Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 1 part 10/22

For now I had begun to wish to seem wise, being full of my own punishment, and I did not weep, but moreover was puffed up with knowledge. For where was that charity which builds upon the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus? Or when would those books teach me it? Into these, therefore, before I should consider Thy Scriptures, I believe Thou didst will that I should fall, that it might be imprinted on my memory how I had been affected by them, and so that afterwards, when in books

of Thine I had been made gentle, and my wounds were handled by Thy curing fingers, I might discern and distinguish what difference there is between presumption and confession — between those who see whither one must go, but do not see the way, and the Way that leads to the blessed homeland, not only to be discerned but also to be inhabited. For if I had first been formed by Thy holy writings, and Thou hadst grown sweet to me in their familiarity, and afterwards had fallen upon those volumes, perhaps they would have snatched me away from the solid foundation of piety; or else, if I had persisted in that wholesome disposition which I had drunk in, I might have thought that even out of those books this could be conceived, if a man had learned them alone.

And so I seized most eagerly upon the venerable pen of your Spirit, and above all upon the apostle Paul; and those questions vanished in which it had once seemed to me that he contradicted himself, and that the text of his discourse did not agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets. And the face of those pure utterances appeared to me as one, and I learned to rejoice with trembling. And I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read in those other books was here said together with the commendation of your grace, so that he who sees should not so glory as if he had not received — not only what he sees, but even that he sees at all. For what has he that he has not received?

And so that you, who are always the same, might not only admonish him to see, but also heal him to hold fast; and that he who cannot see from afar might yet walk the way by which he may come and see and hold. For although a man delights in the law of God according to the inner man, what shall he do about that other law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and leading him captive in the law of sin which is in his members? For you are just, O Lord; but we have sinned, we have done iniquity, we have acted impiously, and your hand has grown heavy upon us, and justly were we handed over to the ancient sinner, the prince of death, because he persuaded our will to the likeness of his own will, by which he did not stand in your truth. What shall the wretched man do?

Who shall deliver him from the body of this death, except your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom you begot coeternal with yourself and created in the beginning of your ways, in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy of death, yet slew him; and the handwriting that was against us was blotted out? These things those writings do not have. Those pages do not have the countenance of that piety, the tears of confession, your sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a contrite and humbled heart, the salvation of a people, the bride city, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. No one there sings: Shall not my soul be subject unto God? For from him is my salvation; for he himself is my God and my Savior, my upholder:

I shall not be greatly moved. No one there hears him calling: Come unto me, all you who labor. They disdain to learn from him, because he is meek and lowly in heart; for you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to little ones. And it is one thing to behold the homeland of peace from a wooded summit and find no way to it, and to strive in vain through trackless places, while fugitive deserters with their prince, the lion and the dragon, lie in wait and beset us; and another to keep the road that leads thither, guarded by the care of the heavenly Commander, where those who have deserted the heavenly army do not lurk as robbers; for they shun it as a punishment.

These things were being grafted into my inmost being in wondrous ways, while I read the least of your apostles, and I had considered your works and was filled with dread. BOOK EIGHT. My God, let me remember in thanksgiving to you and confess your mercies upon me. Let my bones be steeped in your love and say: Lord, who is like unto you? You have broken my bonds: I will offer to you the sacrifice of praise. How you broke them I shall tell, and all who adore you shall say, when they hear these things: "Blessed be the Lord in heaven and on earth; great and wonderful is his name." Your words had clung to the depths of my heart, and on every side I was hedged about by you. Of your eternal life I was certain, although I had seen it in an enigma and as through a glass;

yet all doubt about the incorruptible substance — that from it comes every substance — had been taken from me, and I desired to be not more certain of you, but more stable in you. But concerning my own temporal life, all things were wavering, and my heart had to be cleansed from the old leaven; and the Way itself, the Savior, pleased me, yet I was still loath to go through its narrows. And you put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a good servant of yours, and your grace shone in him. I had also heard that from his youth he had lived most devotedly for you; and indeed by then he had grown old, and by his long age in so good a pursuit of following your way he seemed to me to have experienced much and learned much: and so it truly was.

