Letters 32.1–34.6

The day before we sent this letter, our brothers returned from Africa, for whom you saw us waiting anxiously, and we received from there, as we had greatly desired, letters from holy and very dear men, namely Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, Profuturus and Severus, all of them now bishops alike. So, rejoicing in the very recent words of so many such saints, we hastened to bring our joy to you, so that we might give you too, in your anxious stay abroad, the joy you were awaiting, with most festive tidings. If perhaps you have learned the same things about these venerable and most loving men through the arrival of other ships, receive them repeated by us too, and rejoice again with renewed gladness. But if this news comes to you first from us, rejoice that Christ has granted us such love won in your homeland that whatever divine providence does there, ever wonderful, as it is written, in his saints, we know either first or among the first.

We write that this is a matter for rejoicing not only because Augustine has received the episcopate, but because the African churches have been found worthy of this care of God, to receive heavenly words from Augustine's mouth. For the greater grace of the Lord's gift he has been advanced in a new way, consecrated so that he did not succeed the bishop in his chair but joined him in it. For while Valerius is still alive, Augustine is co-bishop of the church of Hippo. And that blessed old man, whose most pure mind no stain of jealous envy ever clouded, now reaps from the Most High fruits worthy of the peace of his heart, in that he is found worthy to have as colleague the one he simply wished for as successor in his priesthood. Could this have been believed before it happened? But of this work of the Almighty too that gospel saying can be spoken: 'For men these things are hard, but with God all things are possible.' So let us exult and rejoice in him who alone does wonders and who makes those of one mind dwell in a house, because he has looked on our lowliness and visited his people for good, who raised up a horn in the house of his servant David, and has now exalted the horn of his church in his chosen ones, so that he may break the horns of sinners, as he promises through the prophet, that is, of the Donatists and Manichaeans.

Would that this trumpet of the Lord, with which he now thunders through Augustine, might strike the hearing of our son Licentius, but so that he might hear it with that ear by which Christ enters, from which the enemy does not snatch the seed of God! Then Augustine will truly seem to himself a high priest of Christ, for then he will feel that he has been heard on high, if the one whom he begot for you, worthy in letters, he also brings forth worthily for himself as a son in Christ. For even now, believe me, he has written to us with most burning concern for him. We believe in the almighty Christ that Augustine's spiritual prayers will prevail over the carnal wishes of our young man. He will be conquered even against his will, believe me; he will be conquered by the faith of his most devoted parent, lest a bad victory win, if he prefers to conquer to his own ruin rather than to be overcome for his salvation. So that the duty of brotherly kindness might not seem empty, we have sent five loaves to you and to our son Licentius alike, from the hardtack of the Christian campaign, in whose array we serve daily for the ration of frugality; for we could not separate from the blessing one whom we desire to bind closely to us by the same grace. But let us also speak a few words to him, lest he deny that what is written to you about him is written to him. For what Micio hears is said to Aeschinus. But why should I speak of other people's things, when we can say everything from our own, and to speak what belongs to others is not usually the mark of a sound head? By God's grace we are sound and safe in our head, we whose head is Christ. May we have you safe for as long a life as possible, and always happy with your whole house, as we desire, in Christ, lord brother, deservedly most honoured and most longed for.

Hear, then, my son, the law of your father, that is, the faith of Augustine, and do not reject the counsels of your mother; for Augustine's love may equally claim that name by right in your case, since he carried you, such a little one, in his bosom, and, having fed you from infancy with the first milk of worldly wisdom, now longs to nurse and nourish you for the Lord with spiritual breasts too, because he sees you, grown in bodily age, still wailing in spiritual cradles, still an infant in the word of God, scarcely crawling in Christ with first steps and faltering tread, if only Augustine's teaching, like a mother's hand and a nurse's arm, may guide the unsteady little one. If you hear and follow him, then, to entice you again with the words of Solomon, my son, you will receive a crown of graces for your head. And then you will truly be that consul and pontiff, not dreamed of in a phantasm but formed by Truth itself, Christ filling the empty images of a false work with the solid effects of his own work. For Licentius will truly be pontiff and truly consul if you cling to Augustine's footsteps, to prophetic and apostolic disciplines, as blessed Elisha to holy Elijah, as young Timothy to the illustrious apostle, in undivided companionship along the divine ways, so that you may learn with a perfect heart to deserve the priesthood and with a teacher's mouth to counsel the peoples for their salvation.

Enough of warnings and exhortation; for I think, my Licentius, that with little speech and labour one can be roused to Christ who has been fired from boyhood by the spirit and mouth of the venerable Augustine for the pursuit of truth and wisdom, both of which Christ truly is, the supreme good of all good. If he has availed too little with you on your own behalf, what shall I accomplish, so far behind him and poor in all his riches? But because, trusting both in the power of his ability and in the kindness of your nature, I hope that more and greater things have been worked in you than remain to be worked, I have dared to open my mouth for a double reason: that I might be likened to that man, with the love I owe, in concern for you, and that I might be counted, at least by an attested affection, among those who love your salvation. For I know that the palm for bringing about your perfection is destined above all for Augustine. I fear, son, that I may have offended your ears with the harshness of rash speech, and through your ears have wounded your mind too with weariness of me. But your letter came to mind, from which I understood that you are familiar with musical measures, a study which I too once did not shrink from at your age. So, remembering your letter, I found a remedy to soothe your mind, if I had made it sore at all: to call you forth to the Lord, the craftsman of every form of harmony, by the measure of a poem. I ask you to hear with your ear and not to spurn the cause of your salvation in my words, but to receive gladly a loving care and a fatherly mind even in words that might be despised, in which the name of Christ, which is above every name, makes this reverence due, so that it cannot be despised by a believer.

Come then, break off delay and the tenacious bonds of the world, and do not fear the gentle yoke of the mild Lord. The present beauty of things is lovely indeed, but it amazes only wandering minds; the wise mind is not dazzled by it. Now mighty Rome, alas, ill-counselling, tempts you with various figures, able to overturn even the strong. But I pray, son, that father Augustine may always come to meet you amid all the enticements of the city. Looking on him amid such great dangers of fragile life, and holding him in your heart, you will be safe. Yet this I will warn you, repeating it again and again: flee the slippery ways of hard service. Honour is a flattering name, a bad slavery, a sick ending; what you now delight to want, you will soon regret having wanted. It is pleasant to climb the heights, but it is terror to come down from the heights; if you stumble, you will fall the worse from the highest citadel. Now false goods please you, now ambition snatches you with every breeze, and hollow fame carries you in its glassy bosom. But when the ruinous belt of office has girded you with great heat, and fruitless labour has then broken you, late and in vain you will blame your empty hopes and wish to break the bonds you are now tying. Then you will remember, grieving in vain, that you despised the truthful warnings of father Augustine. So, if you are wise, if you are dutiful, boy, hear and take in the words of fathers and the counsel of elders. Why do you draw back your wild neck from the yoke? 'My burden is light, my yoke is sweet': it is the loving voice of Christ. Trust God and put your head to the yoke, give your mouth to the soft halter and put your lowered shoulders under the light load. You can do this now, while you live free, while no bonds hold you back, no care of a marriage bed nor lofty honour. This is good freedom: to serve Christ and in him to be above all things. He serves not the masters of men, not vices, not proud kings, who has given himself to Christ alone as Lord. Nor let the nobility seem free to you, which you now see, astonished, borne aloft through the city, which, you see, thinks itself so free that it disdains to bend its neck to God. That wretch serves many mortals, even slaves, and buys maidservants to be his masters. Those know who have endured eunuchs and great palaces, and whoever wretchedly endures Rome of his own will, at what price of sweat and loss of dignity the official cloak costs there, and here the honour of office. Yet not even the powerful man who has bought his way to be higher than all, so as to serve no one, attains it. Though he boasts himself lord through the whole city, he serves demons, if he worships images. Alas! is it for these that you linger in the city, Licentius, and spurn the kingdom of Christ to please them? Do you call these men masters and greet them with bent neck, whom you see to be slaves of wood and stone? They venerate silver and gold with a divine name; what the disease of avarice loves is their religion. I pray that he who does not love Augustine may love these, and that he who likes to worship these may not worship Christ either. Hence God himself says that two masters cannot be served, since an undivided mind pleases God. One faith, one God, and Christ the only one from the Father: no double service is due to the one Lord. For as great as is the distance between heaven and earth, so great is the distance between the affairs and empires of Caesar and of Christ. Lift yourself from the ground; even now, while breath rules these limbs, pierce the sky with your mind; the delay of the flesh is no hindrance. Die already now to bodily deeds and with a clear mind meditate beforehand on the goods of the heavenly life. You are spirit, though held by a body, if now with a pious mind you victoriously destroy the work of the flesh. These things, dear boy, I have written to you, compelled by faithful love; if you receive them, you will be received by God. Believe that Augustine is now doubled for you in me; take two fathers with one devotion. If we are spurned, you will be torn away to the greater grief of two; if we are heard, you will be a sweet pledge to two. The joyful care of two fathers has sweated over you, and it will be a great honour for you to have gladdened two. But when I join myself to Augustine, I do not boast myself his equal in merits; I compare myself with him only in love for you. For what can I pour on you, sprinkling from a poor stream? Besides me you are washed by a double river: brother Alypius and master Augustine, the one sharing your blood, the other the sower of your talent. You are strong in such a brother and such a teacher, Licentius, and do you hesitate to follow the stars on such wings? Whatever you do (for let not the world hope for you as a friend), you will not be given to the earth, a soul owed to Christ. Though you now contemplate marriage chambers and lofty honours, one day you will be restored to your Lord. I believe two righteous men will overcome one sinner, and fraternal prayers will drive away your wishes. So return, as your parent by his voice and your brother by blood, both priests, bid you return. They draw you back to what is your own, for now you seek what belongs to others; these things are rather yours, which the kingdoms keep for you. Seek these again, long for these, do not waste time on externals; if you will not have what is yours, will anyone give you what belongs to others? You will not be your own, and, sent far through foreign lands, alas, you will live an exile from the senses of your own heart. Enough for an anxious parent to have sung these things to his son, while I wish or fear for you what I wish or fear for myself. This page, if you receive it, will one day bring you life; if you refuse, this same page will be a witness. May Christ grant you to me safe, dearest son, and give you to himself as his servant for ever. Live, I pray, but live to God; for to live to the world is the work of death; to live to God is living life.

Because of the vanities of ignorant people I need not argue with you at length about the heading of my letter. For when we try to call each other back from error, although before the fullest discussion of the case it may seem uncertain to some which of us is in error, yet we serve each other, if we deal with each other in a good spirit, so that we may be freed from the perversity of discord. That I do this with a sincere heart and with the trembling of Christian humility, even if it is not plain to most people, he sees to whom no hearts are closed. And you easily understand what I do not hesitate to honour in you. For I do not consider the error of schism, from which I wish all people to be healed as far as it concerns me, worthy of any honour; but I think that you are to be honoured without any surge of hesitation, above all because you are bound to us by the very bond of human society, and because certain signs of a more peaceable mind stand out in you, which give no reason at all to despair that you may easily embrace the truth once it has been shown. And I owe you as much love as he himself commands us who loved us even to the reproach of the cross.

But do not be surprised that I have long been silent toward Your Benevolence; I did not think you were of the mind which brother Evodius, whom I cannot fail to trust, has joyfully reported to me. For when it happened by chance that you met in one house, and a conversation arose between you about our hope, that is, about the inheritance of Christ, he says that Your Kindness said you wished to confer with us in the presence of good men. I rejoice greatly that you have deigned to offer this to our lowliness, and I can in no way pass by so great an opportunity afforded by your kind mind; so that I may seek and discuss with you, as far as the Lord deigns to grant strength, what cause, what origin, what reason there was for so lamentable and deplorable a division in the church of Christ, to which he said: 'My peace I give you, my peace I leave you.'

