Letters & Lives of Saints 4 part 1/4

1. If, according to Paul the Apostle, we cannot pray for what we feel, and speech does not unfold the thought of one's own mind, how much more perilous is it to judge concerning another's soul, and to investigate and set forth the reason of each man's sayings and words? The nature of man is prone to clemency, and in another's sin each man pities himself. If, therefore, you reprove the accused in his speech, he will call it simplicity; if you charge him with craftiness, he will confess to inexperience, that he may escape the suspicion of malice. And so it will come about that you who accuse will be judged a slanderer, while he who is reproved will be judged not a heretic but a rustic. You know, Pammachius, you know that I come down to this work not from enmity, not from desire of glory;

but provoked by your letters, out of the ardour of faith; and wishing, if it could be done, that all should be of the same mind, and that I, who speak only after three years, could not be reproached for impatience or rashness. Indeed, unless you said that the minds of many were disturbed by the Apology of which I have now resolved to write, and that opinion wavered on both sides, I had determined to remain in the silence I had begun. 2. Let Novatus therefore depart, who stretches out no hand to the erring; let Montanus be cast down with his mad women, hurling headlong into the pit those who lie there, that they may not be raised up. Daily we all sin and slip in some respect. We therefore who are clement toward ourselves do not maintain rigour against others:

nay rather we pray, we beg, we entreat that he either simply confess his own views, or openly defend those of another. I do not want ambiguities of words; I do not want it said to me that which could also be understood otherwise. With unveiled face let us contemplate the glory of the Lord. The people of Israel too once limped on both feet. But Elijah—whose name is interpreted 'strong is the Lord'—said: How long do you limp on both feet? If the Lord is God, walk after Him; but if Baal, follow him. And the Lord Himself says of the Jews: The alien children have lied to me; the alien children have grown old and have limped from their paths. Surely, if there is no suspicion of heresy—as I wish and believe—why does he not speak his own meaning in my words?

What he calls simplicity, I interpret as malice. He wishes to persuade me that he believes purely; let him then also speak purely. And indeed if a single word, or a single meaning, were ambiguous, if two, if three, I would grant pardon to ignorance; nor would I estimate those things which are either obscure or doubtful from things certain and clear. But now, what sort of simplicity is this, to advance with poised step as though over eggs and ears of grain, amid theatrical conjuring tricks—everywhere doubtful, everywhere suspect? You would think that he writes not an exposition of the faith, but a figured controversy. What this man now strives after, we long ago learned in the schools. Our own armour fights against us.

Even if he believes rightly, and speaks circumspectly and timidly, his excessive carefulness rouses suspicion in me. He who walks in simplicity walks confidently. It is foolish to bear infamy in vain. A charge is laid against him of which he has no guilty conscience. Therefore let him confidently deny the charge which hangs entirely on a word, and freely cast the odium upon his adversary. With the same boldness with which the other accuses, let this man defend himself. And when he has said all that he wished, all that he proposed, all that is free from suspicions—if the slander persists, let him grapple hand to hand and drag it into court. I do not want anyone to be patient under suspicion of heresy, lest, among those who do not know his innocence, his dissembling be judged a guilty conscience, if he keep silence;

although it be superfluous to seek his presence and to extort silence from one whose very letters you hold. 3. We all know what he wrote to you, what he charged you with, in what—as you would have it—he slandered you. Answer point by point, tread along the footsteps of this letter, do not pass over even a dot or tittle of the slander. For if you act negligently and—as I believe you when you swear it—by chance pass over anything, at once he will cry out and say: Here, here I hold you bound; here turns the hinge of the whole business. Enemies and friends do not listen alike. He who is an enemy seeks a knot even in a bulrush; a friend judges even crooked things to be straight. The writings of the world declare that the judgements of lovers are blind;

which you, perhaps occupied with the sacred Volumes, have altogether neglected. Never boast of the judgement of friends. That testimony is true which is brought forth by a hostile voice. Otherwise, if a friend speaks on your behalf, he will be thought not a witness, nor a judge, but a partisan. These and such things will your enemies say, who perhaps wish to stir up your bile. But I, whom you have never willingly injured, whose name you are compelled ever to bandy about in your letters, give this counsel: that you either openly proclaim the faith of the Church, or speak as you believe. For this prudent dispensing and balancing of words can deceive the unlearned. The cautious hearer and reader will quickly detect the snares;

and the mines by which truth is undermined he will openly demonstrate in the light. The Arians too, whom you know very well, for a long time, on account of the scandal of the name, pretended to condemn the 'consubstantial,' and smeared the poisons of error with the honey of words. But at length the tortuous serpent revealed itself, and its noxious head, which was covered by the coils of the whole body, was pierced through with the spiritual sword. The Church receives, as you know, the penitent; and, overcome by the number of sinners, while it takes counsel for the deceived flocks, it pardons the wounds of the shepherds. The same custom is now kept in the old and the new heresy, that the people hear one thing, and the priests preach another. 4.

