Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 18 part 11/17

But since of these two you usurp the one and hear the other from us—for you usurp innocence for yourselves, but from us you hear that you live impiously—receive again what I say of each. If you are innocent, why do you contradict Christ's testimony? But if guilty, why do you not flee to His mercy? For both His testimony concerns the unity of the world, and His mercy is in brotherly charity. Petilian said: Finally, as we have already often said, what sort of presumption is yours, that you presume upon kings, when David says: It is good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in man; it is good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in princes! Augustine answered:

We do not hope in man, but as far as we can we admonish men to hope in the Lord; nor do we hope in princes, but as far as we can we admonish princes to hope in the Lord; and if we ask anything of princes for the benefit of the Church, we nevertheless do not hope in them. For neither did the apostle hope in that tribune as in a prince—from whom he obtained that armed escorts be given him—nor in those armed men themselves as in men, by whose multitude, being surrounded, he escaped the ambush of the wicked.

But neither do we blame even you yourselves, because you petitioned the emperor that the basilicas be restored to you, as though you had hoped in Julian the prince; but we blame you because you despaired of Christ's testimony, from whose unity you separated those very basilicas. For at the bidding of the enemy of Christ you received them, in which you might despise the commands of Christ, so long as it seems to you valid and true what Julian decreed, saying: 'This also, at the supplication of Rogatian, Pontius, Cassian and the other bishops, and also the clergy, is added to the sum: that, with the annulment of whatever was wrongly done against them without a rescript, all things be recalled to their former state'—but invalid and false what Christ decreed, saying:

You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria and unto the whole earth. We beseech you: be corrected, return to this most evident unity of the whole world, so that not by the words of the apostate Julian, but by the words of the Savior Christ, all things may be recalled to their former state. Have pity on your own soul. We no longer compare Constantine and Julian, to show how unequal they are. We do not say:

'If you did not hope in man and in a prince—when you said to the man, a pagan and apostate emperor, that with him alone justice had its place (by which prayers and rescript, as is there written, as the acts of the allegation attest, the party of Donatus universally made use)—much less ought we to be accused by you as though we hope in man and in a prince, if we have petitioned anything from Constantine or from the other Christian emperors without any sacrilegious flattery, or if they themselves, we not petitioning, mindful of the account which they will render to the Lord—beneath whose words they tremble when they hear what you yourself cited:

And now, O kings, understand, and the rest, and many other things—of their own accord decree on behalf of the unity of the Catholic Church'—we ought far less to be accused of hoping in man and in a prince. But I say nothing of Constantine. We set Christ and Julian against you—too little do I say—God and man, the Son of God and the son of Gehenna, the Savior of our souls and the slayer of his own soul. Why, in possessing the basilicas, do you hold to the rescript of Julian, and in embracing the peace of the Church do you not hold to the Gospel of Christ? We too cry out: Let whatever was wrongly done be recalled, all of it, to its former state.

Let the Gospel of Christ take precedence over the rescript of Julian; more ancient is the unity of Christ than the party of Donatus; more ancient are the prayers of the Church to the Lord for the unity of Christ than those of Rogatian and Pontius and Cassian to Julian for the party of Donatus. Or is it wrongly done when kings forbid division, and not wrongly done when bishops divide unity? Is it wrongly done when kings serve to defend the Church by Christ's testimony, and not wrongly done when bishops contradict, to deny the Church, Christ's testimony?

We beseech you, then, that not against the Gospel but according to the Gospel even the words of Julian himself, whom you so supplicated, be heard, and that the things which were wrongly done be all recalled to their former state. Petilian said:

You, you, wretched ones, I address, who, terrified by fear of persecutions, while you seek your riches and not your souls, do not so much love the faithless faith of the traditors as, against the very malice of those whose patronage you have procured for yourselves, do just as shipwrecked men in the waves go beneath waves that are about to overwhelm them, and in great peril of life reach out for the very thing that is feared; or as a tyrant's fury, that it may fear no one, is willing even at its own peril to be feared. So, just so, you flee to the citadel of malice, meaning to look on at the losses and penalties of the innocent without dread of your own. If this is to avoid danger, to flee beneath a falling ruin, then damnable also is the fidelity that keeps faith with a robber.

