escape from these perplexities into the atmos- ing to reach, passed into His service. Thus the whole supremacy of authority and light of reason for regenerating and reforming the human race has been made to reside in the one saving Name, and in His one Church.

phere of perfectly pure and simple truth. It becomes us, moreover, to yield submission to His authority all the more unreservedly, when we see that in our day no error dares to lift up itself to rally round it the uninstructed crowd 34. I do not at all regret that I have stated without seeking the shelter of the Christian these things at great length in this letter, although name, and that of all who, belonging to an perhaps you would have preferred that I had earlier age, now remain outside of the Christian taken another course; for the more progress name, those alone continue to have in their that you make in the truth, the more will you obscure assemblies a considerable attendance approve what I have written, and you will then who retain the Scriptures by which, however approve of my counsel, though now you do not they may pretend not to see or understand it, think it helpful to your studies. At the same the Lord Jesus Christ Himself was prophetically time, I have, to the best of my ability, given announced. Moreover, those who, though they answers to your questions, to some of them are not within the Catholic unity and commun- in this letter, and to almost all the rest by brief ion, boast of the name of Christians, are com- annotations on the parchments on which you had pelled to oppose them that believe, and presume sent them. If in these answers you think I to mislead the ignorant by a pretence of appeal- have done too little, or done something else than ing to reason, since the Lord came with this you expected, you do not duly consider, my remedy above all others, that He enjoined on the Dioscorus, to whom you addressed your quesnations the duty of faith. But they are com- tions. I have passed without reply all the quespelled, as I have said, to adopt this policy tions concerning the orator and the books of because they feel themselves most miserably Cicero de Oratore. I would have seemed to overthrown if their authority is compared with myself a contemptible trifler if I had entered on the Catholic authority. They attempt, accord- the exposition of these topics. For I might ingly, to prevail against the firmly-settled author- with propriety be questioned on all the other ity of the immoveable Church by the name and the promises of a pretended appeal to reason. This kind of effrontery is, we may say, characteristic of all heretics. But He who is the most merciful Lord of faith has both secured the Church in the citadel of authority by most famous œcumenical Councils and the Apostolic sees themselves, and furnished her with the abundant armour of equally invincible reason by means of a few men of pious erudition and unfeigned spirituality. The perfection of method in training disciples is, that those who are weak be encouraged to the utmost to enter the citadel of authority, in order that when they have been safely placed there, the conflict necessary for their defence may be maintained with the most strenuous use of reason.

subjects, if any one desired me to handle and expound them, not in connection with the works of Cicero, but by themselves; but in these questions the subjects themselves are not in harmony with my profession now. I would not, however, have done all that I have done in this letter had I not removed from Hippo for a time after the illness under which I laboured when your messenger came to me. Even in these days I have been visited again with interruption of health and with fever, on which account there has been more delay than might otherwise have been in sending these to you. I earnestly beg you to write and let me know how you receive them.

LETTER CXXII.
(A.D. 410.)

TO HIS WELL-BELOVED BRETHREN THE CLERGY, AND
TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE [OF HIPPO], AUGUSTIN

SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

33. The Platonists, however, who, amidst the errors of false philosophies assailing them at that time on all sides, rather concealed their own doctrine to be searched for than brought it into the light to be vilified, as they had no divine personage to command faith, began to exhibit 1. In the first place, I beseech you, my and unfold the doctrines of Plato after the name friends, and implore you, for Christ's sake, not of Christ had become widely known to the won- to let my bodily absence grieve you. For I dering and troubled kingdoms of this world. suppose you do not imagine that I could by any Then flourished at Rome the school of Plotinus, means be separated in spirit and in unfeigned which had as scholars many men of great acute- love from you, although perchance it is even a ness and ability. But some of them were cor- greater grief to me than to you that my weakrupted by curious inquiries into magic, and ness unfits me for bearing all the cares which are others, recognising in the Lord Jesus Christ the laid on me by those members of Christ to whose impersonation of that essential and immutable service both fear of Him and love to them conTruth and Wisdom which they were endeavour-strain me to devote myself. For you know this,

were proposing to store up on earth, in order that, if any accident common to the lot of men occur, he may rejoice who has escaped from a dwelling doomed to ruin; and if, on the other hand, nothing of this kind happen, he may be

