Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Casulanus
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter XXXVI.
(a.d. 396.)
To My Brother and Fellow-Presbyter
Casulanus, Most Beloved and Longed For, Augustin Sends Greeting in
the Lord.
Chap. I.
1. I know not how it was that I did not reply to
your first letter; but I know that my neglect was not owing to want
of esteem for you. For I take pleasure in your studies, and even in
the words in which you express your thoughts; and it is my desire
as well as advice that you make great attainments in your early
years in the word of God, for the edification of the Church. Having
now received a second letter from you, in which you plead for an
answer on the most just and amiable ground of that brotherly love
in which we are one, I have resolved no longer to postpone the
gratification of the desire expressed by your love; and although in
the midst of most engrossing business, I address myself to
discharge the debt due to you.
2. As to the question on which you wish my
opinion, “whether it is lawful to fast on the seventh day of the
week,”1569
I answer,
that if it were wholly unlawful, neither Moses nor Elijah, nor our
Lord Himself, would have fasted for forty successive days. But by
the same argument it is proved that even on the Lord’s day
fasting is not unlawful. And yet, if any one were to think that the
Lord’s day should be appointed a day of fasting, in the same way
as the seventh day is observed by some, such a man would be
regarded, and not unjustly, as bringing a great cause of offence
into the Church. For in those things concerning which the divine
Scriptures have laid down no definite rule, the custom of the
people of God, or the practices instituted by their fathers, are to
be held as the law of the Church.1570
| 1570 We give the ipsissima verba of this canon:
“In his enim rebus de quibus nihil certi statuit Scriptura divina
mos populi Dei vel instituta majorum pro lege tenenda sunt.” | If we choose to fall into a debate
about these things, and to denounce one party merely because their
custom differs from that of others, the consequence must be an
endless contention, in which the utmost care is necessary lest the
storm of conflict overcast with clouds the calmness of brotherly
love, while strength is spent in mere controversy which cannot
adduce on either side any decisive testimonies of truth. This
danger the author has not been careful to avoid, whose prolix
dissertation you deemed worth sending to me with your former
letter, that I might answer his arguments.
Chap. II.
3. I have not at my disposal sufficient
leisure to enter on the refutation of his opinions one by one: my
time is demanded by other and more important work. But if you
devote a little more carefully to this treatise of an anonymous
Roman author,1571
| 1571 In the text the name is Urbicus, from Urbs
Roma. | the
talents which by your letters you prove yourself to possess, and
which I greatly love in you as God’s gift, you will see that he
has not hesitated to wound by his most injurious language almost
the whole Church of Christ, from the rising of the sun to its going
down. Nay, I may say not almost, but absolutely, the whole Church.
For he is found to have not even spared the Roman Christians, whose
custom he seems to himself to defend; but he is not aware how the
force of his invectives recoils upon them, for it has escaped his
observation. For when arguments to prove the obligation to fast on the
seventh day of the week fail him, he enters on a vehement
blustering protest against the excesses of banquets and drunken
revelries, and the worst licence of intoxication, as if there were
no medium between fasting and rioting. Now if this be admitted,
what good can fasting on Saturday do to the Romans? since on the
other days on which they do not fast they must be presumed,
according to his reasoning, to be gluttonous, and given to excess
in wine. If, therefore, there is any difference between loading the
heart with surfeiting and drunkenness, which is always sinful, and
relaxing the strictness of fasting, with due regard to
self-restraint and temperance on the other, which is done on the
Lord’s day without censure from any Christian,—if, I say, there
is a difference between these two things, let him first mark the
distinction between the repasts of saints and the excessive eating
and drinking of those whose god is their belly, lest he charge the
Romans themselves with belonging to the latter class on the days on
which they do not fast; and then let him inquire, not whether it is
lawful to indulge in drunkenness on the seventh day of the week,
which is not lawful on the Lord’s day, but whether it is
incumbent on us to fast on the seventh day of the week, which we
are not wont to do on the Lord’s day.
