On the Governance of God 3 part 1/2

Letter I. O Love, I know not what to call thee, good or evil, sweet or harsh, pleasant or unpleasant: for thou art so full of both that thou seemest to be both. That our own be loved by us is honorable; that they be hurt, bitter. And yet this at times belongs to the same mind and the same devotion: though in appearance it disagrees, in reason it accords. For love makes us love our own; love at times compels us to give offense. Both are one thing, though the one has the grace of love, the other suffers the offense of hatred. How grievous, I ask you, my most beloved, or how bitter it is, that love should be compelled to be the cause of hatred!

This indeed I now fear enough has happened often to others, and also to me, that, while I desire to commend this young man, whom I have sent to you, to my inseparable friends, in being zealous for one I become troublesome to many, and my love for him becomes an offense to the rest—although those who love enough are not quickly offended. But I, fearing that my introduction may be less than welcome to certain persons, reckon even a diminution of favor an offense. For, desiring greatly to please those dear to me, I count their annoyance my own guilt, and unless I please them well enough, I bear the punishment of one who displeases. Yet this is by no means to be feared in you, who, receiving me wholly into yourselves, even fear before others on my behalf.

For so far am I from being able to displease your love and feeling, that you even dread this together with me—lest I perchance displease certain persons—my sweetest and most beloved. The young man whom I have sent to you was taken captive at Cologne together with his own, once of no small name among his people, of a family not obscure, of a household not despicable, and concerning whom I might perhaps say something more, were he not my kinsman. For it comes about that I say less, lest I should seem to speak of myself in saying more of him. His mother, then—she of whom I speak—he left a widow at Cologne, upright and honorable, and of whom perhaps I may boldly say, truly a widow.

For besides the other virtues of chastity and wisdom, she is also noble in faith, which is always an ornament to all adornments, since without it nothing is so adorned that it can adorn. She therefore, as I hear, is there in such great want and destitution that she has the means neither to remain nor to depart, since there is nothing to help her either toward sustenance or toward flight. The only thing is, that seeking her living by hired labor she submits her hands, hired out, to the wives of the barbarians. Thus, although by God's mercy she has been freed from the chains of captivity, since she is no longer a slave by condition, she is a slave by poverty. Therefore, rightly suspecting that I have here the favor of certain holy men (for I do not deny it, lest by denying favor I become ungrateful),

But plainly, just as I do not deny that I possess it, so I know for certain that I do not deserve it; and this to such a degree that, even if that grace be in me, I am not myself the cause of it. For if there is any grace in me, it was granted, unless I am mistaken, chiefly for the sake of those whose interest it was that I should be gracious—so that it may perhaps be a thing to be feared, lest, in refusing to these men what I received on their account, I should seem to deny not so much my own possession as their very own. Thinking, then, that this—either what it truly is, or more than it is—resided in me, he sent to me this man, whom I now send to you, hoping that, through my acting and striving, the favor of my friends might be a help to my kinsmen. I have therefore done what I was asked, yet sparingly and among a few, lest I should use that very favor ungratefully.

I have commended him to others; I commend him to you, though not to you as to the others. First, because it is enough for one who is mine to be commended to you, just as there is no need to commend my very self; next, because since you reckon me a portion of yourselves, you must needs also count him, who is a portion of me, to be in some measure a portion of you as well; and finally, because the commendation itself, being of a different kind, is likewise of a more excellent charity. For I have commended him to others in the body, to you in the spirit; to others for the profits of the present, to you in the hope of things to come; to others for what is brief and earthly, to you for what is everlasting and divine. And rightly so, that—since carnal goods are less available to you than spiritual ones—I might rather seek from you those in which you more abound.

Receive him, then, I pray, as my own flesh, and as far as in you lies—make him yours: draw him in and exhort him, teach, instruct, form, and beget him. May the mercy of Christ our Lord grant that—since this is more to his advantage—he who is now the kinsman of me and of others may begin to be yours rather than his own. Admit him, I beseech you, into those blessed and everlasting homes; receive him into the sacred storehouses; open the heavenly treasuries; and so act and accomplish that, while you lay him up in your treasury, you may make him a part of those very treasures. That ineffable goodness of God is powerful, so that, while you adopt him into the fellowship of spiritual goods, the riches which you pour out upon him you may through him increase.

