Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 77/87

For it is marvelous to suffer pain in fire and yet to live, but more marvelous to live in fire and not suffer pain. If, however, this latter is believed, why not also the former? CHAPTER III. Whether it follows that the destruction of the flesh follows bodily pain. But there is no body, they say, which can suffer pain and cannot die. And whence do we know this? For who is certain about the bodies of demons, whether they suffer pain in them, when they confess that they are afflicted with great torments? But if it be answered that there is no earthly body — solid, that is, and visible — and, to express it rather by one name, that there is no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die: what else is said, except what men have gathered by the sense and experience of the body?

For they know no flesh save mortal flesh; and this is their whole reasoning, that what they have not experienced, they judge can by no means exist. For what reasoning is it to make pain an argument for death, when it is rather an indication of life? For although we ask whether it can always live, yet it is certain that everything which feels pain lives, and that all pain cannot be except in a living thing. It is necessary therefore that the one suffering pain should live, but it is not necessary that pain should slay; for not all pain slays even these mortal and assuredly destined-to-die bodies, and the reason that some pain can slay is this: that the soul is so connected to this body that it yields to the highest pains and departs;

because the very framework of the members and vital parts is so weak that it cannot sustain that force which produces great or extreme pain. But then the soul shall be joined to such a body, and joined in such a manner, that, as that bond shall be loosed by no length of time, so it shall be broken by no pain. Accordingly, even if there is now no such flesh as can endure the sensation of pain and cannot die, there shall nevertheless then be such flesh as is not now, just as there shall be such a death as is not now. For it shall not be no death, but an everlasting death, when the soul shall neither be able to live by not having God, nor to be free from the pains of the body by dying. The first death drives the unwilling soul out of the body, the second death holds the unwilling soul in the body;

by both deaths in common this is had, that the soul suffers from its own body what it does not will. But these contradictors attend to the fact that there is now no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die, and they do not attend to the fact that there is nevertheless something such which is greater than the body. For the mind itself, by whose presence the body lives and is governed, can both suffer pain and cannot die. Behold, a thing has been found which, though it has the sensation of pain, is immortal. This therefore shall then be also in the bodies of the damned, which we now know to be in the minds of all. But if we consider more diligently, the pain which is called the body's pertains rather to the soul.

For to suffer pain belongs to the soul, not to the body, even when the cause of its pain arises from the body, when it suffers pain in that place where the body is hurt. Just as therefore we say bodies are sentient and bodies are living, although sense and life are to the body from the soul: so we also say bodies are pained, although pain cannot be to the body except from the soul. The soul therefore suffers pain together with the body in that place of it where something happens so that it is pained; and it suffers pain alone, although it is in the body, when from some cause, even an invisible one, it is sad, the body being unhurt; it suffers pain even when not placed in the body; for surely that rich man suffered pain in hell, when he said: 'I am tormented in this flame.' But the body neither, when lifeless, suffers pain, nor, when animated, suffers pain without the soul.

If therefore an argument were rightly drawn from pain to death, so that death could happen because pain too could happen, dying would belong rather to the soul, to which belongs rather the suffering of pain too. But since that which can suffer pain more cannot die, what weight does it bring, that we should believe those bodies, because they are to be in pains, therefore also to be destined to die? The Platonists indeed have said that it is from earthly bodies and dying members that the soul has both fearing and desiring and grieving and rejoicing; whence Virgil:

'Hence,' he says (that is, from the dying members of the earthly body), 'they fear and desire, they grieve and rejoice.' But we refuted them in the twelfth book of this work, since according to themselves souls, even when purged from every defilement of the body, have a dire desire which again begins to wish to return into bodies. But where there can be desire, surely there can also be pain. For desire frustrated — whether by not reaching whither it was tending, or by losing what it had reached — is turned into pain. Wherefore, if the soul, which either alone or chiefly suffers pain, has nevertheless a certain immortality of its own after its own measure, those bodies shall not be able to die merely because they shall suffer pain. Finally, if bodies cause that souls should suffer pain, why can they bring pain upon them,

but cannot inflict death, except because it does not follow that what causes pain should cause death? Why therefore is it incredible that fires can thus inflict pain, not death, upon those bodies, just as the bodies themselves cause souls to suffer pain, which nevertheless they do not on that account compel to die? Pain therefore is not a necessary argument of future death. CHAPTER IV. On natural examples, the consideration of which may teach that living bodies can remain amid torments.

