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| To Anastasius
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Letter CXLV.
(a.d. 412 or
413.)
To Anastasius, My Holy and Beloved
Lord and Brother, Augustin Sends Greeting in the Lord.
1. A most satisfactory opportunity of saluting your
genuine worth is furnished by our brethren Lupicinus and
Concordialis, honourable servants of God, from whom, even without
my writing, you might learn all that is going on among us here. But
knowing, as I do, how much you love us in Christ, because of your
knowing how warmly your love is reciprocated by us in Him, I was
sure that it might have disappointed you if you had seen them, and
could not but know that they had come directly from us, and were
most intimately united in friendship with us, and yet had received
with them no letter from me. Besides this, I am owing you a reply,
for I am not aware of having written to you since I received your
last letter; so great are the cares by which I am encumbered and
distracted, that I know not whether I have written or not before
now.
2. We desire eagerly to know how you are, and
whether the Lord has given you some rest, so far as in this world
He can bestow it; for “if one member be honoured, all the members
rejoice with it;”2586
and so it is almost always our
experience, that when, in the midst of our anxieties, we turn our
thoughts to some of our brethren placed in a condition of
comparative rest, we are in no small measure revived, as if in them
we ourselves enjoyed a more peaceful and tranquil life. At the same
time, when vexatious cares are multiplied in this uncertain life,
they compel us to long for the everlasting rest. For this world is
more dangerous to us in pleasant than in painful hours, and is to
be guarded against more when it allures us to love it than when it
warns and constrains us to despise it. For although “all that is
in the world” is “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life,”2587
nevertheless, even in the case of
men who prefer to these the things which are spiritual, unseen, and
eternal, the sweetness of earthly things insinuates itself into our
affections, and accompanies our steps on the path of duty with its
seductive allurements. For the violence with which present things
acquire sway over our weakness is exactly proportioned to the
superior value by which future things command our love. And oh that
those who have learned to observe and bewail this may succeed in
overcoming and escaping from this power of terrestrial things! Such
victory and emancipation cannot, without God’s
grace, be achieved by the human will, which is by no means to be
called free so long as it is subject to prevailing and enslaving
lusts; “For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought
in bondage.”2588
And the
Son of God has Himself said, “If the Son shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed.”2589
3. The law, therefore, by teaching and
commanding what cannot be fulfilled without grace, demonstrates to
man his weakness, in order that the weakness thus proved may resort
to the Saviour, by whose healing the will may be able to do what in
its feebleness it found impossible. So, then, the law brings us to
faith, faith obtains the Spirit in fuller measure, the Spirit sheds
love abroad in us, and love fulfils the law. For this reason the
law is called a “schoolmaster,”2590
under whose threatenings and
severity “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
delivered.”2591
But how
shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?”2592
Wherefore
unto them that believe and call on Him the quickening Spirit is
given, lest the letter without the Spirit should kill them.2593
But by the
Holy Ghost, which is given unto us, the love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts,2594
so that
the words of the same apostle, “Love is the fulfilling of the
law,”2595
are
realized. So the law is good to the man who uses it lawfully;2596
and he
uses it lawfully who, understanding wherefore it was given, betakes
himself, under the pressure of its threatenings, to grace, which
sets him free. Whoever unthankfully despises this grace, by which
the ungodly are justified, and trusts in his own strength, as if he
thereby could fulfil the law, being ignorant of God’s
righteousness, and going about to establish his own righteousness,
is not submitting himself to the righteousness of God;2597
and thus
the law becomes to him not a help to pardon, but the bond fastening
his guilt to him. Not that the law is evil, but because sin worketh
death in such persons by that which is good.2598
For by occasion of the commandment
he sins more grievously who, by the commandment, knows how evil are
the sins which he commits.