So I wanted him to set forth to me, as I shared my surgings with him, what was the fitting manner for one so affected as I was to walk in your way. For I saw the Church full, and one went this way, another that. But what I was doing in the world displeased me, and it was a great burden to me, now that the desires for the hope of honor and money no longer inflamed me, as they used to, to endure that so heavy servitude. For now those things no longer delighted me before the sweetness of you and the beauty of your house, which I loved; but I was still tenaciously bound by woman, nor did the apostle forbid me to marry, although he exhorted me to something better, wishing above all that all men might be as he himself was.

But I, being weaker, was choosing the softer place, and on account of this one thing I was tossed about in the rest, languid and wasting away with withering cares, because in other matters too, which I was unwilling to endure, I was forced to conform to the married life, to which I was bound by devotion. I had heard from the mouth of Truth that there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven; but, he says, let him who can receive it, receive it. Surely vain are all men in whom there is no knowledge of God, nor were they able, from those things which seem good, to find him who is. But I was no longer in that vanity; I had transcended it, and with the whole creation bearing witness I had found you our Creator, and your Word with you, God, and with you one God, through whom you created all things.

And there is another kind of impious men, who, knowing God, glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks. Into this too I had fallen, and your right hand took hold of me, and having taken me away from it you set me where I might recover; for you said to man: Behold, piety is wisdom; and: Be not willing to seem wise, since those saying themselves to be wise became fools. And I had now found the goodly pearl, and selling all that I had it was to be bought, and I hesitated. So I went on to Simplicianus, the father, in receiving grace, of the then bishop Ambrose, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. I told him the circuits of my error.

But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, once a rhetorician of the city of Rome, whom I had heard had died a Christian, had translated into the Latin tongue, he congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers full of fallacies and deceptions according to the elements of this world, whereas in these the Platonists God and his Word are insinuated in every way. Then, that he might exhort me to the humility of Christ, hidden from the wise and revealed to little ones, he recalled Victorinus himself, whom, when he was at Rome, he had known most intimately, and concerning him he told me a thing which I will not pass over in silence.

For it holds great praise of your grace, to be confessed to you, how that most learned old man, most skilled in all the liberal disciplines, who had read and judged so many works of the philosophers, the teacher of so many noble senators, who even for the distinction of his illustrious teaching — which the citizens of this world deem exceptional — had earned and received a statue in the Roman forum, having until that age been a worshiper of idols and a partaker in sacrilegious rites, with which nearly all the Roman nobility was then puffed up and breathing, devotees of monstrous prodigies and gods of every kind and barking Anubis, which had once held weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva, and to whom Rome, though once conquered by them, now made supplication, which gods this old man Victorinus had for so many years defended with thunderous mouth — how he did not blush to be a child of your Christ and an infant of your font, bowing his neck to the yoke of humility and his subdued brow to the reproach of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, who bowed the heavens and came down, who touched the mountains and they smoked, by what means did you insinuate yourself into that breast? He read, as Simplicianus said, the holy Scripture, and most studiously investigated and searched out all the Christian writings, and said to Simplicianus, not openly but more secretly and intimately: "Know now that I am a Christian." And he replied: "I will not believe it, nor count you among the Christians, unless I see you in the Church of Christ." But he would laugh, saying: "Is it then walls that make Christians?" And he said this often, that he was already a Christian, and Simplicianus often gave that reply, and often the mockery of the walls was repeated by him.

For he was afraid to offend his friends, proud demon-worshipers, from the summit of whose Babylonian dignity, as from the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord had not yet broken, he judged that grievous enmities would crash down upon him. But after, by reading and yearning, he had drunk in firmness, and feared to be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he feared to confess him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a great crime by blushing at the sacraments of the humility of your Word and not blushing at the sacrilegious rites of the proud demons, which as a proud imitator he had received — he grew ashamed of vanity and blushed before truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly said to Simplicianus, as he himself related: "Let us go into the church: I wish to be made a Christian."

But he, unable to contain himself for joy, went with him. And when he had been imbued with the first sacraments of instruction, not long after he gave in his name, that he might be regenerated through baptism, while Rome marveled and the Church rejoiced. The proud saw it and were angry; they gnashed with their teeth and pined away: but for your servant the Lord God was his hope, and he regarded not vanities and lying follies.

