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Letter CLXXX.
(a.d. 416.)
To Oceanus, His Deservedly Beloved
Lord and Brother, Honoured Among the Members of Christ, Augustin
Sends Greeting.
1. I received two letters from you at the same time,
in one of which you mention a third, and state that you had sent it
before the others. This letter I do not remember having received,
or, rather, I think I may say the testimony of my memory is, that I
did not receive it; but in regard to those which I have received, I
return you many thanks for your kindness to me. To these I would
have returned an immediate answer, had I not been hurried away by a
constant succession of other matters urgently demanding attention.
Having now found a moment’s leisure from these, I have chosen
rather to send some reply, however imperfect, than continue towards
a friend so true and kind a protracted silence, and become more
annoying to you by saying nothing than by saying too much.
2. I already knew the opinion of the holy
Jerome as to the origin of souls, and had read the words which in
your letter you have quoted from his book. The difficulty which
perplexes some in regard to this question, “How God can justly
bestow souls on the offspring of persons guilty of adultery?”
does not embarrass me, seeing that not even their own sins, much
less the sins of their parents, can prove prejudicial to persons of
virtuous lives, converted to God, and living in faith and piety.
The really difficult question is, if it be true that a new soul
created out of nothing is imparted to each child at its birth, how
can it be that the innumerable souls of those little ones, in
regard to whom God knew with certainty that before attaining the
age of reason, and before being able to know or understand what is
right or wrong, they were to leave the body without being baptized,
are justly given over to eternal death by Him with whom “there is
no unrighteousness!”2823
It is unnecessary to say more on
this subject, since you know what I intend, or rather what I do not
at present intend to say. I think what I have said is enough for a
wise man. If, however, you have either read, or heard from the lips
of Jerome, or received from the Lord when meditating on this
difficult question, anything by which it can be solved, impart it
to me, I beseech you, that I may acknowledge myself under yet
greater obligation to you.
3. As to the question whether lying is in any
case justifiable and expedient, it has appeared to you that it
ought to be solved by the example of our Lord’s saying,
concerning the day and hour of the end of the world, “Neither
doth the Son know it.”2824
When I read this, I was charmed
with it as an effort of your ingenuity; but I am by no means of
opinion that a figurative mode of expression can be rightly termed
a falsehood. For it is no falsehood to call a day joyous because it
renders men joyous, or a lupine harsh because by its bitter flavour
it imparts harshness to the countenance of him who tastes it,
or to say that God knows something when He makes man know it (an
instance quoted by yourself in these words of God to Abraham,
“Now I know that thou fearest God”).2825
These are by no means false
statements, as you yourself readily see. Accordingly, when the
blessed Hilary explained this obscure statement of the Lord, by
means of this obscure kind of figurative language, saying that we
ought to understand Christ to affirm in these words that He knew
not that day with no other meaning than that He, by concealing it,
caused others not to know it, he did not by this explanation of the
statement apologize for it as an excusable falsehood, but he showed
that it was not a falsehood, as is proved by comparing it not only
with these common figures of speech, but also with the metaphor, a
mode of expression very familiar to all in daily conversation. For
who will charge the man who says that harvest fields wave
and children bloom with speaking falsely, because he sees
not in these things the waves and the flowers to which these words
are literally applied?
4. Moreover, a man of your talent and learning
easily perceives how different from these metaphorical expressions
is the statement of the apostle, “When I saw that they walked not
uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter
before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of
the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the
Gentiles to live as do the Jews?”2826
Here there is no obscurity of
figurative language; these are literal words of a plain statement.
Surely, in addressing persons “of whom he travailed in birth till
Christ should be formed in them,”2827
and to whom, in solemnly calling
God to confirm his words, he said: “The things which I write unto
you, behold, before God, I lie not,”2828
the great teacher of the Gentiles
affirmed in the words above quoted either what was true or what was
false; if he said what was false, which God forbid, you see the
consequences which would follow; and Paul’s own assertion of his
veracity, together with the example of wondrous humility in the
Apostle Peter, may warn you to recoil from such thoughts.2829
| 2829 We have left the word ambo in “ambo ista
exhorrescas” untranslated. Critics are agreed that a few words of
the original are probably wanting here, only one alternative of the
dilemma being stated by St. Augustin in the text. |
5. But why say more? This question the
venerable Father Jerome and I have discussed fully in letters2830
| 2830 In Letters XXVIII., XL., LXXV., and LXXXII.,
translated in Letters, pp. 251, 272, 333, 349. | which we
exchanged, and in his latest work, published under the name of
Critobulus, against Pelagius,2831
| 2831 Adversus Pelagium, book i. | he has maintained the same opinion
concerning that transaction and the words of the apostle which, in
accordance with the views of the blessed Cyprian,2832
| 2832 Letters of Cyprian, LXXI. | I myself
have held. In regard to the question as to the origin of souls, I
think there is reasonable ground for inquiry, not as to the giving
of souls to the offspring of adulterous parents, but as to the
condemnation (which God forbid) of those who are innocent. If you
have learned anything from a man of such character and eminence as
Jerome which might form a satisfactory answer to those in
perplexity on this subject, I pray you not to refuse to communicate
it to me. In your correspondence, you have approved yourself so
learned and so affable that it is a rivilege to hold intercourse
with you by letter. I ask you not to delay to send a certain book
by the same man of God, which the presbyter Orosius brought and
gave to you to copy, in which the resurrection of the body is
treated of by him in a manner said to merit distinguished praise.
We have not asked it earlier, because we knew that you had both to
copy and to revise it; but for both of these we think we have now
given you ample time. Live to God, and be mindful of us.
[For translation of Letter CLXXXV. to Count
Boniface, containing an exhaustive history of the Donatist schism,
see Anti-Donatist Writings.]
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