4. This question I would wish to see him
investigate, and resolve in such a manner as would not involve him
in the guilt of openly speaking against the whole Church diffused
throughout the world, with the exception of the Roman Christians,
and hitherto a few of the Western communities. Is it, I ask, to be
endured among the entire Eastern Christian communities, and many of
those in the West, that this man should say of so many and so
eminent servants of Christ, who on the seventh day of the week
refresh themselves soberly and moderately with food, that they
“are in the flesh, and cannot please God;” and that of them it
is written, “Let the wicked depart from me, I will not know their
way;” and that they make their belly their god, that they prefer
Jewish rites to those of the Church, and are sons of the bondwoman;
that they are governed not by the righteous law of God, but by
their own good pleasure, consulting their own appetites instead of
submitting to salutary restraint; also that they are carnal, and
savour of death, and other such charges, which if he had uttered
against even one servant of God, who would listen to him, who would
not be bound to turn away from him? But now, when he assails with
such reproachful and abusive language the Church bearing fruit and
increasing throughout the whole world, and in almost all places
observing no fast on the seventh day of the week, I warn him,
whoever he is, to beware. For in wishing to conceal from me his
name, you plainly showed your unwillingness that I should judge
him.
Chap. III.
5. “The Son of man,” he says, “is Lord
of the Sabbath, and in that day it is by all means lawful to do
good rather than do evil.”1572
If, therefore, we do evil when we
break our fast, there is no Lord’s day upon which we live as we
should. As to his admission that the apostles did eat upon the
seventh day of the week, and his remark upon this, that the time
for their fasting had not then come, because of the Lord’s own
words, “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken
away from them, and then shall the children of the Bridegroom
fast;”1573
since
there is “a time to rejoice, and a time to mourn,”1574
he ought
first to have observed, that our Lord was speaking there of fasting
in general, but not of fasting upon the seventh day. Again, when he
says that by fasting grief is signified, and that by food joy is
represented, why does he not reflect what it was which God designed
to signify by that which is written, “that He rested on the
seventh day from all His works,”—namely, that joy, and not
sorrow, was set forth in that rest? Unless, perchance, he intends
to affirm that in God’s resting and hallowing of the Sabbath, joy
was signified to the Jews, but grief to the Christians. But God did
not lay down a rule concerning fasting or eating on the seventh day
of the week, either at the time of His hallowing that day because
in it He rested from His works, or afterwards, when He gave
precepts to the Hebrew nation concerning the observance of that
day. The only thing enjoined on man there is, that he abstain from
doing work himself, or requiring it from his servants. And the
people of the former dispensation, accepting this rest as a shadow
of things to come, obeyed the command by such abstinence from work
as we now see practised by the Jews; not, as some suppose, through
their being carnal, and misunderstanding what the Christians
rightly understand. Nor do we understand this law better than the
prophets, who, at the time when this was still binding, observed
such rest on the Sabbath as the Jews believe ought to be observed
to this day. Hence also it was that God commanded them to stone to
death a man who had gathered sticks on the Sabbath;1575
but we
nowhere read of any one being stoned, or deemed worthy of any
punishment whatever, for either fasting or eating on the Sabbath.
Which of the two is more in keeping with rest, and which with toil,
let our author himself decide, who has regarded joy as the portion
of those
who eat, and sorrow as the portion of those who fast, or at least
has understood that these things were so regarded by the Lord,
when, giving answer concerning fasting, He said: “Can the
children of the bride-chamber mourn as long as the Bridegroom is
with them?”1576
6. Moreover, as to his assertion, that the reason of
the apostles eating on the seventh day (a thing forbidden by the
tradition of the elders) was, that the time for their fasting on
that day had not come; I ask, if the time had not then come for the
abolition of the Jewish rest from work on that day? Did not the
tradition of the elders prohibit fasting on the one hand, and
enjoin rest on the other? and.yet the disciples of Christ, of whom
we read that they did eat on the Sabbath, did on the same day pluck
the ears of corn, which was not then lawful, because forbidden by
the tradition of the elders. Let him therefore consider whether it
might not with more reason be said in reply to him, that the Lord
desired to have these two things, the plucking of the ears of corn
and the taking of food, done in the same day by His disciples, for
this reason, that the former action might confute those who would
prohibit all work on the seventh day, and the latter action confute
those who would enjoin fasting on the seventh day; since by the
former action He taught that the rest from labour was now, through
the change in the dispensation, an act of superstition; and by the
latter He intimated His will, that under both dispensations the
matter of fasting or not was left to every man’s choice. I do not
say this by way of argument in support of my view, but only to show
how, in answer to him, things much more forcible than what he has
spoken might be advanced.
