerable in the affection of all.