Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 1/17

BOOK ONE. Not knowing, Cresconius, when my writings could reach you, I nevertheless in no way despaired that they would reach you, since your writings too — though long after you wrote them — were yet at some time able to reach me: those in which it seemed good to you that you ought to write against the things which I, as I could, briefly answered in part on behalf of our side, against Petilianus, bishop of Cirta, your fellow, who was striving to establish the repetition of baptism and was accusing our communion, not by the weight of proofs, but by the levity of curses. For not the whole of his epistle had then come into my hands, but only a small former part. Why this happened, what need is there to inquire, since, when the whole afterward came to us, it did not irk us to answer the whole?

If therefore I were not to write back to these your letters which you sent to me, you would perhaps think it insulting; but that I do write back, again I fear lest you think it contentious.

But if you, upon finding letters of mine that were not addressed to you—merely because they seemed to refute the bishop of the party of Donatus, or the party of Donatus itself—judged that it belonged to your office to take up and put forth a rebuttal, since you were conscious of possessing a certain ability, because you belong to that communion, even though you are bound by no clerical function: how much less was it permitted to me, in view of the duty of my burden, to keep silent either against Petilian or against you yourself, when he was assailing the Church for which I do battle, and you, in a similar undertaking, went so far as to compose, publish, and address to me by name a discourse! In its opening sections you laboured to make eloquence appear suspect to men.

For, as if praising my manner of speaking, and again as if fearing that by this manner I might deceive you or anyone else by persuading them of falsehoods, you proceeded to accuse eloquence itself, adducing even a testimony against it from the Holy Scriptures, where you suppose it is said: 'From much eloquence you shall not escape sin'—whereas it was not said 'from much eloquence,' but 'in much talking.' Now much talking is superfluous speech, a fault, that is, contracted through love of speaking. For very often even those who do not know what they are saying, or how they are saying it—whether as regards the soundness of their opinions or as regards the correct sound and order of words that is learned through the art of grammar—love to talk.

But eloquence is the faculty of speaking which fittingly sets forth what we perceive, and it must be used when we perceive rightly. In this way the heretics did not use it. For surely, if they had perceived rightly, there would have been not only nothing evil, but even something good which they might have set forth eloquently. In vain, therefore, by the recital of these examples have you accused eloquence. For neither is a soldier for that reason not to be armed for his fatherland, because some have taken up arms against their fatherland; nor ought good and learned physicians for that reason to refrain from using surgical instruments for health, because even the unlearned and the most wicked misuse these for destruction.

For who does not know that, just as medicine is useful or useless according as the things sought are useful or useless, so eloquence, that is, the skill and faculty of speaking, is useful or useless according as the things spoken are useful or useless? I do not think that even you are ignorant of this. But, I believe, when you saw that I was reckoned eloquent by some, in order to deter the eagerness of the reader or hearer away from me, you thought eloquence ought to be accused, so that whoever, terrified by you, should judge me to be speaking eloquently, might for that very reason deem me to be guarded against and shunned, and so should no longer attend to what I said.

See therefore lest what you have done belong to that evil art which, as you recalled concerning Plato, some have rightly judged should be banished from the city and from the fellowship of the human race. This is not eloquence—would that it had come to me for setting forth what I perceive as much as I desire!—but a certain sophistical and malicious profession, which sets before itself to speak not from the heart, but out of contentiousness or self-interest, for all things and against all things. Of this the Holy Scripture says: 'He who speaks sophistically is hateful.' From this, it seems to me, the apostle Paul forbids the youth of Timothy, where he says: 'Do not strive about words; for it is useful for nothing but the subversion of the hearers.'

And lest he be thought to have forbidden him the faculty of speaking rightly, he immediately added: 'Give diligence to present yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.' No doubt, then, this disposition of mind crept upon you, that out of a zeal for contradiction—not because you so believed, but in order to turn away from us the attention of one desiring to learn—you declared us to be eloquent and disparaged eloquence. For how should I believe that you did this from the heart, when I know how you are wont to extol the eloquence of Donatus, of Parmenian, and of others of yours? Than which what would be more useful, if in so full a stream it flowed forth for the peace of Christ, for unity, truth, and charity? But why should I speak of others?