Chap. IV.
7. “How shall we,” says our author,
“escape sharing the condemnation of the Pharisee, if we fast
twice in the week?”1577
As if the Pharisee had been
condemned for fasting twice in the week, and not for proudly
vaunting himself above the publican. He might as well say that
those also are condemned with that Pharisee, who give a tenth of
all their possessions to the poor, for he boasted of this among his
other works; whereas I would that it were done by many Christians,
instead of a very small number, as we find. Or let him say, that
whosoever is not an unjust man, or adulterer, or extortioner, must
be condemned with that Pharisee, because he boasted that he was
none of these; but the man who could think thus is, beyond
question, beside himself. Moreover, if these things which the
Pharisee mentioned as found in him, being admitted by all to be
good in themselves, are not to be retained with the haughty
boastfulness which was manifest in him, but are to be retained with
the lowly piety which was not in him; by the same rule, to fast
twice in the week is in a man such as the Pharisee unprofitable,
but is in one who has humility and faith a religious service.
Moreover, after all, the Scripture does not say that the Pharisee
was condemned, but only that the publican was “justified rather
than the other.”
8. Again, when our author insists upon
interpreting, in connection with this matter, the words of the
Lord, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom
of heaven,”1578
and thinks
that we cannot fulfil this precept unless we fast oftener than
twice in the week, let him mark well that there are seven days in
the week. If, then, from these any one subtract two, not fasting on
the seventh day nor on the Lord’s day, there remain five days in
which he may surpass the Pharisee, who fasts but twice in the week.
For I think that if any man fast three times in the week, he
already surpasses the Pharisee who fasted but twice. And if a fast
is observed four times, or even so often as five times, passing
over only the seventh day and the Lord’s day without fasting,—a
practice observed by many through their whole lifetime, especially
by those who are settled in monasteries,—by this not the Pharisee
alone is surpassed in the labour of fasting, but that Christian
also whose custom is to fast on the fourth, and sixth, and seventh
days, as the Roman community does to a large extent. And yet your
nameless metropolitan disputant calls such an one carnal, even
though for five successive days of the week, excepting the seventh
and the Lord’s day, he so fast as to withhold all refection from
the body; as if, forsooth, food and drink on other days had nothing
to do with the flesh, and condemns him as making a god of his
belly, as if it was only the seventh day’s repast which entered
into the belly.
.
. .
. .
. .
. . .
We have no compunction in passing over about eight
columns here of this letter, in which Augustin exposes, with a
tedious minuteness and with a waste of rhetoric, other feeble and
irrelevant puerilities of the Roman author whose work Casulanus had
submitted to his review. Instead of accompanying him into the
shallow places into which he was drawn while pursuing such an
insignificant foe, let us resume the translation at the point at
which Augustin gives his own opinion regarding the question whether
it is binding on Christians to fast on Saturday.
Chap. XI.
