Letter XL.

(a.d. 397.)

To My Lord Much Beloved, and Brother Worthy of Being Honoured and Embraced with the Most Sincere Devotion of Charity, My Fellow-Presbyter Jerome, Augustin Sends Greeting.

Chap. I.

1. I thank you that, instead of a mere formal salutation, you wrote me a letter, though it was much shorter than I would desire to have from you; since nothing that comes from you is tedious, however much time it may demand. Wherefore, although I am beset with great anxieties about the affairs of others, and that, too, in regard to secular matters, I would find it difficult to pardon the brevity of your letter, were it not that I consider that it was written in reply to a yet shorter letter of my own. Address yourself, therefore, I entreat you, to that exchange of letters by which we may have fellowship, and may not permit the distance which separates us to keep us wholly apart from each other; though we are in the Lord bound together by the unity of the Spirit, even when our pens rest and we are silent. The books in which you have laboured to bring treasures from the Lord’s storehouse give me almost a complete knowledge of you. For if I may not say, “I know you,” because I have not seen your face, it may with equal truth be said that you do not know yourself, for you cannot see your own face. If, however, it is this alone which constitutes your acquaintance with yourself, that you know your own mind, we also have no small knowledge of it through your writings, in studying which we bless God that to yourself, to us, to all who read your works, He has given you as you are.

Chap. II.

2. It is not long since, among other things, a certain book of yours came into my hands, the name of which I do not yet know, for the manuscript itself had not the title written, as is customary, on the first page. The brother with whom it was found said that its title is Epitaphium,—a name which we might believe you to have approved, if we found in the work a notice of the lives or writings of those only who are deceased. Inasmuch, however, as mention is there made of the works of some who were at the time when it was written, or are even now, alive, we wonder why you either gave this title to it, or permitted others to believe that you had done so. The book itself has our complete approval as a useful work.

Chap. III.

3. In your exposition of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians I have found one thing which causes me much concern. For if it be the case that statements untrue in themselves, but made, as it were, out of a sense of duty in the interest of religion,169    [Velut officiosa mendacia.] have been admitted into the Holy Scriptures, what authority will be left to them? If this be conceded, what sentence can be produced from these Scriptures, by the weight of which the wicked obstinacy of error can be broken down? For as soon as you have produced it, if it be disliked by him who contends with you, he will reply that, in the passage alleged, the writer was uttering a falsehood under the pressure of some honourable sense of duty. And where will any one find this way of escape impossible, if it be possible for men to say and believe that, after introducing his narrative with these words, “The things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not,”170    Gal. i. 20. the apostle lied when he said of Peter and Barnabas, “I saw that they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel ”?171    Gal. ii. 14. For if they did walk uprightly, Paul wrote what was false; and if he wrote what was false here, when did he say what was true? Shall he be supposed to say what is true when his teaching corresponds with the predilection of his reader, and shall everything which runs counter to the impressions of the reader be reckoned a falsehood uttered by him under a sense of duty? It will be impossible to prevent men from finding reasons for thinking that he not only might have uttered a falsehood, but was bound to do so, if we admit this canon of interpretation. There is no need for many words in pursuing this argument, especially in writing to you, for whose wisdom and prudence enough has already been said. I would by no means be so arrogant as to attempt to enrich by my small coppers172    [Obolis meis.] your mind, which by the divine gift is golden; and none is more able than yourself to revise and correct that work to which I have referred.

Chap. IV.

4. You do not require me to teach you in what sense the apostle says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews,”173    1 Cor. ix. 20. and other such things in the same passage, which are to be ascribed to the compassion of pitying love, not the artifices of intentional deceit. For he that ministers to the sick becomes as if he were sick himself; not, indeed, falsely pretending to be under the fever, but considering, with the mind of one truly sympathizing, what he would wish done for himself if he were in the sick man’s place. Paul was indeed a Jew; and when he had become a Christian, he had not abandoned those Jewish sacraments which that people had received in the right way, and for a certain appointed time. Therefore, even although he was an apostle of Christ, he took part in observing these; but with this view, that he might show that they were in no wise hurtful to those who, even after they had believed in Christ, desired to retain the ceremonies which by the law they had learned from their fathers; provided only that they did not build on these their hope of salvation, since the salvation which was foreshadowed in these has now been brought in by the Lord Jesus. For the same reason, he judged that these ceremonies should by no means be made binding on the Gentile converts, because, by imposing a heavy and superfluous burden, they might turn aside from the faith those who were unaccustomed to them.

