Letters 104.1–104.17

I have read your Benevolence's letter, in which you replied to me long after I had given mine to be delivered to you. For I had replied while my holy brother and fellow bishop Possidius was still with us and had not yet sailed; but this letter, which you were so kind as to give him for me, I received on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, about eight months after I had written. Why my letter reached you so late, or yours me, I do not know at all; unless perhaps your Prudence has decided to reply now, which you had previously disdained to do. If so, I wonder why. Have you heard something, which is still hidden from us, that my brother Possidius has obtained something against your fellow citizens, whom (by your leave) he loves much more wholesomely than you do, by which they may be punished more severely? For your letter shows that you fear this, when you urge me to set before my eyes what the appearance of that city is from which men are dragged out to be led to punishment, what the lamentation of mothers, wives, children, parents, with what shame those set free, but tortured, can come back to their fatherland, what sorrows and groans the sight of their wounds and scars renews. Far be it from us to press for these things to be inflicted on any of our enemies, either by us or by anyone else! But, as I said, if some such report has reached you, explain it more openly, so that we may know either what to do so that these things do not happen, or what we should answer those who believe them.

Look rather at my letter, to which you were reluctant to reply; for there I expressed my mind sufficiently. But, I think, having forgotten what I wrote to you, you have reported to me things altogether different and unlike. For, as if remembering what I put in my letter, you inserted in yours what I did not put at all. You say that the last point in my letter was “that the vengeance of the church did not demand life or blood, but that they should be stripped of the things they most fear to lose.” Then, showing how great an evil this is, you add and attach that, unless you are mistaken, you think it more grievous to be stripped of one's means than to be killed. And to explain more clearly what means you spoke of, you go on and add that I know it is often repeated in literature that “death takes away the sense of all evils, while a life of want produces endless calamity.” Then you concluded that it is more grievous to live in evils than to end evils by death.

Now I do not remember ever having read, either in our literature, to which I confess I applied my mind later than I would have wished, or in yours, which I learned from my early youth, that a life of want produces endless calamity. For toilsome poverty is never a sin, and it is in some measure a restraint and check on sins. And so there is no need to fear that the fact that someone lived here in poverty will avail, after this short life, for the eternal calamity of his soul; and in this life which we spend on earth no calamity can in any way be eternal, since this life cannot be eternal, which is not even long, to whatever age and old age it may reach. This rather is what I have read in that literature: that this very life which we enjoy is short; and in it you think, and warn me that it is often repeated in literature, that there can be eternal calamity. That death is the end of all evils your literature does indeed contain, but not all of it; for that is the opinion of the Epicureans, and of any others who think the soul mortal. But those whom Tullius calls as it were the consular philosophers, because he values their authority highly, hold that when we die the soul is not extinguished but departs, and they assert that its deserts too, whether good or bad, remain for either happiness or misery. This agrees with the sacred writings too, of which I wish to be a scholar. Death, then, is the end of evils, but for those whose life has been chaste, pious, faithful and innocent; not for those who, burning with desire for temporal trifles and vanities, even when they seem happy here, are proved miserable by the very perversity of their will, and after death are compelled not only to have heavier miseries but also to feel them.

Since, then, these things are often repeated both in some of your literature, which you hold in greater honour, and in all of ours, O good lover even of your earthly fatherland, fear a luxurious life for your fellow citizens, not a needy one; or, if you fear a needy one, urge them rather to avoid that neediness which, though it overflows with great prosperity of earthly goods, yet, by gaping insatiably after them, to use the words of your own authors, “is lessened neither by plenty nor by want.” But in that letter of mine to which you replied I did not say that your fellow citizens, enemies of the church, should be corrected by that want in which the necessities of nature are lacking, which mercy relieves, about which you even thought you should prescribe to us, saying that this is shown by the character of our works, in which we support the poor, relieve the sick with care, and apply medicine to afflicted bodies; though even to be in want in that way is more useful than to abound in all things for the satisfying of wickedness. But far be it from me to have thought that those we are dealing with should be reduced to this hardship by that coercion.