I have heard indeed that you complained of the brother I mentioned, because he gave you some insulting answer. I beg you not to count as insult what I am sure did not proceed from a proud mind (for I know my brother); but if in disputing for his faith and for love of the church he said something more fervently, perhaps, than your gravity would have wished to hear, it should be called not insolence but confidence. For he wished to be a partner in discussion and debate, not an assenter and flatterer. For this is the oil of the sinner with which the prophet does not wish his head to be anointed; for he says: 'The righteous man will correct me in mercy and rebuke me; but let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head.' For he prefers to be corrected by the severe mercy of the righteous rather than praised with the smooth unction of flattery. Hence also that prophetic saying: 'Those who call you happy lead you into error.' And so of a man whom false flatteries make arrogant it is rightly said in common speech too: 'His head has swelled'; for it has been anointed with the oil of the sinner, that is, not of one who corrects with harsh truth but of one who praises with smooth falsehood. Do not take this to mean that I want you to be understood as corrected by brother Evodius as by a righteous man. For I fear you may think that I too am saying something insulting to you, which I take great care to avoid as far as I can. But he is righteous who said, 'I am the truth.' So when the truth sounds to us with some harshness from the mouth of any man, we are corrected not by that man, who may be a sinner, but by Truth itself, that is, by Christ, who is righteous, so that the anointing of soothing but ruinous flattery, that is, the oil of the sinner, may not anoint our head. And even if brother Evodius, somewhat agitated in defending his communion, had said something rather haughty with a more excited mind, you ought to pardon the man's age and the necessity of the cause.

But I ask you to remember what you deigned to promise: that in the presence of men whom you yourself choose, provided our words are not tossed about in vain but taken down in writing, so that we may discuss more calmly and in better order, and that anything we say that slips from memory may be recalled by reading, we may seek together in harmony so great a matter, which concerns the salvation of all. Or, if you prefer, let us first confer between ourselves with no one in between, either by letters or by conversation and reading, wherever you please, lest perhaps some intemperate hearers prefer to await what they think is our contest rather than to think about their own salvation in our conference; so that what is settled between us the people may afterwards learn through us; or, if you prefer it to be done by letters, let these be read to the congregations, so that at last we may speak not of congregations but of one congregation. In short, as you wish, as you order, as you please, I gladly embrace it. And concerning the mind of my most blessed and venerable father Valerius, now absent, I promise with complete confidence that he will learn of this with great joy; for I know how much he loves peace and is not puffed up by any emptiness of vain pride.

I ask you, what have we to do with old dissensions, that those wounds which the animosity of proud men inflicted on our members should have lasted until now? Through the festering of those wounds we have even lost the pain that usually makes us call the physician. You see with how great and wretched a foulness Christian houses and households are disfigured. Husbands and wives agree about their bed and disagree about the altar of Christ; they swear to each other by him that they will have peace with each other, and in him they cannot have it. Children have one home with their parents and do not have one house of God; they wish to succeed to the inheritance of those with whom they quarrel over the inheritance of Christ. Slaves and masters divide the God they share, who took the form of a slave to free all by serving. Your people honour us, our people honour you; your people adjure us by our crown, our people adjure you by your crown; we accept everyone's words, we wish to offend no one: why does Christ alone offend us, whose members we tear apart? And people who wish to settle their worldly cases before us, as far as we are necessary to them, call us holy men and servants of God, so as to conclude the business of their land: let us at some time conduct the business of our own salvation and theirs. It is not about gold, not about silver, not about estates and cattle, for which matters we are greeted daily with bowed heads so that we may end people's disputes, but about our very Head that there is so shameful and ruinous a dissension among us. However low those who greet us bow their heads, that we may make them agree on earth, our Head bowed down from heaven to the cross, and in him we do not agree.

I ask and implore you, if there is in you any of the humanity that many praise, let your goodness appear here, if it is not feigned for the sake of passing honours: let the heart of mercy tremble within you, and be willing at last for the matter to be discussed, pressing on with us in prayers and conferring peaceably about everything, lest the wretched peoples who pay deference to our honours weigh us down with that deference at the judgment of God; but rather, called back with us by our unfeigned love from errors and dissensions, may they be directed into the ways of truth and peace. I wish you to be happy before the eyes of God, honourable and most beloved lord.

God knows, to whom the secrets of the human heart are manifest, that as much as I love Christian peace, so much am I moved by the sacrilegious deeds of those who persist unworthily and impiously in dissension from it; and that this emotion of my mind is peaceable, and that I am not working for anyone to be forced into Catholic communion against his will, but for the truth to be plainly declared to all who are in error, so that, made manifest through our ministry with God's help, it may itself sufficiently persuade them to embrace and follow it.

For what, I ask you, is more execrable, to say nothing of other things, than what has just happened? A young man is rebuked by his bishop for madly beating his mother again and again, and for not withholding his impious hands from the womb from which he was born, not even on those days when the severity of the laws spares the most wicked; he threatens that same mother that he will go over to the party of Donatus and kill her, whom he is accustomed to beat with incredible fury. He threatens her, goes over to the party of Donatus, is rebaptized in his rage, and, roaring for his mother's blood, is clothed in white garments; he is placed within the chancel rails, prominent and conspicuous, and, though plotting matricide, is set before the eyes of all, who groan, as one renewed.