5. The thing, therefore, which he rebuked in Peter was not his observing the customs handed down from his fathers—which Peter, if he wished, might do without being chargeable with deceit or inconsistency, for, though now superfluous, these customs were not hurtful to one who had been accustomed to them—but his compelling the Gentiles to observe Jewish ceremonies,174    Gal. ii. 14. which he could not do otherwise than by so acting in regard to them as if their observance was, even after the Lord’s coming, still necessary to salvation, against which truth protested through the apostolic office of Paul. Nor was the Apostle Peter ignorant of this, but he did it through fear of those who were of the circumcision. Manifestly, therefore, Peter was truly corrected, and Paul has given a true narrative of the event, unless, by the admission of a falsehood here, the authority of the Holy Scriptures given for the faith of all coming generations is to be made wholly uncertain and wavering. For it is neither possible nor suitable to state within the compass of a letter how great and how unutterably evil must be the consequences of such a concession. It might, however, be shown seasonably, and with less hazard, if we were conversing together.

6. Paul had forsaken everything peculiar to the Jews that was evil, especially this: “That, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they had not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”175    Rom. x. 3. In this, moreover, he differed from them: that after the passion and resurrection of Christ, in whom had been given and made manifest the mystery of grace, according to the order of Melchizedek, they still considered it binding on them to celebrate, not out of mere reverence for old customs, but as necessary to salvation, the sacraments of the old economy, which were indeed at one time necessary, else had it been unprofitable and vain for the Maccabees to suffer martyrdom, as they did, for their adherence to them.176    2 Macc. vii. 1. Lastly, in this also Paul differed from the Jews: that they persecuted the Christian preachers of grace as enemies of the law. These and all similar errors and sins he declares that he “counted but loss and dung that he might win Christ;”177    Phil. iii. 8. but he does not, in so saying, disparage the ceremonies of the Jewish law, if only they were observed after the custom of their fathers, in the way in which he himself observed them, without regarding them as necessary to salvation, and not in the way in which the Jews affirmed that they must be observed, nor in the exercise of deceptive dissimulation such as he had rebuked in Peter. For if Paul observed these sacraments in order, by pretending to be a Jew, to gain the Jews, why did he not also take part with the Gentiles in heathen sacrifices, when to them that were without law he became as without law, that he might gain them also? The explanation is found in this, that he took part in the Jewish sacrifices, as being himself by birth a Jew; and that when he said all this which I have quoted, he meant, not that he pretended to be what he was not, but that he felt with true compassion that he must bring such help to them as would be needful for himself if he were involved in their error. Herein he exercised not the subtlety of a deceiver, but the sympathy of a compassionate deliverer. In the same passage the apostle has stated the principle more generally: “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some,”178    1 Cor. ix. 22.—the latter clause of which guides us to understand the former as meaning that he showed himself one who pitied the weakness of another as much as if it had been his own. For when he said, “Who is weak, and I am not weak?”179    2 Cor. xi. 29. he did not wish it to be supposed that he pretended to suffer the infirmity of another, but rather that he showed it by sympathy.

7. Wherefore I beseech you, apply to the correction and emendation of that book a frank and truly Christian severity, and chant what the Greeks call παλινῴδια. For incomparably more lovely than the Grecian Helen is Christian truth: In her defence, our martyrs have fought against Sodom with more courage than the heroes of Greece displayed against Troy for Helen’s sake. I do not say this in order that you may recover the faculty of spiritual sight,180    The reference here is to the story of the poet Stesichorus, who, having lost his sight as a judgment for writing an attack on Helen, was miraculously healed when he wrote a poem in retractation.—far be it from me to say that you have lost it!—but that, having eyes both clear and quick in discernment, you may turn them towards that from which, in unaccountable dissimulation, you have turned them away, refusing to see the calamitous consequences which would follow on our once admitting that a writer of the divine books could in any part of his work honourably and piously utter a falsehood.

Chap. V.

8. I had written some time ago a letter to you on this subject,181    [Epist. XXVIII.] which was not delivered to you, because the bearer to whom it was entrusted did not finish his journey to you. From it I may quote a thought which occurred to me while I was dictating it, and which I ought not to omit in this letter, in order that, if your opinion is still different from mine, and is better, you may readily forgive the anxiety which has moved me to write. It is this: If your opinion is different, and is according to truth (for only in that case can it be better than mine), you will grant that “a mistake of mine, which is in the interest of truth, cannot deserve great blame, if indeed it deserves blame at all, when it is possible for you to use truth in the interest of falsehood without doing wrong.”182    See Letter XXVIII. sec. 5.