Go over my letter again, if indeed you thought it worth, if not rereading when it had to be answered, at least putting away so that it could be produced when you ordered, whenever you wished; and note what I said: you will certainly find something which, as far as I can judge, you will admit you did not answer. For I now insert my words from that letter: “We are not eager,” I said, “to feed our anger by avenging the past, but we strive to provide mercifully for the future. Wicked men have things in which they may be punished by Christians too, not only gently but also usefully and wholesomely; for they have their bodily safety, they have the means to live, they have the means to live wickedly. Let the first two remain safe, so that there may be people to repent; this we desire, this, as far as in us lies, we press for with earnest effort. But the third, if the Lord wills to cut it off as something rotten and harmful, he will punish very mercifully.” If you had gone over these words of mine when you deigned to reply to me, you would have thought that we should be asked, more invidiously than dutifully, not only about avoiding death but also about avoiding bodily injury to those for whom you plead, since I said we wish their bodily safety preserved; nor would you have feared from us for them a life of want, so that they would need food given by others, since I said we wish the second thing preserved for them too, that they have the means to live. But the third, that they have the means to live wickedly: that is, to say nothing else, the means with which they made silver images of false gods, for the preserving, adoring or still worshipping of which with sacrilegious rite they rushed even to setting fire to the church of God, and the support of the most devout poor was handed over to the wretched mob to plunder, and blood was to be shed: why do you, who care for your city, fear that this should be cut off, lest harmful boldness be nourished and strengthened in every way by impunity? Explain this to us, teach us with careful argument what evil there is in this; attend carefully to what we say, lest what we say to you you seem to throw back at us, under the appearance of a petition, as a kind of oblique accusation.

Let your fellow citizens be honourable by good conduct, not by superfluous wealth. We do not wish them to be brought by any coercion of ours to the plough of Quinctius and the hearth of Fabricius, the poverty by which those leaders of the Roman commonwealth were not only not cheapened in the eyes of their fellow citizens but were for that very reason especially dearer to them and fitter to govern the resources of the fatherland. We do not even wish or work for this: that to the rich of your fatherland there should remain only the ten pounds of silver plate of that Rufinus, twice consul, which the then praiseworthily severe censorship judged should be cut off as a vice. So far does the custom of a degenerate age persuade us to handle too languid souls more gently, that to Christian gentleness what seemed just to those censors seems too much; and you see how great a difference it makes whether merely having so much is already a fault to be punished, or whether, because of other very grave faults, one is permitted to have so much. What was then already a sin, we now wish to be at least the penalty of sin. But there is something that can and should be done, so that severity does not go so far, and impunity does not rejoice too securely and run riot, and an example for imitation, leading to the gravest and most hidden punishments, is not set before the unhappy. At least allow those who try to burn and lay waste our necessities to fear for their superfluities. Let us be allowed to give our enemies this benefit too: that, while they fear for things which it is not harmful to lose, they may not attempt to commit what is harmful to them. For this should not be called vengeance for sin but a protection by counsel; this is not inflicting punishment but guarding against incurring punishment.

