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Letter
CXLVII. To Sabinianus.
Jerome writes in severe but moderate language to
Sabinianus, a deacon, calling on him to repent of his sins. Of these he
recounts at length the two most serious, an act of adultery at Rome and
an attempt to seduce a nun at Bethlehem. The date of the letter is
uncertain.
1. Of old, when it had repented the Lord that he had
anointed Saul to be king over Israel,3949
we are told that Samuel mourned for
him; and again, when Paul heard that there was fornication among the
Corinthians and such fornication as was not so much as named among the
gentiles,3950
he besought them to repent with
these tearful words: “lest, when I come again, my God will humble
me among you and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already and
have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness
which they have committed.”3951
If an
apostle or a prophet, themselves immaculate, could speak thus with a
clemency embracing all, how much more earnestly should a sinner like me
plead with a sinner like you. You have fallen and refuse to rise; you
do not so much as lift your eyes to heaven; having wasted your
father’s substance you take pleasure in the husks that the swine
eat;3952
and climbing the precipice of pride you
fall headlong into the deep. You make your belly your God instead of
Christ; you are a slave to lust; your glory is in your shame;3953
you fatten yourself like a victim for
the slaughter, and imitate the lives of the wicked, careless of their
doom. “Thou knowest not that the goodness of God leadeth thee to
repentance. But after thy hardness and impenitent heart thou treasurest
up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath.”3954
Or is it that your heart is hardened, as
Pharaoh’s was, because your punishment is deferred and you are
not smitten at the moment? The ten plagues were sent upon Pharaoh not
as by an angry God but as by a
warning father, and his day of grace was prolonged until he repented of
his repentance. Yet doom overtook him when he pursued through the
wilderness the people whom he had previously let go and presumed to
enter the very sea in the eagerness of his pursuit. For only in this
one way could he learn the lesson that He is to be dreaded whom even
the elements obey. He had said: “I know not the Lord, neither
will I let Israel go;”3955
and you imitate
him when you say: “The vision that he seeth is for many days to
come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.”3956
Yet the same prophet confutes you with
these words: “Thus saith the Lord God, There shall none of my
words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be
done.” David too says of the godless (and of godlessness you have
proved yourself not a slight but an eminent example), that in this
world they rejoice in good fortune and say: “How doth God know?
And is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold these are the ungodly
who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.”3957
Then almost losing his footing and
staggering where he stands he complains, saying “Verily I have
cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.”3958
For he had previously said: “I
was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For they have no regard for death,3959
| 3959 So the Vulgate,
from which Jerome quotes. | but their
strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men are; neither are
they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a
chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with
fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and
speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set
their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the
earth.”3960
2. Does not this whole psalm seem to you to be written
of yourself? Certainly you are hale and strong; and like a new apostle
of Antichrist, when you are found out in one city, you pass to
another.3961
You are in no need of money, no
crushing blow strikes you down, neither are you plagued as other men
who are not like you mere brute beasts. Therefore you are lifted up
into pride, and lust covers you as a garment. Out of your fat and
bloated carcass you breathe out words fraught with death. You never
consider that you must some day die, nor feel the slightest repentance
when you have satisfied your lust. You have more than heart can wish;
and, not to be alone in your wrongdoing, you invent scandals concerning
those who are God’s servants. Though you know it not, it is
against the most High that you are speaking iniquity and against the
heavens that you are setting your mouth. It is no wonder that
God’s servants small and great are blasphemed by you, when your
fathers did not scruple to call even the master of the house Beelzebub.