4. In vain, however, does any one think
himself to have gained the victory over sin, if, through nothing
but fear of punishment, he refrains from sin; because, although the
outward action to which an evil desire prompts him is not
performed, the evil desire itself within the man is an enemy
unsubdued. And who is found innocent in God’s sight who is
willing to do the sin which is forbidden if you only remove the
punishment which is feared? And consequently, even in the volition
itself, he is guilty of sin who wishes to do what is unlawful, but
refrains from doing it because it cannot be done with impunity;
for, so far as he is concerned, he would prefer that there were no
righteousness forbidding and punishing sins. And assuredly, if he
would prefer that there should be no righteousness, who can doubt
that he would if he could abolish it altogether? How, then, can
that man be called righteous who is such an enemy to righteousness
that, if he had the power, he would abolish its authority, that he
might not be subject to its threatenings or its penalties? He,
then, is an enemy to righteousness who refrains from sin only
through fear of punishment; but he will become the friend of
righteousness if through love of it he sin not, for then he will be
really afraid to sin. For the man who only fears the flames of hell
is afraid not of sinning, but of being burned; but the man who
hates sin as much as he hates hell is afraid to sin. This is the
“fear of the Lord,” which “is pure, enduring for ever.”2599
For the
fear of punishment has torment, and is not in love; and love, when
it is perfect, casts it out.2600
5. Moreover, every one hates sin just in
proportion as he loves righteousness; which he will be enabled to
do not through the law putting him in fear by the letter of its
prohibitions, but by the Spirit healing him by grace. Then that is
done which the apostle enjoins in the admonition, “I speak after
the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye
have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity
unto iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to
righteousness unto holiness.”2601
For what is the force of the
conjunctions “as” and “even so,” if it be not this: “As
no fear compelled you to sin, but the desire for it, and the
pleasure taken in sin, even so let not the fear of punishment drive
you to a life of righteousness; but let the pleasure found in
righteousness and the love you bear to it draw you to practise
it”? And even this is, as it seems to me, a righteousness, so to
speak, somewhat mature, but not perfect. For he would not have
prefaced the admonition with the words, “I speak after the manner
of men because of the infirmity of your flesh,” had there not
been something else that ought to have been said if they had been
by that time able to bear it. For surely more devoted service is
due to righteousness than men are wont to yield to sin. For
pain of body restrains men, if not from the desire of sin, at least
from the commission of sinful actions; and we should not easily
find any one who would openly commit a sin procuring to him an
impure and unlawful gratification, if it was certain that the
penalty of torture would immediately follow the crime. But
righteousness ought to be so loved that not even bodily sufferings
should hinder us from doing its works, but that, even when we are
in the hands of cruel enemies, our good works should so shine
before men that those who are capable of taking pleasure therein
may glorify our Father who is in heaven.2602
6. Hence it comes that that most devoted lover
of righteousness exclaims, “Who shall separate us from the love
of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (As it is written, For
Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep
for the slaughter.) Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”2603
Observe
how he does not say simply, “Who shall separate us from
Christ?” but, indicating that by which we cling to Christ, he
says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” We cling
to Christ, then, by love, not by fear of punishment. Again, after
having enumerated those things which seem to be sufficiently
fierce, but have not sufficient force to effect a separation, he
has, in the conclusion, called that the love of God which he had
previously spoken of as the love of Christ. And what is this
“love of Christ” but love of righteousness? for it is said of
Him that He “is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness,
and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is
written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”2604
As,
therefore he is superlatively wicked who is not deterred even by
the penalty of bodily sufferings from the vile works of sordid
pleasure, so is he superlatively righteous who is not restrained
even by the fear of bodily sufferings from the holy works of most
glorious love.
7. This love of God, which must be maintained
by unremitting, devout meditation, “is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us,”2605
so that he who glories in it must
glory in the Lord. Forasmuch, therefore, as we feel ourselves to be
poor and destitute of that love by which the law is most truly
fulfilled, we ought not to expect and demand its riches from our
own indigence, but to ask, seek, and knock in prayer, that He with
whom is “the fountain of life” “may satisfy us abundantly
with the fatness of His house, and make us drink of the river of
His pleasures,”2606
so that, watered and revived by
its full flood, we may not only escape from being swallowed up by
sorrow, but may even “glory in tribulations: knowing that
tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and
experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed;”—not that we can
do this of ourselves, but “because the love of God is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us.”2607
8. It has been a pleasure to me to say, at
least by a letter, these things which I could not say when you were
present. I write them, not in reference to yourself, for you do not
affect high things, but are contented with that which is lowly,2608
but in
reference to some who arrogate too much to the human will,
imagining that, the law being given, the will is of its own
strength sufficient to fulfil that law, though not assisted by any
grace imparted by the Holy Spirit, in addition to instruction in
the law; and by their reasonings they persuade the wretched and
impoverished weakness of man to believe that it is not our duty to
pray that we may not enter into temptation. Not that they dare
openly to say this; but this is, whether they acknowledge it or
not, an inevitable consequence of their doctrine.2609
| 2609 The heresy of Pelagius is obviously alluded to
here as having begun thus early (A.D. 413)
to command attention. | For
wherefore is it said to us, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not
into temptation;”2610
and wherefore was it that, when He
was teaching us to pray, He prescribed, in accordance with this
injunction, the use of the petition “lead us not into
temptation,”2611
if this be
wholly in the power of the will of man, and does not require the
help of divine grace in order to its accomplishment?
Why should I say more? Salute the brethren who
are with you, and pray for us, that we may be saved with that
salvation of which it is said, “They that are whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the
righteous, but sinners.”2612
Pray, therefore, for us that we
may be righteous,—an attainment wholly beyond a man’s reach,
unless he know righteousness and be willing to practise it, but one
which is immediately realized when he is perfectly willing; but
this full consent of his will can never be in him unless he is healed and assisted
by the grace of the Spirit.
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