Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 24 part 5/9

Since therefore he has both fortified his books at the outset and secured them at the close, and has laid upon your shoulders the religious burden of correcting and amending him, let him find in you what he asked — that, being just, you may amend him in mercy and reprove him; but let not the oil of the sinner, wherewith his head might be made fat, be upon your hands and kisses — that is, the unseemly flattery of a fawner, the deceitful smoothness of a cajoler. But if you neglect to amend when you see amendment is needed, you act against charity; if, however, he seems to you not needing amendment because you think he has felt these things rightly, you are wise against the truth.

And therefore he is the better man, who is more ready to be amended (if an amender be not lacking), than you, if either knowingly you scornfully despise one in error, or unknowingly you likewise follow the error. Consider therefore all things in those same books, written to you and delivered to you, soberly and vigilantly; and you will perhaps find more to be blamed than I.

And whatever things there are in them that are to be approved and praised, if perchance there was truly anything in them of which you were ignorant and which you learned from this man's discourse, plainly profess what that thing is — so that all may know you gave thanks for this, and not for those things there which are so many and are to be disapproved: all who either heard along with you while he recited, or afterward read those same books — lest, in his ornate eloquence, as in a precious cup, they drink poison at your invitation, though you drink not, if they do not know what you drank thence and what you did not drink, and, for the sake of your praise, deem that all things there are wholesomely to be drunk. And yet, to hear and to read and to draw into memory the things that are said — what is this but to drink?

But the Lord foretold concerning His faithful ones, that even if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. And on this account, those who read him with judgment, and, according to the rule of faith, approve what is to be approved and disapprove what is to be disapproved, even if they commit to memory the things that are to be disapproved, are injured by no poisonous depravity of the sentences. That I have admonished or reminded your gravity and religion of these things, whether out of mutual or preceding charity, I shall in no wise, by the Lord's mercy, repent of — however you may take what I judged ought to be presented to you.

But I shall render abundant thanks to Him in whose mercy it is most wholesome to trust, if this letter either finds your faith to be estranged and untouched by these depravities and errors which I have been able to point out from this man's books, or makes it so. BOOK THREE. TO VINCENTIUS VICTOR. What I have thought I ought to write to you, I wish you first to consider, most beloved son Victor: that if I despised you, I should by no means have done this. Nor yet on that account should you so abuse our humility as to think yourself thereby approved because you perceive you have not been despised; for I love you not to be followed, but to be corrected. And since I do not despair that you can be corrected, I would not have you wonder that I cannot despise one whom I love.

For if I ought to have loved you, before you were in communion with us, that you might become a Catholic, how much more ought I now to love you, already in communion, that you may not become a new heretic, and that you may be such a Catholic whom no heretic can resist! For, as far as appears from the gifts of talent which God has already lavished upon you, you will assuredly be wise, if you believe yourself not to be so, and if you piously, humbly, and earnestly beg to be made so by Him who makes men wise, and prefer not to be deceived by error rather than to be honoured by the praises of those in error. First, the title of your name in your books made me anxious for you.

For when I had inquired of those who knew you and happened to be present who Vincentius Victor might be, I heard that you had been a Donatist, or rather a Rogatist, but had lately entered into communion with the Catholic Church. And while I rejoiced as much as we are wont over those whom we know to have been freed from that error — nay rather much more, because I saw that your talent, in which I delighted in your writings, had not remained with the adversaries of the truth — there was added by those who reported it something which, amid those joys, saddened me: namely, that you wished to be surnamed 'Vincentius' because you still hold in your mind Rogatus's successor, who was called by this name, as though a great and holy man, and on this account you wished his name to be your surname.

Nor were there lacking those who said that this too had been boasted by you: that he himself had appeared to you in some vision or other, and had so aided you in composing these books — concerning which I have undertaken to deal with you in this our little work — that, as far as pertains to the matters themselves and their reasonings, he himself dictated to you the things you were to write. And if this be true, I no longer wonder that you could say those things which — if you patiently hearken to my admonition and consider and thoroughly examine those books with a Catholic mind — you will without doubt repent having said: for he indeed who, as the Apostle exposes him, transforms himself into an angel of light, has transformed himself into him for you, whom you believe to have been or to be, as it were, an angel of light.

