Letters 124.1–130.3

Although, by the state of my health or by nature, I cannot bear the cold, yet never have I been able to suffer greater heat than in this most dreadful winter, because I could not (I will not say go, but fly) to you who are settled so near, and who have come from so far to see us, you to whom I ought to have flown even across the seas. And perhaps Your Holiness may have thought that this same wintry harshness was the only cause of my punishment. Far from it, dearest ones. For what is there grievous and troublesome or even dangerous in these rains that I ought not to have undergone and borne to come to you, such great comforts amid our so great evils, lights so ardently kindled from the highest Light in this crooked and perverse generation, raised high by the humility you have taken up and made more illustrious by the renown you have despised? At the same time I would have enjoyed the so spiritual happiness of my earthly homeland, which has been found worthy to have you present too: you of whom, when you were absent, it hesitated perhaps to speak, lest it not be believed, though it believed out of love when it heard what you were by birth and what by the grace of Christ you have become.

I will say, then, why I did not come and by what evils I was kept from so great a good, so that I may deserve not only your pardon but also, through your prayers, mercy from him who works in you, so that you live for him. The people of Hippo, to whom the Lord has given me as a servant, being for the most part, almost wholly, so weak that the pressure of even a lighter tribulation could make them gravely ill, are now beaten by so great a tribulation that, even if they were not so weak, they would scarcely bear it with any health of soul. And when I returned just now, I found them most dangerously offended by my absence; and to your healthy palates, whose spiritual strength we rejoice in in the Lord, the meaning of this saying is surely clear: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” Especially since there are many here who, by disparaging us, try to stir up against us the souls of others by whom we seem to be loved, so as to make room in them for the devil. And when those whose salvation we labor for are angry with us, their great plan of revenge is the desire to die, not in body but in heart, where the corpse is first perceived secretly by its stench before our thought can foresee it. You will surely gladly pardon this anxiety of mine, especially since, if you were angry and wished to take revenge, you would perhaps find nothing more grievous than what I suffer in not seeing you at Thagaste. But I hope, helped by your prayers, that I shall be allowed to come to you as soon as possible, wherever in Africa you may be, when this matter by which I am now detained has passed; that is, if this city in which we labor is not worthy (for I do not dare to think it worthy) to rejoice with us in your presence.

We do indeed grieve deeply, and we cannot make light of it, that the people of Hippo shouted such things to the injury of Your Holiness; but it is much more to be grieved over, good brother, that such things should be thought of us than that those things should be shouted. For when it is believed that we wish to keep servants of God among us out of greed for money, not out of love of righteousness, is it not to be wished that those who believe this should declare aloud what is hidden in their hearts, so that, if possible, remedies as much greater may be sought, rather than that they perish in silence, poisoned by pernicious suspicions? Therefore we must be more concerned (as we said even before this happened) about how to persuade people, to whom we are commanded to offer ourselves as an example of good works, that what they suspect is false, than about how to rebuke those who declare their suspicions in cries and words.

Accordingly, I am not angry with holy Albina, nor do I judge that she should be rebuked, but that she should be healed of such a suspicion. She did not direct these words against me personally, but complained, as it were, about the people of Hippo, that they had revealed their greed by wishing to keep with them a rich man, who despised and gave away such wealth, not for the sake of clerical office but for the sake of money; yet what she thought of us she almost shouted aloud; and not she only, but also her holy children, who said this even on that very day in the apse. These, then, as I said, I think should be healed of such suspicions rather than rebuked for them. For where can security and rest from such thorns be prepared or given us, if they could sprout up against us in hearts so holy and so dear to us? About you it was the ignorant crowd that thought this; about us, the lights of the church: so you see which is more to be grieved over. But I think neither should be accused; both should be healed. For they are human beings and suspect such things of human beings, things false, yet not incredible. For certainly such people are not so foolish as to believe that the people desire their money, especially when they have already found that the people of Thagaste received nothing of it (and so too the people of Hippo); rather, all this resentment seethes only against the clergy, and most of all against bishops, whose dominion appears preeminent, and who are thought to use and enjoy the property of the church as owners and masters. To this greed, so harmful and deadly, let the weak not be encouraged by us, my Alypius, if it can be helped. Remember what we said before this temptation occurred, which presses us all the more to this. Let us rather try, by conferring together with the Lord's help, to make provision for it, and let our own conscience not be enough for us, for this is not a case where it alone ought to suffice. For if we are servants of God who are not reprobate, if any of that little spark is alive in us by which love does not seek its own, we ought certainly to provide what is good not only before God but also before men, lest, drinking calm water in our own conscience, we be shown to walk with careless feet, so that the Lord's sheep drink muddied water.

As for what you wrote, that we should inquire between ourselves about the kind of oath extorted by violence, I beg you, let not our discussion make most clear things obscure. For if certain death were threatened to make a servant of God swear that he would do something unlawful and wicked, he ought to prefer to die rather than to swear, lest he fulfill his oath by a crime. But in this case only the most persistent shouting of the people was compelling the man, and not to any wickedness but to something that, if done, would be done lawfully; and though it was indeed feared that some abandoned men, who are often mixed in with a multitude even of good people, having found an occasion for sedition and, as it were, for just indignation, might break out into some criminal violence from lust for plunder, still what was feared was uncertain. Who would think that, because of uncertain things, I do not say losses or any bodily injuries, but even to escape death itself, a certain perjury ought to be committed? That Regulus, whoever he was, had heard nothing in the holy Scriptures about the impiety of false swearing, had learned nothing about the sickle of Zechariah, and of course had sworn to the Carthaginians not by the sacraments of Christ but by the defilements of demons; and yet he did not dread most certain tortures and a death of horrible example so as to swear out of necessity, but of his own free will, because he had sworn, he accepted them so as not to perjure himself. And the Roman censorship of that time refused to keep, not among the number of saints but among the number of senators, not in heavenly glory but in the earthly senate house, not only those who, from fear of death and cruel punishments, most openly chose to perjure themselves rather than return to their savage enemies, but also the one who had thought himself absolved from the guilt of perjury because, after the oath, he had gone back on some feigned pretext. So those who expelled him from the senate considered not what he himself had in mind when he swore, but what those to whom he had sworn expected of him. Nor had they read what we sing everywhere: “He who swears to his neighbor and does not deceive.” We are accustomed to praise these things with great admiration even in men who were strangers to the grace and name of Christ; and do we still think we must inquire in the divine books whether we may ever lawfully perjure ourselves, where we have even been commanded not to swear, lest by readiness to swear we slip into perjury?

