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| To Memor
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Letter CI.
(a.d. 409.)
To Memor,2323
| 2323 We regard Memori, not Memorio, as the true
reading. | My Lord Most Blessed, and with All Veneration Most
Beloved, My Brother and Colleague Sincerely Longed For, Augustin
Sends Greeting in the Lord.
1. I ought not to write any letter to your holy
Charity, without sending at the same time those books which by the
irresistible plea of holy love you have demanded from me, that at
least by this act of obedience I might reply to those letters by
which you have put on me a high honour indeed, but also a heavy
load. Albeit, while I bend because of the load, I am raised up
because of your love. For it is not by an ordinary man that I am
loved and raised up and made to stand erect, but by a man who is a
priest of the Lord, and whom I know to be so accepted before Him,
that when you raise to the Lord your good heart, having me in your
heart, you raise me with yourself to Him. I ought, therefore, to
have sent at this time those books which I had promised to revise.
The reason why I have not sent them is that I have not revised
them, and this not because I was unwilling, but because I was
unable, having been occupied with many very urgent cares. But it
would have shown inexcusable ingratitude and hardness of heart to
have permitted the bearer, my holy colleague and brother Possidius,
in whom you will find one who is very much the same as myself,
either to miss becoming acquainted with you, who love me so much,
or to come to know you without any letter from me. For he is one
who has been by my labours nourished, not in those studies which
men who are the slaves of every kind of passion call liberal, but
with the Lord’s bread, in so far as this could be supplied to him
from my scanty store.
2. For to men who, though they are unjust and
impious, imagine that they are well educated
in the liberal arts, what else
ought we to say than what we read in those writings which truly
merit the name of liberal,—“if the Son shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed.”2324
For it is through Him that men
come to know, even in those studies which are termed liberal by
those who have not been called to this true liberty, anything in
them which deserves the name. For they have nothing which is
consonant with liberty, except that which in them is consonant with
truth; for which reason the Son Himself hath said: “The truth
shall make you free.”2325
The freedom which is our privilege
has therefore nothing in common with the innumerable and impious
fables with which the verses of silly poets are full, nor with the
fulsome and highly-polished falsehoods of their orators, nor, in
fine, with the rambling subtleties of philosophers themselves, who
either did not know anything of God, or when they knew God, did not
glorify Him as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; so that,
professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed
the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to
corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts, and to
creeping things, or who, though not wholly or at all devoted to the
worship of images, nevertheless worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator.2326
Far be it, therefore, from us to
admit that the epithet liberal is justly bestowed on the lying
vanities and hallucinations, or empty trifles and conceited errors
of those men—unhappy men, who knew not the grace of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord, by which alone we are “delivered from the body of
this death,”2327
and who
did not even perceive the measure of truth which was in the things
which they knew. Their historical works, the writers of which
profess to be chiefly concerned to be accurate in narrating events,
may perhaps, I grant, contain some things worthy of being known by
“free” men, since the narration is true, whether the subject
described in it be the good or the evil in human experience. At the
same time, I can by no means see how men who were not aided in
their knowledge by the Holy Spirit, and who were obliged to gather
floating rumours under the limitations of human infirmity, could
avoid being misled in regard to very many things; nevertheless, if
they have no intention of deceiving, and do not mislead other men
otherwise than so far as they have themselves, through human
infirmity, fallen into a mistake, there is in such writings an
approach to liberty.
3. Forasmuch, however, as the powers belonging
to numbers2328
| 2328 Quid numeri valeant. | in all
kinds of movements are most easily studied as they are presented in
sounds, and this study furnishes a way of rising to the higher
secrets of truth, by paths gradually ascending, so to speak, in
which Wisdom pleasantly reveals herself, and in every step of
providence meets those who love her,2329
desired, when I began to have
leisure for study, and my mind was not engaged by greater and more
important cares, to exercise myself by writing those books which
you have requested me to send. I then wrote six books on rhythm
alone, and proposed, I may add, to write other six on music,2330
as I at
that time expected to have leisure. But from the time that the
burden of ecclesiastical cares was laid upon me, all these
recreations have passed from my hand so completely, that now, when
I cannot but respect your wish and command,—for it is more than a
request,—I have difficulty in even finding what I had written.
If, however, I had it in my power to send you that treatise, it
would occasion regret, not to me that I had obeyed your command,
but to you that you had so urgently insisted upon its being sent.
For five books of it are all but unintelligible, unless one be at
hand who can in reading not only distinguish the part belonging to
each of those between whom the discussion is maintained, but also
mark by enunciation the time which the syllables should occupy, so
that their distinctive measures may be expressed and strike the
ear, especially because in some places there occur pauses of
measured length, which of course must escape notice, unless the
reader inform the hearer of them by intervals of silence where they
occur.
The sixth book, however, which I have found
already revised, and in which the product of the other five is
contained, I have not delayed to send to your Charity; it may,
perhaps, be not wholly unsuited to one of your venerable age.2331
As to the
other five books, they seem to me scarcely worthy of being known
and read by Julian,2332
| 2332 Julian, son of Memor, afterwards a leading
supporter of the Pelagian heresy. | our son, and now our colleague,
for, as a deacon, he is engaged in the same warfare with ourselves.
Of him I dare not say, for it would not be true, that I love him
more than I love you; yet this I may say, that I long for him more
than for you. It may seem strange, that when I love both equally, I
long more ardently for the one than the other; but the cause of the
difference is, that I have greater hope of seeing him; for I think
that if ordered or sent by you he come to us, he will both be doing
what is suitable
to one of his years, especially as he is not yet hindered by
weightier responsibilities, and he will more speedily bring
yourself to me.
I have not stated in this treatise the kinds of
metre in which the lines of David’s Psalms are composed, because
I do not know them. For it was not possible for any one, in
translating these from the Hebrew (of which language I know
nothing), to preserve the metre at the same time, lest by the
exigencies of the measure he should be compelled to depart from
accurate translation further than was consistent with the meaning
of the sentences. Nevertheless, I believe, on the testimony of
those who are acquainted with that language, that they are composed
in certain varieties of metre; for that holy man loved sacred
music, and has more than any other kindled in me a passion for its
study.
May the shadow of the wings of the Most High
be for ever the dwelling-place2333
of you all, who with oneness of
heart occupy one home,2334
| 2334 Ps. lxviii. 6, Septuagint. | father and mother, bound in the
same brotherhood with your sons, being all the children of the one
Father. Remember us.
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