Finally, it is the bargain of a madman to lose your souls lest you lose your riches. For the Lord Christ says: If you should gain the whole world and lose your soul, what will you give in exchange for your soul? Augustine replied: This exhortation would be useful, I confess, if anyone employed it in a good cause. You have altogether rightly deterred men from preferring riches to their soul. But you who have heard these things, hear us too a little; for we also say this, yet attend to the manner.

If kings threaten to take away your riches because you are not Jews according to the flesh, or because you do not worship idols or demons, or because you are not being drawn over into any heresies but remain in Catholic unity, then choose rather that your riches perish, lest you yourselves perish; and prefer nothing else, not even temporal life itself, to the eternal salvation which is in Christ. But if kings threaten you with losses or condemnation for this reason, that you are heretics, they frighten you not cruelly but mercifully, while you have no fear, not out of courage but out of obstinacy. Hear therefore Peter saying:

But what glory is it if, sinning, you suffer penalties? So that here you have no earthly consolations, and in the age to come no eternal life, but here the straits of the wretched and there the hell of heretics. You see therefore, brother, with whom my business now lies: you ought first to show whether you hold the truth, and only then exhort men that, in order to hold it, they be ready to do without all things that terrify them in this temporal life.

Since you do not show this—because you cannot, not because talent is lacking, but because the cause is bad—why do you hasten by your exhortations to make men beggars and unlearned and needy and wandering and ragged and quarrelsome and hungry and heretics, losing temporal goods in this age and finding eternal evils at the judgment of Christ? But the cautious son, who by fearing his father's whip withdraws from the serpent's bed, is neither beaten nor perishes; whereas he who despises the pains of discipline for the sake of his own destructive will is both beaten and perishes. Do you not now understand, eloquent man, that whoever has done without all earthly things for the peace of Christ has God, while whoever has lost even a few coins for the party of Donatus has no heart?

Petilian said: But we, poor in spirit not in riches, do not fear riches but dread them. We, having nothing and possessing all things, count our soul as our wealth, and by our penalties and blood we purchase the eternal riches of heaven, since indeed the Lord says: He who loses his substance shall receive it a hundredfold. Augustine replied: This too is relevant—to note how it is written; for where nothing hinders my purpose, if you deceive or are deceived about the scriptures, I care nothing. It is not written thus: He who loses his substance, but: He who loses his soul for my sake. And of substance it is not written 'he who loses,' but:

'He who forsakes,' and not the substance of money alone, but many other things as well. But you meanwhile have not lost your substance; and whether you have forsaken it—since you so boast of poverty—I do not know. If perhaps my colleague Fortunatus knows this, since you are in the same city, he has never told me, because I had never asked. Yet even if you have done this, you yourself, against yourself, recalled in this very letter of yours the apostolic testimony: If I distribute all my goods to the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing. For if you had charity, you would not reproach a world unknown and unknown to you, nor even the proven crimes of Africans;

if you had charity, you would not feign things in your calumnies, but would acknowledge the unity most manifestly expressed in the words of the Lord throughout the whole earth. But if you have not done this, why do you boast as though you had? Do you then indeed so dread riches that, having nothing, you possess all things? Say these things to your colleague Crispinus, who lately near our own Hippo purchased an estate where he might plunge men into the deep. Whence I too know this only too well; you perhaps do not know, and so, untroubled, you cry: 'We dread riches.' Hence I marvel that this voice of yours, in order to reach us, leaped over him; for between Constantina where you are and Hippo where I am, Calama where he is—though nearer to us—is nonetheless set between.

I marvel therefore how he did not first intercept this voice and cast it back, lest it pass on to us, and against you recite the praises of riches far more copiously. For not only does he not dread riches, but he even loves them. And certainly, for the rest, before you publish, recite such things to him; if he does not amend, we will reply. But you, if it is true that you are poor, there you have my brother Fortunatus: from him you can more easily win the approval of that colleague of mine than of this one of yours. Petilian said: We, by the fear of God whereby we live, do not fear the penalties and deaths which you inflict with the sword; but this only in the end do we flee, that by a most wicked communion you slay souls, the Lord himself saying: Do not fear those who kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul;

but rather fear him who has power to cast both body and soul into the hell of fire. Augustine replied: What you say, you yourselves do—not with a visible sword, but with that of which it was said: Sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword; for with this sword, the accuser and slanderer of an unknown world, you butcher the souls of the unlearned. But if you accuse a most wicked communion, behold, by a mouth not mine but your own: ascend, descend, go out, enter, turn this way, turn that—you are just such as Optatus was.