And indeed in that manner he is less able to deceive Catholics, when he transforms himself not into angels of light, but into heretics; but I would not have you, now a Catholic, be deceived by him. Let it torment you, then, to have learned things that are true — by how much more had he rejoiced to have persuaded you of things that are false! But that you may not love a dead man, whose love can harm you and cannot profit him, I admonish you to consider briefly this: that he is assuredly not holy and just, if you have escaped the snares of the Donatist or Rogatist heretics; but if you deem him holy and just, then by entering into communion with Catholics you have perished. For you assuredly feign yourself a Catholic, if in mind you are what he was whom you love.

And you know how terribly it is written, that the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful. But if, communicating truly, you do not feign yourself a Catholic, why do you still so love a dead heretic that you wish still to boast yourself of the name of him by whose error you are no longer held? We do not wish you to have such a surname, as though you were the monument of a dead heretic; we do not wish your book to bear such a title as we should call false, if we read it on his tomb. For we do not know that Vincentius is a victor (victorem), but vanquished (victum); and would that it were fruitfully so, even as we do not wish you to be vanquished by the truth!

But you supposed it clever and cunning that, when you call your books — which you wish to be believed dictated by his revelation to you — the books of Vincentius Victor, you meant that not so much you, Vincentius, as he wished to be called Victor, as though, by revealing to you what you should write, he had conquered error. To what end are these things to you, my son? Be rather a true, not a feigned, Catholic, lest the Holy Spirit flee you and Vincentius be able to profit you nothing — he into whom the most malignant spirit transformed himself to deceive you; for those things persuaded to you by whatever fraud are his. And if, being admonished, you correct these with pious humility and Catholic peace, they will be judged to have been the errors of a most studious young man wishing rather to be amended than to remain in them.

But if, on their behalf, he has persuaded you even to obstinate contention — which God forbid! — then, as heretical dogmas, they will needs be condemned together with their author, with pastoral and medicinal care, that is, before the dire contagions creep through the incautious multitude, when discipline is neglected not through the truth of love but under its name — a wholesome discipline. If you ask what those things are, you can indeed read my writings to our brethren, Renatus the servant of God and Peter the presbyter, to whom you thought fit to write these very things of which we treat — obeying, as you assert, the will of him who requested it. For they will without doubt give you them to read, if you wish, and will even press them upon you unasked.

Nevertheless, even here I will not keep silent about the things which I most desire to be amended in those same books of yours and in your faith. The first is, that 'you will not have the soul so made by God that He made it out of nothing, but out of Himself.' Here you do not think it follows that it is of the nature of God — because you yourself indeed recognize how impious that would be. That you may be free from this impiety, you must so speak of God as the author of the soul that it was made by Him, not out of Him. For that which is out of Him, as the only-begotten Son, is of the same nature of which He also is. But that the soul may not be of the same nature of which He is, it was indeed made by Him, but not out of Him. Either therefore say out of what, or confess out of nothing. What is it that you say, 'that it is a certain particle of the breath of God's nature'?

Do you perchance deny that the very breath of God's nature, whose breath this particle is, is of the same nature of which God is? If you deny it, then out of nothing God made even this breath also, of which you would have the soul to be a particle. Or if not out of nothing, say out of what God made it. If out of Himself, then He Himself is — which God forbid! — the material of His own work. But you say: when out of Himself He makes a breath or blast, He Himself remains whole; as though the fire of a lamp too did not remain whole, when from it another is kindled, and yet is of the same, not another, nature. But, you say, when a wineskin is inflated by us, no portion of our nature or quality is infused.

since this very thing, that the wineskin, filled with the drawn-in breath, is distended, is done without any diminution of ourselves. To these words of yours you still add and dwell upon and press home a similitude as though necessary, whereby we may understand how God, without any detriment to His own nature, both makes the soul out of Himself, and yet that which is made out of Him is not what He is. For you say: Is the inflation of a wineskin a portion of our soul? Or do we fashion men when we inflate wineskins? Or do we suffer any detriment to ourselves, when we distribute our blasts into various things? But we suffer no detriment,

when out of ourselves we transmit a blast to something, and, the full quality and entire quantity of our own breath remaining in us, we remember suffering no loss from the inflation of a wineskin. Consider how greatly you are deceived by this similitude, which seems to you elegant and fitting enough. For you say that God, being incorporeal, breathes forth the soul as corporeal, made not out of nothing but out of Himself — whereas we emit a blast which, though corporeal, is nevertheless subtler than our bodies are, and that not out of our soul but out of this air we exhale through the organs of the body. For the lungs — which the soul moves (at whose nod the other members of the body also are moved) — the soul moves like bellows to draw in and give back this airy breath.