At last, when the hour came for professing the faith, which at Rome is customarily rendered by those who are about to approach your grace, in fixed words conceived and held by memory, from a higher place in the sight of the faithful people — it was said that it was offered to Victorinus by the presbyters that he should render it more privately, as the custom was to offer to certain ones who seemed likely to tremble with bashfulness; but he chose rather to profess his salvation in the sight of the holy multitude. For there was no salvation in what he taught in rhetoric, and yet he had professed it publicly. How much less, then, ought he to have feared your meek flock, while pronouncing your Word, who had not feared the crowds of madmen while speaking his own words?

And so, when he ascended to make his profession, all who knew him, each one, murmured his name to one another with a buzz of congratulation. And who there did not know him? And it sounded with a subdued sound through the mouths of all who rejoiced together: "Victorinus, Victorinus." Quickly they sounded forth with exultation, because they saw him, and quickly they fell silent in attentiveness, that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with splendid confidence, and all wished to snatch him into their own hearts. And they did snatch him by loving and rejoicing: these were the hands of those who snatched. Good God, what happens in a man, that he rejoices more over the salvation of a soul once despaired of and freed from greater peril, than if hope had always been present to it, or the peril had been less?

For you also, merciful Father, rejoice more over one penitent than over ninety-nine just ones who need no repentance. And we too hear with great gladness, when we hear with how exulting shoulders the shepherd carries back the sheep that had strayed, and the drachma is returned to your treasuries while the neighbors of the woman who found it rejoice together; and the joy of the solemn rite of your house draws out tears, when it is read in your house concerning your younger son, that he was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. For you rejoice in us and in your angels, holy through holy charity. For you are always the same, because those things which are not always nor in the same manner, you always know all in the same manner.

What then happens in the soul, when it is more delighted at things found or restored which it loves, than if it had always had them? For the other things too bear witness, and all things are full of testimonies crying: "It is so." The victorious commander triumphs, and he would not have conquered unless he had fought, and the greater the peril was in the battle, the greater is the joy in the triumph. The storm tosses sailors and threatens shipwreck; all grow pale at coming death: the sky and sea grow calm, and they exult exceedingly, because they had feared exceedingly. One dear to us is sick, and his pulse announces ill; all who desire him whole are sick together in mind:

he recovers, and does not yet walk with his former strength, and yet there arises such joy as there was not when before he walked sound and strong. And these very pleasures of human life men acquire even through troubles not unforeseen and bursting in against the will, but appointed and voluntary. There is no pleasure of eating and drinking unless the trouble of hunger and thirst precede. And drinkers eat certain salty things, so that a troublesome burning may arise, which, when drinking extinguishes it, becomes delight. And it is established that betrothed brides should not be given over at once, lest the husband hold cheap what was given, whom as a bridegroom he had not longed for when she was delayed.

This is so in base and execrable gladness, this in that which is permitted and lawful, this in the most sincere uprightness of friendship, this in him who was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found: everywhere greater joy is preceded by greater trouble. What is this, O Lord my God, since you are eternal joy to yourself, you yourself, and certain things around you ever rejoice in you? What is it, that this part of things alternates by failing and advancing, by offenses and reconciliations?

Or is this their measure, and did you give them only so much, when, from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the earth, from the beginning to the end of the ages, from angel to little worm, from the first motion to the last, you placed all kinds of good things and all your just works each in their own seats, and wrought each in their own times? Woe is me, how exalted you are in the heights, and how deep in the depths! And you never withdraw, and scarcely do we return to you. Come, O Lord, act, stir us up and call us back, kindle and seize us, be fragrant, grow sweet: let us love, let us run.

Do not many return to you from a deeper Tartarus of blindness than Victorinus, and approach and are enlightened, receiving the light, which, if any receive, they receive from you power to become your sons? But if they are less known to peoples, even those who know them rejoice less over them. For when there is rejoicing with many, in individuals too the joy is more abundant, because they kindle and inflame one another. Then, because being known to many, they are an authority to many for salvation, and go before many who will follow; and therefore even those who preceded them rejoice much over them, because they do not rejoice over them alone.