And first, before I insert into this volume your letter—which you wrote to the bishop Theophilus—translated, and show you that I understand your too-cautious prudence, so great as it is, I should like to expostulate with you. What is this so great arrogance, not to answer those who question you about the faith? To regard so great a multitude of brethren, and the choirs of monks who do not commune with you in Palestine, as though they were public enemies? The Son of God, for the sake of one sick sheep, leaving the ninety-nine on the mountains, endured the buffets, the cross, the scourges, and bore it upon His own shoulders, carrying it to heaven and bearing patiently the delicate sinful woman.

You, most blessed pope and fastidious bishop, alone rich, alone wise, alone noble and eloquent, do you look down with wrinkled brow and sidelong eyes upon your fellow-servants, redeemed by the blood of your Lord? Is this what, at the Apostle's bidding, you have learned: Be always ready to give satisfaction to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that is in you? Suppose that we seek an occasion, and under the pretext of faith sow strife, contrive schism, stir up quarrels. Take away the occasion from those who want an occasion; so that, after you have given satisfaction concerning the faith and loosed all the knots that are tied against you, then you may clearly prove to all that the contest is not one of doctrines, but of ordination.

Unless perhaps by prudent counsel you keep silent when questioned about the faith, lest you should seem to be a heretic once you have given satisfaction. Therefore men ought not to refute all the crimes of which they are accused, lest after they have denied them they be held guilty. But you despise laymen, deacons, and presbyters. For you can, as you boast and brag, make a thousand clergy in a single hour. You have pope Epiphanius, who in a letter openly sent calls you a heretic. Surely you are not greater than he in age, nor in knowledge, nor in merit of life, nor in the testimony of the whole world. If you seek age, you, a young man, write to an old man. If knowledge, you, not so learned, write to a learned man:

although your supporters contend that you are more eloquent than Demosthenes, more acute than Chrysippus, wiser than Plato, and perhaps have even persuaded you of it yourself. Of his life and faith, however, I shall say nothing further, lest I seem to injure you. At that time when the heresy of the Arians and Eunomians possessed the whole East, except for pope Athanasius and Paulinus—when you held no communion with the Westerners and with the confessors in the midst of exile—he, whether as presbyter of the monastery, was heard by Eutychius, or afterwards as bishop of Cyprus, was not touched by Valens. For he was always of such great veneration that the reigning heretics counted it their own disgrace if they persecuted such a man. Write therefore to him. Answer his letter:

let the rest perceive your power of perfecting things, your eloquence, your prudence, lest you should seem to yourself to be the only eloquent one. Why, when provoked by one man, do you turn your arms elsewhere? You are questioned by Palestine, and you answer to Egypt. While others have bleary eyes, you anoint the eyes of those who feel no pain. If you speak to please us things addressed to another, it is proud enough; if something other than what we ask, it is superfluous enough. 5. But you say, the bishop of Alexandria approved my letter. What did he approve? That it spoke well against Arius, against Photinus, against Manichaeus. For who accuses you in this present time of being an Arian? Who now fastens upon you the crime of Photinus or Manichaeus? Those things were long ago amended and shaken off. You were not so foolish as to defend openly a heresy which you knew to be displeasing to the Church.

You knew that if you did this, you would at once have to be removed from your place, and you sighed after the delights of your throne. So you tempered your sentence in such a way that you neither displeased the simple nor offended your own party. You wrote well, but nothing pertaining to the case. Whence did the pontiff of the Alexandrian Church know on what points you were accused? Of what things confession was demanded from you? You ought to have set forth the objections laid against you, and so answered each one. An old story relates: A certain man, when he spoke eloquently and was carried along by the impetus and fluency of his words, yet did not touch the case at all, a prudent hearer and judge said: 'Well, well, but to what end is all this so well?' Unskilled physicians use one salve for all pains of the eyes.

He who is accused on many counts, and in the dilution of the charges passes over some, whatever he keeps silent about, he confesses. Did you not answer the letter of Epiphanius, and yourself set forth the things you would dissolve? No doubt you answered with this confidence: No one is strongly struck down by himself. Choose one of the two, whichever you wish. The option will be given you: either you answered the letter of Epiphanius, or you did not. If you answered, why did you leave out the greatest and most numerous of the things objected to you? If you did not answer, where is that Apology of yours, in which you boast among the simple, and which, as though to those who do not know the case, you scatter abroad here and there? 6. Eight heads of questions concerning the hope of the Christian faith have been objected to you, as I shall presently prove.