25. As to the succeeding paragraphs with which he
concludes his treatise, they are, like some other things in it
which I have not thought worthy of notice, even more irrelevant
to a discussion of the
question whether we should fast or eat on the seventh day of the
week. But I leave it to yourself, especially if you have found any
help from what I have already said, to observe and dispose of
these. Having now to the best of my ability, and as I think
sufficiently, replied to the reasonings of this author, if I be
asked what is my own opinion in this matter, I answer, after
carefully pondering the question, that in the Gospels and Epistles,
and the entire collection of books for our instruction called the
New Testament, I see that fasting is enjoined. But I do not
discover any rule definitely laid down by the Lord or by the
apostles as to days on which we ought or ought not to fast. And by
this I am persuaded that exemption from fasting on the seventh day
is more suitable, not indeed to obtain, but to foreshadow, that
eternal rest in which the true Sabbath is realized, and which is
obtained only by faith, and by that righteousness whereby the
daughter of the King is all glorious within.
26. In this question, however, of fasting or
not fasting on the seventh day, nothing appears to me more safe and
conducive to peace than the apostle’s rule: “Let not him that
eateth despise him that eateth not, and let not him which eateth
not judge him that eateth:”1579
“for neither if we eat are we
the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse;”1580
our
fellowship with those among whom we live, and along with whom we
live in God, being preserved undisturbed by these things. For as it
is true that, in the words of the apostles, “it is evil for that
man who eateth with offence,”1581
it is equally true that it is evil
for that man who fasteth with offence. Let us not therefore be like
those who, seeing John the Baptist neither eating nor drinking,
said, “He hath a devil;” but let us equally avoid imitating
those who said, when they saw Christ eating and drinking, “Behold
a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners.”1582
After
mentioning these sayings, the Lord subjoined a most important truth
in the words, “But Wisdom is justified of her children;” and if
you ask who these are, read what is written, “The sons of Wisdom
are the congregation of the righteous:”1583
they are they who, when they eat,
do not despise others who do not eat; and when they eat not, do not
judge those who eat, but who do despise and judge those who, with
offence, either eat or abstain from eating.
Chap. XII.
27. As to the seventh day of the week there is less
difficulty in acting on the rule above quoted, because both the
Roman Church and some other churches, though few, near to it or
remote from it, observe a fast on that day; but to fast on the
Lord’s day is a great offence, especially since the rise of that
detestable heresy of the Manichæans, so manifestly and grievously
contradicting the Catholic faith and the divine Scriptures: for the
Manichæans have prescribed to their followers the obligation of
fasting upon that day; whence it has resulted that the fast upon
the Lord’s day is regarded with the greater abhorrence. Unless,
perchance, some one be able to continue an unbroken fast for more
than a week, so as to approach as nearly as may be to the fast of
forty days, as we have known some do; and we have even been assured
by brethren most worthy of credit, that one person did attain to
the full period of forty days. For as, in the time of the Old
Testament fathers, Moses and Elijah did not do anything against
liberty of eating on the seventh day of the week, when they fasted
forty days; so the man who has been able to go beyond seven days in
fasting has not chosen the Lord’s day as a day of fasting, but
has only come upon it in course among the days for which, so far as
he might be able, he had vowed to prolong his fast. If, however, a
continuous fast is to be concluded within a week, there is no day
upon which it may more suitably be concluded than the Lord’s day;
but if the body is not refreshed until more than a week has
elapsed, the Lord’s day is not in that case selected as a day of
fasting, but is found occurring within the number of days for which
it had seemed good to the person to make a vow.