Wherefore if, as those have written who have more curiously investigated the natures of animals, the salamander lives in fires, and certain very well-known mountains of Sicily, which through so great a duration and antiquity of time have until now, and shall hereafter, boil with flames and yet remain whole, are sufficiently suitable witnesses that not everything which burns is consumed; and the soul indicates that not everything which can suffer pain can also die: what further examples of things are demanded of us, by which we may teach that it is not incredible that the bodies of men punished with eternal punishment may both not lose the soul in fire, and burn without diminution, and suffer pain without destruction?

For the substance of the flesh shall then have that quality bestowed by Him who bestowed so many wondrous and varied qualities upon so many things which we see, that, because they are many, we do not marvel at them. For who but God, the Creator of all things, gave to the flesh of a dead peacock that it should not putrefy? When this, having been heard, seemed incredible, it came to pass that at Carthage this bird was set before us, cooked; and we ordered that as much of the flesh of its breast as seemed good should be plucked off and kept; which, after such a space of days as any other cooked flesh whatsoever would putrefy in, being brought forth and offered to us, offended our sense of smell in nothing.

And likewise, kept again for more than thirty days, it was found to be the same as it was; and the same after a year, except that it was somewhat of a drier and more shrunken consistency. Who gave to chaff so cold a power that it should preserve buried snows, or so fervent a power that it should ripen unripe fruits? Of fire itself, who can explain the wonders — by which whatever things are scorched grow black, although it is itself bright, and most beautiful in color it discolors almost all things which it surrounds and licks, and from a glowing coal renders a most foul charcoal? Nor is this, as it were, defined by a fixed rule; for on the contrary, stones thoroughly baked by white-hot fire themselves become white, and although the fire is rather red, the stones are white, yet what is white agrees with light, as black with darkness.

Since therefore fire, while it burns in wood so as to bake stones, has contrary effects not in contrary things. For although stones and wood are different, they are nevertheless not contrary, as are white and black, of which it makes the one in stones, the other in wood, clarifying the former by its brightness, obscuring the latter, since it would fail in the former unless it lived in the latter.

What of charcoals — is there not in them a marvelous and so great a weakness, that they are broken by the lightest blow, crushed by the easiest pressure, and so great a firmness, that they are corrupted by no moisture, conquered by no age, so much so that those who fix boundaries are wont to lay them underneath, to convict a litigant, whoever after however long a time shall have arisen and contended that the fixed boundary-stone is not a boundary? Who has brought it about that they, dug into moist earth, where wood would rot, can endure so long incorruptibly, except that corrupter of things, fire? Let us also behold the marvel of lime.

Except for that which we have already said enough about, that it whitens with fire, by which other things are made foul, it also most secretly conceives fire from fire, and, though to those touching it the lump is now cold, it keeps it so latently that it appears to no sense of ours at all, but, ascertained by experiment, even while it does not appear, it is known to be present, lying dormant. On account of which we speak of it as living lime, as though the hidden fire itself were the invisible soul of the visible body. But now, how wondrous it is, that, when it is quenched, then it is kindled! For that it may lack the hidden fire, it is poured upon water or drenched with water, and, though before it was cold, thereby it grows hot, from that whereby all hot things grow cold.

As if, then, with that lump as it were expiring, the fire which lay hidden departing, appears, and thereafter, as if by death, it is so cold that, water being added, it shall not be about to burn; and what we were calling living lime, we now call quenched. What is there that may seem able to be added to this marvel? And yet something is added. For if you apply not water, but oil, which is rather a fuel of fire, it grows hot by no pouring on or infusion of it. This marvel, if we had read or heard of it concerning some Indian stone, and it could not come into our own experiment, surely we should either have thought it a falsehood, or certainly have marveled greatly.

But of those things whose daily proofs are turned over before our eyes, they grow cheap by their very constancy, though they are not of a less marvelous kind; so that even from India itself, which is a remote part of the world from us, we have ceased to marvel at certain things which have been able to be brought to us as objects of wonder. Many among us have the diamond stone, and especially goldsmiths and engravers of gems, which stone is said to be conquered neither by iron nor by fire nor by any other force, except by the blood of a goat. But do those who have it and know it marvel so as those to whom its power is first shown? But to those to whom it is not shown, perhaps they do not even believe; or if they believe, they marvel at what they have not experienced;

and if it should happen to be experienced, they still indeed marvel at unaccustomed things, but the constancy of experiencing gradually withdraws the incitement of wonder. We know the magnet stone to be a marvelous snatcher of iron; when I first saw this, I shuddered violently. For I beheld an iron ring snatched and suspended by the stone; then, as if it had given its own power to the iron which it had snatched and made it common, the same ring was brought near to another and suspended it, and just as the former ring clung to the stone, so the other ring clung to the former ring; in the same manner a third was added, a fourth was added; and now there hung, as it were, a chain of rings bound to one another by mutual circles, not of rings interlinked within, but adhering from without.