In your own self did you not disclose how you were a disparager of eloquence not from the heart but out of contentiousness, when you tried both to persuade of the other things you wrote by means of eloquence, and to accuse that very same eloquence eloquently? For as to what you say—that you are both unequal to us in the art of speaking, and utterly uninstructed in the examples of the Christian law—to what purpose, I beg you, is this? Did I in any way compel you to write back against my writings, and is this therefore the voice of one refusing and excusing himself? If, then, you are utterly uninstructed, why do you not rather keep silent, or so speak that you may desire to be instructed?

You say that I am always urging and challenging that your people should dispute with me for the discerning of the question of truth, but that your people act more prudently and patiently, who in the church teach the people only those things which are commanded in the law, and do not care to answer us, knowing that, if the divine law and so many documents of the legal Scriptures cannot persuade us what is better and what is truer, human authority could never recall us, once our errors were discussed, to the rule of truth. What then seemed good to you, that while they are silent you should speak against us? For if they do well, why do you not imitate them; if ill, why do you praise them?

You say that I believe, with intolerable arrogance, that I alone can settle what to others has seemed as it were insoluble and therefore has been left to God the judge—though a little earlier you had said that I wish to settle this after so many years, after so many judges and arbiters, a matter which, before princes and with so many learned men from the bishops of both parties disputing, could not be settled. Am I really the only one who busies himself in this? Am I really the only one who desires this question to be settled by disputation? For I think that, if you had wished to blame only our men for having attempted this, you would not have confessed that your men too were engaged in that attempt. Since, then, you cannot now reprove that attempt, that will and insistence—at least on account of your own men—I refuse to be a stranger to so good a work. What do you allege, what do you censure?

Or do you envy? This must not be rashly believed of you. It remains, therefore, that out of a zeal for contentiousness you blame this in me which you are compelled to praise even in your own men. But, you say, since it has not been settled among so many and such men, it is intolerable arrogance to presume that it can be settled by one man alone. Do not, I pray, think that this ought to be attributed to me alone; we are very many who insist that this be settled—nay rather, that it become known to have been already settled. For those said it was not settled who refused to consent to that same settlement and concealed it from you, so that you too, deceived by their authority, might believe it has not been settled.

But our men, from the time it was settled, at no time whatever ceased—in whatever way they could, publicly and privately—to work that the settlement itself should become known, lest anyone persisting in a most pernicious error should in the last judgment complain of the negligence of God's ministers toward him. We do not, therefore, wish to treat anew a cause long since settled, but to demonstrate how it has been settled, chiefly on account of those who do not know this, so that, when the defenders of error are convicted, either they too, being corrected, may be set free, or at least, when these are refuted and remain in open obstinacy, those who are more desirous of truth than of contention may see what to follow. Nor is this done without fruit, as you suppose.

For if you could see how far and wide this error had pervaded Africa, and how few remnants of it have not yet crossed over, corrected, into the catholic peace, you would in no way judge the insistence of the champions of Christian peace and unity to be fruitless and vain—although even, wherever the diligence spent on this medicine does not profit, it suffices, for the giving of an account to God, that it has not ceased to be spent. For just as a malicious tempter to sin, even if he does not persuade, deservedly incurs the punishment of a deceiver, so a faithful preacher of righteousness, even if he is rejected by men, God forbid that with God he should be defrauded of the reward of his office. For the matter becomes certain unto an uncertain thing; and by uncertain I mean not the reward of the doer, but the mind of the hearer.

For it is uncertain to us whether he to whom the truth is preached will assent, but it is certain that even to such the truth ought to be preached, and it is certain that a fitting recompense awaits those who faithfully preach it, whether they be received or spurned, or even suffer on that account any temporal adversities whatsoever. The Lord says in the Gospel: 'When you have entered, say: Peace be to this house. If they that are there be worthy, your peace shall rest upon them; if not, it shall return to you.' Did he make them certain that those to whom they should preach it would receive their peace? Yet he made them certain that they should preach it without hesitation. The apostle Paul also:

'The servant of the Lord,' he says, 'must not wrangle, but be gentle toward all, apt to teach, patient, in meekness correcting those who think differently, lest perhaps God grant them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, and they may recover themselves out of the snares of the devil, having been taken captive by him unto his will.' Observe how him whom he forbade to wrangle he nevertheless willed to correct in meekness those who think differently, lest the servant of God should suppose the prohibition of petulance to be an occasion for sloth. But because many bear it grievously and burdensomely—even that correction which is done with meekness—whether favouring their own sins, or not finding what to answer yet not acquiescing in the truth, they call those who deal earnestly with them and do not dissemble in convicting them of their error

call litigious and contentious. For falsehood, which fears to be laid bare and refuted, accuses the diligence of truth under the name of those vices which truth condemns. Yet ought we for that reason to desist from this insistence? See how the same apostle binds Timothy, lest on account of men to whom the preaching of truth is unwelcome, any sloth of preaching should creep upon him: 'I charge you,' he says, 'before God and Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his manifestation and his kingdom: preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, exhort, rebuke, in all longsuffering and doctrine.'

Who, hearing these things, if he faithfully serves God, if he is not a deceitful workman, would rest from this diligence and insistence? Who under so great an adjuration would dare to be slothful? Let not your eloquence, therefore, clamour against us in this cause. We altogether preach, with the help of the Lord our God, the usefulness, the piety, the holiness of Christian unity; we preach to the willing in season, to the resisting out of season, and with all the strength we can we show that this question between us and the party of Donatus—and for whom, and against whom, we are able—was long ago settled. Let those recognize in themselves the name and the crime of contentious animosity who either by obstinate cunning furnish patronage to falsehood, or by envious boasting minister a herald's proclamation to the truth.

Both these kinds of contentious men the apostle Paul expressed: the first in Alexander, of whom he says: 'Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord will render to him according to his works; whom do you also avoid, for he strongly withstood our words.' The other in those of whom he says: 'Some indeed out of envy and contention preach Christ, not sincerely, thinking to raise up tribulation for my bonds.' For these without doubt were announcing that very same thing which Paul announced, yet not with that mind, not with that will, not out of charity but out of envy, as he said, but out of contention, wishing with a proud sense to excel in that same preaching and to be preferred before the apostle Paul.

But he, not taking this grievously—nay rather even rejoicing that he saw preached by them that which he desired to become more widely known—says: 'What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ be preached.' For not with the truth of their heart, since not with sincere intention but with rivalrous contention, they nonetheless preached the truth, that is, Christ. You therefore, since you cannot be the judge of the inward parts of our heart, attend only to this: whether we resist the truth, or whether we desire to refute those who resist the truth.

For without doubt, if we persuade the truth and refute error—even if we do it not with the truth of a proper intention, but seeking the gain of this world and human glory—the lovers of truth ought to rejoice, because on this occasion too the truth is announced, just as the apostle who says: 'And in this I will rejoice.' But if—which is most fully known to God, and which could have been known even to you yourself, as far as human capacity allows, had you lived with us—we are engaged in the labour of this dispensation out of the pious solicitude of charity, I think our ministry is by no means justly reproved, if with fervent spirit we contend for the truth against any adversaries of the truth whatsoever.

For if by you anyone is held contentious, or animose, and a preparer of brawls, whoever takes care either to bring against or to return to any man a wrangling of discourse, see what you think concerning the Lord Jesus Christ himself and his servants, the prophets and apostles. For surely the Lord himself, the Son of God—did he have discourse concerning the truth only with his disciples or with the crowds who believed in him, or did he not also have it with enemies who tempted, detracted, questioned, resisted, and reviled? Did it irk him even with a single woman to dispute concerning the question of prayer, against the opinion or heresy of the Samaritans? But he foreknew, you say, that she would believe. What of it?

How many things did he speak, so many times, to the very faces of the Jews, Pharisees, and Sadducees, who not only were by no means going to believe, but were even going most of all to contradict and persecute him! Did he not, of his own accord, when he willed, inquire of them what he willed, in order to convict those men by their own answer? Did he not, to those craftily questioning in temptation, reply without any ambiguity to the things by which, refuted, they should be struck dumb? And though he did this, none of these is read to have been converted to following him. And surely he knew, because he was foreknowing, that he would profit nothing toward their salvation when he said these things to them, or against them, or in their presence.