“The disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his
lord.”3962
If they did this with the green
tree, what will you do with me, the dry?3963
Much in the same way also the offended
believers in the book of Malachi gave expression to feelings like
yours; for they said, “It is vain to serve God: and what profit
is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked
mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? And now we call the proud happy;
yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are
even delivered.” Yet the Lord afterwards threatens them with a
day of judgment; and announcing beforehand the distinction that shall
then be made between the righteous and the unrighteous, speaks to them
thus: “Return ye,3964
and discern
between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and
him that serveth him not.”3965
3. All this may perhaps seem to you matter for jesting,
seeing that you take so much pleasure in comedies and lyrics and mimes
like those of Lentulus;3966
| 3966 A writer and
actor of mimes, probably in the first century of the Empire. | although so
blunted is your wit that I am not disposed to allow that you can
understand even language so simple. You may treat the words of prophets
with contempt, but Amos will still make answer to you: “Thus
saith the Lord, For three transgressions and for four shall I not turn
away from him?”3967
For inasmuch
as Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites and the Moabites, the Jews
also and the children of Israel, although God had often prophesied to
them to turn and to repent, had refused to hear His voice, the Lord
wishing to shew that He had most just cause for the wrath that he was
going to bring upon them used the words already quoted, “For
three transgressions and for four shall I not turn away from
them?” It is wicked, God says, to harbour evil thoughts; yet I
have allowed them to do so. It is still more wicked to carry them out;
yet in My mercy and kindness I have permitted even this. But should the
sinful thought have become the sinful deed? Should men in their pride
have trampled thus on my tenderness? Nevertheless “I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and
live;”3968
and as it is not they that are
whole who need a physician but they that are sick,3969
even after his sin I hold out a hand to
the prostrate sinner and exhort him, polluted as he is in his own
blood,3970
to wash away his stains with tears
of penitence. But if even then he shews himself unwilling to repent,
and if, after he has suffered shipwreck, he refuses to clutch the plank
which alone can save him, I am compelled at last to say: “Thus
saith the Lord, For three transgressions and for four shall I not turn
away from him?” For this “turning away” God accounts
a punishment, inasmuch as the sinner is left to his own devices. It is
thus that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation;3971
not punishing
those who sin immediately but pardoning their first offences and only
passing sentence on them for their last. For if it were otherwise and
if God were to stand forth on the moment as the avenger of iniquity,
the church would lose many of its saints; and certainly would be
deprived of the apostle Paul. The prophet Ezekiel, from whom we have
quoted above, repeating God’s words spoken to himself speaks
thus: “Open thy mouth and eat what I shall give thee. And
behold,” he says, “an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a
roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was
written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations,
and a song, and woe.”3972
The first of
these three belongs to you if you prove willing, as a sinner, to repent
of your sins. The second belongs to those who are holy, who are called
upon to sing praises to God; for praise does not become a
sinner’s mouth. And the third belongs to persons like you who in
despair have given themselves over to uncleanness, to fornication, to
the belly, and to the lowest lusts; men who suppose that death ends all
and that there is nothing beyond it; who say: “When the
overflowing scourge shall pass through it shall not come unto
us.”3973
The book which the prophet eats
is the whole series of the Scriptures, which in turn bewail the
penitent, celebrate the righteous, and curse the desperate. For nothing
is so displeasing to God as an impenitent heart. Impenitence is the one
sin for which there is no forgiveness. For if one who ceases to sin is
pardoned even after he has sinned, and if prayer has power to bend the
judge; it follows that every impenitent sinner must provoke his judge
to wrath. Thus despair is the one sin for which there is no remedy. By
obstinate rejection of God’s grace men turn His mercy into
sternness and severity. Yet, that you may know that God does every day
call sinners to repentance, hear Isaiah’s words: “In that
day,” he says, “did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping
and to mourning and to baldness and to girding with sackcloth: and
behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh,
and drinking wine; let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall
die.” After these words filled with the recklessness of despair
the Scripture goes on to say: “And it was revealed in my ears by
the Lord of Hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you
till ye die.”3974
Only when
they become dead to sin, will their sin be forgiven them. For, so long
as they live in sin, it cannot be put away.
4. Have mercy I beseech you upon your soul. Consider
that God’s judgment will one day overtake you. Remember by what a
bishop you were ordained. The holy man was mistaken in his choice; but
this he might well be. For even God repented that he had anointed Saul
to be king.3975
Even among the twelve apostles
Judas was found a traitor. And Nicolas of Antioch—a deacon like
yourself3976
—disseminated the
Nicolaitan heresy and all manner of uncleanness.3977
I do not now bring up to you the many
virgins whom you are said to have seduced, or the noble matrons who
have suffered death3978
because
violated by you, or the greedy profligacy with which you have hied
through dens of sin. For grave and serious as such sins are in
themselves, they are trivial indeed when compared with those which I
have now to narrate. How great must be the sin beside which seduction
and adultery are insignificant? Miserable wretch that you are! when you
enter the cave wherein the Son of God was born, where truth sprang out
of the earth and the land did yield her increase,3979
it is to make an assignation. Have you
no fear that the babe will cry from the manger, that the newly
delivered virgin will see you, that the mother of the Lord will behold
you? The angels cry aloud, the shepherds run, the star shines down from
heaven, the wise men worship, Herod is terrified, Jerusalem is in
confusion, and meantime you creep into a virgin’s cell to seduce
the virgin to whom it belongs. I am filled with consternation and a
shiver runs through me, soul and body, when I try to set before your
eyes the deed that you have done. The whole church was keeping vigil by
night and proclaiming Christ as its Lord; in one spirit though in
different tongues the praises of
God were being sung. Yet you were squeezing your love-notes into the
openings of what is now the altar, as it was once the manger, of the
Lord, choosing this place in order that your unhappy victim might find
and read them when she came to kneel and worship there. Then you took
your place among the singers, and with impudent nods communicated your
passion to her.