For besides the solid and liquid nourishments, whence come food and drink, God has surrounded us with this third nourishment of the breezes. These we so take in that we can be a long while without food and drink; but without this third nourishment, which the air that stands round us on every side furnishes to us as we breathe in and breathe out, we cannot live even for a brief space of time.

But just as food and drink are not only to be taken in, but also to be discharged through the passages appointed for this, lest they injure by either not entering or not leaving, so this third airy nourishment, because it is not allowed to remain in us nor is corrupted by lingering, but is discharged as soon as it is taken in, has received not other but the same passages — that is, the mouth or the nostrils or both — by which both to enter and to depart. Prove in your own self what I say. Send forth breath by blowing, and see whether you last, if you do not take it back; take it back by breathing in, and see what straits you suffer, if you do not again send it forth. This, then, is what we do when we inflate a wineskin, as you say — which we do in order to live;

except that then we draw in a little more, in order to send out a little more, so as to compress the blowable breath — that is, wind — for filling and distending the wineskin, not by the quiet of breathing in and out, but by the impetus of panting. How then do you say: We suffer no detriment, when out of ourselves we transmit a blast to something, and, the full quality and entire quantity of our own breath remaining in us, we remember suffering no loss from the inflation of a wineskin? It is evident, my son, that if you ever did inflate a wineskin, you did not notice what you were doing. For what you lose by blowing out, you do not feel by immediately taking back.

But you can most easily learn this, if you would rather do so than defend your own words — because they have already been spoken — not by inflating a wineskin but yourself inflated, and inflate your hearers, whom you ought to build up with true things, with the empty noise of windy speech. In this matter I send you not to a master but to yourself. Send forth breath into a wineskin, and close your mouth at once and hold your nostrils, and thus at least feel that what I say is true. For when you begin to suffer intolerable straits, what will you long to take in through open mouth and nostrils, if, when you blew, you think you lost nothing? See in what evil you are, unless by drawing in you resume what by pouring out you had given back;

see what damages and detriments that inflation would have caused, had not that respiration repaired them. For unless what you had expended in filling the wineskin returned to you likewise for your own sustenance, an entrance being laid open, what would remain to you — not only wherewith to inflate it, but wherewith you yourself might live?

These things you ought to have considered when you were writing, and not to have introduced to us, by this similitude of inflated or to-be-inflated wineskins, a God who either — out of another nature which already existed, just as we make a blast out of this surrounding air — breathes forth souls; or else, what both shrinks from that similitude and abounds in impiety, a God who, without indeed any detriment to Himself, yet out of His own nature either brings forth something mutable, or, what is worse, is Himself, as it were, the material of His own work.

In order, therefore, that we may apply some similitude from our own blast to this matter, this rather is to be believed: that, just as we — not out of our nature, but because we are not omnipotent — make out of this surrounding air, which we draw in and give back as we breathe in and breathe out, a blast when we blow, one that neither lives nor feels, although we ourselves live and feel; so God — not out of His own nature, but because He is so omnipotent that He can create what He wills even out of that which is absolutely not, that is, out of nothing — can make a blast that both lives and feels, yet plainly, since He Himself is immutable, one that is mutable.

But what do you mean by what you thought should be added to this similitude as an example from the blessed Elisha, because by blowing into his face he raised the dead? Do you thus suppose that the breath of Elisha became the soul of the boy? I would not believe you have strayed so far from the truth. If, then, that same soul, which had been taken away from the living one that he might die, was restored to him that he might revive, what does it pertain to the matter that you said 'nothing was diminished from Elisha,' as though something passed from him, whence the boy might live, into the boy? But if it was said on this account, because he blew and remained whole, what need was there that you should say this of Elisha raising the dead, which you could nonetheless say of anyone blowing and raising no one?

You have indeed spoken incautiously — though far be it that you should believe the breath of Elisha became the soul of the reviving boy — in that you would not have God's first act differ from this act of the prophet in anything except that God blew once, but Elisha thrice. For you said that Elisha breathed into the face of the deceased son of that Shunammite after the manner of the primeval origin: 'And when,' you say, 'the divine power kindled the dead members, re-animated into their former vigour, through the prophet's breath, nothing was diminished from Elisha, through whose blast the dead body received a reviving soul and spirit — except that once the Lord breathed into the face of man, and he lived, whereas thrice Elisha breathed into the face of the dead, and he revived.'

Your words there sound as though only the number of blowings made a difference, so that what God did the prophet also is believed to have done. And this therefore must be amended. For there was so great a difference between that work of God and this of Elisha, that God blew the breath of life, whereby man became a living soul, while Elisha blew a breath neither feeling nor living, but figuring something for the sake of signification; and finally, that this boy might revive, the prophet did not do it by animating him, but obtained by loving that God should do it. But as to your saying that he blew thrice, either your memory, as often happens, or a fault of the manuscript deceived you. What need of more?

You need not seek any examples and arguments for establishing this, but rather your opinion is to be amended and changed. Do not therefore believe, do not say, do not teach 'that God made the soul not out of nothing, but out of His own nature,' if you wish to be a Catholic. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach 'that God gives souls through infinite time and thus always, just as He Himself is always who gives,' if you wish to be a Catholic. For there will be a time when God will not give souls, although He Himself does not cease to be. What you said, 'He always gives,' could indeed be so taken as to be understood as giving without cessation as long as men beget and are begotten, just as it is said of certain persons:

'always learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth'; for what is here placed, 'always,' is not so taken as though they should never cease learning — since without doubt they do not learn, when they have ceased to live in this body, or when they have begun to burn in the punishment of hell-fire. But you did not permit your word to be so taken, when you said 'He always gives,' since indeed you thought it must be referred to infinite time. And that was too little; but as though it were asked of you, that you might more openly explain how you had said 'He always gives,' you added and said: 'just as He Himself is always who gives.' This the sound and Catholic faith wholly condemns. For far be it that we should believe that God always gives souls, just as He Himself always is who gives.

For He Himself always is in such a way that He never ceases to be; but souls He will not always give, but, the age of generation being ended, He will without doubt cease to give them to those not now being born, to whom they were to be given. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach 'that the soul lost some merit through the flesh, as though it were of good merit before the flesh,' if you wish to be a Catholic. For the Apostle says that those not yet born did nothing good or evil; whence, then, could the soul have merit before the flesh, where it had done nothing good? Or will you perchance dare to say that it lived well before the flesh, when you cannot even show that it existed? How, then, do you say:

Do you not wish the soul to contract its infirmity from the flesh of sin, so that you might see sanctification pass over to it in turn through the flesh, so that through that very flesh it may restore the condition through which it had lost its worth? These teachings, by which the soul is supposed to have possessed some good condition and good desert before the flesh — in case you do not know it — the Catholic Church has already condemned, apart from the ancients, and more recently also in the Priscillianists. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "the soul restores its former state through the flesh and is reborn through that same flesh by which it had deserved to be defiled," if you wish to be a Catholic. For, to pass over what you said:

"By its desert, therefore, the soul restores through the flesh the former state which it had seemed for a little while to have lost through the flesh, so that through it the soul may begin to be reborn, through which it had deserved to be defiled" — that in this most immediate point you set yourself against your very self, so that you, a man who had a little before said that the soul restores through the flesh the state through which it had lost its worth — where in no way can anything but good desert be understood, which you certainly wish to be restored through the flesh in baptism — should again say that the soul deserved to be defiled through the flesh, where now not good but evil desert can be understood: so, to pass over this too, to believe outright that the soul possessed either good or evil desert before the flesh is not Catholic.

Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "the soul deserved to become a sinner before any sin," if you wish to be a Catholic. For it is a very evil desert to have deserved to be made a sinner. And assuredly it could in no way have had so evil a desert before any sin, especially before it came into the flesh, when it could have neither evil nor good desert. How then do you say: "The soul therefore, if it deserved to be a sinner, which could not be a sinner, neither remained in sin, because, being prefigured in Christ, it ought not to be in sin, just as it could not be"? Consider what you are saying, and now cease to say it. For how did it deserve, and how could it not be a sinner?

How, I ask you, did it deserve to be a sinner, when it did not live wickedly? How, I ask you, was it made a sinner, when it could not be a sinner? Or if you say "it could not" for the reason that it could not apart from the flesh, how then did it deserve to be a sinner — by which desert it should be sent into the flesh — seeing that before the flesh it could not be a sinner, whence it should deserve anything evil? Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "infants who die before they are baptized, being prevented by death, can attain to the pardon of original sins," if you wish to be a Catholic. For the examples that deceive you — whether of the thief who confessed the Lord on the cross, or of Dinocrates the brother of holy Perpetua — lend no support to the opinion of this error of yours.

For as to that thief, although by the divine judgment he could be reckoned among those who are purified by the confession of martyrdom, yet you do not even know whether he was not baptized. For — to pass over the belief that, being fixed near the Lord, he could have been drenched by the water flowing forth together with the blood from the Lord's side, and thus washed by that most holy baptism — what if he had been baptized in prison, which some too were afterward able to obtain secretly in the time of persecution? What if even before he was arrested? Nor for that reason could the public laws spare him, so far as pertains to the death of the body, merely because he had received the remission of sins from God.

What if, being already baptized, he had fallen into the deed and crime of robbery, and, not being void of baptism but as a penitent, received pardon for the wickednesses he committed after being baptized? Since indeed so faithful a piety appeared toward the Lord in his heart and toward us in his words. For if we contend that those of whom it is not written whether they were baptized departed this life without baptism, we slander the apostles themselves, of whom, apart from the apostle Paul, we do not know when they were baptized. But if we could come to know that they were baptized through this, that the Lord said to blessed Peter:

"He who is washed does not need to wash" — what shall we say of the others, of whom we read no such thing spoken: of Barnabas, of Timothy, of Titus, of Silas, of Philemon, of the very evangelists Mark and Luke, of countless others, whom God forbid that we should doubt were baptized, although we do not read it? And Dinocrates, a seven-year-old boy — at which age boys, when they are baptized, already recite the creed and answer for themselves to the questions asked — why it should not have seemed to you that he could have been baptized and then recalled by his impious father to the sacrileges of the Gentiles, and for this reason have been in the punishments from which he was freed by his sister's prayer, I do not know.

For neither did you read that he was never a Christian or that he died a catechumen — although that very reading is not in the canon of Scriptures from which testimonies must be produced in questions of this kind. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "those whom the Lord has predestined to baptism can be snatched from His predestination and die before that which the Almighty has predestined has been fulfilled in them," if you wish to be a Catholic. For I know not what power against the power of God is here granted to chances, by whose sudden onset what He has predestined is not permitted to come to pass.

There is no need to enlarge upon how great a whirlpool of impiety this error engulfs the one who errs in, since it is enough briefly to have admonished a prudent man ready to be corrected. For these are your very words: "We say," you say, "that this manner of reasoning must be held concerning infants of this kind, who, predestined to the baptism of the present life, are forestalled by death before they are reborn in Christ." So then, are those predestined to the baptism of the present life forestalled by death before they attain to it, and did God predestine what He foreknew would not come to pass, or did He not know that it would not come to pass, so that either His predestination was frustrated or His foreknowledge deceived?

You see how many things could here be said, were I not to hold to what I said a little before, so as briefly to admonish you here. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "concerning infants who, before they are reborn in Christ, are forestalled by death, it is written: 'He was caught away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding or deceit beguile his soul. Therefore He hastened to lead him out of the midst of iniquity; for his soul was pleasing to God,' and: 'Being made perfect in a short while, he fulfilled long times,'" if you wish to be a Catholic. For this pertains not at all to those, but rather to those who, being baptized and living devoutly, are not permitted to live here long, being made perfect not in years but in the grace of wisdom.

But this error, by which this is thought to have been said of little ones who die before they are baptized, does an intolerable injury to the sacred laver itself, if the little one who could be baptized and then caught away is for that reason caught away first, "lest wickedness alter his understanding or deceit beguile his soul" — as though in that very baptism there were believed to be this wickedness and deceit by which he would be changed for the worse and deceived, if he were not first caught away.