Letters 91.1–93.5

That your mind, while your limbs are already growing cold with age, glows with love of your country, I do not wonder, and I praise it; and that you not only remember but show by your life and conduct that ‘there is no measure or limit to the good man’s care for his country,’ I accept not unwillingly, nay even gladly. Hence we would wish to have you too as a citizen of a certain heavenly country, in whose holy love, according to our small measure, we face danger and labour among those whom we counsel to win it; so that you would think there is no measure or limit to care for its little portion that is a pilgrim on this earth, becoming the better, the better the city to which you paid your due services, destined to find no end of rejoicing in its eternal peace, if for a time you set no end to your care for its labours.

But until this happens (for we must not despair that you can gain that country, or are already most prudently considering how to gain it, where your father too, who begot you in this one, has gone before you), until this happens, then, forgive us if, for the sake of our country, which we desire never to leave, we sadden your country, which you desire to leave flourishing. If we were to discuss its flowers with your Prudence, there is no fear that you would be hard to persuade, or rather that it would not easily occur to you, how a city ought to flourish. That most famous poet of your literature recalled certain flowers of Italy; but in your country we have experienced not so much ‘with what men that land flourished’ as ‘with what arms it burned’; nay rather, not with arms but with flames, and it did not burn but set on fire. If so great a crime goes unpunished, with no fitting correction of the wicked, do you think you will leave your country flourishing? O flowers, plainly not of fruits but of thorns! Compare now whether you would rather your country flourished in piety or in impunity, in corrected morals or in secure audacity; compare these and see whether you surpass us in love of your country, whether you desire it to flourish more and more truly than we do.

Look a little at those very books ‘On the Republic’ from which you drank in that affection of a most loving citizen, that ‘there is no measure or limit to the good man’s care for his country.’ Look, I beseech you, and see with what praises frugality and self-control are proclaimed there, and faithfulness to the marriage bond, and chaste, honourable, and upright morals; when a city excels in these, it may truly be said to flourish. And these morals are taught and learned in the churches growing throughout the world, as in holy lecture halls of the peoples, and above all the piety by which the true and truthful God is worshipped, who not only commands us to undertake, but also grants us to fulfil, all those things by which the human mind is instructed and fitted for divine fellowship, to dwell in the eternal and heavenly city. That is why he both foretold that the images of the many false gods would be overthrown and commanded that they be overthrown. For nothing makes men so unsociable through perversity of life as the imitation of those gods, such as they are described and commended in their own literature.

Indeed, those most learned men who sought or even described the commonwealth and earthly city, such as they thought it ought to be, in private discussions rather than establishing and shaping it by public action, proposed for the education of the character of youth men they thought outstanding and praiseworthy to be imitated, rather than their gods. And truly that young man in Terence who, looking at a picture painted on the wall, in which there was a painting of the adultery of the king of the gods, inflamed the lust by which he was carried away with the goad of so great an authority, would in no way have slipped into that shameful act by desiring it, or sunk into it by committing it, if he had chosen to imitate Cato rather than Jupiter; but how could he do so, when he was compelled to worship Jupiter rather than Cato in the temples? But perhaps we ought not to bring forward these examples from comedy, by which the dissoluteness and sacrilegious superstition of the ungodly might be refuted. Read or recall how wisely it is argued in those same books that the writings and performances of comedies could never have been accepted unless the morals of those who accepted them had agreed with them. Thus it is confirmed by the authority of most famous men, eminent in the commonwealth and discussing the commonwealth, that the most wicked men become worse by imitating gods, not true gods, of course, but false and fictitious ones.

‘But all those things that were written long ago about the life and morals of the gods are to be understood and interpreted quite differently by the wise.’ Indeed, we heard yesterday and the day before such wholesome interpretations recited in the temples to the assembled peoples! I ask you, is the human race so blind to the truth that it does not perceive things so open and manifest? In so many places Jupiter is painted, cast, hammered, sculpted, written, read, acted, sung, danced, committing so many adulteries; how much would it have been if, at least in his own Capitol, he were read prohibiting such things? If these evils, full of disgrace and impiety, seethe among the peoples with no one prohibiting them, are adored in the temples, laughed at in the theatres; if, when victims are sacrificed to them, even the cattle of the poor are wasted, and when actors perform and dance these things, the patrimonies of the rich are poured out, are cities said to flourish? Plainly the mother found worthy of these flowers is not a fertile earth, nor any rich virtue, but that goddess Flora, whose stage games are celebrated with such lavish and licentious filthiness that anyone may understand what kind of demon it is that cannot be appeased except by the slaughter there, not of birds, not of four-footed beasts, not even of human blood, but, much more wickedly, of human modesty, perishing as if sacrificed.

