Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Possidius
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter CCXLV.
To Possidius,3011
| 3011 Possidius, a disciple of Augustin, spoken of in
Letter CI. sec. 1, p. 412 was the Bishop of Calama who made the
narrow escape recorded in Letter XCI. sec. 8, p. 379. He was for
forty years an intimate friend of Augustin, was with him at his
death, and wrote his biography. | My Most Beloved Lord and Venerable Brother and Partner
in the Sacerdotal Office, and to the Brethren Who are with Him,
Augustin and the Brethren Who are with Him Send Greeting in the
Lord.
1. It requires more consideration to decide what to
do with those who refuse to obey you, than to discover how to show
them that things which they do are unlawful. Meanwhile, however,
the letter of your Holiness has come upon me when I am exceedingly
pressed with business, and the very hasty departure of the bearer
has made it necessary for me to write you in reply, but has not
given me time to answer as I ought to have done in regard to the
matters on which you have consulted me. Let me say, however, in regard to
ornaments of gold and costly dress, that I would not have you come
to a precipitate decision in the way of forbidding their use,
except in the case of those who, neither being married nor
intending to marry, are bound to consider only how they may please
God. But those who belong to the world have also to consider how
they may in these things please their wives if they be husbands,
their husbands if they be wives;3012
with this limitation, that it is
not becoming even in married women to uncover their hair, since the
apostle commands women to keep their heads covered.3013
As to the
use of pigments by women in colouring the face, in order to have a
ruddier or a fairer complexion, this is a dishonest artifice, by
which I am sure that even their own husbands do not wish to be
deceived; and it is only for their own husbands that women ought to
be permitted to adorn themselves, according to the toleration, not
the injunction, of Scripture. For the true adorning, especially of
Christian men and women, consists not only in the absence of all
deceitful painting of the complexion, but in the possession not of
magnificent golden ornaments or rich apparel, but of a blameless
life.
2. As for the accursed superstition of wearing
amulets (among which the earrings worn by men at the top of the ear
on one side are to be reckoned), it is practised with the view not
of pleasing men, but of doing homage to devils. But who can expect
to find in Scripture express prohibition of every form of wicked
superstition, seeing that the apostle says generally, “I would
not that ye should have fellowship with devils,”3014
and again,
“What concord hath Christ with Belial?”3015
unless, perchance, the fact that
he named Belial, while he forbade in general terms fellowship with
devils, leaves it open for Christians to sacrifice to Neptune,
because we nowhere read an express prohibition of the worship of
Neptune! Meanwhile, let those unhappy people be admonished that, if
they persist in disobedience to salutary precepts, they must at
least forbear from defending their impieties, and thereby involving
themselves in greater guilt. But why should we argue at all with
them if they are afraid to take off their earrings, and are not
afraid to receive the body of Christ while wearing the badge of the
devil?
As to ordaining a man who was baptized in the
Donatist sect, I cannot take the responsibility of recommending you
to do this; it is one thing for you to do it if you are left
without alternative, it is another thing for me to advise that you
should do it.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