For far be it that in your tabernacle the persons of the rich should be received before the poor, or the noble before the ignoble, since rather you chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and you chose the ignoble things of this world and the contemptible and the things that are not, as though they were, that you might bring to nothing the things that are. And yet this same least of your apostles, through whose tongue you sounded these your words, when Paul the proconsul, his pride subdued through that apostle's warfare, had been sent under the gentle yoke of your Christ, made a provincial of the great King — he too chose to be called Paul instead of his former Saul, for the distinction of so great a victory. For an enemy is more conquered in the one whom he holds more firmly, and through whom he holds the more.

But he holds the proud more by the name of nobility, and through these he holds the more by the name of authority. By how much more gratefully, then, was Victorinus' heart pondered, which the devil had held as so impregnable a stronghold, and Victorinus' tongue, that great and sharp weapon by which he had slain many — by so much the more abundantly ought your sons to exult, because our King had bound the strong man, and they saw his vessels snatched away to be cleansed and fitted for your honor, and made useful to the Lord for every good work. But when this man of yours, Simplicianus, told me these things about Victorinus, I burned to imitate him: for to this end he had told them.

And after he had added this too, that in the times of the emperor Julian, by a law laid down, Christians were forbidden to teach literature and oratory — which law that man embraced, choosing rather to desert the talkative school than your Word, by which you make the tongues of infants eloquent — he seemed to me not so much braver as happier, because he had found occasion to be free for you. To which thing I was sighing, bound not by another's iron, but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and from it had made a chain for me and bound me fast. For from a perverse will lust was made, and while lust is served, habit was made, and while habit is not resisted, necessity was made.

By these little links, as it were, linked to one another — whence I called it a chain — a harsh servitude held me bound. But the new will, which had begun to be in me, that I should freely worship you and enjoy you, O God, the only sure joy, was not yet able to overcome the former, strengthened by age. Thus my two wills, one old, the other new, the one carnal, the other spiritual, fought between themselves, and by their discord tore apart my soul. So I understood by my own experience that which I had read, how the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh — I indeed in both, but more I in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself.

For there it was now more not I, since for a great part I suffered unwilling rather than did it willing. But yet the habit had been made more combative against me out of myself, since unwilling I had come to where I was unwilling to be. And who could justly contradict, when just punishment followed the sinner? And there was no longer that excuse by which I used to seem to myself not yet to serve you with the world despised, because the perception of truth was uncertain to me: for now it too was certain. But I, still bound to the earth, refused to serve you as a soldier, and feared to be freed from all impediments as one ought to fear to be impeded.

Thus by the burden of the world, as is wont in sleep, I was sweetly pressed down, and the thoughts by which I meditated on you were like the efforts of those wishing to awake, who nevertheless, overcome by the depth of slumber, sink back again. And as there is no one who would always wish to sleep, and in the sound judgment of all it is better to be awake, yet a man often defers to shake off sleep when a heavy torpor is in his limbs, and, though it now displeases him, takes it the more gladly even though the time to rise has come: so I held it certain that it was better to give myself to your love than to yield to my own desire; but the one pleased and conquered, the other delighted and bound. For there was nothing I could answer you, when you said to me:

Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten you; and to you, showing me on every side that you spoke truth, there was utterly nothing I could answer, convicted by the truth, but only slow and drowsy words: "presently," "behold, presently," "let me be a little while." But "presently and presently" had no measure, and "let me be a little while" went on long. In vain I delighted in your law according to the inner man, while another law in my members warred against the law of my mind and led me captive in the law of sin, which was in my members. For the law of sin is the violence of habit, by which even the unwilling mind is dragged and held, by that desert by which it willingly slips into it.

Who then would deliver wretched me from the body of this death, except your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord? And how you delivered me from the bond of the desire of carnal embrace, by which I was held most tightly, and from the servitude of secular affairs, I will tell and confess to your name, O Lord, my helper and my redeemer. I went about my usual business with growing anxiety, and daily I sighed to you, I frequented your church as much as I was free from those affairs under whose weight I groaned. With me was Alypius, idle from the work of jurists after his third assessorship, awaiting to whom he might again sell counsels, just as I sold the faculty of speaking, if any such can be furnished by teaching.