28. Be not moved by that which the
Priscillianists1584
| 1584 Priscillian, Bishop of Avila in Spain, adopted
Gnostic and Manichæan errors and practices. He was condemned by
the Synod of Saragossa in 381 A.D., and
beheaded, along with his principal followers, by order of Maximus
in 385 A.D. | (a sect
very like the Manichæans) are wont to quote as an argument from
the Acts of the Apostles, concerning what was done by the Apostle
Paul in Troas. The passage is as follows: “Upon the first day of
the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul
preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued
his speech until midnight.”1585
Afterwards, when he had come down
from the supper chamber where they had been gathered together, that
he might restore the young man who, overpowered with sleep, had
fallen from the window and was taken up dead, the Scripture states
further concerning the apostle: “When he therefore was come up
again, and had broken bread, and eaten and talked a long while,
even till break of day, so he departed.”1586
Far be it from us to accept this
as affirming that the apostles were accustomed to fast habitually
on the Lord’s day. For the day now known as the Lord’s day was
then called the
first day of the week, as is more plainly seen in the Gospels; for
the day of the Lord’s resurrection is called by Matthew μία σαββάτων, and by the other
three evangelists ἡ μία (τῶν) σαββάτων,1587
and it is
well ascertained that the same is the day which is now called the
Lord’s day. Either, therefore, it was after the close of the
seventh day that they had assembled,—namely, in the beginning of
the night which followed, and which belonged to the Lord’s day,
or the first day of the week,—and in this case the apostle,
before proceeding to break bread with them, as is done in the
sacrament of the body of Christ, continued his discourse until
midnight, and also, after celebrating the sacrament, continued
still speaking again to those who were assembled, being much
pressed for time in order that he might set out at dawn upon the
Lord’s day; or if it was on the first day of the week, at an hour
before sunset on the Lord’s day, that they had assembled, the
words of the text, “Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on
the morrow,” themselves expressly state the reason for his
prolonging his discourse,—namely, that he was about to leave
them, and wished to give them ample instruction. The passage does
not therefore prove that they habitually fasted on the Lord’s
day, but only that it did not seem meet to the apostle to
interrupt, for the sake of taking refreshment, an important
discourse, which was listened to with the ardour of most lively
interest by persons whom he was about to leave, and whom, on
account of his many other journeyings, he visited but seldom, and
perhaps on no other occasion than this, especially because, as
subsequent events prove, he was then leaving them without
expectation of seeing them again in this life. Nay, by this
instance, it is rather proved that such fasting on the Lord’s day
was not customary, because the writer of the history, in order to
prevent this being thought, has taken care to state the reason why
the discourse was so prolonged, that we might know that in an
emergency dinner is not to stand in the way of more important work.
But indeed the example of these most eager listeners goes further;
for by them all bodily refreshment, not dinner only, but supper
also, was disregarded when thirsting vehemently, not for water, but
for the word of truth; and considering that the fountain was about
to be removed from them, they drank in with unabated desire
whatever flowed from the apostle’s lips.
29. In that age, however, although fasting
upon the Lord’s day was not usually practised, it was not so
great an offence to the Church when, in any similar emergency to
that in which Paul was at Troas, men did not attend to the
refreshment of the body throughout the whole of the Lord’s day
until midnight, or even until the dawn of the following morning.
But now, since heretics, and especially these most impious
Manichæans, have begun not to observe an occasional fast upon the
Lord’s day, when constrained by circumstances, but to prescribe
such fasting as a duty binding by sacred and solemn institution,
and this practice of theirs has become well known to Christian
communities; even were such an emergency arising as that which the
apostle experienced, I verily think that what he then did should
not now be done, lest the harm done by the offence given should be
greater than the good received from the words spoken. Whatever
necessity may arise, or good reason, compelling a Christian to fast
on the Lord’s day,—as we find, e.g., in the Acts of the
Apostles, that in peril of shipwreck they fasted on board of the
ship in which the apostle was for fourteen days successively,
within which the Lord’s day came round twice,1588
—we ought to have no hesitation
in believing that the Lord’s day is not to be placed among the
days of voluntary fasting, except in the case of one vowing to fast
continuously for a period longer than a week.
Chap. XIII.
