Letters 235.1–238.8

I have gained the fruit of my letter, namely the reply of your goodwill. From it I now see that there has arisen and begun between us something like the seed of a great discussion about a great matter. This is what I wanted first; what I still want, God will help with: that is, that what has been begun may be brought to its due and wholesome end. So I accept, not unwillingly, this restraint in a pagan's mind, that you thought you should neither rashly deny nor affirm anything about Christ. And as for your wish to be taught by my writings about this, I will by no means refuse, nor will I cease to serve this good will of yours, very dear to me. But first it is necessary in some way to clarify and grasp plainly your view of the ancient rites. For when you had said that the better way to God is that by which a good man, “proved by pious, just, pure, chaste, true words and deeds without any boasting sought from changing times, and surrounded by the company of the gods, the powers of God having been earned, that is, the virtues of that one, universal, incomprehensible, untiring Creator having been fulfilled, whom, as is your custom, you call angels, or something else after God or with God, either from God or toward God, hastens to go with the intention of soul and mind” (you recognize these words from your letter), you then added: “It is the way, I say, by which those who are purified by the pious precepts of the ancient rites and by most pure expiations, and refined by abstinent observances, hasten on, steadfast in soul and body.”

In these words I sense, unless I am mistaken, that you think it is not enough for the way by which one goes to God that a good man, by pious, just, pure, chaste, true words and deeds, should earn the favor of the gods, so that, surrounded by their company, he may hasten to go to that highest God, Creator of all, unless he is also purified by the pious precepts and expiations of the ancient rites. Therefore I would like to know what you think must be purified by rites in one who, by living piously, justly, purely and truthfully, earns the favor of the gods and through them of that one God of gods. For if he still has to be purified by rites, he is certainly not clean; and if he is not clean, he does not live piously, justly, purely and chastely. But if he already lives so, he is already clean. And what need is there for one already clean and pure to be purified by expiating rites? So here is the knot of our discussion; when it is untied, we will see what follows: whether a man lives well in order to be purified by rites, or is purified by rites in order to live well; or whether the measure of good living in a man, however great, is not yet fit for the happy life that is received from God unless the aids of the rites are added; or whether receiving the rites is itself, as it were, a part of living well, so that living well is not one thing and living by the rites another, but the life of the rites is included within the bounds of good living. Which of these four I have proposed you most approve, please do not mind disclosing by letter. For it matters greatly for what we have undertaken to carry through in conversation with each other that, while I try to refute many unnecessary things as if you held views you perhaps do not hold, necessary time should not be spent on superfluous things. So I did not want to burden the letter, so that when you reply quickly we may weave together the rest.

I thought I could do nothing better than to write to Your Holiness above all, so that the enemy, who never stops lying in wait to destroy souls bought at so great a price, may not through negligence lay waste the sheepfold of our Lord Jesus Christ in your province. A certain subdeacon of Malliana, Victorinus, has been proved among us to be a Manichee, and in so sacrilegious an error he was hiding under the name of a cleric; and he is already an old man in age. He was so exposed that, when questioned by me, even before he was convicted by witnesses, he could not deny it; for he knew there were already so many, and such people, to whom he had incautiously poured himself out, that if he tried to deny it he would appear, I will not say most shameless, but quite insane. He confessed, however, that he was a Hearer of the Manichees, not one of the Elect.

Those who among them are called Hearers both eat meat and till the fields and, if they wish, have wives; none of which those called the Elect do. But the Hearers themselves kneel before the Elect, so that hands may be laid on them as suppliants, not only by their presbyters or bishops or deacons but by any of the Elect. They also worship and pray to the sun and moon with them. They fast with them on the Lord's day too, and believe with them all the blasphemies for which the Manichaean heresy is to be detested: denying that Christ was born of a virgin, not confessing that his flesh was real but false, and therefore contending that his passion too was false and that there was no resurrection. They blaspheme the patriarchs and prophets. They say the law given through God's servant Moses was not from the true God but from the prince of darkness. They think that the souls not only of men but even of beasts are of God's substance and altogether parts of God. Finally they say that the good and true God fought with the race of darkness and mixed part of himself with the princes of darkness, and they assert that this part, defiled and bound throughout the whole world, is purified by the food of their Elect and by the sun and moon; and that what of this very part of God could not be purified is bound at the end of the world in an eternal and penal bond: so that God is believed not only to be violable, corruptible and capable of defilement, since part of him could be brought to such evils, but also unable to be purified wholly from such defilement, uncleanness and misery even at the end of the world.

These intolerable blasphemies this subdeacon, as though a Catholic, not only believed with them but also taught with what strength he could; for he was discovered while teaching, when he trusted himself to people he took for learners. After he confessed that he was a Hearer of the Manichees, he did ask me to call him back to the way of the truth of Catholic doctrine; but, I confess, I was deeply horrified at his pretense under the guise of a cleric, and I had him restrained and arranged for him to be expelled from the city. Nor was this enough for me unless I also informed Your Holiness by my letter, so that, deposed from the clerical rank with fitting church severity, he may become known to all as one to be avoided. But when he asks for a place of penance, let him be believed then, if he also discloses to us the others he knows to be there, not only at Malliana but in the whole province.

Having read what Your Holiness sent, it seems to me that Argyrius either fell upon the Priscillianists unawares, so that he did not know at all whether they were Priscillianists, or is already entangled in the nets of that heresy. For I do not doubt that those writings are the Priscillianists'. But, with one necessity after another pressing on me without a break, I could barely find leisure to have even one of the two volumes read through to me entire; for somehow the other went astray and, though searched for most diligently among our people, could in no way be found, my most blessed lord and justly venerable father.

The hymn which they say is our Lord Jesus Christ's, which most disturbed Your Reverence, is usually found in apocryphal writings, which are not peculiar to the Priscillianists; other heretics too use them with the impious vanity of several sects, although they differ among themselves. So each followed his own different heresy, but they hold these writings in common amid their diversity, and those who do not accept the Old Law and the canonical prophets are especially accustomed to use them. For they deny that these belong to the good God and to Christ his Son, like the Manichees, like the Marcionites and the others who have favored this damnable blasphemy. Even in the canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, that is, in the true Gospel and apostolic writings, they do not accept everything, but what they wish; they choose which books to accept and reject others. And in each book they mark off the passages they think agree with their errors and hold the rest as false. For some Manichees reject the canonical book entitled the Acts of the Apostles. They fear its most evident truth, where the Holy Spirit appears sent, who was promised by the Lord Jesus Christ in the truth of the Gospel. For under the name of this Spirit, from whom they are utterly estranged, they deceive untaught human hearts, asserting with wonderful blindness that this promise of the Lord was fulfilled in their heresiarch Mani. The heretics called Cataphrygians do the same, saying that through some madmen, Montanus and Priscilla, whom they hold as their own prophets, the Holy Spirit came whom the Lord promised to send.

The Priscillianists, however, accept everything, canonical and apocryphal alike; but whatever is against them they twist into the sense of their perversity, sometimes by a cunning and crafty interpretation, sometimes by a ridiculous and dull one; and not even so that they themselves believe true the very interpretations they give to people outside their sect. Otherwise they would either be Catholics or not far from the truth, if they found Catholic meanings even in the apocryphal writings, or seemed to wish to find them. But since they think other things with their own people and teach or learn among themselves things they do not dare to divulge, because they are truly wicked and detestable, they nevertheless preach the Catholic faith to those they fear, not a faith they hold but one under which they hide. For perhaps some more unclean heretics can be found, but none is comparable to these in deceit. For other heretics, as human failings go, lie out of the habit or weakness of this life; but these are said to have, in the wicked doctrine of their heresy itself, a precept to lie even with false oaths in order to conceal their tenets. Those who have had experience of them, who were once their members and were freed from them by God's mercy, even recall the very words of this precept: “Swear, forswear, do not betray the secret.”

Therefore, so that it may be seen without any difficulty that they do not think about the apocryphal writings what they pretend to set forth, we must consider the reason they seem to give for ascribing divine authority to those writings, and, what is more wicked, even preferring them to the canonical ones. You have their words set down in that volume as follows: “The hymn of the Lord, which he spoke in secret to the holy apostles his disciples, because it is written in the Gospel, ‘When the hymn had been said, he went up the mountain’; and it was not placed in the canon because of those who think according to themselves and not according to the Spirit and the truth of God; and because it is written, ‘It is good to hide the sacrament of a king, but it is honorable to reveal the works of God.’” This is their great reason why this hymn is not in the canon: that, as the sacrament of the king, it had to be hidden from those who think according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit and the truth of God. Therefore the canonical Scriptures do not concern the sacrament of the king, which they think must be hidden, and were written for those who think according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit and the truth of God. What is this but to say that the holy canonical Scriptures neither savor according to the Spirit of God nor belong to the truth of God? Who would listen to this? Who could bear the horror of such impiety? Or, if the canonical Scriptures are understood spiritually by the spiritual and carnally by the carnal, why is this hymn not also in the canon, if the spiritual understand it too spiritually and the carnal carnally?