But Nebridius had yielded to our friendship so as to assist in teaching under Verecundus, a Milanese citizen and grammarian, most familiar of us all, who vehemently desired and by the right of intimacy demanded from our number a faithful helper, of whom he stood in great need. It was not, therefore, desire of advantages that drew Nebridius thither — for he could have done greater things, if he wished, in letters — but, as a most sweet and gentle friend, by the duty of benevolence he was unwilling to despise our request.

But he did that thing most prudently, taking care not to become known to persons greater according to this world, avoiding in them all disquiet of mind, which he wished to keep free and for as many hours as he could at leisure for seeking or reading or hearing something of wisdom. On a certain day, therefore — I do not recall the cause for which Nebridius was absent — behold, there came to us at home, to me and Alypius, a certain Ponticianus, our fellow-countryman insofar as African, holding a distinguished post in the palace: he wanted something from us, I know not what. And we sat down to converse. And by chance he noticed a codex on the gaming-table that was before us: he took it, opened it, and found the apostle Paul, quite unexpectedly;

for he had thought it something from the books whose profession was wearing me out. Then, smiling and looking at me, he marveled with congratulation that he had suddenly come upon these and these alone before my eyes. For he was a Christian and faithful, and often prostrated himself before you, our God, in church in frequent and prolonged prayers. When I had indicated to him that I bestowed the greatest care upon those Scriptures, a discourse arose, he himself narrating, about Antony the Egyptian monk, whose name shone excellently among your servants, but lay hidden from us until that hour. When he discovered this, he lingered in that discourse, making known so great a man to us who were ignorant, and marveling at this same ignorance of ours.

But we were amazed, hearing of your wonders so recent in memory and almost in our own times, most attested in the right and catholic faith of the Church. We all marveled — we, because they were so great, and he, because they were unheard of by us. Thence his discourse rolled on to the flocks of monasteries and the ways of your sweet fragrance and the fruitful deserts of the wilderness, of which we knew nothing. And there was a monastery at Milan full of good brothers, outside the walls of the city, under Ambrose as their nurturer, and we had not known it. He pressed on and spoke still further, and we listened intently in silence.

Whence it happened that he told how, at some time, he and three other companions of his, evidently at Trier, when the emperor was held by the afternoon spectacle of the games, had gone out to walk in the gardens adjoining the walls; and there, as they happened to be strolling in pairs, one apart with himself and the other two likewise apart and going together; but those wanderers had burst into a certain cottage, where dwelt certain servants of yours, poor in spirit, of such is the kingdom of heaven, and had found there a codex in which was written the Life of Antony. When one of them began to read it, and to marvel, and to be kindled, and amid his reading to think of seizing such a life and, leaving secular soldiery, of serving you. Now they were of those whom they call agents in public affairs.

Then, suddenly filled with holy love and sober shame, angry at himself, he cast his eyes upon his friend and said to him: "Tell me, I pray you, with all these labors of ours, where are we striving to arrive? What do we seek? For what cause do we serve as soldiers? Can our hope in the palace be greater than that we should be friends of the emperor? And there, what is not fragile and full of perils? And through how many perils does one arrive at a greater peril? And when will that be? But a friend of God, if I wish it, behold, even now I become." He said this, and troubled by the birth-pangs of a new life, he turned his eyes back to the pages: and he read, and was changed within, where you saw, and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon appeared.

For while he read and tossed upon the waves of his heart, he groaned at one moment, and discerned and resolved upon better things, and now being yours, he said to his friend: "I have now broken myself away from that hope of ours and have resolved to serve God, and this from this very hour, in this very place I undertake. If it irks you to imitate me, do not oppose me." The other answered that he would cleave to him as a companion of so great a reward and so great a soldiery. And both, now yours, began to build a tower at suitable cost, leaving all their own and following you. Then Ponticianus and the one who was walking with him through other parts of the garden, seeking them, came upon the same place, and finding them admonished them to return, since the day had now declined.