Do these things please you, after all, most grave man? I would never believe this of you; I know your thoughtfulness. A mother in the flesh is beaten in the members with which she bore and nourished an ingrate; the church, his spiritual mother, forbids it; she too is beaten in the sacraments with which she bore and nourished an ingrate. Does he not seem to you to have said, gnashing his teeth like a parricide: 'What shall I do to the church, which forbids me to beat my mother? I have found what to do: let her too be struck with whatever injuries can be inflicted; let something be done in me to make her members ache; I will go to those who know how to blow upon the grace in which I was born there, and to destroy the form I received in her womb; I will torture both my mothers with cruel torments; let the one who bore me second bury the one who bore me first; to the grief of the one I will die spiritually, to the slaughter of the other I will live carnally.' What else do we expect, honourable Eusebius, but that now, as a Donatist, he will arm himself without fear against the wretched woman, decrepit with old age and bereft by widowhood, whom in the Catholic Church he was restrained from beating? For what else did he conceive in his raging heart when he said to his mother, 'I will go over to the party of Donatus and drink your blood'? See, now, bloody in conscience and whitened in his garment, he fulfils part of his promise; the other part remains, that he drink his mother's blood. If these things please, then, let him be urged by his clerics and sanctifiers to fulfil his whole vow within his octave.

The right hand of the Lord is indeed able to restrain his fury from the wretched and desolate widow, and to deter him, in ways he knows, from so wicked a design. Yet, struck with such grief of mind, what should I do, if not at least speak? Or do they do these things and am I told, 'Be silent'? May the Lord turn away from me this madness, that, when he himself commands me through his apostle and says that those who teach what they should not must be refuted by a bishop, I should be terrified by their indignation and keep silent. For my reason for wanting so sacrilegious a crime fixed in the public records was certainly this: that no one, especially in other cities, where it may be opportune for me to lament these things, should think I am inventing anything, since even at Hippo itself it is now being said that Proculianus did not give the instruction which the public official reported.

And what more moderate course can we take than to conduct so serious a case through you, a man of most distinguished rank and of calm and most considerate disposition? I ask, then, as I have already asked through our brothers, good and honourable men whom I sent to Your Excellency, that you deign to inquire whether Victor, Proculianus's presbyter, did not receive from his bishop the instruction which he reported to the public official, or whether perhaps, though Victor himself said something else, those officials entered something false in the record, although they are of the same communion. Or, if he agrees that we should calmly discuss the whole question of our dissension, so that the error, which is already manifest, may become known still more manifestly, I gladly embrace it. For I have heard that he said that ten grave and honourable men from each side should be present with us without popular tumult, and that we should search out according to the Scriptures what is true. As for what some have reported to me that he said besides, asking why I did not go to Constantina when many of them were there, or saying that I ought to go to Milevis, because, as they say, they are about to hold a council there, it is ridiculous to say this, as if any church but that of Hippo were my own care. For me the whole matter of this question lies chiefly with Proculianus. But if perhaps he thinks himself unequal to it, let him call on the help of whichever colleague he likes. For in other cities we do only as much of what concerns the church as the bishops of those cities, our brothers and fellow priests, either permit us or lay upon us.

And yet I do not well understand what this man, who calls himself a bishop of so many years, fears in me, a novice, that he does not wish to confer with me. If it is learning in the liberal arts, which perhaps he himself either did not learn or learned less, what has this to do with the question, which is to be discussed either from the holy Scriptures or from church or public documents, with which he has been occupied for so many years, so that he ought to be more skilled in them? Finally, there is here my brother and colleague Samsucius, bishop of the church of Turris, who has learned none of the things this man is said to fear; let him be present, let him debate with him. I will ask him, and, as I trust in the name of Christ, he will readily grant me this, to take my place in this matter; and the Lord will help him as he contends for the truth, unpolished in speech though he is, yet instructed in the true faith, as we trust. There is no reason, then, why he should put it off to some others or other, rather than settle between ourselves what concerns us. Yet, as I said, I do not avoid those others either, if he asks for their help.