You touch only three, and pass over the rest. As for the others, there is a great silence. If you had answered the seven most completely, I would have stuck fast on only one charge: and what you had kept silent about, that I would have held. But now, as though you had caught a wolf by the ears, you can neither hold it nor dare to let it go. Those very three also, as though careless and unconcerned, and as though doing something else: even in matters where there is either no question or a small one, you fly over and graze past them. And so covered and concealed do you advance, that you confess more by your silence than you deny by your disputing. Who cannot say to you at once: If the light that is in you is darkness, how great will that darkness itself be?

If the three little questions, about which you seemed to say something, are not free from suspicion and blame, and are shown to have been written fraudulently and slipperily, what shall we make of the five remaining ones? Concerning these, because no opportunity for ambiguous speech was given, and you could not delude your hearers, you chose to keep entirely silent rather than openly to confess what had been concealed. 7. And first, concerning the book in which he says: 'For just as it is incongruous to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is unfitting to suppose that the Holy Spirit can see the Son.' Second, that souls are bound in this body as in a prison; and that before man came to be in paradise, they dwelt among rational creatures in the heavens.

Whence afterwards, for its own consolation, the soul speaks in the Psalms: 'Before I was humbled, I went astray.' And: 'Return, O my soul, into your rest.' And: 'Bring my soul out of prison,' and other things like these. Third, that he says both the devil and the demons will one day do penance, and will reign with the saints at the last time. Fourth, that he interprets the garments of skins as human bodies, with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their transgression and expulsion from paradise — there being no doubt that before, in paradise, they were without flesh, sinews, and bones. Fifth, that he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh and the framework of the members, and the sex by which we men are distinguished from women:

both in his exposition of the first Psalm and in many other treatises. Sixth, that he so allegorizes paradise that he takes away the truth of the history; understanding angels in place of the trees, heavenly powers in place of the rivers — and by his tropological interpretation he overturns the whole content of paradise. Seventh, that he supposes the waters which the Scriptures say are above the heavens to be holy and supernal powers, while those above the earth and beneath the earth he reckons to be hostile and demonic. Eighth, which he hurls as his last point, he says that the image and likeness of God, in which man had been created, was lost by him, and that it was not in man after paradise. 8. These are the arrows by which you are pierced through; these the darts by which you are wounded throughout the whole Epistle:

except for this — that, falling at your knees and for a little while laying aside the honor of his priesthood, he prostrates his holy white hair beneath you, and pleads for your salvation, and speaks in these words: 'Grant to me and to yourself that you may be saved, as it is written, From a perverse generation: and withdraw from the heresy of Origen, and from all heresies, most beloved.' And below: 'In defense of heresy you stir up hatreds against me and break the charity which I had toward you — to such a degree that you have made us even repent that we ever communicated with you, who thus defend the errors and dogmas of Origen.' Tell me, distinguished disputant, about the eight chapters to which you should have replied. For a little while I keep silent about the rest.

That first blasphemy — that neither can the Son see the Father, nor can the Holy Spirit see the Son — by what darts of yours has it been pierced through? 'We believe,' he says, 'in the holy and adorable Trinity, of one and the same substance, and coeternal; of the same glory and divinity: anathematizing those who speak of anything great or small, or unequal, or visible in the deity of the Trinity. But just as we call the Father incorporeal, invisible, and eternal: so we call the Son and the Holy Spirit incorporeal, invisible, and eternal.' Unless you said this, you would not hold to the Church: and yet I do not ask whether you said it before; I will not winnow it out, if you have loved those who preached such things;

with whom you were when those who spoke such things were enduring exile: who was that man who, when the presbyter Theon was preaching in the Church that the Holy Spirit is God, stopped up his ears, and, roused, fled outside with his followers, lest he should hear so great a profanity. 'At once,' he says, 'I want him faithful, even by a late conversion.' Wretched Praetextatus, who died while consul-elect. A sacrilegious man, a worshipper of idols, used to say in jest to the blessed Pope Damasus: 'Make me bishop of the city of Rome, and I will at once become a Christian.' Why do you, with long discourse and rambling periods, prove to me that you are not an Arian? Either deny that the man who is accused said this: or if he spoke such things, condemn him for having said it. Do you want to know how great is the ardor of those who believe rightly?