9. As to the reply which you were pleased to give me concerning Origen, I did not need to be told that we should, not only in ecclesiastical writers, but in all others, approve and commend what we find right and true, but reject and condemn what we find false and mischievous. What I craved from your wisdom and learning (and I still crave it), was that you should acquaint us definitely with the points in which that remarkable man is proved to have departed from the belief of the truth. Moreover, in that book in which you have mentioned all the ecclesiastical writers whom you could remember, and their works, it would, I think, be a more convenient arrangement if, after naming those whom you know to be heretics (since you have chosen not to pass them without notice), you would add in what respect their doctrine is to be avoided. Some of these heretics also you have omitted, and I would fain know on what grounds. If, however, perchance it has been from a desire not to enlarge that volume unduly that you refrained from adding to a notice of heretics, the statement of the things in which the Catholic Church has authoritatively condemned them, I beg you not to grudge bestowing on this subject, to which with humility and brotherly love I direct your attention, a portion of that literary labour by which already, by the grace of the Lord our God, you have in no small measure stimulated and assisted the saints in the study of the Latin tongue, and publish in one small book (if your other occupations permit you) a digest of the perverse dogmas of all the heretics who up to this time have, through arrogance, or ignorance, or self-will, attempted to subvert the simplicity of the Christian faith; a work most necessary for the information of those who are prevented, either by lack of leisure or by their not knowing the Greek language, from reading and understanding so many things. I would urge my request at greater length, were it not that this is commonly a sign of misgivings as to the benevolence of the party from whom a favour is sought. Meanwhile I cordially recommend to your goodwill in Christ our brother Paulus, to whose high standing in these regions I bear before God willing testimony.

EPISTOLA XL . Augustinus Hieronymo de titulo vulgati ab ipso libri de Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis: tum de Petro reprehenso non mendaciter a Paulo, de quo jam eidem scripsit Epistolam 28. Hortatur postremo ut prodat Origenis et singulorum haereticorum errata.

Domino dilectissimo, et cultu sincerissimo charitatis observando atque amplectendo fratri, et compresbytero HIERONYMO, AUGUSTINUS.

CAP. PRIMUM.

1. Habeo gratiam quod pro subscripta salutatione, plenam mihi epistolam reddidisti, sed breviorem multo quam ex te vellem sumere, tali viro, a quo tempora quantalibet occupet, nullus sermo prolixus est. Quanquam itaque nos negotiorum alienorum, eorumque secularium, curis circumstemur ingentibus; tamen epistolae tuae brevitati facile non ignoscerem, nisi cogitarem quam paucioribus verbis meis redderetur. Quare, aggredere, quaeso, istam nobiscum litterariam collocutionem, ne multum ad nos disjungendos liceat absentiae corporali: quanquam simus in Domino Spiritus unitate conjuncti, etiamsi ab stilo quiescamus, et taceamus. Et libri 0155 quidem, quos de horreo dominico elaborasti, pene totum te nobis exhibent. Si enim propterea te non novimus, quia faciem tui corporis non vidimus: hoc modo nec ipse te nosti; nam tu quoque non vides eam. Si autem tibi non ob aliud notus es, nisi quia nosti animum tuum; et nos eum non mediocriter novimus in litteris tuis, in quibus benedicimus Domino, quod tibi, et nobis, omnibusque fratribus, qui tua legunt, te talem dedit.

CAP. II.

2. Liber quidam tuus inter caetera non diu est ut venit in manus nostras: quae sit ejus inscriptio, nescimus adhuc; non enim hoc codex ipse, ut assolet, in liminari pagina praetendebat. Epitaphium tamen appellari dicebat frater apud quem inventus est; quod ei nomen tibi placuisse ut inderetur crederemus, si eorum tantum vel vitas, vel scripta ibi legissemus, qui jam defuncti essent. Cum vero multorum et eo tempore quo scribebatur, et nunc usque viventium, ibi commemorentur opuscula; miramur cur hunc ei titulum vel imposueris, vel imposuisse credaris. Sane utiliter a te conscriptum eumdem librum satis approbamus.

CAP. III.