Who would not be amazed at that power of the stone, which was not only inherent in it, but also passed through so many suspended rings and bound them with invisible bonds? But much more marvelous is that which I learned about this stone from my brother and fellow bishop Severus of Milevis. For he related that he himself had seen how a certain Bathanarius, once Count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, brought forth this same stone and held it under silver, and placed iron upon the silver; then, as he moved beneath the hand with which he was holding the stone, so the iron above was moved, and with the silver in the middle and suffering nothing, by a most rapid course and recourse the stone was moved below by the man, and above the iron was snatched by the stone.

I have told what I myself beheld; I have told what I heard from him, to whom I gave credit as if I myself had seen it. What also I have read about this magnet, let me tell. When a diamond is placed next to it, it does not snatch iron; and if it had already snatched it, when the diamond has approached it, it soon lets it go. India sends these stones; but if we, having come to know them, now cease to marvel, how much more those from whom they come, if they have them very readily — perhaps they have them just as we do not marvel at lime, which in a wondrous manner grows hot with water (by which fire is wont to be quenched) and does not grow hot with oil (by which fire is wont to be kindled), because it is ready at hand for us. CHAPTER V. How great are the things whose reason cannot be recognized, and yet that the same are true is not doubtful.

But nevertheless those unbelieving men, who, when we proclaim the divine miracles, whether past or future, which we are not able to show them to be experienced, demand of us the reason of those things — which, since we cannot render it (for they exceed the powers of the human mind), they suppose that what we say is false — they themselves ought to render the reason of so many marvelous things which we either can see or do see. But if they shall have perceived that this cannot be done by man, it must be confessed by them that not on that account has something not existed or shall not exist, because the reason of it cannot be rendered, since indeed there are these things, concerning which it likewise cannot be done.

I do not therefore go through the very many things which have been committed to writings, not as having been done and transacted, but as remaining in particular places; to which if anyone shall wish and be able to go, he shall explore whether they are true; but I recount a few. They report that the Agrigentine salt of Sicily, when it has been brought near fire, melts as if in water; but when brought to water itself, crackles as if in fire. Among the Garamantes there is a certain fountain so cold by day that it cannot be drunk, so hot by night that it cannot be touched. In Epirus there is another fountain, in which lighted torches, as in others, are extinguished, but, not as in others, extinguished ones are kindled. The Asbestos stone of Arcadia is so called for this reason, that, once kindled, it can no more be extinguished.

The wood of a certain Egyptian fig tree does not, like other woods, float on waters, but sinks; and, what is more marvelous, when it has been at the bottom for some time, from there it again emerges to the surface of the water, when, being soaked, it ought to have been weighed down by the weight of the moisture. Apples in the land of the Sodomites do indeed grow and come to the appearance of ripeness; but when tried by biting or pressing, they vanish into smoke and ashes, the rind falling apart. The Pyrites, a Persian stone, burns the hand of one holding it, if it be pressed rather strongly, on account of which it took its name from fire. In the same Persia there is also produced the Selenites stone, whose inner whiteness increases and wanes with the moon. In Cappadocia also the mares conceive by the wind, and these same offspring do not live more than three years.

The island of Tylos in India is preferred above other lands for this reason, that every tree which is born on it is never stripped of the covering of its leaves. Concerning these and other innumerable marvels, which the history not of deeds done and transacted, but of remaining places, holds — to pursue which, while I am about another task, would be too long for me — let those unbelievers render the reason, if they can, who are unwilling to believe the divine writings; for what else are they doing but not thinking them to be divine, on the ground that they contain incredible things, such as is this very matter about which we now treat? For no reason admits, they say, that flesh should burn and not be consumed, should suffer pain and not die; great reasoners, forsooth, who could render the reason of all those things which it is agreed are marvelous.