Whoever, with some feeling of pain, deprives a heedless person [of something dangerous], so that, grown used to needless crimes, he may not pay the most atrocious penalties, is like one who pulls a boy's hair so that he will not clap his hands at snakes: so where love is troublesome, no limb is harmed, but where it deters, health and life are in danger. We are not beneficent when we do what is asked of us, but when we do what does not harm those who ask. For we often help by not giving, and would harm if we had given. Hence that proverb: “Not even a sword to a boy.” “But you,” says Tullius, “not even to an only son.” For the more we love someone, the less we ought to entrust to him things in which there is great danger of sinning. And, if I am not mistaken, he was speaking of riches when he said this. Therefore what is entrusted dangerously to those who use it badly is very often also withdrawn wholesomely. Physicians, when they see that a rotten part must be cut and burned, often mercifully turn a deaf ear to many tears. If, every time we begged pardon for our faults as small children, or even as somewhat older ones, we had received it from parents or teachers, which of us would have grown up bearable? Which of us would have learned anything useful? These things are done with foresight, not with cruelty. Do not, I beg you, in this case aim at nothing but how to obtain from us what your people ask of you; consider everything carefully. If you neglect the past, which cannot now be undone, look a little to the future; consider prudently not what those who ask you desire, but what is good for them. We are certainly shown not to love them faithfully if we look only to this, that our being loved by them should not be lessened by our not doing what they demand. And where is it that your literature too praises that ruler of the fatherland who consults the people's advantage rather than its wishes?

“It makes no difference,” you say, “what kind of sin it seems to be, when pardon is asked.” You would say this rightly if it were a question of punishing men, not of correcting them. For far be it from a Christian heart to be carried away by lust for vengeance to anyone's punishment; far be it that, in forgiving anyone's sin, it should not either anticipate the prayers of the one asking or at least follow them at once; but this, surely, so that it may not hate the man, may not repay evil for evil, may not be inflamed with eagerness to harm, may not desire to feed on vengeance even when it is due by law; not so that it may not take thought, not provide for the future, not restrain from evils. For it can happen that by more vehement opposition one neglects the correction of a man whom one hates more gravely, and by some trouble, in restraining him, makes better one whom one loves most.

For repentance too, as you write, obtains pardon and cleanses the offence; but that repentance which is practised in the true religion, which considers the future judgment of God; not that which is shown or feigned before men for the moment, not so that the soul may be cleansed from the offence for ever, but so that a life soon to perish may meanwhile be freed from the present fear of trouble. That is why, in the case of Christians who confessed and begged pardon, who had been involved in that offence either by not helping the church as it burned or by taking something from the most wicked plunder, we believed the pain of repentance to be fruitful, and judged it sufficient for their correction that there is faith in their hearts, by which they could consider what they ought to fear from the divine judgment. But what repentance can heal those who not only neglect to acknowledge the very fountain of pardon but do not cease to mock and blaspheme it? And yet even against these we do not keep enmity in our heart, which lies open and bare to him whose judgment we fear and whose help we hope for, both in the present and in the future life. But we think we are providing something for them too, if men who do not fear God fear something, by which not their advantage is harmed but their vanity is chastised, lest God himself, whom they despise, be more gravely offended by them through bolder deeds born of harmful security, and lest that very security be set before others to imitate with much more ruinous effect. Finally, for those for whom you ask us, we ask God that he may turn them to himself, and, cleansing their hearts by faith, teach them to practise a true and wholesome repentance.

See how much more rightly and usefully than you (by your leave) we love those with whom you think we are angry, praying for them both to avoid evils so much greater and to obtain goods so much greater. If you too loved them from God's heavenly gift and not by the earthly custom of men, and wrote to me sincerely that you heard gladly when I urged you toward the worship and religion of the most exalted God, you would not only wish these things for them but would go before them yourself toward these things. Thus the whole business of your petition would be concluded with us with great and sound joy; thus you would earn that heavenly fatherland, which you said you gladly received when I urged that it be contemplated, by a true and godly love for this one too, which begot you in the flesh, truly caring for your people, not for the vanity of temporal joy nor for the most ruinous impunity of crime, but for the grace of everlasting happiness.