Hear the Apostle: 'Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you otherwise than we have announced, let him be anathema.' But you, that you may extenuate the crime for me, and concealing the name of the criminal, as though all were secure, and no one were being accused of blasphemies, weave together an idle faith with artful speech. Say at once, and let your Epistle have this opening: 'Anathema to him who dared to write such things.' Pure faith brooks no delay. As soon as a scorpion appears, it must straightway be crushed. David, found according to the heart of the Lord, says: 'Did I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and pine away over your enemies? With perfect hatred I hated them.'

For my part, if I had heard my father, my mother, or my brother saying these things against my Christ, I would have torn their blaspheming mouths as those of a rabid dog, and my hand would have been the first upon them. Those who said to father and mother, 'We do not know you,' these fulfilled the will of the Lord. 'He who loves father or mother above Christ is not worthy of him.' 9. It is objected against you that your master, whom you call catholic, whom you defend stubbornly, said: 'The Son does not see the Father; and the Holy Spirit does not see the Son.' And you say to me: 'The Father is invisible, the Son is invisible, the Holy Spirit is invisible': as though the angels also, and the cherubim and seraphim, were not, according to their own nature, invisible to our eyes?

Surely David too, doubting even about the sight of the heavens, says: 'I shall see the heavens, the works of your fingers.' 'I shall see,' not 'I see.' 'I shall see,' when, with face unveiled, I shall have contemplated the glory of the Lord: but now we see in part, and we know in part. The question is whether the Son sees the Father: and you say: 'The Father is invisible.' It is being deliberated whether the Holy Spirit sees the Son: and you reply, 'The Son is invisible.' The matter under discussion is whether the Trinity sees itself in turn — human ears cannot bear so great a blasphemy — and you say, 'The Trinity is invisible.' You wander off into other praises: you discourse at length on those things which no one is inquiring about. You drag the hearer elsewhere, so that you may not speak of what we are asking.

But let these things be said as superfluous. We grant you that you are not an Arian: nay more, that you never were one. We concede that in your exposition of the first chapter there is no suspicion against you, and that you spoke the whole thing purely and simply; with the same simplicity we too speak with you. Did Pope Epiphanius accuse you of being an Arian? Did he charge you with the heresy of Eunomius or of Aerius? This is what is sought throughout the whole Epistle: that you follow the errors of Origen's dogmas, and that you have certain associates of this heresy. Why, being questioned about one thing, do you answer about another, and, as though you were speaking with fools, dissembling the charges contained in the letters, do you repeat what you said in the Church in the presence of Epiphanius?

You are required to give a confession of faith, and you thrust your most eloquent treatises upon those who do not want them? I beg you, reader, mindful of the tribunal of the Lord, and understanding that you yourself will be judged according to your own judgment, that you favor neither me nor my adversary, and that you consider not the persons of the speakers, but the cause. Let us therefore say what we began. 10. You write in your Epistle that, before Paulinianus became a presbyter, Pope Epiphanius never confronted you over the error of Origen. First, the matter is doubtful, and I am disputing about persons. He says he made the charge, you deny it: he produces witnesses, you do not wish to hear those brought forward. He also recalls that there was another meeting, you dissemble about both: he sends you a letter by his cleric, demands a reply:

you keep silent, you dare not so much as mutter, and, being challenged in Palestine, you make your speech at Alexandria. Between him and you, to whom credence is to be accommodated, it is not for me to say. I suppose that not even you yourself would dare, against so great and so eminent a man, to assign truth to yourself and falsehood to him. But it may be that each one speaks for himself. I will call you yourself as a witness against yourself. For if no question concerning the dogmas was being raised: if you had not stirred the old man's stomach: if he had made you no reply, what need was there that, in a single discourse in the Church, you — a man not very eloquent — should dispute about all the dogmas: about the Trinity, about the assumption of the Lord's body, about the cross, about the underworld, about the nature of the angels, about the state of souls, about the resurrection of the Savior and our own:

and on earth — which perhaps you forgot to write — in the presence of the people and of so great and eminent a man, you fearlessly held forth, and ran through everything with one breath? Where are the ancient expositors of the Church, who could scarcely unfold single questions in many volumes? Where is the chosen vessel, the trumpet of the Gospel, the roar of our lion, the thunder of the nations, the river of Christian eloquence, who marvels at, rather than discourses upon, the mystery hidden from generations past, and the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God? Where is Isaiah, the proclaimer of the Virgin, who, succumbing in a single question, says: 'Who shall declare his generation?'

In our age there has been found a not-so-great little manling, who, on all the questions of the Church, with one turn of the tongue flashes more clearly than the sun. If no one was demanding it of you, and all was tranquil, you foolishly chose to undergo such hazards of disputing. If even then you were speaking in satisfaction of the faith, then the ordination of the presbyter is not the cause of the discord — which is agreed to have been established a long time afterward. You have deceived the absent, and your letters flatter foreign ears. 11. We were here, we know everything, when Pope Epiphanius was speaking against Origen in your Church: when, under that man's name, javelins were being hurled against you.

You and your chorus, with dog-like grimace and wrinkled nostrils, scratching your heads, were calling the old man delirious by your nods. Did you not, having sent the archdeacon before the Lord's sepulchre, command that, while disputing such things, he should fall silent? What bishop ever gave such an order to his own presbyter in the presence of the people? When you were going from the Anastasis to the Cross, and a crowd of every age and sex was flocking to him, offering their little ones, kissing his feet, plucking at his fringes; and when he could not move forward a step, but in one spot could scarcely withstand the surge of the flooding people — did you not, tormented with envy against the glorious old man, cry out, and were not ashamed to say to his face, that he was lingering on purpose and by design?

Recall, I beg you, that day when the people, invited at the seventh hour and held back by hope alone — as though they were afterward going to hear Epiphanius — were being detained: what you preached then. Surely against the Anthropomorphites, who in rustic simplicity suppose that God has members, such as are written in the divine books, you spoke raging and indignant: you directed at the old man references to eyes and hands and the trunk of the whole body, wishing to make him suspect of that most foolish heresy. After, weary, with parched mouth, head thrown back and trembling lips, you fell silent, and at last the desire of the whole people was fulfilled — what did the delirious and foolish old man do to you?

He rose, to indicate that he would say but a few words, and, having greeted the Church both with voice and hand, he said: 'All that the brother — in his office a colleague, in age my son — has spoken against the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, he has spoken well and faithfully, and it is condemned by my voice also. But it is fair that, just as we condemn this heresy, we should also condemn the perverse dogmas of Origen.' What laughter, what acclamation of all followed, I think you remember. This is that which you say in your Epistle: that he spoke to the people what he wished, and such things as he wished. Evidently he was raving, who in your kingdom spoke against your opinion. 'What he wished,' you say, 'and such things as he wished.' Either praise it, or condemn it. Why do you here too walk doubtfully?

If the things he spoke were good, why do you not openly proclaim them? If they were bad, why do you not steadfastly rebuke them? And yet, O pillar of truth and faith, who dare to say of so great a man, 'while he spoke to the people what he wished' — let us consider how prudently and modestly, how humbly, he reports about himself. 'When,' he says, 'we too had spoken one day before him, and the present lesson had given occasion, with him listening and the whole Church, we spoke these things concerning the faith and all ecclesiastical dogmas — the very things which always, by the grace of God, we teach unceasingly in the Church and in the catechisms.' 12. I ask, what is this confidence, what is so great a swelling of mind?

All philosophers and orators tear apart Gorgias of Leontini, because he dared, with his chair set up publicly, to promise that he would answer about whatever matter anyone might wish to ask. Were I not restrained by the honor of the priesthood and the reverence of his name, and did I not know that saying of the Apostle, 'I did not know, brethren, that he is a high priest: for it is written, You shall not curse the prince of your people' — with what outcry and indignation of words would I complain about your narrative! Although you yourself extenuate the dignity of your name, when you despise, both in deed and in speech, the father of nearly all the bishops, and the relics of ancient sanctity.

You say that one day, when the present lesson had given occasion, with him listening and the whole Church, you disputed about the faith and all ecclesiastical dogmas. Now is the time to marvel at Demosthenes, who is said to have labored over his most beautiful oration against Aeschines for a long time. In vain do we admire Tully; for Cornelius Nepos relates that in his presence, in almost the same words as it was published, he delivered that defense on behalf of Cornelius, the seditious tribune. Behold our Lysias, behold our Gracchus, and — to bring in something of the more recent men — Quintus Haterius, who had his genius on ready cash, so that he could not even keep silent without a prompter: of whom Caesar Augustus excellently said, 'Our Quintus needs a brake applied.' 13.

Would any prudent man of sound head assert that, in a single discourse in the Church, he had disputed about the End and about all ecclesiastical dogmas? I beg you to show me which is that lesson, seasoned with the whole savor of the Scriptures, whose occasion provoked you, so that you suddenly descended to the peril of displaying your genius. And had not the river of your eloquence overflowed for you, you could have been accused of being unable to speak extempore about all the dogmas. But what is this? You promise one thing, and exhibit another. Now the custom among us is of this sort: that to those who are to be baptized, for forty days, we publicly hand down the holy and adorable Trinity.