3. In expositione quoque Epistolae Pauli ad Galatas, invenimus aliquid quod nos multum moveat. Si enim ad Scripturas sanctas admissa fuerint velut officiosa mendacia, quid in eis remanebit auctoritatis? quae tandem de Scripturis illis sententia proferetur, cujus pondere contentiosae falsitatis obteratur improbitas? Statim enim ut protuleris; si aliter sapit qui contra nititur, dicet illud, quod prolatum erit, honesto aliquo officio scriptorem fuisse mentitum. Ubi enim hoc non poterit, si potuit in ea narratione, quam exorsus Apostolus ait, Quae autem scribo vobis, ecce coram Deo quia non mentior (Gal. 1, 20), credi affirmarique mentitus eo loco ubi dixit de Petro et Barnaba: Cum viderem quia non recte ingrediuntur ad veritatem Evangelii (Ibidem, II, 14)? Si enim recte illi ingrediebantur, iste mentitus est; si autem ibi mentitus est, ubi verum dixit? An ibi verum dixisse videbitur, ubi hoc dixerit, quod lector sapit; cum vero contra sensum lectoris aliquid occurrerit, officioso mendacio deputabitur? Non enim deesse poterunt causae, cur existimetur non solum potuisse, verum etiam debuisse mentiri, si huic regulae conceditur locus. Non opus est hanc causam multis verbis agere, praesertim apud te, cui sapienter providenti dictum sat est. Nequaquam vero mihi arrogaverim ut ingenium tuum, divino dono aureum, meis obolis ditare contendam; nec est quisquam te magis idoneus, qui opus illud emendet.

CAP. IV.

4. Neque enim a me docendus es quomodo intelligatur quod idem dicit, Factus sum Judaeis tanquam Judaeus, ut Judaeos lucrifacerem (I Cor. IX, 20); et caetera quae ibi dicuntur compassione misericordiae, non simulatione fallaciae. Fit enim tanquam aegrotus qui ministrat aegroto; non cum se febres habere mentitur, sed cum animo condolentis cogitat quemadmodum sibi serviri vellet, si ipse aegrotaret. Nam utique Judaeus erat; Christianus autem factus, non Judaeorum 0156 Sacramenta reliquerat, quae convenienter ille populus et legitimo tempore quo oportebat, acceperat. Itaque suscepit ea celebranda, cum jam Christi esset Apostolus; sed ut doceret non esse perniciosa iis qui ea vellent, sicut a parentibus per Legem acceperant, custodire, etiam cum Christo credidissent, non tamen in eis jam constituerent spem salutis; quoniam per Dominum Jesum salus ipsa, quae illis Sacramentis significabatur, advenerat. Ideoque Gentibus, quod insuetos a fide revocarent onere gravi et non necessario, nullo modo imponenda esse censebat (Act. XV, 28).

5. Quapropter non ideo Petrum emendavit, quod paternas traditiones observaret: quod si facere vellet, nec mendaciter nec incongrue faceret; quamvis enim jam superflua, tamen solita non nocerent: sed quoniam Gentes cogebat Judaizare (Gal. II, 14), quod nullo modo posset, nisi ea sic ageret, tanquam adhuc etiam post Domini adventum necessaria saluti forent; quod vehementer per apostolatum Pauli veritas dissuasit. Nec apostolus Petrus hoc ignorabat; sed id faciebat, timens eos qui ex circumcisione erant. Ita et ipse vere correctus est, et Paulus vera narravit, ne sancta Scriptura, quae ad fidem posteris edita est, admissa auctoritate mendacii, tota dubia nutet et fluctuet. Non enim potest aut oportet litteris explicari, quanta et quam inexplicabilia mala consequantur, si hoc concesserimus. Posset autem opportune minusque periculose demonstrari, si coram inter nos colloqueremur.