And indeed, if there is any good disposition in him, his hope and salvation ought not to be a great difficulty to you: even if he hears nothing from you, it is fitting that this very thing should suffice him—that he sees you. Farewell. LETTER II. Salvian to Bishop Eucherius. Ursicinus your foster-son lately delivered to me your greeting: if it was unbidden, I praise the wisdom, though I do not approve the untruth; if it was bidden, I marvel that you preferred to entrust the office of love rather than to write it—that is, to give it through a servant rather than through yourself. I therefore find fault with this and wish it amended, if however it be a matter of negligence and not of pride.

For arrogance is very often the attendant of new honor; although in you no reputation for the common vice is to be admitted, since your mind and kindness are almost unique. Hence I still ceaselessly desire that you would answer to the old esteem I have of you, lest, if in certain of your offices your custom should differ, it might seem that something has been permitted in you by your new honors. LETTER III. Salvian to Bishop Agricius. If I should wish to excuse my want of duty before your holiness, I should rather deserve to be accused, since out of dullness I would not even acknowledge, or out of pride would not confess, that I am inexcusable. I do not, then, excuse myself; for it is an increase of guilt to boast of innocence after a fault.

What then shall I do, who have neither the means of denying my offense nor of defending it? For I dare not deny what is manifest, and I cannot excuse what is beyond measure. I must therefore take refuge in the remedies of the divine Scriptures, which [heal] the greatest of crimes... LETTER IV. Salvian, Palladia, and Auspiciola send greeting to their parents Hypatius and Quieta. Paul the Apostle, the vessel of election, the master of faith and the receptacle of God, although as a most eloquent man he dictated all his epistles, nevertheless upon certain of them inscribed not only his own name; for on some he added the name of Silvanus, on several that of Timothy, and on certain ones he joined his own name to the name of both. Why so? First, I believe, that they might be recognized to be together who wrote together;

next, that those who had been instructed separately by each one of them might know that the judgment of all did not disagree; and finally, that those whom the authority of individuals did not move might at least be moved by the consent of all.

So then we too, small imitators of great examples, write to you—whom by nature we have as parents, by faith as brethren, by honor as lords—not, like those apostles, with the authority of teachers, but with the humility of servants; so that you who thus far have not been moved by the letters of each of us singly may now at last be moved by the entreaty of us all, and that you may know us to be your children (lest there be any superfluous fear), and at the same time know that we exist and think alike, and fear alike, and equally make supplication—not because we know whether you are angry at us all, but because we cannot be divided as to our cause. For our fear is much the same, even if the offense does not seem to be the same.

For mutual charity brings it about that, although you perhaps are not angry at both of us, yet when one of us is held guilty, the other cannot be without the sadness of that guilt. This indeed is what makes us contend in some way and vie with one another: that although we are both equally your children under charge, yet each of us fears more for the other than for himself. Dearest parents, most reverend parents, we pray that we may be allowed to question you. Can pledges of your blood, loving thus, thus not be loved? What great evil have we deserved, O most beloved affections, O most reverend lords, that neither is favor rendered to us as to children, nor is offense remitted to us as to servants?

It is now nearly the seventh year since you sent us, set so far from you, any writing at all. On scarcely any who sin against God is so long a time of mourning imposed; on scarcely any of the greatest crimes... that he may love the more—namely, that a father's stirrings should not be the diminishings of love but its advancements, since as much as chastisement contributes to the correction of one, so much may correction render back to mutual charity. And yet it would be more fitting for those parents to do this who have true causes for being angry with their children over certain matters. But you—why are you angry, you who, from the time you became a Christian, have ceased to have even false ones? For grant that once, as a pagan, you did not take our little conversion with equanimity:

then indeed even a divergence of wills had to be borne, arising from the dissimilarity of pursuits, since although love did not chafe at us, yet superstition was opposed to us. For although a father did not hate his daughter, yet error hated truth. Now it is far otherwise. From the time you professed the worship of God, you pronounced in my favor. If you pursue the past causes of your anger, charge them to yourself, who gave your daughter to a Christian. If that is not so, why are you angry with me, because I now desire to increase in myself that religion which you have begun to approve in yourself? Why, I ask, would you not love in me what you are, you who in yourself have condemned what you were? But words must be a little spared, because even in a good cause a son's speech ought, as far as the matter allows, to be humble before parents.

