Letters 1.1–3.5

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!” I have plainly felt, as though my heart had been anointed with the honey of your speech, the truth of holy Scripture where it says, “Good words fatten the bones”: not, of course, these bones whose framework holds us together in the fitness of the body, but those in which the strength of the inner man is contained, namely hope and faith and love, which are also the bowels of mercy, the bones of patience, and the limbs of every virtue. These bones and limbs and bowels you have enriched with holy words of hope and faith and love. By them you have taught me that the hope of your faith is intent on the Lord, that the faith of your hope stands firm in the Lord, and that the fullness of love abides in Christ, like God’s own love toward us. For when I was anxious and longing, and believed nothing else of you, or rather of God, who works and perfects his power even in the weak, you told me of the increase of your inheritance in heaven, which you have wholesomely gained by boiling away the burdens of the present, buying heaven and Christ at the price of a frail estate: truly “considering the needy and the poor,” in whom, as he himself taught, you believed that Christ is, and in whom Christ is clothed, fed, and lent to.

Let this be “an odor of death unto death to those who perish,” to whom the flesh and cross of the living God is foolishness or a stumbling block, because flesh and blood, which they serve, does not reveal to them that Christ Jesus is the Son of God; but to us let faith in the divine flesh and death become “an odor of life unto life.” And let not our feet be moved, dearest brother, from the ways of the Lord and the path of the narrow road, if at times the profane or foolish words of some worldly men bark around us; for through the sacred letters we have been taught enough both about them and about ourselves. Of them the blessed apostle tells us that “for this we labor and are reviled, because we hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful.” And he whose account you wish to render to these men has, even with his own mouth in the Gospels, foretold both the poison in their talk and what they deserve in punishment: “Woe to those who cause one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble! It is better for that man that a donkey’s millstone be hung about his neck and that he be thrown into the depth of the sea.” But to us he says: “Blessed are you when men revile you and say every evil against you and reproach my name as evil; rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” Keeping these words of the Lord, my brother, let us both be strengthened in our faith and disregard the reproaches or hatred of unbelievers; for they walk in darkness, because the sun of righteousness has not risen for them. “The poison of asps is under their lips,” which infects the mind and kills the soul, if, once received by the ears, it penetrates to the heart. “Their heart,” says divine Scripture, “is vain, and their throat is an open grave.” Let us beware of their leaven, lest it corrupt the whole lump. For it is written, “The wicked shall not dwell beside you,” and again, “With the holy you will be holy, and with the perverse you will be overthrown,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” Stop up, brother, and hedge your ears with thorns against their words, which are the thorns and arrows of the devil, who, lurking in their hearts, lies in ambush in secret to seize Christ’s poor man and hunt the soul of a Christian. But, as it is written, their iniquity will turn back upon their own head, and they will fall into the pit that they are making.

But you, man of God, flee from these men, and do not labor to render an account to them as though they were wiser, since you know that the beginning of wisdom is with you, who fear the Lord. If they think what we do is foolish, rejoice in your conscience that you are doing the work of God and the command of Christ, and remember that “God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” and that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” To wish to be cleared before such men is the same as to be able to deny Christ himself, who will in turn be ashamed to acknowledge before the Father those who are ashamed of his name before this world.

You, then, who labor, as you write, to render an account of my deed and yours: what will you do if you fail to persuade men who argue with you about the work of God, not for their own edification but for your destruction? At once you will blush and grow pale, as the defender of the worse cause; shaken from your footing, you will stagger on the way of the Lord and slide back from heaven to earth, if you destroy what you have built. It matters a great deal who these people are to whom an account is to be given. If someone comes from a desire to learn and confesses his ignorance, sow in him the seed of faith and open to him the divine command. If he receives the word, you have gained a brother for the church and a sheep for Christ. But if he is not the pure growth of good seed, but harmful grass sown by the enemy of the heavenly householder by night when he scattered tares among the wheat, an unhappy crop to be separated from the good fruit at harvest time, owed not to the barns but to the furnaces, fuel destined to burn as food for the eternal fire, growing meanwhile for its own burning: then flee from him and drive him from your conversation and your sight, so that, if he cannot be healed by your faith, he may not wound you with his unbelief.