But if you return to your heart and find that you are not such—not because he did not share the sacraments with you, but because he displeased you—then you will absolve the whole world of others' crimes and will find yourselves entangled in the crime of schism. Petilian said: You, therefore, who wish to be washed by a most false baptism rather than born again, not only fail to lay aside your own offenses, but even burden your souls with the crimes of the guilty; for as the water of the harmful is emptied of the Holy Spirit, so plainly is it stuffed full with the crimes of traditors. Whoever therefore, wretched one, is baptized by such a man—if you wished to be free of lying, you are drenched with falsehood; if you did not wish to shut out the sins of the flesh, then, with the conscience of the guilty coming upon you, you receive their guilt as well;

if you did not wish to quench the flame of avarice, you are drenched with fraud, drenched with crime, drenched also with fury. Finally, if you believe that faith belongs to the one who receives and the one who gives, then by him who kills a man you are drenched with a brother's blood. So it comes about that you who had come to baptism innocent go back from baptism a parricide. Augustine replied: I could wish to converse with those who, having read or heard these words, applauded; for such men have no ears in their heart, but a heart in their ears. Yet let them read again and again, and ponder and feel these things—not what they sound, but what they mean. First, to shake out this last point: 'So then it happens,' you say, 'that you who had come to baptism innocent go back from baptism a parricide.'

Answer first: who comes to baptism innocent, except that One who came to be baptized not that his iniquity might be washed away, but that authority of humility might be furnished to us? For what shall be forgiven an innocent man? Or are you indeed so eloquent as to show us some sinful innocence? Do you not hear the scripture saying: No one is clean from sin in your sight, not even an infant whose life on earth is of one day? For why is it that even with infants people run to the remission of sins? Do you not hear another: I was conceived in iniquity? Then, if for this reason he goes back a parricide who had come without parricide, because a parricide baptizes him, then as many as have gone back baptized by Optatus have been made Optatuses.

Go now, and object against us that we stir up the wrath of kings against you. Do you not fear that as many henchmen of Gildo may be sought out from among you as there were men who could be baptized by Optatus? Do you see at last how this opinion of yours, like a bladder, has burst not only with an empty noise, but even upon your own head? Now the other, earlier points which we have proposed to refute are such that any baptized person is said to go back altogether such as was the one by whom he is baptized. But far be it that, mad as you are in saying these things, those whom you baptize should go back from you as mad. And how prettily it rang in your ears, what you said: 'you are drenched with fraud, drenched with crime, drenched also with fury!'

But you indeed, unless you were not merely drenched but filled with fury, would not pour out such things. Is it so then—to pass over other matters—that whoever, being not avaricious, come to your avaricious colleagues or your presbyters to be baptized, go back avaricious; and whoever, being sober, run to those gulfs of wine to be baptized, come back drunkards? Holding such views and urging such things, do you dare even to cite as though against us what you set down a little above: 'It is good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in man; it is good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in princes'? What else, I ask, do you teach than to hope not in the Lord but in man, when you say that the baptized becomes such as was the baptizer?

And because you take to yourselves this sovereignty of baptizing, are men to believe you, and are those who were to hope in the Lord to hope in princes instead? Nay rather, let them not listen to you, but rather to those testimonies which you set down against yourselves, and to something still more terrible: for not only is it good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in man, but even, Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man. Petilian said: Imitate at least the prophets, who feared that their sacred souls should be deceived by a false baptism. For Jeremiah first said, among the impious, that water is lying: 'Lying water,' he says, 'has no faith.' Augustine replied:

One who is ignorant of the scriptures, hearing these things and not believing you either to err so as not to know what you say, or to deceive so that the one you deceive knows not what he says, supposes that the prophet Jeremiah, when he wished to be baptized, took precaution lest he be baptized by impious men, and so spoke these words. For to what does it pertain that, before you set down this testimony, you said: 'Imitate at least the prophets, who feared that their sacred souls should be deceived by a false baptism'? As if in Jeremiah's times anyone was washed by the sacrament of baptism—except that the Pharisees dipped themselves at almost every moment in those washings which the Lord rebuked: their couches and cups and dishes, as is read in the gospel.