5. Oh! crying shame! I can go no farther. For sobs
anticipate my words, and indignation and grief choke me in the act of
utterance. Oh! for the sea of Tully’s eloquence! Oh! for the
impetuous current of the invective of Demosthenes! Yet in this case I
am sure you would both be dumb; your eloquence would fail you. A deed
has been disclosed which no rhetoric can explain; a crime has been
discovered which no mime can represent, nor jester play, nor comedian
describe.3980
| 3980 Mimus, scurra,
atellanus. |
It is usual in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria for
virgins and widows who have vowed themselves to God and have renounced
the world and have trodden under foot its pleasures, to ask the mothers
of their communities to cut their hair; not that afterwards they go
about with heads uncovered in defiance of the apostle’s
command,3981
for they wear a close-fitting
cap and a veil. No one knows of this in any single case except the
shearers and the shorn, but as the practice is universal, it is almost
universally known. The custom has in fact become a second nature. It is
designed to save those who take no baths and whose heads and faces are
strangers to all unguents, from accumulated dirt and from the tiny
creatures which are sometimes generated about the roots of the
hair.
6. Let us see then, my good friend, how you acted in
these surroundings. You promised to marry your unhappy victim; and then
in that venerable cave you took from her, either as securities for her
fidelity or as a pledge of the engagement, some locks of hair, some
handkerchiefs, and a girdle, swearing at the same time that you would
never love another as you loved her. Then you ran to the place where
the shepherds were watching their flocks when they heard the angels
singing over head, and there again you plighted your troth. I say no
more; I do not accuse you of kissing her or of embracing her. Although
I believe that there is nothing of which you are not capable, still the
sacred character of stable and field forbids me to suppose you guilty
except in will and determination. Unhappy man! When you first stood
beside the virgin in the cave, surely a mist must have dimmed your
eyes, your tongue must have been paralysed, your arms must have fallen
to your sides, your chest must have heaved, your gait must have become
unsteady. She had assumed the bridal-veil of Christ in the basilica of
the apostle Peter and had vowed to live henceforth in the monastery, in
the spots consecrated by the Lord’s Cross, His Resurrection, and
His Ascension; and yet after all this you dared to accept that hair,
which at Christ’s command she had cut off in the cave of His
birth, as a token of her readiness to sleep with you. Again you used to
sit beneath her window from the evening till the morning; and because
owing to its height you could not come to close quarters with her, you
conveyed things to her and she in her turn to you by the aid of a cord.
How careful the lady superior must have been is shewn by the fact that
you never saw the virgin except in church; and that, although both of
you had the same inclination, you could find no means of conversing
with each other except at a window under cover of night. As I was
afterwards told you used to be quite sorry when the sun rose. Your face
looked bloodless, shrunken, and pale; and to remove all suspicion, you
used to be for ever reading Christ’s gospel as if you were a
deacon indeed.3982
| 3982 At the
Eucharistic service the gospel was commonly though not exclusively read
by a deacon. (See Const. Apost. II. 57, 5, and Sozomen, H. C. VII.
19.) | I and others
used to attribute your paleness to fasting, and to admire your
bloodless lips—so unlike the brilliant colour which they
generally shewed—in the belief that they were caused by frequent
vigils. You were already preparing ladders to fetch the unhappy virgin
from her cell; you had already arranged your route, ordered vessels,
settled a day, and thought out the details of your flight, when,
behold, the angel who kept the door of Mary’s chamber, who
watched over the cradle of the Lord and who bore in his arms the infant
Christ, in whose presence you had committed these great sins, himself
and none other, betrayed you.
7. Oh! my unlucky eyes! Oh! day worthy of the most
solemn curse, on which with utter consternation I read your letters,
the contents of which I am forced to remember still! What obscenities
they contained! What blandishments! What exultant triumph in the
prospect of the virgin’s dishonour. A deacon should not have even
known such things, much less should he have spoken of them. Unhappy
man! where can you have learned them, you who used to boast that you
had been reared in the church. It is true, however, that in these
letters you swear that you have never led a chaste life and that you
are not really a deacon. If you try to disown them your own handwriting
will convict you, and the very letters will cry out against you. But meantime
you may make what you can of your sin, for what you have written is so
foul that I cannot bring it up as evidence against you.
8. You threw yourself down at my knees, you prostrated
yourself, you begged me—I use your own words—to spare
“your half-pint of blood.” Oh! miserable wretch! you
thought nothing of God’s judgment, and feared no vengeance but
mine. I forgave you, I admit; what else being a Christian could I do? I
urged you to repent, to wear sackcloth, to roll in ashes, to seek
seclusion, to live in a monastery, to implore God’s mercy with
constant tears. You however showed yourself a pillar of confidence, and
excited as you were by the viper’s sting you became to me a
deceitful bow; you shot at me arrows of reviling. I am become your
enemy because I tell you the truth.3983
I do
not complain of your calumnies; everyone knows that you only praise men
as infamous as yourself. What I lament is that you do not lament
yourself, that you do not realize that you are dead, that, like a
gladiator ready for Libitina,3984
| 3984 The goddess who
in the Roman pantheon presided over funerals. The gladiators meant are
the so-called bustuarii who were engaged to fight at the funeral pile
(bustum) in honour of the dead. | you deck
yourself out for your own funeral. You wear not sackcloth but linen,
you load your fingers with rings, you use toothpowder for your teeth,
you arrange the stray hairs on your brown skull to the best advantage.
Your bull’s neck bulges out with fat and droops no whit because
it has given way to lust. Moreover you are redolent of perfume, you go
from one bath to another, you wage war3985
| 3985 i.e. by
the use of depilatories. | against the hair that grows in spite
of you, you walk through the forum and the streets a spruce and
smooth-faced rake. Your face has become the face of a harlot: you know
not how to blush.3986
Return,
unhappy man, to the Lord, and He will return to you.3987
Repent, and He will repent of the
evil that He has purposed to bring upon you.
9. Why is it that you disregard your own scars and try
to defame others? Why is it that when I give you the best advice you
attack me like a madman? It may be that I am as infamous as you
publicly proclaim; in that case you can at least repent as heartily as
I do. It may be that I am as great a sinner as you make me out; if so,
you can at least imitate a sinner’s tears. Are my sins your
virtues? Or does it alleviate your misery that many are in the same
plight as yourself? Let a few tears fall on the silk and fine linen
which make you so resplendent. Realize that you are naked, torn,
unclean, a beggar.3988
It is
never too late to repent.3989
| 3989 Cf. Cyprian,
Epist. ad Demet. xxv. | You may have
gone down from Jerusalem and may have been wounded on the way; yet the
Samaritan will set you upon his beast, and will bring you to the inn
and will take care of you.3990
Even if you are
lying in your grave, the Lord will raise you though your flesh may
stink.3991
At least imitate those blind men
for whose sake the Saviour left His home and heritage and came to
Jericho. They were sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death when
the light shone upon them.3992
For when they
learned that it was the Lord who was passing by they began to cry out
saying: “Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.”3993
You too will have your sight restored;
if you cry to Him, and cast away your filthy garments at His call.3994
“When thou shalt turn and bewail
thyself then shalt thou be saved, and then shalt thou know where thou
hast hitherto been.”3995
Let Him but
touch your scars and pass his hands over your eyeballs; and although
you may have been born blind from the womb and although your mother may
have conceived you in sin, he will purge you with hyssop and you shall
be clean, he will wash you and you shall be whiter than snow.3996
Why is it that you are bowed together
and bent down to the ground, why is it that you are still prostrate in
the mire? She whom Satan had bound for eighteen years came to the
Saviour; and being cured by Him was made straight so that she could
once more look up towards heaven.3997
God says
to you what He said to Cain: “Thou hast sinned: hold thy
peace.”3998
Why do you
flee from the face of God and dwell in the land of Nod? Why do you
struggle in the waves3999
| 3999 An etymological
allusion. Nod = ‘ebb and flow.’ | when you can
plant your feet upon the rock? See to it that Phinehas does not thrust
you through with his spear while you are committing fornication with
the Midianitish woman.4000
Amnon did not spare
Tamar,4001
and you her brother and kinsman in
the faith have had no mercy upon this virgin. But why is it that when
you have defiled her you change into an Absalom and desire to kill a
David who mourns over your rebellion and spiritual death? The blood of
Naboth4002
cries out against you. The vineyard
also of Jezreel, that is, of
God’s seed, demands due vengeance upon you, seeing that you have
turned it into a garden of pleasures and made it a seed-bed of lust.