This indeed I do not doubt is said most rightly: that the faith of an oath is fulfilled not according to the words of the one who swears, but according to the expectation of the one to whom it is sworn, which the one who swears knows. For words very seldom capture, especially in a few words, the meaning whose faithful observance is required of the one who swears. Hence those are perjurers who, while keeping the words, have deceived the expectation of those to whom they swore; and those are not perjurers who, even without keeping the words, have fulfilled what was expected of them when they swore. Accordingly, since the people of Hippo wished to have holy Pinianus not as a condemned man but as a most dear resident of their city, even if this could not be sufficiently captured in his words, yet what they expected of him is so evident that his present absence after the oath disturbs none of those who could hear that he was going to set out for a definite reason with the intention of returning. And so he will not be a perjurer, nor be thought one by them, unless he deceives their expectation; and he will not deceive it unless he either changes his intention of living among them or someday departs without arranging to return, which be far from his character and from the faith which he keeps as due to Christ and the church. For, to pass over how terrible the divine judgment on perjury is, which you know as well as I do, this I certainly know: that henceforth we ought to be angry with no one who does not believe us when we swear, if we think that the perjury of such a man is not only to be borne with equanimity but even defended. May the mercy of him who rescues from temptation those who hope in him turn this away both from us and from him. As you wrote back, then, in your memorandum, let him fulfill his promise, since he promised that he would not withdraw from Hippo, in the same way as I and the people of Hippo themselves do not withdraw, who nevertheless have free power both to go away and to return; except that those who are not bound by an oath also have the power to move away altogether and not return without the guilt of perjury.

Whether it can be proved that our clergy or the brothers living in the monastery took part in or incited the insults against you, I do not know. For when I had inquired about this, I was told that only one, a Carthaginian from the monastery, had shouted with the people, when they were demanding him as presbyter, not when they were hurling unworthy things at you. I have attached to this letter a copy of the promise itself, transcribed from the very paper which he signed, and checked under my inspection.

It is right to console, not to increase, the grief of your mind, which you write that you cannot express; so that, if possible, we may heal your suspicions, and not disturb your venerable heart, dedicated to God, still further by being angry at them on our own account. No fear of death was inflicted on our holy brother, your son Pinianus, by the people of Hippo, even if perhaps he himself feared something of the kind; for we too were afraid that some abandoned men, who often mix with a multitude in secret conspiracy, might break out into violent audacity, having found an occasion for sedition which they could stir up as if with just indignation. But, as we were able to learn afterward, nothing of the kind was said or attempted by anyone; but they did indeed shout many insulting and unworthy things against my brother Alypius, from which so great a guilt may they deserve to be absolved through his prayers. But after their first shouts, when I had told them what promise already bound me not to ordain him against his will, and had added that, if they got him as presbyter by my breaking faith, they would not have me as bishop, I had left the crowd and returned to our seats. Then they, somewhat checked and disturbed by my unexpected reply, like a flame pressed down a little by the wind, began to be stirred up much more ardently, thinking it could happen either that I might be forced not to keep that promise or that, while I kept faith with the promise, he might be ordained by another bishop. To those I could reach, the more honorable and weighty men who had come up to us in the apse, I said that I could neither be moved from keeping faith with my promise, nor could he be ordained by another bishop in the church entrusted to me unless I were asked and gave permission; and if I gave permission, I would no less be departing from my word. I added also that, if he were ordained against his will, they would get nothing except that, once ordained, he would depart. They did not believe this could happen. But the multitude standing before the steps, persisting in the same will with a horrible and most persistent roar of shouting, made them uncertain in mind and counsel. Then those unworthy things were shouted against my brother; then more serious things were feared by us.

But although I was deeply moved by so great an agitation of the people and so great a disturbance of the church, and had said nothing else to that crowd than that I could not ordain him against his will, still I was not induced to urge him in any way to accept the presbyterate, because I had promised that I would not do this either; and if I had been able to persuade him, he would no longer have been ordained against his will. I kept faith with both promises: not only the one I had already made known to the people, but also the one by which I was bound with only one witness, as far as men are concerned. I kept faith, I say, with a promise, not an oath, in so great a danger. Although, as we found out afterward, it was falsely feared, yet the danger, if there was any, hung over all of us in common, and the fear itself was common; and I thought of withdrawing, fearing most for the church in which we were. But it was to be feared that in my absence less reverence and more burning resentment might bring about something of the kind. Then, if I departed with brother Alypius through the packed crowd, care had to be taken lest anyone dare to lay hands on him; but if I departed without him, how would my reputation look, if something happened to him and I seemed to have deserted him so that he might be handed over to the raging people?

Amid these anxieties of mine and my heavy grief, with no breathing space for any counsel, behold, suddenly and unexpectedly our holy son Pinianus sends a servant of God to tell me that he wished to swear to the people that, if he were ordained against his will, he would leave Africa altogether; thinking, I believe, that since he could not perjure himself, they would no longer shout with fruitless persistence and so drive away from here a man whom we ought at least to have as a neighbor. But since it seemed to me that their resentment was to be feared as more vehement after this oath, I kept it to myself in silence; and since he had at the same time asked me to come to him, I did not delay. When he had told me this very thing, he at once added to the same oath what he had sent me word of by another servant of God while I was on my way to him, namely, that he would reside here if no one laid the burden of clerical office on him against his will. At this, refreshed in such straits as by a breath of air, I answered him nothing, but went with quicker step to brother Alypius and told him what Pinianus had said. But he, avoiding, I think, that anything should be done on his authority by which he thought you would be offended, said: “Let no one consult me about this.” Having heard this, I went to the tumultuous people and, when silence had been obtained, disclosed what had been promised, together with the promise of an oath. But they, who thought of and desired only his presbyterate, did not receive what was offered as I had thought they would, but, muttering a little among themselves, asked that there be added to the same promise and oath that, if he should ever be pleased to consent to receive clerical office, he would consent only in the church of Hippo. I referred it to him; he agreed without hesitation. I announced it to them; they rejoiced and immediately demanded the promised oath.