How then could Jeremiah, as though desiring baptism and avoiding being baptized by the impious, have spoken these words? He said this rather when he was complaining about an unfaithful people, by whose most wicked morals he was afflicted, not mingling himself in their deeds; yet he did not bodily separate himself from that people, nor did he seek other sacraments than those which that people, according to the order of the law, took as suited to that time. This wicked-living people he called a wound, by which the heart of the just man was heavily struck—whether he said this of himself, or figured in himself what he saw as coming. For thus he says: Lord, remember me and visit me, and make me innocent from those who pursue me; not in longsuffering;

know how I have taken up reproach for your sake from those who spurn your words. Consume them, and your word shall be to me for joy and gladness of my heart, since your name has been invoked upon me, O Lord Almighty. I have not sat in the council of those who make sport, but I feared before the face of your hand; I sat alone, since I am filled with bitterness. Why do those who grieve me prevail against me? My wound is grievous: whence shall I be healed? It has become to me as lying water that has no faith. In all these things it appears what the prophet wished to be understood; but it appears so to those who do not wish, for their perverse cause, to pervert what they read.

For Jeremiah called his wound the lying water without faith made for him; but by his wound he meant those to be understood who grieved him by living wickedly. Whence the apostle also says: fightings without, fears within, and again: Who is weak, and I am not weak? and who is made to stumble, and I do not burn? And because he despaired of their being corrected, therefore he said: 'whence shall I be healed?'—as though he would have pain forever, so long as they remained such among whom he was compelled to live. But that a people is customarily signified by the name of water is made manifest in the Apocalypse, where 'many waters, many peoples' we know not by our own conjecture but by the interpretation there unfolded.

Do not therefore, through a depraved understanding—or rather through error—blaspheme the sacrament of baptism, even if it be in a most lost man; for neither in Simon the liar was the baptism he had received a lying water, nor do so many liars of yours give a lying water when they baptize in the name of the Trinity. For they do not begin to be liars when, betrayed and convicted, they confess their crimes, but rather they were liars back then, when, being adulterers and criminals, they feigned themselves chaste and innocent. Petilian said: David also said: The oil of the sinner shall not anoint my head. Whom then does he declare a sinner? Me who suffer your crimes, or you who persecute the innocent? Augustine replied:

From the person of the body of Christ, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth, diffused throughout the whole world for the sake of the gospel which is preached, as the apostle says, in every creature that is under heaven—from the person of the whole earth, of which the same David, whose words you do not understand, says: He has established the world, which shall not be moved—which you contend to be not merely not moved by others' sins but altogether to have perished: from that person, therefore, I answer, 'I do not persecute the innocent.' But David said 'the oil of the sinner'; he did not say 'of the traditor,' not 'of the incense-burner,' not 'of the persecutor,' but 'of the sinner.' What then will you do according to your own interpretation? See first whether you yourself are not a sinner.

I do not want you to tell me, 'I am not a traditor, I am not an incense-burner, I am not a persecutor.' Neither indeed am I any of these, if it please the Lord, nor is the whole earth, which shall not be moved. But say, if you dare: 'I am not a sinner.' For that one says: the oil of the sinner. For whatever sin, even light, is found in you—how do you show that it does not pertain to what is said: the oil of the sinner? For I ask whether you pray with the Lord's Prayer; for if you do not pray with that prayer by which the Lord taught his disciples to pray, whence have you learned another, exceeding, for your greater merits, the merits of the apostles? But if you pray as that Master deigned to teach, how do you say:

Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors? For we do not ask this concerning those sins which were forgiven us in baptism. Therefore these words of the prayer either do not allow you to be a suppliant of God, or they expose you as a sinner. Let them now come and kiss your head, those baptized by you, whose heads have perished by your oil. But you—see what you are, or what you think of yourself. Was Optatus then really not even a sinner of any kind—Optatus whom pagans, Jews, our Christians and yours throughout all Africa cry out to be a thief, robber, betrayer, oppressor, separator, and of that man whom a certain one of you called his companion-god, not a friend, not a client, but a henchman?