Let them then render the reason of these few things which we have set down, which, beyond doubt, if they did not know that they exist and we said that they were to be in the future, they would much less believe than that which now, when we say it, they are unwilling to believe shall at some time come to pass. For who of them would believe us, if, in the manner in which we say there shall be in the future living bodies of men which shall always burn and suffer pain, yet never at any time die, we should likewise say that there shall be in a future age a salt which fire should make melt as if in water, and which water should make crackle as if in fire; or that there shall be a fountain whose water in the cool of night should so burn that it cannot be touched, but in the heats of day should be so frozen that it cannot be drunk;

or that there shall be a stone, either one which by its own heat should burn the hand of him who clutches it, or one which, once kindled from any source whatever, could not at all be extinguished; and the other things which, the rest of the innumerable ones being passed over, I have for the time thought worthy to be mentioned? If, then, we should say that these things shall be in that age which is to come, and the unbelievers should answer us: 'If you wish that we should believe these things, render the reason of each one,' we should confess that we cannot, on the ground that by these and similar marvelous works of God the weak reasoning of mortals is overcome; yet that it is fixed in our minds that the Omnipotent does nothing without reason, whereof the weak human mind cannot render the reason;

and that in many things indeed it is uncertain to us what He wills, yet that this is most certain, that none of those things is impossible to Him, whatsoever He shall have willed; and that we believe Him when He foretells, whom we can believe to be neither powerless nor lying. But these reprovers of faith and exactors of reason — what do they answer to these things, of which the reason cannot be rendered by man, and yet they exist, and seem to be contrary to the very reason of nature? For if we should say that these were to be in the future, the reason of them would likewise be demanded of us by unbelievers, just as of those things which we say are to be in the future.

And on this account, since in such works of God the reason of the human heart and speech fails, just as these things are not on that account non-existent, so neither shall those things on that account not be, because the reason of both cannot be rendered by man. CHAPTER VI. That not all miracles are natural, but very many are modified by human ingenuity, very many however composed by the art of demons. Here perhaps they may answer: 'These things neither exist nor do we believe them; the things said about them are false, the things written are false'; and they may add, reasoning and saying:

'If such things are to be believed, then believe also you that which has been recorded in those same writings, that there was or is a certain temple of Venus, and there a candelabrum and in it a lamp burning under the open sky in such a way that no tempest, no rain could extinguish it; whence, just as that stone, so this was named λύχνος ἄσβεστος, that is, an inextinguishable lamp.' This they will be able to say for this reason, that they may force straits upon us in answering; because if we shall say that it is not to be believed, we shall weaken those writings of miracles; but if we shall grant that it is to be believed, we shall confirm the deities of the pagans.

But we, as I have already said in the eighteenth book of this work, do not have any necessity to believe all things which the history of the nations contains, since even the historians themselves, as Varro says, dissent among themselves in many things, as it were by deliberate design and as if on purpose; but those things, if we will, we believe which are not opposed to the books which we do not doubt that we ought to believe. But concerning these places of miracles, those things sufficiently suffice for us, toward the things which we wish to persuade the unbelieving shall be in the future, which we too are able to experience, and of which it is not difficult to find suitable witnesses. But concerning that temple of Venus and the inextinguishable lamp, not only are we constrained into no straits, but a field of breadth is even opened to us.

For to that inextinguishable lamp we add many marvels both human and magical — that is, the demonic arts wrought through men, and those of the demons themselves working by their own power. And if we should wish to deny these, we would set ourselves against that very truth of the sacred writings in which we believe. Either, then, in that lamp human craft contrived something mechanical out of the stone called asbestos, or it was made by magic art, so that men might marvel at it in the temple; or else some demon, under the name of Venus, presented himself with such efficacy that this prodigy both appeared to men there and endured for a long time.

Now demons are enticed to take up their dwelling through created things — things which they themselves did not make, but God created — being drawn by various delights according to their own diversity: not as animals are drawn by food, but as spirits by signs that suit each one's delight, through the various kinds of stones, herbs, woods, animals, chants, and rites. But in order that they may be enticed by men, they first seduce those very men with most cunning craftiness, either by breathing some hidden poison into their hearts, or even by appearing in deceitful friendships; and they make a few of these their disciples and teachers of very many. For unless they themselves first taught it, it could not be learned what each of them desires, what each abhors, by what name it is invited, by what name it is compelled;

hence arose the magic arts and their practitioners. But most of all they possess the hearts of mortals, and in that possession above all they glory, when they transform themselves into angels of light. There are therefore very many works of theirs, which the more wonderful we confess them to be, the more cautiously we ought to avoid them; yet for the matter we are now treating these very things are profitable to us. For if these unclean demons can do such things, how much more powerful are the holy angels; how much more powerful than them all is God, who made even the angels themselves the workers of such great miracles!