I returned to our son and found him wavering over the words in which that promise with the oath might be framed, because of emergencies that might arise and compel him to depart. At the same time he showed what he feared: that some hostile incursion might occur which would have to be escaped by departure. Holy Melania wanted the pretext of unhealthy air added too, but she was overruled by his reply. I said that he had raised a serious and not negligible cause of necessity, one that would compel even citizens to emigrate; but if this were said to the people, it was to be feared that we would seem to be making ill omens, while if the excuse were made under the general name of necessity, it would be thought nothing but a fraudulent necessity. It was decided, however, to test the people's mind on this, and we found nothing other than what we had expected. For when his words were read out by the deacon and everything had pleased them, as soon as the word “necessity,” which had been inserted, sounded, there was immediately a shout of protest and the promise displeased them, the tumult breaking out afresh and the people thinking that nothing but fraud was being practiced on them. When our holy son saw this, he ordered the word “necessity” to be removed, and the people returned to rejoicing.

And though I pleaded weariness, he would not go to the people without me; we went together. He said that he had sent the words they had heard from the deacon, that he had sworn them, and that he would carry them out; and at once he went through everything in the form in which he had dictated it. The answer was, “Thanks be to God,” and it was asked that the whole document be signed. We dismissed the catechumens, and at once he signed the document. Then we bishops began to be asked, not by the voices of the people, but still on the people's behalf through honorable members of the faithful, to sign it too. But when I began to sign, holy Melania objected. I wondered why she did so this late, as though we could make that promise and oath void by not signing; but I complied all the same, and so my signature remained incomplete, and no one thought we should be pressed further to sign.

What stirrings there were, or what men said, on another day, after they learned that he had departed, I have taken care to inform Your Holiness by a memorandum, as far as I thought sufficient. Whoever, then, may perhaps have told you anything contrary to what I have narrated is either lying or mistaken. For I am aware that I have passed over some things which seemed to me not to concern the matter, but I have said nothing false. Accordingly, it is true that our holy son Pinianus swore in my presence and with my permission; but that he swore at my command is false. He himself knows it; the servants of God whom he sent to me know it, first holy Barnabas, then Timasius, through whom he also sent me word about the promise of his residence. The people too, by their shouting, were pressing for the presbyterate, not for an oath; but they did not reject the oath when it was offered to them, in the hope that, with him living among us, the will might arise in him to consent to ordination, so that he would not depart, as he had sworn to do if he were ordained against his will. And so they too shouted for the sake of God's work (for the consecration of a presbyter is certainly God's work); and since afterward they were not glad about the promised residence unless it were added that, if he ever wished to consent to receive clerical office, he would consent only in the church of Hippo, it is clear enough what they hoped for even from his living among them, and therefore they did not give up that desire for God's work.

How then do you say that they did this out of a most shameful appetite for money? First, because it does not concern the common people who were shouting at all; for just as the people of Thagaste have nothing from what you gave to the church of Thagaste except joy in your good work, so too the people of Hippo, and of any other place where you have carried out, or wherever you will carry out, the Lord's precepts concerning the mammon of unrighteousness. It was not, then, their own financial advantage that the people sought from you when they demanded most ardently that their church be provided with so great a man; rather they loved in you your contempt of money. For if they loved in me what they had heard, that I had turned to the free service of God, despising a few little fields I had from my father, and in this they did not begrudge the church of Thagaste, which is my earthly homeland, but, since it had not imposed clerical office on me, seized me to have me when they could; how much more ardently could they love in our Pinianus so great a desire for this world, such great wealth, such great hope, overcome and trampled underfoot by so great a conversion! For in the view of many who compare themselves with themselves, I seem not to have given up riches but to have come into riches. For my father's property can scarcely be reckoned a twentieth part in comparison with the estates of the church, which I am now thought to possess as owner. But in whatever church this man of ours might be, especially among the African churches, not as presbyter, I say, but as bishop, compared with his former wealth he will be very poor, even if he acts with the mind of an owner. Much more clearly and securely, then, is Christian poverty loved in him, in whom no greed for greater possessions can be suspected. This is what kindled the minds of the people; this is what roused them to that violence of most persistent shouting. Let us not accuse them of shameful greed besides; let us rather allow them, without reproach, at least to love in others the good which they themselves do not have. For even if there were poor people or beggars mixed in that multitude, who shouted along with the rest and hoped for some relief of their need from your venerable abundance, not even this, I think, is shameful greed.

It remains, then, that this most shameful appetite for money is directed obliquely at the clergy and especially at the bishop. For we are thought to be masters of the church's property; we are thought to enjoy its wealth. In short, whatever we have received of such gifts we either still possess or have distributed as we judged best; nothing of it have we given to the people outside the clergy or the monastery, except to a very few in need. I do not say, then, that these things ought to have been said by you especially against us, but that they could credibly be said only against us. What then shall we do? By what reasoning can we clear ourselves, if not before our enemies, at least before you? This matter is in the mind, it is within, hidden far from the eyes of mortals, known to God alone. What then remains but to call God to witness, to whom it is known? So when you think such things of us, you do not merely command us to swear (which would be much better, and which in your letter you thought should be held against me as blameworthy), but you altogether compel us to swear: not by threatening fear of death to our flesh, as the people of Hippo were thought to have done, but by threatening fear of death to our reputation, which, for the sake of the weak, to whom we try to offer ourselves as an example of good works by our way of life, such as it is, must certainly be preferred even to the life of this flesh.

Yet we are not angry with you for compelling us to swear in this way, as you are angry with the people of Hippo. For you believe of us, as human beings of human beings, things which, though they are not in us, are yet not things that could not be in us. These things are to be healed in you, not accused, and our reputation must be cleared before you, if our conscience is clear before the Lord. He perhaps will grant, as my brother Alypius and I discussed before this temptation occurred, that it may become very well known not only to you, our dearest fellow members, but even to our enemies themselves, that we are not sullied by any greed for money in the affairs of the church. Until this happens (if the Lord grants that it happen), see, here and now we do what we are compelled to do, so as not to postpone for any length of time the healing of your heart. God is witness that all this management of the church's property, whose dominion we are believed to love, I bear because of the service I owe to the love of the brothers and to the fear of God, not that I love it, so that I would wish to be without it, if I could do so without failing in my duty. And God himself is witness that I think no differently of my brother Alypius. Yet the people, and, what is more serious, the people of Hippo, thinking otherwise of him, have been carried headlong into such insults against him; and you, holy ones of God and full of the bowels of mercy, believing such things of us, wished to touch and admonish us under the name of the same people, who have nothing at all to do with any cause for greed of this kind; surely in order to correct us, not out of hatred, which be far from you. Hence I ought not to be angry but to give thanks, that you could not act more modestly or more freely than by not throwing what you thought in a bishop's face as a reproach, but leaving it to be understood obliquely.