Though he be a brother and friend joined to you more closely than your right hand and dearer than your eyesight, if he is a stranger and an enemy in Christ, let him be to you as an outsider and as a tax collector. Let him be cut off from your body like a useless right hand, since he does not cohere with you in the body of Christ; and let him be plucked out like a harmful eye that darkens your whole body with its stain or blindness. For it is better that one member perish for the health of the whole body than that, from love of one diseased member, the whole body go, as the Lord says, into Gehenna. Nor should we fear offending such people; indeed we should even wish for it, since from their reproaches and curses is born that reward which God has promised in abundance in heaven. “The disciple,” he says, “is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord,” and “if they have called the householder Beelzebub, how much more those of his household?” If they loved the Lord and God whom we follow, they will love us too; if they persecuted him, they will persecute us also. What do we want with the favor of the world, which is hatred of Christ? “If you were of the world,” he says, “the world would love what was its own.”

You, then, who seek to render an account to men, and to unbelieving men at that, consider what you are wishing for: without doubt the favor of men, that is, of the world, which you cannot please unless you choose to displease Christ. “For if I were pleasing men,” he says, “I would not be the servant of Christ.” Let us therefore displease them, and rejoice that we displease the very people whom God also displeases. For, as you know, it is not our work but the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, of almighty God, in us that they assail. Him they scorn in their own acts and hate in our works, and too late they will say: “Lord, when did we see you naked and did not clothe you? hungry, and did not feed you? sick, and did not visit you?” And then they will hear: “Go into the eternal fire, which God has prepared for your father and his angels,” because what they do not do for the needy they deny to Christ, who, “though he was rich, became poor, that he might make us rich by his poverty.”

Meanwhile let them enjoy their pleasures, honors, and riches, if indeed they are theirs, which they prefer to have here, where we cease to be, rather than there, where we continue to be. Let them keep their wisdom and their happiness for themselves, and leave us our poverty, as they think it, and our folly. From the very words of him whom they confess by name but deny in deed, “having the form of godliness but denying its power”: from the words, I say, of our God himself let them, if they please, claim prudence for themselves and reproach us with folly. For the Lord said, “The children of this world are wiser than the children of light,” but he added, “in their generation.” Let them be more prudent, provided they are not children of light; let them be wise for one generation, provided they are found senseless in that regeneration of ours. Let them now be blessed, or rather fortunate, drifting through every prosperity as the world flatters them; let them be clothed in soft garments and be in kings’ houses, provided they are not in the labors of men and are not scourged with men. Let them be rich for the world, since they are poor toward God, of whom it is written, “The rich have wanted and hungered,” just as of us it is added at once, “but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.”

Would that we, my brother, might be counted worthy to be cursed and branded and crushed and even killed in the name of Jesus Christ, provided Christ himself is not killed in us! Then at last we would walk upon the asp and the basilisk and trample the head of the ancient dragon. But as yet, what is worse, we are relaxed by a friendly world and take our pleasure in Christ, loving only to be praised in his name and refusing to be grieved and afflicted, which is more profitable. Remember that the grain of mustard seed, of which seed we are, when crushed is the more kindled and only then roused to its full strength. We ought therefore, as it were, to answer to our nature in this: crushed by hostile words, let us blaze up toward faith, and let us burn those very men who try to break us as the least of men, that is, like the grain of mustard, which is the least of seeds. But if those who are outside demand of you an account of your holy work and dart venomous tongues from a viper’s heart into your heart, “do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine.” “For what part has the believer with the unbeliever? What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial?”