I have said these things because you wrote that, the nearer your age is to its end, the more you desire to leave your country safe and flourishing. Let all those vain and insane things be taken away; let men be converted to the true worship of God and to chaste and godly morals: then you will see your country flourishing, not in the opinion of fools but in the truth of the wise, when this country of your fleshly birth has become a portion of that country into which we are born not by the body but by faith, where all the saints and faithful of God, after the wintry labours, as it were, of this life, will flourish in unending eternity. It is our heart’s desire, therefore, neither to lose Christian gentleness nor to leave in that city an example harmful for others to imitate. How we are to do this, God will help us, if he is not too gravely angry with them. Otherwise both the gentleness which we desire to keep and the discipline which we strive to use moderately may be hindered, if something else pleases God in secret, whether judging that so great an evil must be punished with a sharper scourge, or even, being more vehemently angry, if he wills that it remain unpunished for a time, while they are not corrected or converted to him.

Your Prudence in a way prescribes to us concerning the role of a bishop, and you say that your country ‘has fallen through no light offence of its people. If indeed we measure it by the rigour of public law, it ought to be punished with a severer sentence. But it is not right,’ you say, ‘for a bishop to do anything but bestow salvation on men, to stand by causes for the better state of things, and to obtain from almighty God pardon for the faults of others.’ This we try wholly to observe: that no one be punished with a severer sentence, either by us or by anyone else at our intercession; and we desire to bestow on men salvation, which consists in the happiness of living rightly, not in the security of doing wrong. We also strive to obtain pardon not only for our own faults but also for those of others, which we cannot obtain at all except for those who are corrected. You add further and say: ‘I ask with all the supplication I can that, if the matter is to be defended, the harmless be defended and trouble be kept from the innocent.’

Hear briefly what was done, and distinguish the guilty from the innocent yourself. Against the most recent laws, on the Kalends of June, a sacrilegious pagan festival was celebrated with no one prohibiting it, with such insolent daring that, what was not done even in the times of Julian, a most impudent crowd of dancers passed right along the same street before the doors of the church. When the clergy tried to prohibit this most unlawful and most unworthy thing, the church was stoned. Then about eight days later, when the bishop had reminded the council of the well-known laws, and while they were making a show of arranging to carry out what was ordered, the church was stoned again. The next day, when our people wished to make a statement in the records, to put fear into the wicked, as seemed right, they were denied their public rights; and on that same day, that they might be frightened at least by heaven, hail was returned for the stonings; and when it had passed, they at once made a third stoning and finally set fire to the church buildings and the people; they killed one of the servants of God who, wandering, happened to meet them, while the rest hid partly where they could and fled partly as they could; meanwhile the bishop, thrust into a certain place and squeezed in, hid himself there, where he heard the voices of those seeking him to kill him and reproaching themselves because, not having found him, they had committed so great a crime for nothing. These things were done from about the tenth hour until no small part of the night. No one of those whose authority could carry weight tried to restrain them, no one to help, except one stranger, through whom very many servants of God were freed from the hands of those trying to kill them and much was wrested from the plunderers. Through him it was made clear how easily these things would either not have happened at all or would have stopped once begun, if the citizens, and especially the leading men, had forbidden them to be done and carried through.

So in that whole city you will perhaps be able to distinguish not the innocent from the guilty but the less guilty from the more guilty. For those are in slight sin who, deterred by fear, and especially of offending those whom they knew to be most powerful in that town and enemies of the church, did not dare to bring help; but all are criminals by whose will these things were committed, even if they did not do them or instigate them; more criminal are those who committed them; most criminal those who instigated them. But let us suppose that the instigation is a suspicion and not the truth, and let us not examine those things which cannot be found out at all except by torturing those through whom they are investigated. Let us also pardon the fear of those who thought it better to pray to God for the bishop and his servants than to offend the powerful enemies of the church. What of those who remain? Do you think they should be restrained by no discipline, and that so savage an example of fury should be set forth unpunished? We are not eager to feed our anger by avenging what is past, but we take pains to provide mercifully for the future. Wicked men have things in which they may be punished by Christians not only gently but also usefully and wholesomely; for they have the fact that they live with body unharmed, they have the means by which they live, and they have the means by which they live wickedly. Let the first two be kept safe, so that there may be those who repent; this we desire, and as far as lies in us we press for it with earnest effort. But the third, if God wills to cut it off as rotten and harmful, he will punish very mercifully; but if he wills either more, or does not permit even this, the reason of a higher and certainly juster counsel lies with him. From us must be given care and duty, as far as we are permitted to see; praying him to approve our intention, by which we wish all to be provided for, and to let nothing be done through us which he knows much better than we do is not expedient for us and for his church.