God sends you an Elijah to tell you of torment and of death. Bow
yourself down therefore and put on sackcloth for a little while; then
perhaps the Lord will say of you what He said of Ahab: “Seest
thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself
before me,4003
I will not bring the evil in his
days.”
10. But possibly you flatter yourself that since the
bishop who has made you a deacon is a holy man, his merits will atone
for your transgressions. I have already told you that the father is not
punished for the son nor the son for the father. “The soul that
sinneth it shall die.”4004
Samuel too had
sons who forsook the fear of the Lord and “turned aside after
lucre” and iniquity.4005
Eli also was a
holy priest, but he had sons of whom we read in the Hebrew that they
lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of God,
and that like you they shamelessly claimed for themselves the right to
minister in His sanctuary.4006
Wherefore the
tabernacle itself was overthrown and the holy place made desolate by
reason of the sins of those who were God’s priests. And even Eli
himself offended God by shewing too great leniency to his sons;
therefore, so far from the righteousness of your bishop being able to
deliver you, it is rather to be feared that your wickedness may hurl
him from his seat and that falling on his back like Eli he may perish
irretrievably.4007
If the Levite
Uzzah was smitten merely because he tried to hold up from falling the
ark which it was his special province to carry;4008
what punishment, think you, will be
inflicted upon you who have tried to overthrow the Lord’s ark
when standing firm? The more estimable the bishop is who ordained you,
the more detestable are you who have disappointed the expectations of
so good a man. His long ignorance of your misdoings is indeed easy to
account for; as it generally happens that we are the last to know the
scandals which affect our homes, and are ignorant of the sins of our
children and wives even when our neighbors talk of nothing else. At all
events all Italy was aware of your evil life; and it was everywhere a
subject of lamentation that you should still stand before the altar of
Christ. For you had neither the cunning nor the forethought to conceal
your vices. So hot were you, so lecherous, and so wanton, so entirely
under the sway of this and that caprice of self-indulgence, that, not
content with satisfying your passions, you gloried in each intrigue as
a triumph and emerged from it bearing palms of victory.
11. Once more the fire of unchastity seized you, this
time among savage swords and in the quarters of a married barbarian of
great influence and power. You were not afraid to commit adultery in a
house where the injured husband might have punished you without calling
in a judge’s aid. You found yourself attracted and drawn to
suburban parks and gardens; and, in the husband’s absence behaved
as boldly and madly as if you supposed your companion to be not your
paramour but your wife. She was at last captured, but you escaped
through an underground passage and secretly made your way to Rome.
There you hid yourself among some Samnite robbers; and on the first
hint that the aggrieved husband was coming down from the Alps like a
new Hannibal in search of you, you did not think yourself safe till you
had taken refuge on shipboard. So hasty indeed was your flight that you
chose to face a tempest at sea rather than take the consequences of
remaining on shore. Somehow or other you reached Syria, and on arriving
there professed a wish to go on to Jerusalem and there to serve the
Lord. Who could refuse to welcome one who declared himself to be a
monk; especially if he were ignorant of your tragical career and had
read the letters of commendation which your bishop had addressed to
other prelates?4009
Unhappy man! you
transformed yourself into an angel of light;4010
and while you were in reality a minister of Satan, you pretended to be
a minister of righteousness. You were only a wolf in sheep’s
clothing;4011
and having played the adulterer once
towards the wife of a man, you desired now to play the adulterer to the
spouse of Christ.4012
| 4012 i.e. to the
church at large represented by individual virgins. |
12. My design in recounting these events has been to
sketch for you the picture of your evil life and to set your misdeeds
plainly before your eyes. I have wished to prevent you from making
God’s mercy and His abundant tenderness an excuse for committing
new sins and to save you from crucifying to yourself the son of God
afresh and putting Him to an open shame. For you may do these things if
you do not read the words which follow the passage to which I have
alluded. They are these: “The earth which drinketh in the rain
that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom
it is dressed, receiveth blessings
from God: but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected and is
nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.”4013
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