Nor should you be troubled, as though you thought yourselves blamed, because I thought I should swear. For the apostle was not blaming, nor loving too little, those to whom he said: “We were not among you with flattering speech, nor with a pretext for greed; God is witness.” For of the open matter he called them themselves as witnesses, but of the hidden matter whom but God? If, then, he rightly feared that human ignorance might think anything of the kind about him, whose labor was evident to all (for he took nothing for his own use from the peoples to whom he dispensed the grace of Christ except in the utmost necessity, but provided the other necessities of his living with his own hands), how much more must we labor to be believed, who are far unequal to him both in merit of holiness and in strength of mind, and cannot work at anything with our own hands for the support of this life, and, if we could, would by no means be allowed to by such great occupations, which I do not believe they endured then! Let not, then, a most shameful appetite for money be laid any further in this cause against the Christian people, which is the church of God. For it is more tolerably laid against us, on whom the suspicion of this evil, though false, could still plausibly fall, than against those who are evidently strangers both to this appetite and to the suspicion of it.

For minds endowed with any faith whatever, how much more with Christian faith, it is not right to deny an oath its due; I do not say by affirming something contrary to it, but even by doubting it at all. What I think on this matter I have, I believe, set out sufficiently and very plainly in the letter I wrote to my brother. Your Holiness wrote to me: “Whether either I or the people of Hippo hold that an oath extorted by violence should be fulfilled.” But what do you yourself hold? Does it please you that, even with certain death threatening (which was then feared in vain), a Christian should take the name of the Lord his God in deceit, a Christian should call his God as witness to a falsehood? Surely, if apart from an oath he were compelled under threat of death to give false testimony, he ought to have feared staining his life more than ending it. Hostile armies clash with one another, armed and certainly with the most open threat of death; and yet, when they swear to each other, we praise those who keep faith and rightly detest those who deceive. And in order that they should swear, what did each side fear from the other but to be killed or captured? And therefore, unless an oath extorted by fear of death or captivity is respected, unless the faith given there is kept, even such men, who fear perjury more than killing a man, are held guilty of the crime of sacrilege and perjury; and do we propose for debate, as it were, the question whether an extorted oath must be fulfilled by servants of God who are eminent in the gift of holiness, monks running toward the perfection of Christ's commandments even by distributing their own property?

For why is that promised residence weighed down with the name of exile, or deportation, or banishment? I beg you to tell me. I think the presbyterate is not exile. Would our friend, then, have chosen that exile rather than this? Far be it from us that the holy one of God, so dear to us, be defended in this way; far be it, I say, that it be said that he preferred exile to the presbyterate, or perjury to exile. I would say these things if the oath promising residence had really been extorted from him by us or by the people; but in fact it was not extorted from him while he refused, but accepted when he offered it, and that in the hope, as we said above, that through that residence he might, it was believed, also consent to receive clerical office for those who desired it. Finally, whatever is thought of us or of the people of Hippo, the case of those who compelled someone to swear is far different from that of those who, I will not say compelled, but persuaded someone to perjure himself. Let the man himself who is concerned not refuse to consider whether it is worse to take an oath under any fear whatever, or to commit perjury when that fear is removed.

Thanks be to God that the people of Hippo consider the promise concerning him to be fulfilled in no other way than that he be present with the will to reside, and go wherever it may be necessary with the intention of returning. For if they attended to the words of the oath and exacted them, the servant of God ought in no way to depart rather than in any way perjure himself. But since it would be a crime on their part to hold, I do not say such a man, but any man in that way, they themselves have shown that they had no other expectation, since they rejoiced on hearing that he had departed intending to return; and a truthful oath owes them nothing other than what they expected of it. And what is this that is said, that in the oath uttered by his own mouth he made an exception for necessity? As if he had not by his own mouth ordered this to be removed again. Certainly, when he himself spoke to the people, he would have inserted it then too. If he had done so, the answer would certainly not have been “Thanks be to God,” but there would have been a return to the outcry that had arisen when it was read out in that form by the deacon. And does it make any difference whether an excuse of necessity for departing was inserted or not? Nothing else was expected of him than what we said above. And whoever deceives the expectation of those to whom he swears cannot but be a perjurer.

Let what was promised be done, then, and let the hearts of the weak be healed; lest by so great an example those whom this pleases be built up to imitate perjury, and those whom it displeases say most justly that none of us is to be believed, not only when promising something but even when swearing. For it is from this quarter rather that we must guard against the tongues of enemies, which that greater enemy uses like darts to kill the weak. But far be it from us to hope anything else of such a soul than what the fear of God inspires and the so great excellence of holiness that is in it encourages. As for me, who you say ought even to have forbidden it, I confess I could not be so wise as to prefer that the church I serve be overthrown by so great a tumult or offense rather than accept what was offered to us by such a man.

That excellent man, my son Ruferius, your kinsman, has told me what you have vowed to the Lord. Gladdened by his account, and at the same time fearing that the tempter, who from of old envies such goods, may persuade you otherwise, I thought I should exhort Your Charity in a few words, excellent lord and deservedly honorable and longed-for son, to consider what is read in the divine oracles: “Do not delay to turn to the Lord, nor put it off from day to day”; and to take up and see to the payment of what you know you have vowed to him who both exacts debts and pays what he promises. For this too is written: “Vow and pay to the Lord our God.” And yet, even if you had not vowed, what else should you have been urged to, or what better can a man do than restore himself to him by whom he was made, especially since so great a sign of God's love toward us has appeared and shone forth, that he sent his only-begotten Son to die for us? It remains, then, that what the apostle says be done, that Christ died for this, that those who live may live no longer for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again; unless perhaps the world is still to be loved, worn down by such a collapse of things that it has lost even the appearance of allurement. For as much as those are to be praised and proclaimed who did not deign to flourish with the world even when it was flourishing, so much are those to be rebuked and accused who delight to perish with it as it perishes.