But you, soldier of Christ, armed by the apostle with the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of truth, and the power of the Holy Spirit: stand firm in heavenly armor and quench the fiery darts of the enemy with the fountain of wisdom and the river of living water within you. Guard the deposit, keep the faith, pursue righteousness, hold fast the love of Christ, strive after patience, train yourself for godliness, which is profitable for all things; be sober, labor in all things, fight the good fight, finish the course, that you may lay hold of that for which you have been laid hold of. For the rest there will be laid up for you the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award on that day to those who love his appearing. But those who do not endure sound doctrine, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, always advancing into worse, deceiving and deceived, men corrupt in mind and estranged from the truth and for that very reason given over to the desires of their heart, into a snare and many desires that sink those shipwrecked from the faith into ruin and perdition, because they have preferred the creature to the Creator, that is, holding the idols of the nations, gold and silver, dearer than God, saving their souls in this world and losing them in Christ: withdraw from such men and avoid profane novelties of words, lest you begin to grow sick over old wives’ questions and vain or impious disputes about words, and be endangered by false brothers or by lost and reprobate wise men, and all who see it, while the devil mocks, say: “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Far be this from us, who, relying not on our own works or strength but on divine power and mercy, have dared the work of perfection. He who is almighty is able to perfect in us the work of his own perfection, and what he has deigned to found and raise up with the first scaffolding, to build to his own measures and complete to the roof. For when even his apostles were dismayed at the mass of this work, he deigned to tell them that this was impossible with men but not with God, for those who believe in whom nothing is impossible.

But so that we may comfort one another with the words of the Lord and advance in works: go out from your land and from your kindred, that, imitating faithful Abraham in his departure, you may be worthy of the blessed bosom of Abraham. Hasten to come to us, to receive and to give, for our common gain, what is lacking in faith. For this is acceptable before God, since “a brother helping a brother will be exalted.” We are at present, as I wrote before, staying in the city of Barcelona. After the letter you answered, on the Lord’s day on which he deigned to be born in the flesh, I was seized by a sudden violence of the crowd, as he himself is witness, but, I believe, by his own ordering, and was initiated into the presbyterate, against my will, I confess. This was not from disdain for the place (for I call him to witness that I had wished to begin holy service even with the name and office of sacristan), but because, destined for one thing and settled and fixed in mind elsewhere, as you know, I was terrified at this new and unhoped-for decision of the divine will. Having given my neck, then, to the yoke of Christ, I see myself handling works greater than my merits and understanding, and, received and admitted now into the secrets and inner sanctuaries of the most high God, I share in heavenly things and, brought nearer to God, move in the very Spirit and body and splendor of Christ. I can hardly yet grasp the meaning of this sacred burden with my narrow mind, and, aware of my weakness, I shudder at the load of my office. But he who gave wisdom to little ones and “out of the mouth of infants and sucklings perfects praise for himself” is able to perfect his work in me also and to adorn the office, so that he may make worthy the one whom he called from unworthiness. Know, however, that by the gift of the same Lord the plan of our common vow is safe; for I was brought to be consecrated in the church of Barcelona on this condition, that I should not be bound to that church, but dedicated only to the priesthood of the Lord, not also to a place in the church.

Come, then, if you please, before Easter, which is what we most wish, so that you may celebrate the holy festival with me as priest; but if you would rather, God willing, meet us at the start of our journey, set out after Easter in the name of Christ. Yet we trust in our Lord that he will breathe into you a more burning desire for us, so that you will not bear to put off your coming to us beyond the time of Easter. How long the journey is the servant of your oneness of heart will also report; he reached us from Elusa, as he declared, on the eighth day. For the road is so short and easy that it is not steep even in the Pyrenees, which lie between Narbonensis and the Spains as a frightening rampart, a mountain more in name than in fact. But why should I talk of distance? If you long for us, the road is short; long, if you do not care.

After some time we received the letter of your love; but the longer it was awaited, the more eagerly we took it up. For “cold water is sweeter to the thirsty, and good news from a far country” is more welcome; so too the sweetness of your words has fattened our bones and filled our hungry soul with good things. What worthy return can we make for such eloquence, we who are thin in talent, gross in heart, fasting in speech, and, as it is written, “slow bellies”? Yet though we are inferior in all things, love alone makes us your equals. For we strive with equal mind to match the love you have for us, a love planted in our inmost being, fixed in our hearts, and mingled with our very soul by the Spirit of the Lord, who “makes those of one way of life dwell in one house,” who binds countless thousands of believers into one heart, because the One is fulfilled as all in all.

Now it has pleased this Lord to place his treasure in an earthen vessel. He has called me by his grace, “raising the needy from the earth and lifting the poor from the dunghill, to set him with the princes of his people,” and to clothe him with salvation among the priests, so that, while I run after the fragrance of his ointments, I might become a drop of that ointment which ran down upon the beard of Aaron. When, aware of my merits, I refused, or rather did not dare, to accept becoming a member of his household and blessing the Lord from the fountains of Israel, I, “a worm and no man,” was seized against my will, I confess, by sudden violence and compelled by a choking crowd. Though I wished that this cup might pass from me, I had to say to the Lord, “Yet not my will but yours be done,” especially since I read that the Lord said of himself, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Forestalled, then, by the Lord and laid hold of by him whom we have not yet laid hold of, we serve the altar of God and minister at the tables of salvation, now elders in name and office, but still little children in understanding and sucklings in speech.

That I may serve this ministry well, “gain a good standing for myself,” and “know how I ought to behave in the house of God” and handle “the mystery of godliness,” you, venerable lord, brother and lord to us in Christ, pray the Lord who is rich in every good, that we may abound “in faith and speech and knowledge and all earnestness,” and moreover in your love for us, that you also may abound in this grace. Instruct us often, too, by your letters with the help we need; for, nourished on the words of faith and of good doctrine, which you have followed from childhood in the sacred letters, shape us to the rule of right direction; feed us with spiritual food, that is, with the word of God, who is the true and living bread, by which one lives more than by bread, since he is the food of the righteous who live by faith. Do not be less careful about my instruction because we are separated in our place in the church, though not in body; for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, who is the head of the church, in which, since we are all one, we live as in one house. Nor can we say that we are without you, since we are of one Spirit and dwell in the One, who is one. So, “keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” as one body and one spirit, let us labor together for each other as fellow members, that we may grow into the building up of that body whose head is Christ.

Therefore, since from enemies we have been made citizens, from those far off neighbors, from sheep shepherds, and have been set on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, instruct and strengthen my hands in the skill of building, that I may learn to join both walls to the stone that has become the head of the corner, and to build bodies and hearts cleansed by faith into a holy temple and a dwelling place of God; to take captive, by the apostle’s weapons, mighty before God, every height that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God and bring every thought into obedience to Christ; to lay the axe of the Gospel to the roots of the trees; with the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God, to slay the sinners of the earth; with the shield of the catholic faith to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one; and, having fought the fight, finished the course, kept the faith, and fulfilled the ministry, to await what the Lord, the righteous judge, will give on that day to all who love his appearing. So, seeing and holding me spiritually as your own and as dwelling with you, instruct, help, exhort, strengthen me. For since I was born to God in Christ from you and through you, I ought to be above all your care, because I shall be your shame, if unworthy, or your joy, if I am known by good fruit to be a branch of your tree.

This is true love, this is perfect charity, which you have shown you have toward our lowliness, truly holy lord, deservedly most blessed and longed for. For we have received, through our man Julian returning from Carthage, a letter bringing us so great a light of your holiness that we seemed not to come to know your love but to recognize it again. For plainly this love flowed from him who predestined us for himself from the origin of the world, in whom we were made before we were born, because “he made us and not we ourselves,” he who made the things that are to be. Formed by his foreknowledge and work into likeness of wills and unity of faith, or faith in unity, we were joined by a love that went before acquaintance, so that we knew each other by the revelation of the Spirit before we saw each other in the body. We therefore rejoice and glory in the Lord, who, one and the same in every land, works his love in his own by the Holy Spirit, whom he has poured out on all flesh, gladdening his city with the rush of the river. Among its citizens he has deservedly placed you in the first rank, “with the princes of his people,” in an apostolic see, and has willed that we too, whom he raised up when we were crushed and lifted needy from the earth, be counted in your lot. But we rejoice still more in that gift of the Lord by which he has set us to dwell in your heart and has deigned to insinuate us so into your inmost being that we may claim a special confidence in your love, provoked by these services and gifts, so that we may not love you diffidently or lightly.

For we have received a special token of your love and care: the work of our brother Augustine, a holy man perfect in the Lord Christ, completed in five books, which we so admire and look up to that we believe its words were dictated by God. So, confident in your oneness of heart, which we must revere, we have dared to write to him too, presuming that through you we will be both excused to him for our lack of skill and commended to his love. So too with all the saints by whose good offices, though absent, you have deigned to greet us: you will doubtless take care, with equal affection, that through your holiness they in turn are greeted with our respects, both the companions of your holiness in the clergy and the imitators of your faith and virtue in the monasteries. For though you act among peoples and over a people, guiding the sheep of the Lord’s pasture as a shepherd watchful in anxious vigils, yet by renouncing the world and rejecting flesh and blood you have made a desert for yourself, set apart from the many, called among the few.

As a kind of return gift, though unequal to you in everything, I have, as you instructed, provided that History of all the ages by Eusebius, the venerable bishop of Constantinople. The delay in obeying lay in this: since I did not have the codex myself, on your instruction I found it at Rome with our truly most holy father Domnio, who without doubt obeyed me the more readily in this kindness because I told him it was to be passed on to you. However, since you deigned also to tell me where you would be, as you yourself advised, we have written to the venerable companion of your crown, our father Aurelius, asking that, if you are now staying at Hippo Regius, he would deign to send you there our letter and the parchment copied at Carthage. We have also asked those holy men whom we came to know from your words, which showed their love, Comes and Evodius, to take care to write themselves, so that our father Domnio may not be without his codex any longer, and the copy sent to you may remain with you with no need to return it.

But I ask this of you especially, since you have embraced me, undeserving and unexpecting, with great love: that in return for this history of the ages you tell me the whole history of your holiness. Tell me your family, from what house you were called by so great a Lord, by what beginnings, set apart from your mother’s womb, you renounced the stock of flesh and blood and passed over to the mother who rejoices in her offspring of the sons of God, and were transferred into a royal and priestly race. As for what you have told me, that you learned the name of our lowliness at Milan when you were being initiated there, I confess I wish to learn more closely, so as to know you in every respect and to rejoice the more if it was by our father Ambrose, whom I revere, that you were either invited to the faith or consecrated to the priesthood, so that we both may seem to have the same author. For I, though baptized by Delphinus at Bordeaux and consecrated by Lampius at Barcelona in Spain through the violence of a suddenly inflamed people, have yet always been nourished in the faith by the love of Ambrose, and am now cherished by him in my ordination to the priesthood. Indeed he wished to claim me for his own clergy, so that, though I live in different places, I may be reckoned his presbyter.

But that you may not be ignorant of anything about me: know that I am a sinner of very long standing, not long ago led out of darkness and the shadow of death to breathe the breath of life, and not long ago I put my hand to the plow and took up the cross of the Lord; that we may be able to carry it to the end, let us be helped by your prayers. This reward will be added to your merits, if by your intercession you lighten our burdens. For “a holy man helping one who labors” (since we do not dare to say “a brother”) “will be exalted like a great city.” And you indeed are a city built on a mountain, or a lamp lit upon a lampstand, shining with sevenfold brightness; we lie hidden under the bushel of our sins. Visit us with your letters, bring us out into the light in which you yourself move, conspicuous upon the golden lampstands. Your words will be a light to our paths, our head will be anointed with the oil of your lamp, and our faith will be kindled when we take from the breath of your mouth food for the mind and light for the soul. [6] The peace and grace of God be with you, and may the crown of righteousness await you on that day, lord father, deservedly most beloved, venerable and most longed for. We ask you to greet with much affection and respect the blessed companions of your holiness and its imitators in the Lord, our brothers, if they deign to be so, both in the churches and in the monasteries at Carthage, Thagaste, Hippo Regius and in all your parishes, and in all the places known to you throughout Africa, who serve the Lord in the catholic way. If you receive the parchment of holy Domnio, please send it back to us copied. And I ask you to write to me which of my hymns you have recognized. We have sent your holiness one loaf as a sign of unity, in which the solidity of the Trinity is also contained. You will make this loaf a blessing by deigning to receive it.