Wherefore, if so many and such great marvels — which they call 'mechanisms' — are produced by men using their arts upon God's creation, so that those who do not understand them suppose them to be divine (whence it came to pass that in a certain temple, with magnetic stones placed in proportion of size in the floor and in the ceiling, an iron image stood suspended in the air midway between the two stones, while those who knew not what was above and below thought it hung as though by the power of a deity — something such as we have already said could be made by a craftsman in that lamp of Venus out of the asbestos stone);

if the works of the magicians, whom our Scripture calls sorcerers and enchanters, could so exalt the demons that a noble poet seemed to agree with the perceptions of men when, concerning a certain woman who was mighty in such an art, he said: 'She promises by her spells to set free what minds she will, but to send harsh cares upon others; to stay the water in rivers and turn the stars backward; she calls up the spirits of the night: you shall see the earth bellowing beneath your feet and the ash-trees coming down from the mountains' — how much more is God able to do things that to unbelievers are incredible, but easy to His power;

seeing that He Himself created the power of stones and of other things, and the talents of men who use them in wondrous ways, and the angelic natures more powerful than all earthly living beings — overcoming all marvels by His marvelous power, and by the wisdom of working, commanding, and permitting, using all things as wondrously as He created them. CHAPTER VII. That in marvelous things the highest ground for believing is the omnipotence of the Creator. Why, then, should God not be able to bring it about both that the bodies of the dead rise again and that the bodies of the damned be tormented in eternal fire — He who made a world in heaven and on earth, in air and in waters, full of innumerable miracles, when this world itself is without doubt a greater and more excellent miracle than all the marvels with which it is full?

But these men, with whom or against whom we are arguing — who both believe that God exists, by whom the world was made, and that gods were made by Him, through whom the world is administered by Him, and who either do not deny or even besides proclaim the world's powers that work miracles, whether spontaneously, or obtained by some worship and rite, or even magical — when we set before them the wondrous power of other things, which are neither rational animals nor spirits endowed with any reason, such as those few which we have mentioned, are accustomed to reply:

'This is a force of nature; their nature is so constituted; these are the efficacies proper to their natures.' The whole explanation, then, why the salt of Agrigentum is made to flow by flame and to crackle in water, is that this is its nature. But this seems rather to be contrary to nature, which gave to salt to dissolve not by fire but by water, and to roast it by fire, not by water. 'But,' they say, 'it is the natural force of this salt to suffer the contrary to these things.' This explanation, then, is given also concerning that Garamantian spring, where one vein is cold by day and boils by night, troublesome to those who touch it in either state;

and this is given also concerning that other spring, which, though cold to those who handle it, and though it extinguishes a lit torch as other springs do, nevertheless, unlike them yet wondrously, the same spring itself kindles a torch that has been extinguished; and this concerning the asbestos stone, which, though it has no fire of its own, yet once fire is received from elsewhere burns so that it cannot be extinguished; and this concerning the rest, which it is tedious to recount, in which, although an unusual force seems to be present contrary to nature, yet no other reason is rendered for them except that it be said that this is their nature. A brief explanation indeed this is, I admit, and a sufficient answer.

But since God is the author of all natures, why are they unwilling that we should render a stronger reason, when they refuse to believe something as though impossible, and when, as they demand a rendering of a reason, we answer that this is the will of the omnipotent God? — who certainly is called omnipotent for no other reason than that He can do whatever He wills, who was able to create so many things which, unless they were displayed or were said even today by witnesses worthy of belief, would assuredly be thought impossible — not only those most unknown among us, but even those most well-known which I have set down.

For those things which, apart from those in whose books we have read of them, have no witness, and were written down by men who were not divinely taught and could perhaps be deceived as men are — anyone may, without just blame, refuse to believe these. For neither do I wish all the things I have set down to be rashly believed, since neither are they so believed by myself as though there were no doubt about them in my own thinking — except those which I have either myself experienced and which anyone can easily test: as concerning lime, that it grows hot in water and is cold in oil; concerning the magnet stone, that by I know not what insensible attraction it does not move a straw but seizes iron; concerning the flesh of the peacock that does not putrefy, even when the flesh of Plato has putrefied;