6. Hoc ergo Judaeorum Paulus dimiserat, quod malum habebant; et in primis illud, quod ignorantes Dei justitiam, et suam justitiam volentes constituere, justitiae Dei non sunt subjecti (Rom. X, 3). Deinde quod post passionem et resurrectionem Christi, dato ac manifestato Sacramento gratiae secundum ordinem Melchisedech, adhuc putabant Sacramenta vetera, non ex consuetudine solemnitatis, sed ex necessitate salutis esse celebranda: quae tamen si nunquam fuissent necessaria, infructuose atque inaniter pro eis Machabaei martyres fierent (II Mach. VII, 1). Postremo istud quod praedicatores gratiae Christianos Judaei tanquam hostes Legis persequebantur. Hos atque hujusmodi errores et vitia, dicit se damna et stercora arbitratum, ut Christum lucrifaceret (Philipp. III, 8,); non observationes Legis, si more patrio celebrarentur, sicut et ab ipso celebratae sunt sine ulla salutis necessitate, non sicut Judaei celebrandas putabant, aut fallaci simulatione, quod in Petro reprehenderat. Nam si propterea illa Sacramenta celebravit, quia simulavit se Judaeum ut illos lucrifaceret; cur non etiam sacrificavit cum Gentibus, quia et iis qui sine Lege erant, tanquam sine Lege factus est, ut eos quoque lucrifaceret, nisi quia et illud fecit, ut natura Judaeus, et hoc totum dixit, non ut fallaciter se fingeret esse quod non erat, sed ut misericorditer eis ita subveniendum 0157 esse sentiret, ac si ipse in eodem errore laboraret; non scilicet mentientis astu, sed compatientis affectu? Sicut eo ipso loco generaliter intulit, Factus sum infirmis infirmus, ut infirmos lucrifacerem (I Cor. IX, 22); ut sequens conclusio, Omnibus omnia factus sum, ut omnes lucrifacerem (Ibid.), ad hoc referenda intelligatur, ut cujusque infirmitatem tanquam in seipso miseratus appareat. Non enim et cum diceret, Quis infirmatur, et ego non infirmor (II Cor. XI, 29)? infirmitatem alterius simulasse se potius quam condoluisse, volebat intelligi.

7. Quare arripe, obsecro te, ingenuam et vere christianam cum charitate severitatem, ad illud opus corrigendum atque emendandum, et παλινῳδίαν, ut dicitur, cane. Incomparabiliter enim pulchrior est veritas Christianorum, quam Helena Graecorum. Pro ista enim fortius nostri martyres adversus hanc Sodomam, quam pro illa illi heroes adversus Trojam, dimicaverunt. Neque hoc ideo dico, ut oculos cordis recipias; quos absit ut amiseris: sed ut advertas, quos cum habeas sanos et vigiles, nescio qua dissimulatione avertisti, ut non intenderes quae consequantur adversa; si semel creditum fuerit, posse honeste ac pie scriptorem divinorum Librorum in aliqua sui operis parte mentiri.

CAPUT V.

8. Scripseram hinc jam aliquando ad te epistolam quae non perlata est, quia nec perrexit cui perferendam tradideram: ex qua illud mihi suggestum est, cum istam dictarem, quod in hac quoque praetermittere non debui, ut si alia est sententia tua, eademque est melior, timori meo libenter ignoscas. Si enim aliter sentis, verumque tu sentis (nam nisi verum sit, melius esse non potest), ut non dicam nulla, certe non magna culpa meus error veritati favet, si recte in quoquam veritas potest favere mendacio.

CAPUT VI.

9. De Origene autem quod rescribere dignatus es, jam sciebam non tantum in ecclesiasticis litteris, sed in omnibus recta et vera quae invenerimus, approbare atque laudare; falsa vero et prava improbare atque reprehendere. Sed illud de prudentia doctrinaque tua desiderabam, et adhuc desidero, ut nota nobis facias ea ipsa ejus errata, quibus a fide veritatis ille vir tantus recessisse convincitur. In libro etiam quo cunctos, quorum meminisse potuisti, scriptores ecclesiasticos et eorum scripta commemorasti, commodius, ut arbitror, fieret, si nominatis eis quos haeresiotas esse nosti, quando ne ipsos quidem praetermittere volueris, subjungeres etiam in quibus cavendi essent: quanquam nonnullos etiam praeterieris; quod scire cuperem quo consilio factum sit. Aut si illud volumen forte onerare noluisti, ut commemoratis haereticis, non adderes in quibus eos catholica damnarit auctoritas; peto ne grave sit litterario labori tuo, quo non mediocriter per Domini Dei nostri gratiam, in latina lingua sanctorum studia et accendisti 0158 et adjuvisti, id quod tibi per humilitatem meam fraterna charitas indicit, ut si occupationes tuae sinunt, omnium haereticorum perversa dogmata, qui rectitudinem fidei christianae usque ad hoc tempus vel impudentia vel imperitia vel pervicacia depravare conati sunt, uno libello breviter digesta edas, in notitiam eorum quibus aut non vacat propter alia negotia, aut non valent propter alienam linguam tam multa legere atque cognoscere. Diu te rogarem, nisi hoc soleret esse indicium minus praesumentis de charitate. Hunc interea fratrem nostrum Paulum in Christo multum commendo benignitati tuae, cujus in nostris regionibus existimationi bonum coram Deo testimonium perhibemus.