Bear with me, dearest affections; the cause of God makes me a little more free in his own business. If you have other reasons for being angry, I do not deny that I could have sinned; but in this, where you are angry precisely because I seem to love Christ, forgive what I am about to say. I do indeed beg pardon, because you will be angry, but I cannot say that what I did is evil. This, then, I address to you in my own name and as a kind of personal prayer. Now do you, O most beloved and most venerable sister, who are dearer to me by as much as those ought to be more loved by their own kin in whom Christ has made himself to be loved—do your part together with mine. Pray that I may obtain; ask, that we both may prevail.

Kiss—since being absent you cannot with your lips—at least by entreaty the feet of your parents as a handmaid, their hands as a foster-child, their face as a daughter. Do not tremble, do not fear: we have good judges, affection itself pleads for you, nature itself makes petition on your behalf, you have the votes for your cause in the hearts of your own, they quickly assent who are themselves overcome by their own love. Beseech, then, and say as a suppliant: What have I done, what have I deserved? Forgive whatever it is; I ask pardon, even though I know of no offense. Never, as you yourselves know, did I offend you by any want of duty or by obstinacy; never did I wound you with a harsher word; never did I violate you with a more insolent look. By you I was handed over to a husband, by you I was made over to a spouse.

I hold, unless I am mistaken, your commands; the holy mystery of your godly instruction clings to my senses. You bade me be, as I think, above all things obedient to my husband. I have obeyed your will, I have complied with your command: in all things I have submitted to him to whom you willed me to submit. He invited me to religion, he invited me to chastity. Grant pardon—I thought it shameful to resist; the matter seemed to me modest, seemed decent, seemed holy. I confess, when he dealt with me about such a business, I blushed that I had not first begun it myself. To this was added also reverence and affection for Christ: I believed that I acted honorably in whatever I did out of love of God.

I fall down, O dearest parents, at your feet—I, that Palladia of yours, your little jackdaw, your little mistress, with whom by these many pet-names you once played in your most indulgent tenderness, who through various names was now to you a mother, now a little bird, now a mistress, since indeed the one name was of my kindred, the second of my infancy, the third of my rank. Behold, I am she through whom first the names of parents and the joys of grandparents befell you, and—what surpasses both—both happily, with the fruit of gaining and the blessedness of full enjoyment; not that I reckon anything of this to myself, yet she through whom God willed you to be happy ought not to be unthankful in your eyes.

Let it not, therefore, I pray, be grievous to you that I desire to render something back to God, to whom I cannot repay all things. You are full of most delightful comforts, full of dearest pledges, full of divine blessing: beside my own particular cause, your very business bids me render thanks to God; I judge that I owe it to him, because he has granted us such great things. But enough of this: for now, O dearest sister, we have prayed sufficiently through ourselves; the rest must be done through the daughter.

Let us therefore make use—for in order to reconcile the affection of parents all things are honorably attempted—let us make use of the manner and example of those who, in the last place of their pleadings, sometimes brought forward certain things to move the mercy of judges toward those about to pass sentence, thrusting forward either lamenting matrons, or squalid old men, or weeping little children—so that they who had already won the earlier parts of the cause by words might plead the later parts by the very facts. We too, therefore, offer to you, O dearest parents, a pledge of a kind indeed equal to theirs, yet of a more welcome support. For we offer a pledge not unknown but of the household, not alien but our own, and not—like those orators—foreign to both themselves and the judges, but common to us and to you together:

she whom the very disposition of your own blood does not force to the love of unknown men, but recalls to the charity of your own; nor commends aliens to you by alien means, but your own by what is yours; nor does she pray this, that you love those whom you never before saw, but that you not hate those whom, I think, you cannot but love. Yours therefore, dearest parents, is the business, yours the affair; your own heart, your own charity, entreats it of you. Do not, I pray, be so angry with us that you take no thought even for us, while there pleads with us... a common pledge through us together and along with us, and sends forth almost her first cry to you on behalf of our offense. Utterly unhappy and pitiable indeed is her condition, who has begun to know her grandparents first from her parents' guilt.

Have mercy, we beseech you, on her innocence; have mercy on her need: she is in a manner compelled to make supplication for the offense of her own kin, she who as yet knows not what it is to offend. God, once grieved by the sins of the Ninevites, was softened by the wailing of infants and the weeping. For although we read that the whole people mourned, yet the chief mercy was merited by the lot and the innocence of the little ones, God saying to Jonah: 'Are you greatly saddened over the gourd?' And a little after: 'Shall I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there dwell more than a hundred and twenty thousand who do not know their left hand or their right?'—declaring, namely, that for the sincerity of the innocent he spared even the faults of the guilty.