Then what reason is there for them to try to explain this same hymn according to the canonical Scriptures? For if it is not in the canonical Scriptures because those Scriptures were written for the carnal and this hymn for the spiritual, how is a hymn that does not concern the carnal explained from Scriptures that concern carnal men? For if, for example, it is sung and said in this hymn, “I wish to loose and I wish to be loosed,” because, as they explain these words, the Lord Christ looses us from the way of life of the world, so that we are not bound in it again, this we have certainly learned in the canonical Scriptures: that the Lord looses us from the way of life of the world and that we ought not to be bound in it again. For what else is “You have broken my bonds”? What else is “The Lord looses the fettered”? And the apostle admonishes those already loosed, saying, “Stand fast, therefore, and do not be held again by the yoke of slavery”; and the apostle Peter says, “For if, having fled the defilements of the world in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first,” showing thus that, once loosed, we ought not to be bound to the world again. Since, then, these things are plain in the canon, from the testimonies I have mentioned and from very many others, and never cease to be read and preached, why do they say that this hymn, where, to speak as they do, the words are set down very obscurely, is not in the canon so that it might not be revealed to the carnal, when rather we see things revealed in the canon and in this hymn altogether veiled, as they themselves assert? For, as is more to be believed, the meanings are not these at all but some others, which by such an explanation they veil far more and are afraid to reveal.

For surely, if what is meant by those words is that the Lord looses us from the way of life of the world, and that we are not bound in it again, it would not be said, “I wish to loose and I wish to be loosed,” but, “I wish to loose, and I wish those whom I have loosed not to be bound.” Or if he transfers his members, that is, his faithful, into himself, as when he says, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” he would rather say, “I wish to be loosed and not to be bound.” Or if he both looses and is loosed because the head looses and the members are loosed, the members that the one persecuted to whom he cried from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, this indeed the interpreter of these words did not say; but even if he had said it, we answer him what we answered a little before: that we read these things in the canonical Scriptures, understand them there, confirm them from there, and preach them from there daily. Why then is this hymn said to have been withheld from the carnal, so as not to be placed in the canon, when what is covered in it is uncovered in the canon? Or are they so foolish, or rather mad, as to dare to say that the sacrament of the king is hidden from the spiritual in this hymn but manifest to the carnal in the canon?

The same can be said of the earlier words of the same hymn, where it says, “I wish to save and I wish to be saved.” For if, as they explain, these words mean that we are saved by the Lord through baptism and that we save, that is, keep in ourselves, the Spirit given us through baptism, does not canonical Scripture proclaim this sense, where we read, “He saved us by the washing of regeneration,” and where we are told, “Do not quench the Spirit”? How, then, is this hymn not in the canon so that it may not become known to the carnal, when what is obscure in it shines in the canon, unless it is that under this explanation, such as it is, which they hold out to any outsiders, they try to hide what they themselves understand here? Yet they are so blind that they even bring in certain words from the canon itself to explain the hymn, which they say is not in the canon lest the sacrament of the king be betrayed to the carnal. What, then, are they doing with things set more clearly in the canon, through which the obscure things in this hymn are opened?

For if, as they say, where the hymn says, “I wish to be begotten,” we are to understand what is written in the canonical letter of the apostle Paul, “whom I am again in labor with until Christ is formed in you”; if, where the hymn says, “I wish to sing,” we are to understand what is written in a canonical psalm, “Sing to the Lord a new song”; if, where it says, “Dance, all of you,” we are to understand what is written in the Gospel canticle, “We sang to you and you did not dance”; if, by “I wish to lament; beat your breasts, all of you,” we are to understand what is written in the Gospel canticle, “We lamented to you and you did not mourn”; if “I wish to adorn and I wish to be adorned” means in this hymn what is written in the canon, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” and, “You are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you”; if what it says in this hymn, “I am a lamp to you who see me,” means what is written in a canonical psalm, “In your light we shall see light”; if what it says in this hymn, “I am a door to you, whoever knocks at me,” means what is read in a canonical psalm, “Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will go in through them and give thanks to the Lord,” and in another psalm, “Lift up your gates, you princes, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory shall come in”; if what it says in this hymn, “You who see what I do, keep silent about my works,” means what is written in the book of Tobit, “It is good to hide the sacrament of a king”: why is this hymn said not to be in the canon so that the sacrament of the king may be hidden from the carnal, when the things explained in this hymn are also read in the canon, and are found so manifest there that by them those obscure things are explained, unless it is that they have these explanations to hide in, while in the words of that hymn, which they pretend to explain, they understand something they fear to explain to outsiders?

It would take long to show everything by argument. But from what we have said it is very easy to consider the rest and to see that the good and honorable things they say in explaining this hymn are also found in the canon. So that claim of theirs is not a reason but an evasion: that the hymn was separated from the canon because the sacrament of the king had to be hidden from carnal men. Hence they are rightly believed not to wish by these explanations to open what they read, but rather to cover what they think. Nor is it surprising, since they have believed that the Lord Jesus himself, speaking not through the mouths of prophets or apostles or angels but through his own mouth, was a mocker rather than a teacher of truth, ascribing divine authority to this hymn, where some author of the hymn invented his saying, “By a word I mocked all things, and I was not mocked at all.” Let these distinguished spiritual men answer, if they can: where shall we go, to whom shall we open our ears, whom shall we believe when he speaks, in whose promise shall we place our hope, if Christ mocked all things by a word, if the almighty Teacher mocked all things by a word, if he who is the only-begotten Word of God the Father mocked all things by a word? What more shall I say of these lost men, these vain talkers and deceivers, first of their own minds and then of others whom they have been able to join to themselves, predestined to eternal destruction? I have written back to Your Reverence both much later than I wished and at greater length than I had planned. You do very well to guard vigilantly against wolves; but labor also with pastoral diligence, with the help of the Lord of shepherds himself, to heal the sheep, if they have perhaps violated or already wounded any.

I had wished, at your request and insistence, as you will remember, or rather at your command, as befits your age and rank, to confer with you in person about the Christian faith, as far as the Lord gave me ability. But since after lunch you were displeased with what had pleased us both in the morning, namely that our words should be taken down by stenographers, so that you may no longer say, as I hear you do not stop saying, that I did not dare to tell you my faith, receive it in this letter, which you may read and give to whomever you wish to read, and to which, if you disagree, you may reply in writing in turn. For it is unjust for anyone to wish to judge another and not wish to be judged himself.

As for our earlier agreement, which you refused to keep at the arranged noon meeting, it can easily be judged which of us lacked confidence in his faith: the one who wished it to be spoken and feared that it would be held to, or the one who was so unwilling to withdraw it from the judgment of those in debate that he wished it committed to writing and so entrusted to the memory of readers too, so that no one, either imagining through forgetfulness or provoked by disagreement, might say that one of us had not said what had been said, or had said what had not. For in such things those who are more eager for contention than for truth usually look for hiding places for their bad defense. But this could not have been said by you or by me, of you or of me, if you had kept faith with the agreement that our words should be taken down and written. Especially since you yourself, in the words in which you pronounced your faith, varied them as often as you repeated them; which I believe was done not by any fraud but through forgetfulness.

For first you said that you believed “in God the Father almighty, invisible, unbegotten, incomprehensible, and in Jesus Christ his Son, God born before the ages, through whom all things were made, and in the Holy Spirit.” When I heard this and answered that nothing had yet been said by you that contradicted my faith, and that therefore, if you wrote it down, I could also subscribe to it, the matter somehow came to this, that you took a sheet and wished to set down in writing with your own hand the very words you had spoken. When you had given it to me to read, I noticed that you had not written “Father,” since you had written “God almighty, invisible, unbegotten, unborn.” When I pointed this out, you added “Father” after not much argument; and “incomprehensible,” which you had said in speech, you had left out in writing, but I made no mention of that.