What then shall they do, whose heads a man guilty of a capital crime has anointed? Do not they too kiss your heads—those about whose heads, through your interpretation, you judge so ill? At least betray them and warn them to be healed. Or is it rather your own head that must be healed, raving as you are? 'What then,' you will say, 'did David say?' Why do you ask me? Ask him; in the preceding verse he will answer you: The just man, he says, shall correct me in mercy and shall reprove me; but the oil of the sinner shall not fatten my head. What plainer, what more open? I prefer, he says, to be healed by a merciful rebuke than to be deceived and perverted by fawning flattery, as though my head were anointed. Under other words the same sentiment is elsewhere in the scriptures:

Better are the wounds of a friend than the willing kisses of an enemy. Petilian said: The ointment of concord he thus praises among brethren: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity; like the ointment on the head that runs down onto the beard, the beard of Aaron, that runs down onto the hem of his garment; as the dew of Hermon that descends upon the mountains of Sion. For there the Lord commanded blessing and life for evermore. Thus, he says, is unity anointed, as the priests were anointed. Augustine replied: You speak truly. For that priesthood, in the figure of the body of Christ, had an anointing which is made safe by the bond of unity. For Christ himself is named from chrism, that is, from anointing.

The Hebrews call him Messiah, a word consonant with the Punic tongue, as are very many other Hebrew words and almost all. What then in that priesthood is the head, what the beard, what the hem of the garment? As far as the Lord grants me to understand, the head is the Savior himself of the body, of whom the apostle says: and he himself is the head of the body, the Church. By the beard, fortitude is not incongruously understood. Therefore to those who are strong in his Church and cleave to his mouth, that they may without fear preach the truth, from Christ himself as from the head the holy ointment descends, that is, spiritual sanctification. The hem of the garment is understood to be that which is at the head of the garment, through which the head of the one clothing himself passes.

By this are signified the perfect faithful in the Church; for in the hem is perfection. And surely you remember it was said to a certain rich man: If you would be perfect, go, sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. That man indeed went away sad, a neglecter of perfection, a chooser of falling away. But were there therefore lacking those into whom the ointment of unity, made perfect by such a relinquishing of earthly things, might descend, as onto the hem of the garment from the head?

For, excepting the apostles and those who were with them as leaders and teachers—whom we understand as the more eminent and stronger in the beard—read in the Acts of the Apostles and see: they laid the prices of their sold goods at the apostles' feet, and no one said that anything was his own, but they had all things in common, and it was distributed to each as each had need, and they had one soul and one heart toward God. Surely you recognize it is so written. Recognize then the good and pleasant thing, brethren dwelling together in unity; recognize the beard of Aaron; recognize the hem of the spiritual garment. Ask the scripture itself where these things began to be done; you will find—in Jerusalem. From this hem of the garment, through all nations, the whole unity is woven together.

By this the head entered into the garment, that Christ might be clothed with the variety of the whole world, because in this hem of the garment appeared that very variety of tongues. Why then do you resist that very head, from which that ointment of unity descended, that is, the fragrance of spiritual love—why, I say, do you resist that very head that testifies and says:

Repentance and remission of sins shall be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem? And in this ointment do you wish to interpret the sacrament of chrism—which indeed, in the class of visible seals, is most holy, like baptism itself, yet can exist also in the most wicked men, who consume their life in the works of the flesh and are not to possess the kingdom of heaven, and who therefore pertain neither to the beard of Aaron, nor to the hem of his garment, nor to any weaving of the priestly garment? For where will you place those things which the apostle enumerates as the manifest works of the flesh:

which are, he says, fornications, uncleannesses, licentiousness, the service of idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like; which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God? I set aside fornications, which are committed in secret; interpret uncleannesses as you will, I set them aside also; let us there place sorceries too, since no one is openly a maker and giver of poisons; I set aside heresies also, since this is what you wish; the service of idols I do not know whether I ought to set aside, since the apostle there places avarice, which rages in public.