You have here set out the thoughts and wishes of my heart in this case. But what lies hidden in the counsel of God I confess I do not know, being a man; but I know most certainly that, whatever it is, it is more just and wise and most firmly established, with incomparable excellence, above all the minds of men. For what is read in our books is true: “Many are the thoughts in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord remains for ever.” So what time may bring, what possibility or difficulty may arise for us, finally what will may suddenly spring from either the correction or the hope of present things; whether God is so angered by these deeds that they will be punished more and more severely by the very impunity they seek, or will judge that they should be mercifully restrained in the way we prefer, or, through some sharper but more wholesome correction of theirs going before, and through a true conversion, not to the mercy of men but to his own, will turn away whatever terror was being prepared and turn it into joy: this he knows, but we do not know. Why then should your Excellency and I labour in vain over this between us before the time? Let us set aside for a little the concern whose hour has not come, and, if you please, let us do what is always pressing. For there is no time when it is not fitting and necessary to do what may please God; which in this life either cannot be fulfilled to that perfection in which there is no sin at all in a man, or perhaps is very difficult. So, cutting off all delays, we must flee to the grace of him to whom can most truly be said what someone said in a flattering poem to some nobleman or other, though he confessed that he had taken it from a Cumaean, as it were prophetic, song: “Under your leadership, any traces of our crime that remain, made void, will free the lands from perpetual fear.” For under this leader, all sins loosed and forgiven, one comes by this way to the heavenly fatherland, in whose dwelling you were so much delighted when I commended it to your love as well as I could.

But since you said that all laws seek it by different ways and paths, I fear that, thinking that the way on which you are now set also leads there, you may be slower to hold the one way that alone leads there. But again, paying careful attention to the word you used, I seem not unwisely to discern your meaning. For you did not say that all laws by different ways and paths attain it, or show it, or find it, or enter it, or obtain it, or anything of that kind; but by saying “seek”, with a weighed and balanced word, you signified not the attainment but the desire to attain. So you neither excluded the one that is true nor admitted the others that are false; for the one that leads there also seeks it, but not every one that seeks it leads there. Whoever is led there is without any doubt happy; and we all wish to be happy, that is, we seek it; yet not all of us who wish are able, that is, attain what we seek. He attains, then, who holds the way not only by which he seeks it but by which one also arrives, leaving others on the roads of seeking without the end of attaining; for there would be no error if nothing were sought, nor if the truth sought were held. But if you spoke of different ways in such a sense that we do not understand opposed ways, as we speak of different precepts which nevertheless all build up a good life, some about chastity, some about patience, some about faith, some about mercy, and whatever others there are, then that fatherland is not only sought by ways and paths so different, but also found. For in the holy Scriptures both “ways” and “the way” are read: “ways”, as in this, “I will teach the unjust your ways, and the ungodly will turn to you”; “the way”, as in this, “Lead me in your way, and I will walk in your truth”; not those ways being other and this way another, but all one, of which the same holy Scripture says in another place: “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.” If these are considered carefully, they produce a copious discourse and a most delightful understanding; if it is necessary, I will put it off to another time.

Now, however, which I think is enough for the duty I have undertaken of replying to your Excellency, since Christ said, “I am the way”, mercy and truth must be sought in him, lest, if we seek them elsewhere, we go astray, holding a way that seeks but does not also lead; as, if we wished to hold that very one from which you mentioned something, that all sins are equal, would it not send us far into exile from that fatherland of truth and blessedness? For what can be said more absurd, more insane, than that he who laughed somewhat immoderately and he who savagely set fire to his fatherland should be judged to have sinned equally? This opinion of certain philosophers, not a different way that nevertheless leads to the heavenly dwelling, but a plainly perverse one that leads to most ruinous error, you thought should be brought in, not according to your own view but for the cause of your fellow citizens, so that we might pardon those by whose raging fires the church burned, as we would pardon them if we were attacked by them with some insolent abuse.

But see how you built it up: “And if, as some philosophers hold,” you say, “all sins are equal, pardon ought to be common to all.” Then, as if trying to show that all sins are equal, you add and say: “Someone spoke insolently: he sinned. He heaped insults or accusations: he sinned equally.” This is not teaching but putting forward, without any support of proofs, what is perversely thought. For to your “he sinned equally” the answer is quick: he did not sin equally. Perhaps you demand that I prove it; but what have you proved, that he sinned equally? Or should we listen to what you add: “Someone plundered another's goods: it is counted among offences”? Here even you yourself were ashamed; for you were embarrassed to say that he sinned equally, but you say, “it is counted among offences.” But the question there is not whether this too is counted among offences, but whether it is joined to that offence in equality; or, if they are equal because both are offences, mice and elephants will be equal because both are animals, flies and eagles because both are winged creatures.

You go further still and throw in: “He violated places profane or sacred: he is not to be excluded from pardon.” Here indeed, with the violation of sacred places, you have come to the crime of your fellow citizens, yet even you did not make it equal to insolent speech; you only asked pardon for them, which is rightly asked of Christians because of their abundant compassion, not because of the equality of sins. I put above what is written in our literature: “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.” They will obtain mercy, then, if they do not hate truth. That mercy is owed by Christian right, not to those as if they had sinned equally, as though they had spoken insolently, but to those who rightly repent of a most monstrous and ungodly crime. But you, deservedly praiseworthy man, do not, I beg you, teach these paradoxes of the Stoics to be followed by your Paradoxus, whom we wish to grow up for you in true piety and happiness. For what could a noble young man think more unjust, and more dangerous to yourself, than if he made, I do not say parricide, but insult against his father equal to an insult hurled at any stranger?

It is fitting, then, that you plead with us for your fellow citizens by pressing on us the mercy of Christians, not the hardness of the Stoics, which not only does nothing for the cause you have taken up but even works greatly against it. For the Stoics count that very mercy, without which no petition of yours and no prayers of theirs could move us, as a vice, and drive it out entirely from the mind of the wise man, whom they want to be wholly iron and inflexible. It would have been better, then, to recall what you could quote from your Cicero, who, praising Caesar, says: “Of your virtues none is more admirable or more pleasing than mercy.” How much more ought it to prevail in the churches, since they follow him who said, “I am the way”, and read, “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth”! Do not fear, then, that we are plotting destruction for the innocent, we who do not wish even the guilty to come to the punishment they deserve, forbidden by that mercy which we love in Christ together with truth. But he who spares and fosters vices in order not to sadden the will of sinners is as little merciful as one who will not snatch a knife from a child so as not to hear him cry, and does not fear that he may grieve over him wounded or dead. Keep for a suitable time, then, what you would do with us for these men, in love for whom (pardon me) you not only do not go before us at all but do not even follow us yet; and write back instead what troubles you about this way which we hold and in which we urge you to walk with us to the heavenly fatherland in which, we know and rejoice, you take delight.

As for the citizens of your earthly fatherland, you said that some, though not all, were innocent; yet, as you ought to notice on rereading my letter, you did not defend them. When I said, in reply to what you had written about wishing to leave your fatherland flourishing, that we had felt its thorns, not its flowers, you thought I was joking. Of course, one would like to joke amid such evils! That's exactly it! The ruins of the burned church are still smoking, and we joke about the matter! And though no innocent people occurred to me there except those who were absent, or who suffered those evils, or who had no strength or authority to prevent them, I nevertheless distinguished in my reply the more guilty from the less guilty, and set apart the case of those who feared to offend the powerful enemies of the church, of those who wished this to be committed, of those who committed it, and of those who instigated it; and I wished nothing done about the instigators, because this perhaps cannot be discovered without bodily tortures, which are abhorrent to our purpose. But your Stoics, who hold that all sins are equal, grant that all are equally guilty; and, combining with this opinion their hardness, by which they condemn mercy, they think not that all should be pardoned equally, but that all should be punished equally. Remove them, then, as far as you can, from the defence of this case, and wish rather that we may act as Christians, so that, as we wish, we may gain in Christ those whom we spare, and not spare them with a ruinous laxity. May the merciful and truthful God deign to grant you true happiness.