Then, when I had said I was ready to subscribe, since those words could also be mine, I first asked, so that what had come to mind would not slip away, whether “the Father unbegotten” was read anywhere in the divine Scriptures. I did this because at the beginning of our conversation, when Arius and Eunomius had been mentioned, not by me but by my brother Alypius, who asked which of them Auxentius had followed (Auxentius having shortly before been praised by you with no small commendation), you cried out and anathematized both Arius and Eunomius. Then you at once demanded that we too anathematize homoousios, as though there were some man called that, like Arius and Eunomius. Then you insisted vehemently that we show you this word in the Scriptures, and you would immediately enter into communion with us. We answered that, since we spoke Latin and that was Greek, we must first ask what homoousios is, and then demand that it be shown in the holy books. You, on the contrary, repeating the word itself often and tossing it about invidiously, and recalling that it was written in the councils of our forebears, pressed vehemently that we show that very word, homoousios, in the holy books, while we again and again recalled that, since our language was not Greek, we must first translate and explain what homoousios is, and only then look for it in the divine writings; because, even if the name itself was perhaps not found, the thing itself would be found. For what is more contentious than to fight about a name when the thing is agreed?

Since, then, we had already discussed these things, when it came to your writing down your faith, as I have related, although I saw nothing in those words contrary to our faith and therefore said I was ready to subscribe, I asked, as I said, whether the Scripture of God contained this word, that the Father is unbegotten; and when you answered that it was written, I pressed you more urgently to show it. Then one of those present, a partner in your faith as far as one can tell, said to me: “What then? Do you call the Father begotten?” I answered: “I do not.” And he said: “If, then, he is not begotten, he is certainly unbegotten.” I said to him: “You see that it can happen that even for a word that is not in the Scripture of God a reason can be given showing that it is rightly said. So also with homoousios, which we were being forced to show on the authority of the divine books: even if we do not find the term itself there, it can happen that we find that to which this term is judged rightly applied.”

When this had been said, I waited to hear what you thought of it, and you said it was rightly done that the Father was not called unbegotten in the holy Scriptures, so that no injury might be done to him by such a word. “Then,” I said, “injury has just been done to God, and by your hand.” On hearing this you had begun to admit that you ought not to have said it either. But when I advised you that, if this word seemed to you such as to injure God, you should delete it from where you had written it, you considered, I believe, that it could rightly be said and defended, and said again: “I certainly say it.” Then I repeated what I had already said, that it could happen that homoousios too is not found written in the holy pages and yet is defended as said in the assertion of the faith, just as we nowhere read in those books that the Father is unbegotten, and yet it is defended as something that must be said. Then you took from me the sheet you had given me and tore it up. And we agreed that in the afternoon stenographers should be present to take down our words, and that we should treat these matters between us more carefully, as far as we could.

We came, as you know, at the agreed hour; we brought stenographers, and yours too were to be present; we sat down. You stated your faith again, and in your words I did not hear “the Father unbegotten,” I suppose because you had thought about what had been said about it in the morning and wished to be on guard. Then you asked me to state my faith too. When I asked, recalling our morning agreement, that you rather deign to dictate what you had said, you cried out that we were preparing a false charge against you and therefore wanted to keep your words in writing. What I answered then I do not like to recall, and I wish you did not remember it either. Yet I kept the respect due to your rank, and did not count as an insult what I had deserved to hear not from truth but from power. Still, because I did repeat those very words, saying in a low voice, “Are we really preparing a false charge against you?”, I ask your pardon.

But when you heard this, you repeated your faith again in a louder voice, and in your words I did not hear “God the Son,” which you had never left out whenever you stated it. Here, when I asked as modestly as I could that our agreement about taking down our words be kept, I also pointed out its usefulness from the present experience, saying that you yourself had not been able to keep in memory your own most familiar words, since you could never repeat them without leaving out something, and something most necessary; how much less could those listening to us remember our words so well that, if either you wished to reconsider and discuss something of mine or I of yours, they could clearly recall whether it was said or not; in which difficulty the stenographers' reading back would most easily help us! Then you said indignantly that it would have been better for you always to hear my reputation, because you had found me far inferior to what it had boasted to you. Then I recalled that when we greeted you before lunch and you had spoken of that reputation to us, I had said that it had lied about me. Here indeed you said I had spoken the truth. So since two things have told you different things about me, my reputation one thing and I another, I ought surely to rejoice that I rather than it was found truthful. But since it is written, “God alone is true, but every man is a liar,” I fear I may have said this too rashly of myself; for we are not truthful in ourselves or by ourselves, when we are, but when he speaks in his servants who alone is true.