Recently, when we were at Calama, so that our people in so great a grief might be either consoled in their affliction or calmed in their anger, we did with the Christians, as far as we could, what we thought was needed at that time. Then we also admitted the pagans themselves, the head and cause of so great an evil, at their request to see us, so that on this occasion we might admonish them what they ought to do, if they were wise, not only to remove their present anxiety but also to seek eternal salvation. They heard much from us, and they themselves also asked much; but far be it from us to be such servants as are pleased to be asked by those by whom our Lord is not asked. So you see, in the liveliness of your mind, that we must strive, while keeping Christian gentleness and moderation, either to deter others from imitating their perversity or to wish that others may imitate their correction. The losses that were inflicted are either borne by Christians or made good through Christians. The gains of souls, which we long to acquire even at the risk of our blood, we desire both to come about more profitably in that place and not to be hindered in other places by that example. May the mercy of God grant us to rejoice in your salvation.

I have learned, not only from your letter but also from the report of the man who brought it, that you are earnestly asking for a letter from me, believing that you can have very great consolation from it. You must see what you gain from it; but I ought not to refuse or delay it. May your faith and hope console you, and love itself, which is poured out in the hearts of the godly by the Holy Spirit, of whom we have now received something as a pledge, that we may learn to long for the fullness itself. For you ought not to think yourself desolate when you have Christ present in the inner man by faith in your heart; nor ought you to be saddened like the Gentiles who have no hope, since by a most truthful promise we hope that we, who are to depart from this life, from which we have not lost but sent ahead some of our own who are departing, shall come to that life where they will be the dearer to us the better known they are, and lovable without fear of any parting.

Here, however, although your husband, by whose departure you are called a widow, was very well known to you, he was better known to himself than to you. And why so, when you saw his bodily face, which he certainly did not see, unless because our knowledge of ourselves is surer within, where ‘no one knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him’? But when the Lord comes and brings to light the hidden things of darkness and makes manifest the thoughts of the heart, then nothing in a neighbour will be hidden from his neighbour, nor will there be anything that one opens to his own and hides from strangers, where no one will be a stranger. But that light itself, by which all these things now hidden in hearts will be illumined, who can express with the tongue what it is like or how great, who can touch it even with a weak mind? Surely that light is God himself, since ‘God is light and in him there is no darkness at all’; but he is the light of purified minds, not of these eyes of the body. Then, therefore, the mind will be fit to see that light, which it is not yet now.

But the eye of the body can neither do this now nor will be able to then. For everything that can be seen by the eyes of the body must be in some place, and is not whole everywhere, but occupies a smaller place with a smaller part of itself and a larger with a larger. God is not like this, invisible and incorruptible, ‘who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.’ For he cannot be seen by man by that by which man sees bodies with the body. For if he were unapproachable even to the minds of the godly, it would not be said, ‘Approach him and be enlightened’; and if he were invisible to the minds of the godly, it would not be said, ‘We shall see him as he is.’ For consider the whole sentence in the letter of John: ‘Beloved,’ he says, ‘we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ So we shall see in so far as we shall be like him, because even now we do not see in so far as we are unlike. We shall see, then, by that in which we shall be like him. But who, however mad, would say that we are or shall be like God in body? This likeness, then, is in the inner man, ‘who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.’ And we are made the more like him the more we advance in knowledge and love of him; for ‘though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is renewed day by day’; in such a way, however, that in this life, however far one has advanced, one is far from that perfection of likeness which will be fit to see God, as the apostle says, ‘face to face.’ If in these words we wish to take ‘face’ as bodily, it will follow that God too has such a face, and that there is some distance between ours and his when we see him face to face; and if distance, then certainly limit, and a bounded arrangement of members, and other things absurd and impious to say or think, by which the natural man, who does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God, is mocked by most deceitful vanities.

For some of those who chatter such things say, as far as could reach me, that we see God now with the mind but then with the body, so that they even assert that the ungodly will see him in the same way. See how far they have advanced for the worse, while unpunished talkativeness wanders hither and thither without the limit of fear or shame. Formerly they said that Christ granted this to his own flesh alone, that it should see God with bodily eyes; then they added that all the saints too, having received their bodies in the resurrection, would see God in the same way; now they have granted this possibility even to the ungodly. Let them grant as much as they will and to whom they will; for who would dare to contradict men giving of their own? ‘For he who speaks a lie speaks of his own.’ But you, with those who hold sound doctrine, do not dare to claim anything of these things of your own; but when you read, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,’ understand that the ungodly will not see him; for the ungodly are neither blessed nor pure in heart. Likewise, when you read, ‘We see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face,’ understand that we shall then see face to face by that by which we now see through a mirror in an enigma. Both of these are the work of the inner man, whether when in this pilgrimage one still walks by faith, in which it uses a mirror and an enigma, or in that homeland when it will contemplate by sight, for which vision ‘face to face’ is put. Let the flesh drunk with carnal thoughts hear: ‘God is spirit, and therefore those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.’ If worship, how much more see! For who would dare to affirm that the substance of God is seen bodily, when he did not wish it to be worshipped bodily? But they think they speak cleverly and press us, as it were, with a question: ‘Could Christ grant to his flesh that it should see the Father with bodily eyes, or could he not?’ So that, if we answer that he could not, they may proclaim that we have detracted from God’s omnipotence; but if we concede that he could, they may conclude their argument from our answer. How much more tolerably foolish are those who assert that the flesh will be changed into the substance of God and will become what God is, so as at least to make it fit to see God by making it not so different from him! I believe these men drive away that vanity from their faith, perhaps even from their ears. And yet, if they were pressed in the same way with the question whether God can bring this about or cannot, will they detract from his power if they answer that he cannot, or will they admit that it will happen if they concede that he can? As, then, they would escape from this snare of others, so let them escape from their own. Next, why do they contend that this gift was attributed only to the eyes of Christ’s body, and not to the other senses as well? Will God then be a sound, so that he can be perceived by his ears too? And will he be a breath, so that he can be sensed by his smell? And will he be some liquid, so that he can also be drunk? And will he be a mass, so that he can also be touched? ‘No,’ they say. What then? Can God do the one and not the other? If they say he cannot, why do they detract from God’s omnipotence? If they answer that he can but will not, why do they favour only the eyes and begrudge the other senses of Christ’s body? Or are they foolish just as far as they wish? How much better are we, who do not fix limits to their folly, but wish them not to be foolish at all!

Much can be brought forward to refute this madness. But if it should ever assail your ears, read them this meanwhile, and do not be reluctant to write back, as you can, what they answer. For our hearts are cleansed by faith for this reason, that the vision of God is promised us as the reward of faith. If it is to be through the eyes of the body, the mind of the saints is exercised in vain to attain it; nay rather, a mind that thinks so perversely is not exercised in itself but is wholly in the flesh. For where will it dwell more tenaciously and more firmly than where it presumes it will see God? How great an evil this is I leave rather to your understanding than labour to explain in a long discourse. May your heart always dwell in the protection of the Lord, excellent lady, deservedly most distinguished, daughter to be honoured in the love of Christ. I return the greetings, with the respect due to your merits, of your honourable children, most beloved to you and to us in the Lord.

I have received a letter which I did not find it hard to believe is yours, for it was brought by a man known to be a Catholic Christian, who, I think, would not dare to lie to me. But even if the letter is perhaps not yours, I thought I should write back to whoever wrote it that I am now more eager for quiet and more desirous of it than I was then, when you knew me at Carthage as a young man, while Rogatus, whom you succeeded, was still alive. But the Donatists are far too restless, and it does not seem to me useless that they should be restrained and corrected by the authorities ordained by God. For we already rejoice over the correction of many who hold and defend Catholic unity so sincerely, and are so glad to have been set free from their former error, that we marvel at them with great joy. Yet these, by some force of habit, would never have thought of changing for the better had they not been struck with this fear and turned their anxious minds to consider the truth. They feared that if they endured these temporal troubles with a fruitless and empty endurance, not for the sake of righteousness but for human perversity and presumption, they would afterwards find with God nothing but the punishment due to the ungodly who had despised so gentle a warning and such fatherly scourges. Made teachable by this thought, they found the church promised throughout all nations, not in human slanders and tales, but in the divine books; and they saw it fulfilled before their own eyes, and from the same books they no longer doubted that Christ, foretold there, is above the heavens, though they do not see him. Ought I then to have begrudged these men their salvation and called my colleagues back from this fatherly diligence, through which it has come about that we see many accusing their former blindness? Though they believed that Christ is exalted above the heavens without seeing him, they denied his glory over all the earth even while they saw it; yet the prophet embraced both in one sentence with such clarity, saying: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory above all the earth.”