he may, has committed his possessions to the keeping of the ever-living Lord, to whom he is about to go. Wherefore, my dearly-beloved brethren, let every one of you, according to his ability, of which he himself is the best judge, do with a portion of his substance as ye were wont to do; do it also with a more willing mind than ye were wont; and amid all the vexations of this life bear in your hearts the apostolic exhortation: "The Lord is at hand: be careful for nothing." Let such things be reported to me concerning you as may make me understand that it is not through my presence with you, but from obedience to the precept of God, who is never absent, that you follow that good practice which for many years while I was with you, and for some time after my departure, you observed. May the Lord preserve you in peace! And, dearly-beloved brethren, pray for us.

my beloved, that I have never absented myself to the treasury of heaven the goods which they from you through self-indulgent taking of ease, but only when compelled by such duties as have made it necessary for some of my holy colleagues and brethren to endure, both on the sea and in countries beyond the sea, labours from which I was exempted, not because of reluc- exempt from painful solicitude who, die when tance of spirit, but by reason of imperfect bodily health. Wherefore, my dearly-beloved brethren, act so that, as the apostle says, "whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel." If any vexation pertaining to time causes you distress, this itself ought the more to remind you how you should occupy your thoughts with that life in which you may live without any burden, escaping not the annoying hardships of this short life, but the dread flames of eternal fire. For if ye strive with so much anxiety, so much earnestness, and so much labour, to save yourselves from falling into some transient sufferings in this world, how solicitous ought you to be to escape everlasting misery! And if the death which puts an end to the labours of time is so feared, how ought we to fear the death which ushers men into eternal pain! And if the short-lived and sordid pleasures of this world are so loved, with how much greater earnestness ought we to seek the pure and infinite joys of the world to come! Meditating upon these things, be not slothful in good works, that ye may come in due season to reap what you have sown.

LETTER CXXIII.

(A.D. 410.)

[FROM JEROME TO AUGUSTIN.]

2. It has been reported to me that you have There are many who go halting upon both forgotten your custom of providing raiment for feet, and refuse to bend their heads even when the poor, to which work of charity I exhorted their necks are broken, persisting in adherence you when I was present with you; and I now to their former errors, even though they have exhort you not to allow yourselves to be over- not their former liberty of proclaiming them. come and made slothful by the tribulation of Respectful salutations are sent to you by the this world, which you see now visited with such holy brethren who are with your humble servant, calamities as were foretold by our Lord and and especially by your pious and venerable Redeemer, who cannot lie. You ought in pres- daughters.3 I beg your Excellency to salute in ent circumstances not to be less diligent in works my name your brethren my lord Alypius and my of charity, but rather to be more abundant in lord Evodius. Jerusalem is held captive by these than you were wont to be. For as men Nebuchadnezzar, and refuses to listen to the betake themselves in greater haste to a place of counsels of Jeremiah, preferring to look wistgreater security when they see in the shaking fully towards Egypt, that it may die in Tahof their walls the ruin of their house impending, panhes, and perish there in eternal bondage.4 so ought Christians, the more that they perceive, from the increasing frequency of their afflictions, that the destruction of this world is at hand, to be the more prompt and active in transferring

Phil. i. 27.

2 Phil. iv. 5, 6.

3 Paula, Eustochium, and other recluses of Bethlehem.

enigmatical allusion to the events recorded in Jeremiah, chap. xlui. Some think that Jerome refers to Rome, then occupied by the Goths.

4 Two opinions have been advanced as to the signification of this

Others find here a reference to the state of the Church at Jerusalem at the time; perhaps under the name of Nebuchadnezzar some heretical bishop is designed.

THIRD DIVISION.

LETTERS WHICH WERE WRITTEN BY AUGUSTIN AFTER THE TIME OF THE CONFERENCE WITH THE DONATISTS AND THE RISE OF THE PELAGIAN HERESY IN AFRICA; I.E., DURING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE (A.D. 411-430).

LETTER CXXIV.

(A.D. 411.)

TO ALBINA, PINIANUS, AND MELANIA,' HONOURED IN
THE LORD, BELOVED IN HOLINESS AND LONGED

chance, to repeat it to others, lest it should be disbelieved.