If the labors and dangers and ruins of this transitory life are undergone for the sake of that same life, which must end some day, so that its death is not taken away altogether but only put off a little, how much more are they to be undergone for eternal life, where death is neither anxiously avoided by nature, nor shamefully feared by cowardice, nor bravely endured by wisdom! For it will be no one's, since it will not exist. Let eternal life, then, have you among its lovers. Do you not see how vehement are the lovers of this miserable and needy life, and how much it binds them to itself? Yet they, often thrown into confusion by its danger, end it the sooner by the very means by which they fear to end it, and while they shun death they hasten it, as if someone fleeing a robber or a wild beast should rush into a river and be swept away. In a raging storm they sometimes throw even their food into the sea, and to live they cast away that by which they live, lest there be a speedy end of a life that is lived even in toil. With what great labors men act so as to labor for a longer time! And when death begins to threaten, it is avoided so that it may be feared longer. For amid so many accidents of human frailty, how many deaths are feared, of which, when one has come, the rest are certainly no longer to be feared! And yet one is fled so that all may be feared. With what pains are those tortured who are treated and cut by doctors! Is it so that they may not die? No, but that they may die somewhat later. Many certain tortures are undergone so that a few uncertain days may be added; and sometimes, overcome by the very pains they undergo for fear of death, they die at once. And though they by no means choose to end life so as not to suffer, but rather to suffer so as not to end it, it befalls them both to suffer and to end it: not only because even when healed they certainly end, after their pains, a life bought with such punishments, which can be neither everlasting, since it is mortal, nor long-lasting, since it is wholly brief, nor secure even of its brief span, since it is always uncertain; but also because sometimes they have ended by pain the very life which they were willing to suffer pain so as not to end.

This too is a great evil in the excessive love of this life, and one vehemently to be cursed and dreaded: that many, while they want to live a little longer, gravely offend God, with whom is the fountain of life; and so, while they fear in vain the end of life which must necessarily come, they are shut out from the place where one lives without end. Add to this that a miserable life, even if it could be perpetual, is in no way to be compared with a happy life even of the shortest. And yet these people, by loving a most miserable and most brief life, lose a most happy and everlasting one, while in this very life which they wrongly love they want what they lose in the other; for certainly in this life they love neither misery, since they want to be happy, nor brevity, since they do not want it to end. Only because it is life is it so loved that often, for its sake, miserable and brief as it is, the happy and everlasting life is lost.

These things considered, what great thing does eternal life command of its lovers, when it commands that it be loved as this life is loved by its own? Or is it fitting or tolerable that all things loved in the world are despised so that a life which is soon to end may be kept in the world at least for that short while, and yet the world is not despised so that a life may be obtained which is without end with him through whom the world was made? Lately, when Rome itself, the home of the most glorious empire, was laid waste by barbarian invasion, how many lovers of this temporal life gave everything they kept, not only for its delight and adornment but even for its support and protection, to buy it back, even if it was to be prolonged unhappily and stripped bare! Lovers are certainly accustomed to bestow many gifts on those they love, in order to have them; these men would not have had their beloved unless by loving her they had made her poor, nor did they bestow many things on her but rather took everything away, lest the enemy take her from them. Nor do I blame their plan; for who does not know that she would have perished had not those things perished which had been stored up for her sake? Although some lost those things first and soon her too, while others, though ready to lose everything for her sake, lost her first. But from this we should be admonished what kind of lovers of eternal life we ought to be, so that for its sake we despise everything superfluous, since for this transitory life even the things necessary to it were despised.

For we do not strip our beloved, as they did theirs, in order to keep her; rather we make this temporal life serve as a less encumbered handmaid for gaining the eternal one, if we neither bind it with the chains of vain ornaments nor burden it with the loads of harmful cares, and if we listen to the Lord, who most faithfully promises us that life, to be desired with the highest ardor, crying out as it were in the assembly of the whole world: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This discipline of pious humility drives out of the mind, and in a way breathes out, the windy and turbulent desire that is greedy for things placed outside our power. For there is labor where many things are sought and loved for whose obtaining and keeping the will is not enough, because it does not have the ability to follow through. But the just life is present when we will it, because to will it fully is itself justice, and justice requires nothing more for its accomplishment than a perfect will. See whether there is labor where to will is enough. Hence it was divinely said: “Peace on earth to men of good will.” Where there is peace, there is rest; where there is rest, there is the end of desiring and no cause for laboring. But for this will to be full it must be healthy; and it will be healthy if it does not flee the physician by whose grace alone it can be healed of the disease of harmful desires. He, then, is the physician who cries, “Come to me, all you who labor,” calling his yoke easy and his burden light; because, when love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, what is commanded will surely be loved, and it will not be harsh or burdensome if one serves under this one yoke with a neck the more free the less it is swollen with pride. And this is the one load by which its bearer is not weighed down but lifted up. If riches are loved, let them be kept where they cannot perish; if honor is loved, let it be had where no one unworthy is honored; if health is loved, let it be sought where, once obtained, nothing is feared; if life is loved, let it be acquired where it is ended by no death.

Pay, then, what you have vowed, because you yourselves are what you pay, and you pay yourselves to him from whom you have your being; pay, I beg you. For what you pay will not be diminished by paying, but rather kept and increased; for he is a kind creditor, not a needy one, one who does not grow from what is paid but makes those who pay grow in himself. To him, then, what is not paid is lost, while what is paid is added to the one who pays; or rather, the payer himself is kept safe in him to whom he pays. For the same thing will be both the payment and the payer, because the same thing was both the debt and the debtor. For man owes himself to God, and must be paid back to him from whom he received his existence, in order to be happy. This is what the Lord means in the gospel: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” For he said this when a coin had been shown to him and he had asked whose image it bore, and the answer was “Caesar's”; so that they might understand from this that God demands from man his own image in man himself, as Caesar demanded his in the coin. How much more, then, must it be paid when it has been promised, since it is owed to him even when not promised!

Wherefore, dearest friend, I could indeed, according to my small little ability, praise more fully the fruit of the holy resolution which I have learned that you have vowed to God, and show the difference between Christians who love this world and those who despise it. Both are called faithful, both have been washed in the same bath of the sacred font, imbued and consecrated with the same mysteries, both are not only hearers but also preachers of the same gospel, and yet they are not both partakers of the kingdom of God and of light, and co-heirs of eternal life, which alone is happy. For the Lord Jesus distinguished, not those who do not hear his words from those who do, but the hearers of his words among themselves, by a very wide boundary and no slight distinction: “He who hears these words of mine and does them,” he says, “I will liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock: the rain came down, the rivers came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it did not fall; for it was founded on the rock. But he who hears these words of mine and does not do them, I will liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand: the rain came down, the rivers came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was its ruin.” To hear those words, then, is to build; in this both are equal; but in doing or not doing what they hear they are as unequal as a building founded on the solidity of rock is unequal to one which, having no foundation, is overturned by the easy shifting of sand. Nor does one who does not hear at all procure anything safer for himself; for he builds nothing and has no roof, and so is given over much more easily to be overwhelmed, carried off, and scattered by rains, rivers, and winds.

I could also, according to my small measure, distinguish those very people who belong to the right hand and the kingdom of heaven according to their grades and merits, and show how the married life of fathers and mothers of families who beget children, though they are religious and pious, differs from the life which you have vowed to God, if you now needed to be exhorted to vow it; but since you have already vowed it and already bound yourself, you may not do otherwise. Before you were bound by the vow, you were free to be lower, although that freedom is not to be congratulated by which something that is repaid with profit is not owed. But now, since your pledge is held before God, I am not inviting you to great righteousness but deterring you from great iniquity. For if you do not do what you have vowed, you will not be such as you would have remained if you had vowed nothing of the kind. For then you would be lesser, not worse; but now, may it not be so, you would be as much more wretched, if you broke faith with God, as you will be happier if you fulfill it. Nor should you regret having vowed; rather rejoice that it is no longer permitted to you which would have been permitted only to your loss. Go forward, then, without fear, and fulfill your words with deeds; he himself who seeks your vows will help you. Happy is the necessity that compels us to better things.

There could be one single reason for which we would not only not exhort you to fulfill what you have vowed, but even forbid you: if perhaps your wife refused to undertake this with you through weakness of mind or of flesh. For such things are not to be vowed by married people except by common consent and will; and if it has been done too hastily, the rashness is rather to be corrected than the promise paid. For God does not exact it if someone has vowed something that belongs to another; rather he forbids usurping what belongs to another. For the divine sentence on this matter has been pronounced through the apostle: “The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.” By the name of “body” he meant sex. But since I hear that she is so ready to dedicate continence to God that she would be hindered only if she were compelled to render you the debt by conjugal right, both of you render to God what both of you have vowed, so that there may be paid to him what you do not exact from each other. If continence is a virtue, as it is, why should the weaker sex be readier for it, when virtue (uirtus) seems rather to be named from man (uir), as the likeness of the words suggests? Do not, then, being a man, shrink from a virtue which a woman is ready to undertake. Let your consent be an offering on the heavenly altar of the creator, and, concupiscence being conquered, let the bond of love be the stronger the holier it is. Let us rejoice over you in the abundant grace of Christ, excellent lords and deservedly honorable and longed-for children.

We inform you by this letter that we agree in all respects, as you deigned to advise, with the edict of Your Excellency by which provision has been made for preserving the tranquillity and quiet of our conference and for manifesting and securing the truth; that is, concerning the place and time of the conference itself and the number of those who are to be present. We agree also that those to whom we delegate the duty of conferring should sign their proceedings; and that, in the document by which we impose this charge on them and promise that we will hold as valid whatever they do, you should not only have the signatures of all of us made but also see them yourself as they are made. We will also, with the Lord's help, admonish the Christian people to keep their gatherings altogether away from the place of the conference for the sake of quiet and tranquillity, and not to hurry to hear what is done while it is being done, but to wait to learn it when it has been written down, since you have promised to publish it to all.

Trusting in the truth, we also bind ourselves by this condition. If those with whom we are dealing can demonstrate that, when according to God's promises the Christian peoples, growing everywhere, were already filling a great part of the world and spreading to fill the rest, the church of Christ suddenly perished through the contagion of the sins of I know not what people, whom they accuse, and remained only in the party of Donatus: if, as has been said, they can demonstrate this, we will seek no honors of episcopal office among them, but will follow their counsel for the sake of eternal salvation alone, owing them gratitude for so great a benefit, the knowledge of the truth. But if we, rather, are able to show that the church of Christ, which already holds, with an abundance of peoples, the most fruitful territories not only of all the African but also of the overseas provinces and of many nations, and, as it is written, bears fruit and grows in the whole world, could not perish through the sins of any men mixed with it; if, finally, we demonstrate that the question of those very men whom they then wished to accuse rather than were able to convict has been settled (although the cause of the church does not rest on them), and that Caecilian was judged innocent and they violent and slanderous by the emperor to whose examination they themselves sent their charges as accusers; lastly, if, whatever they say about the sins of any men, we prove by human or divine documents either that those men's innocence was assailed by false charges or that the church of Christ, to whose communion we adhere, was not destroyed by any of their offenses: then let them hold its unity with us in such a way that they not only find the way of salvation but do not lose the honor of the episcopate either. For in them we detest not the sacraments of divine truth but the fictions of human error; when these are removed, we embrace a brother's heart, joined to us by Christian love, which we now grieve to see separated by diabolical dissension.