But perhaps he strengthened us by his example—we who are unable to foreknow men's future faith or perfidy—lest, if ever we should have spoken to the too hardened and too perverse without fruit of their salvation, we might fail and desist from the insistence of preaching, since it had irked us to labour in vain. What of the fact that even the devil himself—whom now not only God, but not even men can doubt

is in no way going to be converted to righteousness—yet the Son of God, when it insidiously tempted him and set before him the snares of questions from the Holy Scriptures, convicted it by replying from the Holy Scriptures; nor did Christ judge it unworthy to hold converse with Satan concerning the divine oracles. What indeed did he foresee, except that what profited nothing for the Jews and the devil would profit the Gentiles who were going to believe? We read also that prophets were sent to men so disobedient that God himself, who was sending the prophets, foretold concerning those to whom he was sending them, that they would not obey their words.

I pass over the fact that by the prophetic spirit, by which they discerned things to come, they too could surely have known this—that those men were going to despise their words—to whom nevertheless they did not keep silent, but spoke with vehement insistence. Most plainly the Lord says to the prophet Ezekiel: 'Go and enter into the house of Israel and speak my words to them; for you are not sent to a people of an unknown tongue, but to the house of Israel; not to many peoples speaking with diverse or difficult tongues, whose words you could not hear. And if I had sent you to such, perhaps they would have heard you; but the house of Israel will not hear you, because they will not hear me. For the whole house of Israel is of a restless and hard heart.'

'But I have made your face strong against their face, and I will strengthen your struggle against their struggle.' Behold, the servant of God is sent and bidden to speak to those who were not going to hear him, with the Lord himself who was sending and bidding him speak foretelling that they were not going to hear. For what cause, for whose good, with what fruit or what effect is he sent to the struggle of preaching the truth against those who would struggle against it and would not obey? Will anyone dare to say that the holy prophets of God incurred the reproach cast at me by you, when you said: 'If you know that the matter of which you treat cannot be settled by you, why do you take up useless labour, why do you spend vain effort, why do you contend superfluously and without fruit?'

Or is it not a great error to will what you cannot accomplish, since the law too admonishes, saying: 'Seek not things too high for you, and search not out things too mighty for you'; and again: 'A passionate man prepares strifes, and a wrathful man heaps up sin'? Certainly you would not say these things to Ezekiel, who is sent with the word of God to bring struggle upon men who would not obey, would be minded against it, would speak against it, would act against it. For if you should say them, he would perhaps answer you what the apostles answered those same Jews: 'Whom ought one to obey? God rather, or men?' This I too would answer you.

Here, if you press me to show where God has also commanded me to do that which you forbid, remember that the apostolic epistles were written not only to those who at the time when they were written were listening, but also to us—for it is for no other reason that they are recited in the church. Attend also to that which the apostle says: 'Do you wish to receive a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?' And recall now, not what Paul, but what through him Christ spoke, which I mentioned a little before: 'Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season,' and so forth. Attend also to how, to Titus, when he was explaining what kind of man a bishop ought to be, he said he ought also to be persevering according to the doctrine of the faithful word:

'that he may be able,' he says, 'both to exhort in sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers. For there are many unruly, vain talkers and seducers of minds, especially those of the circumcision, who must be refuted.' He does not say that only those of the circumcision are such, but that these especially are such; yet by an undoubted precept he established that vain talkers and seducers of minds ought to be convicted and refuted by the bishop in sound doctrine. Whence I recognize that this too has been commanded me; this I do according to my strength; upon this work, as much as he himself who commanded it helps, I perseveringly insist. Why do you oppose, why do you clamour, why do you forbid, why do you censure? Ought one to obey you, or God?

Unless perhaps you think that these testimonies, which have been brought forward by me from the Holy Scriptures, are to be so taken that—what you praised your men for practicing—the peoples should be taught in the church only those things which are commanded in the law. For there perhaps you think that those who think differently ought to be corrected and convicted, so that each teacher should amend the error only of his own people by disputing and preaching; but if anyone should undertake to deal thus with those who are outside, then he ought to be held animose, then contentious or litigious—because, you say, even Ezekiel himself and the other prophets were sent with the words of God to their own people, Israelites, that is, to Israelites. To these things too I answer you.