If, then, we were so to disregard and tolerate these men, once our fierce enemies, who gravely troubled our peace and quiet with violence and ambushes of every kind, that we devised and urged nothing at all that might serve to frighten and correct them, we would truly be repaying evil for evil. For if someone saw his enemy, made delirious by a dangerous fever, running toward a precipice, would he not rather be repaying evil for evil if he let him go on so, than if he had him seized and bound? And yet at that moment he would seem to the man most troublesome and most hostile, when in fact he had shown himself most useful and most merciful; but once his health was restored, the man would thank him all the more warmly the less he felt he had been spared. Oh, if only I could show you how many of the Circumcellions themselves we now have as open Catholics, condemning their former life and their wretched error, in which they thought that whatever they did in their restless rashness they were doing for the church of God! Yet they would not have been brought to this soundness had they not been bound, like madmen, by the bonds of these laws that displease you. And what of that other kind of very grave disease, of those who had no turbulent boldness but were weighed down by a kind of long-standing sluggishness, who said to us: “What you say is true; there is no answer to it; but it is hard for us to give up the tradition of our parents”? Was it not wholesome that they should be shaken by the discipline of temporal troubles, so that they might come out of a sort of lethargic sleep and awaken to the salvation of unity? How many of these, too, now rejoicing with us, condemn the former weight of their ruinous course, and confess that we ought to have troubled them, lest they perish of the disease of inveterate habit as of a deadly sleep!

“But these things do some people no good.” Is medicine to be neglected, then, because some people's plague is incurable? You pay attention only to those who are so hard that they do not accept even this discipline. Of such it is written: “In vain have I scourged your children; they did not receive discipline.” Yet I think they were scourged out of love, not hatred. But you ought also to pay attention to the many over whose salvation we rejoice. For if they were frightened and not taught, it would seem a kind of wicked tyranny. Again, if they were taught and not frightened, hardened by long habit they would move more sluggishly to take the way of salvation; for many, as we well know, when the reason had been given them and the truth shown by divine testimonies, answered us that they wished to pass into the communion of the Catholic Church but feared the violent hostility of desperate men. They certainly ought to have despised that for the sake of righteousness and eternal life; but the weakness of such people must be borne until they are made strong, not despaired of. Nor must we forget what the Lord himself said to Peter while he was still weak: “You cannot follow me now; you will follow …” When [saving teaching] is joined [to useful fear], so that not only does the light of truth drive out the darkness of error but the force of fear also breaks the chains of bad habit, then, as I have said, we rejoice over the salvation of many who bless God with us and give him thanks that, having fulfilled his promise by which he promised that the kings of the earth would serve Christ, he has thus cured the diseased and thus healed the weak.

Not everyone who spares is a friend, nor is everyone who strikes an enemy. “Better are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy.” It is better to love with severity than to deceive with gentleness. It is more useful to take bread away from a hungry man, if, secure about his food, he was neglecting righteousness, than to break bread for a hungry man so that he may be seduced into consenting to unrighteousness. Both he who binds a madman and he who rouses a lethargic man trouble both of them and love both. Who can love us more than God? And yet he does not cease not only to teach us gently but also to frighten us for our good. To the soothing poultices with which he comforts he often adds the most stinging medicine of tribulation: he tries with famine even the godly and devout patriarchs; he harries a stubborn people with heavier punishments; he does not take away from the apostle the thorn in the flesh, though asked three times, so that he may perfect strength in weakness. Let us love even our enemies, for this is right and this God has commanded, so that we may be sons of our Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust. But as we praise these gifts of his, let us also consider his scourges on those whom he loves.

Do you think that no one ought to be compelled to righteousness, when you read that the householder said to his servants, “Whomever you find, compel them to come in”; when you read too that Saul, later Paul, was driven by the great violence of Christ compelling him to know and hold the truth? Unless perhaps you think that money or any possession is dearer to men than this light which is taken in by the eyes! Struck down by the heavenly voice, he lost it suddenly and did not recover it until he was incorporated into the holy church. And do you think that no force should be used on a man to free him from the ruin of error, when you see by the surest examples that God himself, than whom no one loves us more usefully, does this, and you hear Christ saying, “No one comes to me unless the Father has drawn him”, which happens in the hearts of all who turn to him through fear of the divine wrath; and when you know that sometimes a thief scatters fodder to lead cattle away, and sometimes a shepherd calls straying cattle back to the flock with a whip?