2. I shall therefore tell you the reason why I have not come, and the trials by which I have been kept back from so great a privilege, that I

FOR IN BROTHERLY AFFECTION, AUGUSTIN SENDS may obtain not only your forgiveness, but also,

GREETING IN THE LORD.

through your prayers, the mercy of Him who so works in you that ye live to Him. The congregation of Hippo, whom the Lord has ordained me to serve, is in great measure, and almost wholly, of a constitution so infirm, that the pressure of even a comparatively light affliction might seriously endanger its well-being; at pressent, however, it is smitten with tribulation so overwhelming, that, even were it strong, it could scarcely survive the imposition of the burden. Moreover, when I returned to it recently, I found it offended to a most dangerous degree by my absence; and you, over whose spiritual strength we rejoice in the Lord, can with healthful taste relish and approve the saying of Paul: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?" I feel this espe cially because there are many here who by disparaging us attempt to excite against us the minds of the others by whom we seem to be loved, in order that they may make room in them for the devil. But when those whose salvation is our care are angry with us, their strong determination to take vengeance on us is only an unreasonable desire for bringing death to themselves, - not the death of the body, but of the soul, in which the fact of death discovers itself mysteriously by the odour of corruption before it is possible for our care to foresee and provide against it.

1. I AM, whether through present infirmity or by natural temperament, very susceptible of cold; nevertheless, it would not be possible for me to suffer greater heat than I have done throughout this exceptionally dreadful winter, having been kept in a fever by distress because I have been unable, I do not say to hasten, but to fly to you (to visit whom it would have been fitting for me to fly across the seas), after you had been settled so near to me, and had come from so remote a land to see me. It may be, also, that you have supposed the rigorous weather of this winter to be the only cause of my suffering this disappointment; I pray you, beloved, give no place to this thought. For what inconvenience, hardship, or even danger, can these heavy rains bring, which I would not have encountered and endured in order to make my way to you, who are such comforters to us in our great calamities, and who, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, are lights kindled into vehement flame by the Supreme Light, raised aloft by lowliness of spirit, and deriving more glorious lustre from the glory which you have despised? Moreover, I would have enjoyed participation in the spiritual felicity vouchsafed to my earthly birthplace, in that it has been permitted to have you present, of whom when absent its citizens had heard much so Doubtless you will readily excuse this anxiety much, indeed, that although giving charitable on my part, especially because, if you were discredence to the report of what you were by na- pleased and wished to punish me, you could perture and had become by grace, they feared, perhaps invent no severer pain than what I already

The name Melania, though now almost as little known to the have assigned the designation, was in the time of Augustin highly world at large as the fossil univalve molluscs to which paleontologists esteemed throughout Christendom. The elder Melania, a lady of rank and affluence, left Rome when it was threatened by Alaric, and spent thirty-seven years in the East, returning to the city in 445 A.D. Her daughter-in-law, Albina, and her grand-daughter, the younger Melania (whose husband was the Pinianus mentioned here and in the two following letters), left Rome with her in 408 A.D., and after spending two years in Sicily, passed over into Africa, and fixed their residence at Thagaste, the native town of St. Augustin. A visit which they paid to him at Hippo was the occasion of the extraordinary proceedings referred to in Letters CXXV. and CXXVI.

suffer in not seeing you at Thagaste. I trust, however, that, assisted by your prayers, I may been removed with all speed to come to you, in be permitted when the present hindrance has whatsoever part of Africa you may be, if this town in which I labour is not worthy (and I do not presume to pronounce it worthy) to be along with us made joyful by your presence.

2 2 Cor. xi. 29.

LETTER CXXV.

(A.D. 411.)

