Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 54 part 1/4

THE BOOK: ON THE PROFIT OF BELIEVING. If, Honoratus, a heretic and a man who believes heretics seemed to me to be one and the same thing, I would judge that in this matter I ought to keep silent both with my tongue and with my pen. But now, since there is a very great difference between these two—inasmuch as a heretic, in my opinion, is one who, for the sake of some temporal advantage and especially for the sake of his own glory and preeminence, either begets or follows false and novel opinions, whereas he who believes men of this kind is a man deluded by a certain imagination of truth and piety—since, then, these things are so, I did not think I ought to keep silent before you as to what seems to me concerning the finding and holding fast of the truth, for which, as you know, we burned with a great love from the beginning of our youth.

But the matter is far removed from the minds of vain men, who, having advanced too far into and fallen among these corporeal things, think there is nothing else than what they perceive by those five most familiar messengers of the body; and the blows and images which they have received from these they turn over within themselves, even when they try to withdraw from the senses, and by that deadly and most deceptive rule of theirs they think they can most correctly measure the ineffable inner sanctuaries of truth. Nothing is easier, my dearest, than not only to say but even to be of the opinion that one has found the truth; but how exceedingly difficult it really is, you will recognize, as I trust, from this letter of mine.

And I hope it will be so, if I am rightly conscious to myself that I have approached this writing with a pious and dutiful spirit, not from any craving for an empty name or from a display of denial. It is therefore my purpose to prove to you, if I can, that the Manichees inveigh sacrilegiously and rashly against those who, following the authority of the catholic faith, are fortified beforehand by believing and are prepared for God who is about to illumine them, before they are able to behold that truth which is contemplated by a pure mind. For you know, Honoratus, that we fell in with such men for no other reason than that they said they would, setting aside terrifying authority, by pure and simple reason lead to God those who were willing to hear them, and free them from every error.

For what else compelled me, for nearly nine years, having spurned the religion which had been instilled in me as a little boy by my parents, to follow those men and diligently listen to them, except that they said we were terrified by superstition and that faith was enjoined upon us before reason, whereas they pressed no one to faith unless the truth had first been discussed and unfolded? Who would not be enticed by these promises, especially a young man's mind eager for truth—and one proud and garrulous from the disputations of certain learned men in the schools, such as those men then found me—scorning, that is, as old wives' tales, and desiring to hold and drink in the open and sincere truth promised by them?

But again, what reason called me back, so that I should not cleave to them utterly, so that I held myself in that grade which they call 'of the Hearers,' so that I did not let go the hope and business of this world, except that I noticed that they too were more eloquent and copious in refuting others than firm and certain in proving their own doctrines? But what shall I say about myself, who was already a catholic Christian? These breasts, after a very long thirst, almost drained and dry, I sought again with all avidity, and weeping and groaning I shook and pressed them the deeper, that they might yield forth that which could suffice, for me so affected, for recovery and for bringing back the hope of life and salvation. What then shall I say about myself?

You, not yet a Christian, who at my urging—when you vehemently execrated those men—were with difficulty induced to think that they were worth your hearing and examining: by what other thing, I ask you, recall it, I beseech you, were you delighted, except by a certain great presumption and promise of reasons? But because they disputed at length and vehemently and most extensively about the errors of the ignorant—which I learned too late is very easy for anyone even moderately educated—if they also inserted anything of their own into us, we thought it must be retained of necessity, since nothing else occurred to us in which we might rest. And so they did to us what treacherous fowlers are wont to do, who fix limed twigs near water in order to deceive thirsty birds.

For they cover over and by whatever means conceal the other waters that are round about, or even frighten the birds away from them by fearsome contrivances, so that they may fall into their snares not by choice but by lack. But why do I not myself answer myself, that these fine and witty similitudes and reproaches of this kind can be poured forth most urbanely and wittily by any adversary against all who teach anything? But for this reason I thought something of the sort should be inserted into my letter, that I might admonish them to cease acting in such ways, so that—as that man says—setting aside the trifles of commonplaces, thing may contend with thing, cause with cause, reason with reason.

Wherefore let them cease to say that thing which they have on their lips as though it were necessary, whenever anyone who had listened for some time deserted them: 'The light made its passage through him.' For you see, my greatest concern—for about those men I am not too greatly troubled—how empty and how very easy for anyone to censure this can be. And so I leave this to be examined by your prudence. For I do not fear that you should judge me to have been indwelt by light while I was entangled in the life of this world, bearing a shadowy hope from the beauty of a wife, from the pomp of riches, from the emptiness of honors, and from the other harmful and destructive pleasures. For all these things, as is not hidden from you, while I was studiously listening to those men, I did not cease to desire and hope for. Nor do I attribute this to their doctrine;

for I confess that they too diligently admonish that such things be guarded against. But to say that I was now deserted by the light when I had turned myself away from all these shadows of things and had resolved to be content with plain sustenance necessary for the health of the body alone, but that I had been illumined and resplendent when I loved those things and was held wrapped up in them—this belongs to a man who, to speak most gently, considers less than acutely the matters about which he much loves to speak. But let us come to the point, if you please. For you well know that the Manichees, in reproaching the catholic faith and especially in tearing apart and mangling the Old Testament, disturb the unlearned:

who assuredly do not know in what measure those things are to be received, and how, when drawn in profitably, they descend into the veins and marrow of souls still as it were wailing like infants. And because there are certain things there which give some offense to minds ignorant and neglectful of themselves—which is the greatest crowd—they can be popularly accused; but they cannot, on account of the mysteries which are contained in them, be defended popularly except by very few. And those few who know how to do this do not love the open and notorious contests in disputation, and for this reason are very little known, except to those who most insistently seek them out. Concerning this rashness of the Manichees, then, by which they reproach the Old Testament and the catholic faith, receive, I beseech you, the things that move me.

But I wish and hope that you will receive this with the same spirit in which they are said by me. God knows—to whom the secrets of my conscience are known—that I do nothing maliciously in this discourse, but, as I judge, it is to be received for the sake of proving the truth: for which one thing alone we have now long resolved to live, and with incredible solicitude, lest to err along with you should have been most easy for me, but to hold the right way along with you should be—that I may not speak too harshly—most difficult. But I presume that in this hope also, by which I hope that you will obtain the way of wisdom together with me, He will not desert me, to whom I am consecrated:

whom I strive to behold day and night, and, because of my sins and because of habit, bearing the eye of my soul wounded by the blows of long-torpid opinions, I know that I am feeble, often with tears. And just as after a long blindness and darkness, the eyes being scarcely opened and still, by fluttering and turning away, refusing the very light which nevertheless they desire—especially if someone should try to show them this sun—so it now befalls me: not denying that there is a certain ineffable and singular good of the soul, which is seen by the mind, yet confessing with weeping and groaning that I am not yet fit to contemplate it.

He will not, then, desert me, if I feign nothing, if I am led by dutiful affection, if I love the truth, if I cherish friendship, if I greatly fear lest you be deceived. All Scripture, therefore, which is called the Old Testament, is handed down in a fourfold manner to those desiring diligently to know it: according to history, according to aetiology, according to analogy, according to allegory. Do not think me foolish for using Greek names. First, because I received it thus, nor do I dare to convey it to you otherwise than as I received it. Then, you too observe that among us there are no customary names for these things; and if I had fabricated them by translating, I should surely be more foolish; but if I circumlocuted, I should be less ready in discoursing.

This alone I beg you to believe: that in whatever way I may err, nothing is done by me out of conceit or arrogance. Now, according to history a thing is handed down when it is taught what is written or what was done — and what was not done, but only written as though it had been done. According to aetiology, when it is shown for what cause something was either done or said. According to analogy, when it is demonstrated that the two Testaments, the Old and the New, are not in conflict with each other. According to allegory, when it is taught that certain things which are written are not to be taken according to the letter, but understood figuratively. All these methods our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles employed. For that example was taken from history, when it was objected that His disciples had plucked ears of grain on the Sabbath day.

He said: Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him — how he entered into the house of God and ate the loaves of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? To aetiology, however, belongs that instance where, when Christ had forbidden a wife to be put away except for the cause of fornication, and it was brought forward by His questioners that Moses, by giving a bill of divorce, had permitted this liberty, He said: Moses did this because of the hardness of your heart. For here a cause is rendered, why that was rightly permitted by Moses for the time, so that what Christ was now commanding might appear to reveal that other times had already come.

But to explain the changes and order of these times, arranged and composed by a certain wondrous disposition of divine providence, would take long. Furthermore, as to analogy, by which the harmony of both Testaments is perceived, why should I say that all those employed it, to whose authority even they yield? Since they can consider within themselves how many things they are wont to say were foisted into the divine Scriptures by I know not what corrupters of the truth. This assertion always seemed to me most feeble, even while I was listening to them; and not to me alone, but also to you — for I remember it well — and to all of us who were trying to exercise a little more diligence in judging than the crowd of believers.

But now, after many things which most disturbed me have been set forth and unravelled for me — those very things, namely, in which their eloquence for the most part boasts itself, and the more safely it is without an adversary, the more unrestrainedly it exults — nothing seems to me to be said by them more shamelessly, or, to speak more mildly, more carelessly and feebly, than that the divine Scriptures have been corrupted, when they can prove this by no manuscripts existing in so recent a memory. For if they said that they had thought these Scriptures were by no means to be received, because they had been written by men whom they judged not to have written the truth, their evasion would somehow be more upright, or their error more human. For this they have done with that book which is entitled 'The Acts of the Apostles.'

When I turn this design of theirs over within myself, I cannot sufficiently wonder at it. For it is not the wisdom of men in this matter that I miss, but a heart of ordinary sense. For that book contains so many things which are similar to those which they do accept, that it seems to me great folly not both to receive this too, and, if anything there offends them, to call it false and interpolated. Or if such a plea is shameless, as indeed it is, why do they think that in Paul's epistles, why in the four books of the Gospel, those things have any force, in which — I know not whether in proportion far more things could have been present than in that book — they wish it to be believed that passages were inserted by corrupters? But doubtless it is that which I perceive, and which I beg you to consider with me in the most calm and serene judgment.

For you know that, striving to bring the person of their founder Manichaeus into the number of the apostles, they say that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised He would send to His disciples, came to us through him. Therefore, if they were to accept the 'Acts of the Apostles,' in which the coming of the Holy Spirit is plainly proclaimed, they would find no way to say that this had been foisted in. For they will have it that there were I know not what corrupters of the divine books before the time of Manichaeus himself, and that those men corrupted them who desired to mingle the law of the Jews with the Gospel.

This they cannot say of the Holy Spirit, unless perchance they assert that those men foretold and set down in their books what would at some time be brought forward against a future Manichaeus, who would say that the Holy Spirit had been sent through himself. But of the Holy Spirit we shall speak something more plainly elsewhere. Now let us return to what I had intended. For it has, I think, been sufficiently demonstrated that both the history of the Old Testament, and aetiology, and analogy, are found in the New Testament; it remains to show concerning allegory. Our Deliverer Himself in the Gospel uses an allegory from the Old Testament. This generation, He says, seeks a sign; it shall not be given to it, except the sign of Jonah the prophet.

For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so also shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And what shall I say of the apostle Paul, who signifies that the very history of Exodus was an allegory of the future Christian people, in his first epistle to the Corinthians? I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and that rock was Christ. But with the greater part of them God was not well pleased;

for they were laid low in the wilderness. Now these things were figures of us, that we should not be lusters after evil things, even as they lusted. Neither let us worship idols, as some of them did, as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day twenty-three thousand men. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by serpents. Neither let us murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our correction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

There is likewise in the apostle a certain allegory, indeed one pertaining most closely to the matter, for the very reason that these same men are accustomed to bring it forward and parade it in their disputations. For the same Paul says to the Galatians: For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free; but he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, while he who was of the free was by promise: which things are said by way of allegory. For these are two covenants: the one, indeed, from Mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which borders upon that which is now Jerusalem, and is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Here therefore those men, by no means bad, while they try to frustrate the law, compel us to approve these Scriptures. For they mark that it is said that those are in bondage who are under the law, and this above all others they toss about: You are made void from Christ, you who are justified in the law; you have fallen from grace. We grant that all these things are true, nor do we say that that law was necessary except for those to whom bondage is still profitable, and that it was therefore usefully enacted, because men who could not be recalled from sins by reason had to be restrained by such a law — namely by the threats and terrors of those punishments which can appear worthless to fools:

and when the grace of Christ frees us from these, it does not condemn that law, but at length invites us to obey its love, not to serve the fear of the law. This very thing is grace, that is, a benefit, which those do not understand to have come to them from God, who still desire to be under the bonds of the law. Whom Paul rightly rebukes as unbelieving, because they do not believe that they have already been freed, through our Lord Jesus, from the bondage to which for a fixed time, by the most just disposition of God, they had been made subject. Hence is that saying of the same apostle: For the law was our schoolmaster in Christ. He therefore gave men a schoolmaster whom they might fear, and afterwards a master whom they might love.

Yet in those precepts and commands of the law, which it is now not lawful for Christians to use — such as the Sabbath, or circumcision, or sacrifices, and whatever is of this kind — such great mysteries are contained, that every devout person understands there is nothing more pernicious than for whatever is there to be taken according to the letter, that is, to the word; and nothing more wholesome than for it to be revealed by the spirit. Hence is: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Hence is: The self-same veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not lifted, since in Christ it is done away. For in Christ it is not the Old Testament that is done away, but its veil, so that through Christ that may be understood and as it were laid bare, which without Christ is obscure and covered.

For immediately the same apostle adds: But when you shall have turned to Christ, the veil shall be taken away; for he does not say: the law or the Old Testament shall be taken away. It is not therefore that, by the grace of the Lord, things useless were being covered there and so have been removed, but rather the covering by which useful things were being covered. In this manner is it dealt with those who diligently and piously — not confusedly and impudently — seek out the meaning of those Scriptures; and there is carefully demonstrated both the order of things and the causes of deeds and sayings, and so great a harmony of the Old Testament with the New, that not one jot is left which does not accord. And such great secrets of the figures, that all things which are drawn out by interpretation compel them to confess wretched who wish to condemn these things before learning them.

But, laying aside for the present the loftiness of knowledge, let me deal with you as I think one ought to deal with a friend of mine — that is, as I am able, not as I have marvelled that most learned men are able. There are three kinds of error by which men err when they read something. Of each I will speak. The first kind is that in which what is false is thought true, whereas he who wrote thought otherwise. The second is that — though not so widely extended, yet no less harmful — in which what is false is thought true, and yet that is thought which even he who wrote thought. The third is that in which something true is understood from another's writing, although he who wrote did not understand this. In which kind there is no small usefulness;

nay rather, if you consider more diligently, the whole fruit of reading is entire. An example of the first kind is, if anyone should, for instance, say and believe that Rhadamanthus in the underworld hears and adjudges the causes of the dead, because he read this in Maro's poem. For here he errs in two ways: because he both believes a thing not to be believed, and because he who wrote it is not to be thought to have believed it. The second kind can be observed thus: if anyone, because Lucretius writes that the soul is made of atoms and that after death it is dissolved into the same atoms and perishes, should judge this to be true and to be believed by himself. For this man also is no less wretched, if concerning so great a matter he has persuaded himself as certain of that which is false, although Lucretius, by whose books he was deceived, held that opinion.

For what does it profit this man to be certain of the author's opinion, when he has chosen him not as one through whom he might err, but as one with whom he might err? To the third kind this is fitting: if anyone, having read in the books of Epicurus some passage where he praises self-restraint, should affirm that Epicurus placed the highest good in virtue, and that therefore he is not to be blamed. For what harm does Epicurus's error do to this man, if Epicurus believes the highest good of man to be pleasure of the body, when this man has not given himself over to so base and hurtful an opinion, nor does Epicurus please him for any other cause than that he thinks Epicurus did not hold what ought not to be held? This error is not only human, but often even most worthy of a man. For consider: if it were reported to me concerning someone whom I loved,

namely that he had said, in the hearing of many, that when he was bearded, boyhood and infancy so pleased him that he even swore he wished to live in like manner — and this were so proved to me that I could not shamelessly deny it — would I seem to anyone to be blameworthy, if I supposed that in saying this he wished to signify that innocence pleased him, and a mind estranged from those desires by which the human race is entangled, and if for this reason I loved him more and more than I loved him before, even though perchance the fool had, in the ages of boys, fallen in love with a certain license in playing and eating and with slothful idleness?

For suppose him to have died after this had been reported to me, and that I could not question him about anything, so that he might disclose his meaning: would anyone be so wicked as to be angry with me, when I praised the man's purpose and will through those very words which I had received? Nay, what if even a just estimator of things would perhaps not hesitate to praise my opinion and my will, since both innocence pleased me, and I, as one man about another in a doubtful matter, judged well rather than ill, when it was even permitted to judge ill? Since these things are so, hear now also as many conditions and differences of these same Scriptures; for it is necessary that just as many present themselves.

For either someone has written usefully and is understood not usefully by another; or both are done unprofitably; or the reader understands usefully, while he who is read wrote the contrary. Of these three, the first I do not condemn, the last I do not concern myself with. For I can neither reprove a man who by no fault of his own has been ill understood, nor take it amiss that anyone is read who has not seen the truth, since I see it does no harm to the readers. There is therefore one kind most approved and, as it were, most cleansed, when things are both well written and are received in a good sense by the readers. Yet this too is still divided into two; for it does not wholly exclude error.

For it happens for the most part that, when the writer has thought well, the reader also thinks well, but something other than he did, and often better, often inferior, yet usefully. But when we both think that which he whom we read thought — and that is most fitted to a life well lived — truth possesses itself in fullest measure, nor is any place of falsity opened from any quarter. This kind, when the reading is about the most obscure matters, is altogether most rare, nor, in my opinion, can it be clearly known, but only believed. For by what arguments shall I so gather the will of an absent or dead man, that I could swear about it, when even if he were present and questioned, there might be many things which, if he were not wicked, he would most dutifully conceal?

But that, I judge, avails nothing toward knowing the matter — what sort of man he was who wrote; yet he is most honourably believed to be good, by whose writings the human race and posterity have been provided for. Wherefore I would that those men would tell me in which kind they place the error which they think belongs to the Catholic Church. If in the first, it is altogether a grave charge, but it does not require a long defense; for it is enough to deny that we understand as they suppose when they inveigh against us. If in the second, it is no less grave, but by the same word they are refuted. If in the third, there is no charge at all. Come then, and next consider the Scriptures themselves. For what do they object against the books of what is called the Old Testament? Is it perchance that they are good, but are ill understood by us?

But they themselves do not accept them. Or is it because they are neither good nor well received? But this the earlier defense sufficiently overthrows. Or will they say this: Although they are well received by you, yet they are bad? What else is this but to acquit the living, with whom the dispute is carried on, as adversaries, and to accuse the long-dead, with whom there is no contention? I indeed believe that those men both committed to memory all things usefully, and were great and divine, and that that law was promulgated and established by the command and will of God; and this, although I know very few books of that kind, I can nevertheless easily persuade, if a fair and by no means obstinate mind be applied to me. And this I will do, when opportunity of your benevolent ears and mind shall have been given to us;

but this when I shall be able. Now, however, is it not enough for me that, in whatever way this matter stands, I have not been deceived? I call to witness, Honoratus, my conscience and God dwelling in pure souls, that I esteem nothing more prudent, more chaste, more religious, than are all those Scriptures which the Catholic Church retains under the name of the Old Testament. You wonder, I know. For I cannot dissemble that we had been persuaded far otherwise.