Indeed I have already recalled above that the Lord Jesus himself, who offered himself to his disciples to be imitated, did not disdain to assert the truth and to answer concerning the law not only to Jews, but even to Pharisees and Sadducees and Samaritans, and to the devil himself, the prince of all deceits and errors. But lest you think that this was permitted to the Lord, yet is not permitted to his servants, receive what is read in the Acts of the Apostles: 'Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, came to Ephesus, mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit he spoke and taught most truly the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John; this man also had begun to act boldly in the synagogue.'

'When Aquila and Priscilla had heard him, they took him and expounded to him more accurately the way of the Lord. And when he wished to go into Achaia, the brethren, having exhorted him, wrote to the disciples to receive him. When he had come, he helped much those who had believed there; for he vehemently confuted the Jews publicly, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.' What do you say of this man, what do you think? Would you not perhaps have charged him with being contentious and animose, an inciter and preparer of brawls, were you not pressed by so great an authority of the sacred book?

Or was it because he was a Jew who had believed in Christ, that he therefore ought publicly to confute the Jews who resisted the Christian faith and denied that Jesus was the Christ—whereas we, because we were never of the party of Donatus, therefore ought not to confute the party of Donatus that resists Christian unity? Was the apostle Paul ever a worshipper of idols, or ever in the heresy of the Epicureans or the Stoics, with whom nevertheless he was neither ashamed nor irked to hold discourse concerning the question of the living and true God? Receive what is written of this matter in the same book: 'Now Paul, while he waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred within him, seeing the city given over to idols.'

'He disputed therefore in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout, and in the marketplace every day with those who were present. But certain of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conferred with him, and some said: What does this sower of words wish to say? But others: He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign demons.' Behold, the apostle Paul did not refuse to confer with himself the Stoics and Epicureans—heresies diverse not only from him but even adverse to one another—disputing with them not only outside the church, but even outside the synagogue; nor, terrified by their revilings as though shunning strifes and contentions, did he cease from preaching the Christian truth. For see what Holy Scripture next testifies:

'And having laid hold of him,' it says, 'they led him to the Areopagus, saying: Can we know what these things are which are spoken by you? For you bring certain strange things to our ears; we wish therefore to know what these things mean.' Now the Athenians and the visiting strangers had leisure for nothing else than to tell or to hear something new. And Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: 'Men of Athens, in all things I perceive you to be too superstitious. For as I passed by and considered your images, I found also an altar on which was written: To the unknown God. Whom therefore you worship in ignorance, him I announce to you'—and the rest, which it would be long to recall in full.

But as much as suffices for the question we are now discussing, attend, I beseech you, to the apostle of Christ, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, standing and discoursing not in the synagogue of the Jews nor in the church of the Christians, but in the Areopagus of the Athenians—that is, of the most contentious and most impious of the Greeks. For there arose the most loquacious heresies of the philosophers, of which some, like these very Stoics who are here recalled, contend more about the adversity of words than of things—which the apostle forbade to Timothy, saying it is useful for nothing but the subversion of the hearers. For of these, as you know, Tullius says: 'For a controversy of words has long tormented those little Greeks, more desirous of contention than of truth.'

Yet our Paul undertook to address and correct these, not terrified by the name of the very place—which resounds as derived from Mars, whom they say is the god of wars—there he spoke undauntedly, peaceable, to those who would believe; there, girded with spiritual arms, he stormed pernicious errors, and feared neither the contentious as the gentlest of men, nor the dialecticians as the most simple. For you know how greatly dialectic flourished especially among the Stoics—although the Epicureans themselves, who were not only not ashamed of unskillfulness in the liberal disciplines but even delighted in it, boasted that they rather both held and taught certain rules of disputing, by which whoever used them would least of all be deceived. For what else is dialectic than skill in disputing?

This I thought ought to be disclosed, because you wished to cast even this at me, as though it did not befit Christian truth, and therefore your teachers, forsooth, judged that I, as a dialectical man, ought rather to be fled and guarded against than refuted and confuted. Since they did not persuade you of this—for it did not irk you to dispute against us even by writing—you nevertheless charged dialectic against me, that you might deceive the unskilled and praise those who had refused to engage with me in disputation. But surely you do not use dialectic when you write against us! Why then did you throw yourself into so great a peril of disputing, when you do not know how to dispute?