TO ALYPIUS, MY LORD MOST BLESSED AND BROTHER
BELOVED WITH ALL REVERENCE, AND MY PART-
NER IN THE PRIESTLY OFFICE, AND TO THE
BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM, AUGUSTIN AND

THE BRETHREN WHO ARE WITH HIM SEND GREET-
ING IN THE LORD.

and so much beloved by us? It is by the ignorant multitude that such things have been thought concerning you, but I am the victim of similar Church; you may see, therefore, which of us suspicions from those who are the lights of the has the greater cause for grief. It seems to me that both cases call, not for invectives, but for remedial measures; for they are men, and their suspicions are of men, and therefore such things as they suspect, though they may be false, are not 1. We are deeply grieved, and can by no incredible. Persons such as these are of course means regard it as a small matter, that the peo- not so foolish as to believe that the people are ple of Hippo clamorously said so much to the coveting their money, especially after their expedisparagement of your Holiness; but, my good rience that the people of Thagaste obtained none brother, their clamorous utterance of these of their money, from which it was certain that things is not so great a cause for grief as the the people of Hippo would also obtain none. fact that we are, without open accusation, Nay, all the violence of this odium comes against deemed guilty of similar things. For when we the clergy alone, and especially against the bishare believed to be actuated in retaining God's ops, whose authority is visibly pre-eminent, and servants among us, not by love of righteousness, who are supposed to use and enjoy as owners but by love of money, is it not to be desired and lords the property of the Church. My dear that persons who believe this concerning us Alypius, let not the weak be encouraged through should with their voices avow what is hidden in our example to cherish this pernicious and fatal their hearts, and so obtain, if possible, remedies covetousness. Call to mind what we said to each great in proportion to the disease, rather than other before the occurrence of this temptation, silently perish under the venom of these fatal which makes the duty all the more urgent. Let suspicions? Wherefore it ought to be a greater us rather by God's help endeavour to have this care to us (and for this reason we conferred to- difficulty removed by friendly conference, and gether before this happened) to provide how men to whom we are commanded to be examples in good works may be convinced that there is no ground for suspicions which they cherish, than to provide how those may be rebuked who in words give definite utterance to their susty which seeketh not her own, we are bound by picions.

2. Wherefore I am not angry with the pious Albina, nor do I judge her to deserve rebuke; but I think she requires to be cured of such suspicions. It is true that she has not pointed at myself the words to which I refer, but has complained of the people of Hippo, as it were, alleging that their covetousness has been brought to light, and that in desiring to retain among them a man of wealth who was known to despise money, and to give it away freely, they were moved, not by his fitness for the office, but by regard to his ample means; nevertheless, she almost said openly that she had the same suspicion of myself, and not she only, but also her pious son-in-law and daughter, who, on that very day, said the same thing in the apse of the church. In my opinion, it is more necessary that the suspicions of these persons should be removed than that their utterance of them should be rebuked. For where can immunity and rest from such thorns be provided and given to us, if they can sprout forth against us even in the hearts of intimate friends, so pious

I The "absis" was a chapel or recess in the choir, where the bishop was accustomed to stand surrounded by his clergy.

let us not count it sufficient to be guided by our own conscience alone; for this is not one of the cases in which its voice alone is sufficient for our direction. For if we be not unworthy servants of our God, if there live in us a spark of that chari

all means to provide things honest, not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of men, lest while drinking untroubled waters in our own conscience, we be chargeable with treading with incautious feet, and so making the Lord's flock drink from a turbid stream.

3. For as to the proposal in your letter that we should discuss together the obligation of an oath which has been extorted by force, I beseech you, let not the method of our discussion involve in obscurity things which are perfectly clear. For if inevitable death were threatened in order to compel a servant of God to swear that he would do something forbidden by laws both human and divine, it would be his duty to prefer death to such an oath, lest he should be guilty of a crime in fulfilling his oath. But in this case, in which the determined clamour of the people, and only this, was forcing the man, not to a crime, but to that which if it were done would be lawfully done; when, moreover, there was indeed apprehension lest some reckless men, such as are mixed with a multitude even of good men, should through love of rioting break out into some wicked deeds of violence, if they found a pretext for disturbance and for plausibly justifiable indignation, but

4. I by no means dispute the perfect correctness of the maxim, that good faith requires an oath to be kept, not according to the mere words of him who gives it, but according to that 5. As to our clergy and the brethren settled which the person giving the oath knows to in our monastery, I do not know that it can be be the expectation of the person to whom he proved that they either aided or abetted in the swears. For it is very difficult to define in reproaches which were made against you. words, especially in few words, the promise in regard to which security is exacted from him who gives his oath. They, therefore, are guilty of perjury, who, while adhering to the letter of their promise, disappoint the known expectation of those to whom their oath was given; and they are not guilty of perjury, who, even though