But why do I speak of the mercy of God, who not only grants what is asked, but sometimes even bestows what was not hoped for, and who is (if it may be said) as much greater than men in kindliness and benevolence as he is in power and nature? A war was prepared, as Livy says, between the Romans and the Sabines—and, what can more difficultly be settled, one already begun—which the prayers and intervention of dear pledges once put away;

and although one of their nations was by nature fierce, the other seething with grief, yet the sight of mutual affection so prevailed that neither the Roman could be mindful of the war nor the Sabine of the injury; and those who a little before were wild and half-barbarous, greedy of kindred blood, prodigal of their own, began to embrace one another, because they had now begun to hold a mutual pledge, and each became one people, because the affection of both was one. We do not stand in the battle-line, we do not take up arms, we do not offer violence nor attempt to repel it, thinking it would be impious if, even in this, children should oppose their parents, that they might not be unjustly punished. Why, I ask, should our affections not be able to obtain for us what those affections once obtained for their own?

Or is it for this that we, most unhappy of almost all men, for this less deserve pardon, because we know not how to fight back? Whatever you wish us to suffer, we suffer. If you are angry, we entreat; if you think us deserving of punishment, we acquiesce. What, I ask, remains over for vengeance after these things? Surely, even if parents have just causes for anger, nothing more fortunate, nothing more desirable, can befall them than that they should thus have satisfaction made to them for a child's fault, and yet have no need to take vengeance. But what is there in which we can more fully make satisfaction to you? We are your children, who beseech you; the granddaughter is she through whom we beseech: spare, forgive: they of your own, dearest parents, plead on their own behalf, for whose names' sake you are wont to deny nothing even to strangers.

It would be long, and out of order, to speak of the innumerable examples of piety and humanity. That we may come from the greater to the lesser: yet nevertheless the thing I am about to say, though in appearance it is less, is nevertheless in reality not less. Servius Galba, once pleading in the Roman forum for the peril of his reputation and safety, when on account of the difficulty of the business and the odium of his deed he placed little hope not only in his cause but even in his eloquence, used a device, that he might try by the emotion of the facts to move the minds of the judges whom he could not bend by the appeal of prayers.

And so, when almost all the resources of oratorical art and native talent had now been spent, when he perceived that he had advanced but little, he brought forth into the assembly of the judges and into their sight a little boy whom he had with him—the son of Gallus, a man in those days accounted most illustrious and lately dead—and his own small children, before the benches of the hearers; and when he commended them with tearful speech to the arbiters about to pass sentence, the minds of all were broken by emotion and bowed down. What more? It was done, so that, with the feelings of all bent, mercy granted to humanity whatever truth would deny to his pleading. O human affections, how great you are, how much you avail, you who have been able to hold sway even in a court of law!

Learn, O dearest parents—let it be said with your leave—learn by this example at least to be broken and softened. Surely mercy prevailed even there where mercy was not permitted to have a place. The judges about to pass sentence, who had sworn to pronounce nothing except from the duty of truth, could not shut out mercy even after their oaths, being so moved by human feeling that, while they took thought for another's affair, they almost forgot their own. We entreat of you nothing hard, nothing unwonted: show to your own, on your own behalf, what those men showed to strangers, against themselves. Surely there neither was the cause more just, nor the person dearer, nor the audience more humane, nor the orator more pleasing. There the pleading was for a crime, here for affection;

there for strangers, here for children; there before sworn judges, here before unsworn parents; there through an orator who strove to overreach them, here through a granddaughter who, that she may move you the more by the very simplicity of her infancy, does not yet know how to ask. What is there that is wanting to our cause? What new and unheard-of support must we seek out? Must we make use of strangers' prayers before you? In love there is ever caution; for no one loves better than he who most fears to offend. Hence I now beg pardon, not because I know that I have offended, but that I may leave no place at all for offense—not from a consciousness of fault, but by the reasoning and duty of charity, that entreaty may merit a greater favor of affection before you,

and that a supplication free of guilt may profit love. And may you have in the entreaty of your son more that you may love, if you have nothing to remit. And yet perhaps we flatter ourselves rashly about our innocence, not knowing what you feel about us; for account must be taken of your sentiment rather than of the reasoning of our own opinion. It remains, therefore, that if any other thing—and whatever that thing is—has been committed by us, you, who deem it worthy of offense, may also judge it not unworthy of pardon. You will beautifully satisfy your own self in the charge against your own. A father loses nothing of vengeance by forgiving his son, since it is far more fortunate and more praiseworthy to forgive one of one's own even undeservedly than to take vengeance on one's own even deservedly. Farewell. LETTER V.