30. The reason why the Church prefers to
appoint the fourth and sixth days of the week for fasting, is found
by considering the gospel narrative. There we find that on the
fourth day of the week1589
| 1589 Commonly called quarta feria. | the Jews took counsel to put the
Lord to death. One day having intervened,—on the evening of
which, at the close, namely, of the day which we call the fifth day
of the week, the Lord ate the passover with His disciples,—He was
thereafter betrayed on the night which belonged to the sixth day of
the week, the day (as is everywhere known) of His passion. This
day, beginning with the evening, was the first day of unleavened
bread. The evangelist Matthew, however, says that the fifth day of
the week was the first of unleavened bread, because in the evening
following it the paschal supper was to be observed, at which they
began to eat the unleavened bread, and the lamb offered in
sacrifice. From which it is inferred that it was upon the fourth
day of the week that the Lord said, “You know that after two days
is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be
crucified;”1590
and for
this reason that day has been regarded as one suitable for fasting,
because, as the evangelist immediately adds: “Then assembled
together the chief priests and the scribes and the elders of the
people unto the palace of the high priest, who is called Caiaphas,
and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty and kill
Him.”1591
After the
intermission of one day,—the day, namely, of which the evangelist
writes:1592
“Now, on
the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, the disciples came
to Jesus, saying unto Him, Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee
to eat the passover? “—the Lord suffered on the sixth day of
the week, as is admitted by all: wherefore the sixth day also is
rightly reckoned a day for fasting, as fasting is symbolical of
humiliation; whence it is said, “I humbled my soul with
fasting.”1593
31. The next day is the Jewish Sabbath, on
which day Christ’s body rested in the grave, as in the original
fashioning of the world God rested on that day from all His works.
Hence originated that variety in the robe of His bride1594
which we
are now considering: some, especially the Eastern communities,
preferring to take food on that day, that their action might be
emblematic of the divine rest; others, namely the Church of Rome,
and some churches in the West, preferring to fast on that day
because of the humiliation of the Lord in death. Once in the year,
namely at Easter, all Christians observe the seventh day of the
week by fasting, in memory of the mourning with which the
disciples, as men bereaved, lamented the death of the Lord (and
this is done with the utmost devoutness by those who take food on
the seventh day throughout the rest of the year); thus providing a
symbolical representation of both events,—of the disciples’
sorrow on one seventh day in the year, and of the blessing of
repose on all the others. There are two things which make the
happiness of the just and the end of all their misery to be
confidently expected, viz. death and the resurrection of the dead.
In death is that rest of which the prophet speaks: “Come, my
people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about
thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the
indignation be overpast.”1595
In resurrection blessedness is
consummated in the whole man, both body and soul. Hence it came to
be thought that both of these things [death and resurrection]
should be symbolized, not by the hardship of fasting, but rather by
the cheerfulness of refreshment with food, excepting only the
Easter Saturday, on which, as I have said, it had been resolved to
commemorate by a more protracted fast the mourning of the
disciples, as one of the events to be had in
remembrance.
Chap. XIV.
32. Since, therefore (as I have said above),
we do not find in the Gospels or in the apostolical writings,
belonging properly to the revelation of the New Testament, that any
law was laid down as to fasts to be observed on particular days;
and since this is consequently one of many things, difficult to
enumerate, which make up a variety in the robe of the King’s
daughter,1596
that is to
say, of the Church,—I will tell you the answer given to my
questions on this subject by the venerable Ambrose Bishop of Milan,
by whom I was baptized. When my mother was with me in that city, I,
as being only a catechumen, felt no concern about these questions;
but it was to her a question causing anxiety, whether she ought,
after the custom of our own town, to fast on the Saturday, or,
after the custom of the Church of Milan, not to fast. To deliver
her from perplexity, I put the question to the man of God whom I
have just named. He answered, “What else can I recommend to
others than what I do myself?” When I thought that by this he
intended simply to prescribe to us that we should take food on
Saturdays—for I knew this to be his own practice—he, following
me, added these words: “When I am here I do not fast on Saturday;
but when I am at Rome I do: whatever church you may come to,
conform to its custom, if you would avoid either receiving or
giving offence.” This reply I reported to my mother, and it
satisfied her, so that she scrupled not to comply with it; and I
have myself followed the same rule. Since, however, it happens,
especially in Africa, that one church, or the churches within the
same district, may have some members who fast and others who do not
fast on the seventh day, it seems to me best to adopt in each
congregation the custom of those to whom authority in its
government has been committed. Wherefore, if you are quite willing
to follow my advice, especially because in regard to this matter I
have spoken at greater length than was necessary, do not in this
resist your own bishop, but follow his practice without scruple or
debate.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