For each of us, joining to himself a partner in honor, will be able to sit in the more eminent place by turns, as when a visiting bishop sits beside his colleague. When this is granted on both sides in alternate basilicas, each is anticipated by the other in mutual honor, because, where the reception of love has enlarged hearts, the possession of peace does not become cramped; and when one of them dies, thereafter single bishops will succeed single bishops in the former manner. Nor will anything new be done; for Catholic love has observed this from the very beginning of the separation in the case of those who, having condemned the error of wicked division, have tasted the sweetness of unity, even if late. Or if perhaps the Christian peoples delight in single bishops and cannot bear the partnership of two, an unaccustomed sight, let us both withdraw from the midst; and, when the cause of schism has been condemned and the churches established in peaceful unity, let single bishops be appointed where necessary for the unity that has been made, by those who will be found as single bishops in single churches. For why should we hesitate to offer our Redeemer the sacrifice of this humility? Or did he descend from heaven into human members so that we might be his members, and do we fear to descend from our chairs, lest his very members be torn apart by cruel division? For our own sakes nothing is more sufficient than that we be faithful and obedient Christians; let us always be this, then. But we are ordained bishops for the sake of the Christian peoples; whatever, then, benefits the Christian peoples for Christian peace, let us do that with our episcopate. If we are useful servants, why do we begrudge our Lord eternal gains for the sake of our temporal eminence? The episcopal dignity will be more fruitful to us if, laid down, it gathers the flock of Christ, rather than if, retained, it scatters it. For with what face shall we hope in the world to come for the honor promised by Christ, if in this world our honor hinders Christian unity?

We have taken care to write this to Your Excellency so that through you it may become known to all. We ask that, with the help of the Lord our God, at whose prompting we make these promises and with whose help we trust we can fulfill them, pious love may, even before the conference if possible, either heal or tame the hearts of men, whether weak or hard; and so, with minds now at peace, may we not resist the most manifest truth, and may we either precede our debate with concord or follow it with concord. For we ought not to despair, if they remember that the peacemakers are blessed, since they shall be called children of God, that they would much more fittingly and easily wish that the party of Donatus be reconciled to the whole Christian world than that the whole Christian world be rebaptized by the party of Donatus; especially since they sought out with such love those coming from the sacrilegious and condemned schism of Maximian, whom they even took care to correct by pursuing them with the orders of earthly powers, that they did not dare to annul the baptism given by them, and received some of the condemned without any loss of their honor, and judged certain others to have been unpolluted in the fellowship of that division. We do not begrudge them their concord among themselves; but they ought certainly to notice how piously and with what zeal the Catholic root seeks out the branch broken off from it, if the branch itself likewise labored so hard to gather a small fragment cut off from it. [And in another hand:] We wish you good health in the Lord, son. I, Aurelius, bishop of the Catholic Church of Carthage, have signed this letter. [Likewise in another hand:] I, Silvanus, senior bishop, of the church of Summa, have signed.

The notice, or letter, of our brothers, whom we desire to be converted from pernicious dissension to Catholic peace, has made us very anxious, because they refused to agree to the edict of Your Nobility by which you provided for the tranquillity and quiet of our debate; we fear that, if not all, at least some of them may by the tumult or din of a multitude hinder the conference, which ought to be peaceable and peaceful. Would that such a thought may not tempt them, and that this suspicion of ours may rather prove mistaken! And so, if they want all to be present, may it be in order that, when it seems good to them, with us too assembled there, we may go out from there together, in concord and at peace, and, the schismatic division corrected and bound by the brotherly bond of Christ's unity, while all good people marvel and rejoice and only the devil and those like him grieve, may proceed together into the church to give thanks and render praises to God with most ardent and most shining love!

For what great thing is it, if a peaceful eye attends and Christian thought does not fail to consider and see, setting aside human accusations whether true or false, that the church is to be sought in those writings in which Christ its Redeemer was made known? For just as we do not listen, against Christ, to those who say that his body was stolen from the tomb by the disciples, so we ought not to listen, against his church, to those who say that it exists only among the Africans and a very few associates of the Africans. For the apostle says that true Christians are members of Christ. Just as, then, we do not believe that Christ's dead flesh was lost from the tomb through anyone's theft, so we ought not to believe that his living members have been lost from the world through anyone's sin. It is therefore not difficult, since Christ is the head and the church the body, to see both commended together in the gospel: the head against the calumnies of the Jews and the body against the accusations of heretics. For what is read, “It was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,” is against those who say that he was carried off dead from the tomb; and what follows, “and that repentance and remission of sins be preached in his name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” is against those who say that the church is not in the whole world; so that by one short passage and a few words both the enemy of the head and the enemy of the body are repelled, and, if he attends faithfully, corrected.

For we grieve that our brothers keep up these enmities all the more because it is evident that they hold with us the same Scriptures in which these most plain testimonies are contained. The Jews, indeed, who deny that Christ rose, at least do not accept the gospel; but these brothers of ours are bound by the authority of both testaments, and yet they want to accuse us of handing over the gospel, and refuse to believe it when it is read. But now perhaps, having undertaken the care of this conference, they have examined the holy Scriptures more diligently. They have found in them innumerable testimonies by which the church was promised to be in all nations and in the whole world, as we see that it began to be delivered and presented in the gospel and in the apostolic letters and in the Acts of the Apostles, where the very places and cities and provinces are named through which it grew, beginning from Jerusalem, so that from there it spread even into Africa, not by migrating but by growing; but they have not found any testimony of the divine oracles where it is said that it would perish from the other parts of the world and remain only in Africa in the party of Donatus. And they have seen how absurd it is that so many divine testimonies should be read on behalf of a church that was to perish, while not a single testimony of his can be found on behalf of the one which, as they think, was to please the Lord. Thinking these things, perhaps, they have wished all to come together to the place of our conference to end enmities that are vain and pernicious and contrary to eternal salvation, not so that a new tumult may arise but so that an old discord may be ended.

For as to the thing by which they are usually gravely provoked against us, that the kings of the earth, who it was foretold so long before would serve Christ the Lord, establish laws against heretics and schismatics for the sake of Catholic peace, we believe they have at some time reflected that this is not to be blamed. For the ancient kings too, not only of the Hebrew nation but foreigners as well, restrained all the peoples of their kingdoms with most threatening commands, lest anyone should not only do but even say anything against the God of Israel, that is, the true God; and their own forefathers sent the very case of Caecilian, from which this dissension arose, to the emperor Constantine through the proconsul Anulinus, as accusers, which they certainly seem to have done for no other reason than that the emperor Constantine might decree something by royal authority against those who had lost, in favor of those who had won. And they could find, by searching the public archives (and perhaps they have done so because of this very conference), that the whole case was settled long ago, after the ecclesiastical judgments by which Caecilian was acquitted, with that emperor too giving judgment, to whose examination they first sent the whole matter and later brought it. There they could also have found that the case of Felix of Aptunga, Caecilian's ordainer, whom they had called in their council the source of all evils, was cleared when the proconsul Aelianus heard it by order of the same emperor.

And yet, if they have attended to this too, and noticed, as was easy, that in the holy Scriptures the church of Christ was promised to be mixed with tares and chaff and bad fish until the time of harvest, winnowing, and the shore, they could certainly have reflected that, even if Caecilian and his fellow bishops had had a bad case, they could not have prejudiced the Christian world at all, which God promised so long before to a few who believed and has now delivered to many who see it; unless perhaps a sinning man had more power against the church than God swearing on its behalf, and iniquity in what it lost more than truth in what it promised. How foolish and impious it is to think this they have perhaps already seen. They have reflected too that they took care to have the Maximianists, whom they had condemned, the condemners of Primian, driven even from their basilicas through earthly powers; and there they learned more surely, by their own more recent example, that it is not a sin if the church asks such powers for something of this kind against its rebels. And since they afterward received back some of the condemned, and, when they condemned them, gave a delay to very many others established in the same fellowship of schism, whom they said had remained unpolluted in communion with the sacrilegious sapling of Maximian, and did not dare to annul and repeat the baptism given either by the condemned or by their associates, though given outside in schism, they certainly judged clearly enough that the things they used to say against us were condemned by their own example. And it is to be believed that they now understand how unworthy, how intolerable it is that, while Primian's condemners and those condemned in his case sit with these men and with Primian himself in episcopal chairs, so that there may be peace in the party of Donatus, the Christian world should be defamed on account of Caecilian, so that the unity of Christ may not live in peace.

Thinking perhaps of all these things and moved by the fear of God, they wanted all to be present at the place of the conference, not with a plan for tumult but for peace. As for their saying that they would all be present so that their number might appear, since their adversaries had often lied that they were few: if this was ever said by our people, it could be said most truly of those places where the number of our fellow bishops and clergy and laity is far greater, and especially in the proconsular province; although, except in consular Numidia, they are very easily outnumbered by ours in the other African provinces too; or certainly we say most rightly that, in comparison with all the nations through which the Catholic communion is spread, they are very few. But now, if they had wished their number to be known, would it not have been made known in a more orderly and tranquil way through their signatures, which you directed in your edict that they should append to their mandate in your sight? What then is the meaning of their desire that all be present at the place of the conference? For if they are not thinking of peace, what will they not disturb if they speak, or what will they do there if they keep silent? For even if there is no shouting, the mere whispering of many will make a great enough din to hinder that conference.

And what of the statement they thought fit to put in their notice, that they had justly demanded that all be present because all had been summoned to come; as if the few who were to be present could be chosen otherwise than by all who had come, so that they might sign their election in your presence, and thus all would be present in the few, since the few would have been chosen by all? Either tumult, then, is in their thoughts, or peace. Of these we desire the latter and guard against the former; and therefore, lest perhaps (may it not be so) what we guard against should be prepared rather than what we desire, we agree that all of them be present, but in such a way that on our side only as many be present as seemed sufficient to Your Excellency; so that, if anything tumultuous should arise through the crowds, it may rightly be imputed only to those on whose side a multitude was present, wholly superfluous for a matter to be conducted by a few. But if, as we desire with all our prayers, as we ardently seek, as we humbly beg of the Lord, that multitude will be needed for making unity, then, when they wish, we will all be present and will fly eagerly to so great a good with the help of him who grants it, saying: “You are our brothers,” no longer to those who detest us, but to those who, hatred ended, embrace us, “that the name of the Lord may be honored and may appear to them in gladness,” as they now experience with us how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity. [And in another hand:] We wish you good health in God, son. [Likewise in another hand:] I, Aurelius, bishop of the Catholic Church of Carthage, have signed. [Likewise:] I, Silvanus, of the primatial see of the province of Numidia, have signed.

Remembering that you asked, and that I promised, that I would write something to you about praying to God, I ought, now that time and opportunity have been granted by him to whom we pray, to pay my debt at once and serve your devout zeal in the love of Christ. How much your request itself gladdened me, for in it I learned how great a care you take for so great a matter, I cannot express in words. For what ought to be the greater business of your widowhood than to persevere in prayers night and day, according to the apostle's admonition? He says: "She who is truly a widow and desolate has set her hope on the Lord and perseveres in prayers night and day." Hence it may seem wonderful that, since by the standards of this world you are noble and rich, and the mother of so great a family, and therefore, though a widow, still not desolate, the care of praying should have taken hold of your heart and claimed it above all for itself, unless it is because you wisely understand that in this world and in this life no soul can be secure.

Therefore he who gave you that concern is surely doing what he did for his disciples when they were saddened, not for themselves but for the human race, and despaired that anyone could be saved, after they heard from him that it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven: he answered with a wonderful and most merciful promise that what is impossible for human beings is easy for God. He, then, for whom it is easy that even a rich man should enter the kingdom of heaven, has inspired in you the devout anxiety about which you thought I should be consulted, namely how you ought to pray. For even while he was still here in the flesh, he sent the rich man Zacchaeus into the kingdom of heaven; and after he was glorified by his resurrection and ascension, he imparted the Holy Spirit and afterward made many rich people despisers of this world, richer once their greed for riches was ended. For how would you be so eager to pray to the Lord if you did not hope in him? And how would you hope in him if you hoped in the uncertainty of riches and despised the most wholesome precept that the apostle gives: "Command the rich of this world not to be proud nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy; let them be rich in good works, give readily, share, lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of the true life"?

You ought therefore, out of love for this true life, to count yourself desolate in this world, whatever prosperity of it you may enjoy. For just as that is the true life, in comparison with which this life that is so much loved, however pleasant and long it may be, should not even be called life, so also there is a true consolation, which God promises through the prophet, saying: "I will give them true consolation, peace upon peace"; without this consolation, whatever earthly consolations there are, desolation rather than consolation is found in them. For riches and the heights of office and other things of this kind, by which mortals who have no share in that true happiness think themselves happy, what consolation do they bring, since it is better not to need them than to excel in them, and since, once gained, they torment more by the fear of losing them than they did by the passion to gain them when they were desired? People do not become good by such goods; but having been made good from elsewhere, by using them well they make these things good. True consolations, then, are not in these things, but rather where true life is. For a person must become happy from the same source from which he becomes good.