Salvian to his sister Cattura. Although, as Paul the Apostle teaches, we know not what it is fitting for us to pray for—whence it comes that at times we do not know what we ought to wish or rejoice at—yet I, out of the common affection of the human race (by which all men whatsoever, more piously than wisely, desire those who are dear to us to be with us as long as possible), rejoice that after a grave and long-lasting illness you have obtained the hope even of the present life, you who have always had the hope of the life to come.

Blessed therefore be the Lord our God, who, ever the guardian of your spirit, has now been especially the guardian even of your flesh, and, dwelling in you and guarding you, has stretched out his hand from your inner parts even to the outer, and has preserved not only the holy of holies but also the vestibule and enclosures of his temple, and, pouring out his protection more widely, has made the salvation of your soul reach even to the health of your body. Although I do not think that even this weakness of the earthen vessel which you have endured has harmed you, whose strength, as you know, is ever the enemy of the mind; so that I now rightly think you the stronger in spirit by as much as you have begun to be weaker in the flesh.

For 'the flesh,' says the Apostle, 'lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh: for these are contrary the one to the other, that you may not do the things that you would.' Therefore, if with the body resisting we cannot do the things we wish, we must be weakened in the flesh, that we may do the things we desire. And it is true. For the weakness of the flesh sharpens the vigor of the mind, and, with the limbs afflicted, the strengths of bodies are transferred into virtues of souls; so that it seems to me a certain kind of health that a man should at times not be in health. For then there is no struggle of the spirit with the body—that is, of the divine nature with the earthly enemy.

The marrow does not burn with shameful flames, hidden incitements do not kindle a mind unsound, the wandering senses do not run riot through various delights, but the soul alone exults, glad in a body afflicted as though an adversary subdued. Rejoice, therefore, foster-child of Christ; open the door of your mind—ever simple and quiet, but now the more purified and free—and draw in, as you read, the Holy Spirit. Never, I think, have you stood forth more worthy of God as an inhabitant: by as much as you are weaker in body, so much are you purer in mind. By the diseases overcoming your flesh you have conquered with your mind—happy, if you shall preserve this death of the body ever unto life of the spirit.

With all the incitements of human temptations perhaps now extinguished in you, you have in a manner begun to have the nature of a soul even in the flesh; so that to me you seem to have both fallen sick before and now recovered, not only by a great dispensation of God, but even by a great gift. For you were sick thus far to confirm the virtue of the spirit, now perhaps obtaining secure health, the flesh being already overcome, so that hereafter you may possess the soundness restored to your body without any weakness of the soul, and so the flesh may begin to be well in such a way that temptation may no longer rise up again. Farewell. LETTER VI. Salvian to Limenius, greeting in the Lord.

Although I know that honorable minds do not forget upright affections—because good men in good pursuits love, as it were, their own nature—yet because, as far as in us lies, it befits us to increase the love of good friends by our own service, I judged that you should be reminded of the charity long ago begun by me, and lately increased by you; so that, reading my letters, while you see in me the zeal of love for you, you might kindle in yourself the love for me. And our God, I do not doubt, will grant that, receiving into yourself the affection of Christians, you may yourself become the very affection of Christ. Farewell in the Lord. LETTER VII. Salvian to Aper and Verus.

Whether it be a matter of duty or of impudence that I wrote to you before I received from you the right of writing, I prefer to be of your judgment rather than of my own assertion, because a doubtful and hidden matter is always better entrusted to good interpreters than to bad defenders. But although these things be truly so, and be so reckoned by me, yet if you think that whatever, according to my understanding, may be in the opinion of the truth ought to be heard from me, I judge thus: whenever there is a holy contention about the deferring of duty between little ones, such as I am, and superiors, such as you are, that they do better if they anticipate their patrons by writing than if they be anticipated by them.

For since the very assiduity of writing and writing back is rendered above all in giving and repaying acts of deference, it must needs be much more humble and more compliant that someone should give his effort to defer the office first, than to expect to receive it first; because, according to what we said above, the offering of the office seems to flee honor, the dissimulation to court it. Fittingly, therefore, and in many ways reasonably, was it done that I should write to you first. First, because as an inferior I should seem to have basely courted honor; next, because the dignity of your character so vindicates you from every mark of such an opinion that scarcely anything done by you is believed not to have been rightly done: