Epistulae.

I. The Letter of Faustus to the Presbyter Lucidus. To the most devoted lord and brother, Lucidus the presbyter, revered and esteemed by me with special affection, Faustus. It is a mark of great charity to wish rather to cure the error of a not sufficiently cautious brother through the grace and help of God, than, as the highest bishops contemplate, to suspend him from unity. What can I say about this opinion, as you wish, in letters with your unanimity, when I, present with you, could never draw you to the path of truth by much gentle and humble conversation? Therefore, speaking of the grace of God and the obedience of man, we must establish this in every way: that we walk the royal road, neither leaning to the left nor being importunate to the right. Moreover, I was amazed that your reverence said that no one under a religious profession has ever written or preached against the Catholic faith, when very many have believed that their manifold and profane errors should even be committed to the monuments of writers, who nevertheless gloried in the Christian name. Briefly, therefore, I will say, as much as I can speak with an absent person, what you ought to think with the Catholic Church, that is, that you always join the operation of the baptized servant with the grace of the Lord, and that you detest the one who asserts predestination to the exclusion of human labor, together with the dogma of Pelagius.

Anathema therefore to him who, among the other impieties of Pelagius, has contended with damnable presumption that man is born without sin and can be saved by effort alone, and who has believed that he can be freed without the grace of God. Likewise, anathema to him who has asserted that a man, solemnly baptized with a faithful confession and professing the Catholic faith, and afterwards having fallen through the various pleasures and temptations of this world, has perished in Adam and original sin. Likewise, anathema to him who has said that man is driven into death by the foreknowledge of God. Likewise, anathema to him who has said that he who has perished did not receive the ability to be saved [that is, concerning the baptized or concerning the pagan of that age who could have believed and wished to]. Likewise, anathema to him who has said that a vessel in dishonor cannot rise up to become a vessel in honor. Likewise, anathema to him who has said that Christ did not die for all, nor does he wish all men to be saved.

But when you come to us in the name of Christ, or when you have been summoned by holy priests, then, if the Lord so orders, we will bring forth the testimonies in their proper places, by which both what is catholic may be made manifest and what is contrary to catholic teaching may be destroyed. We, however, truly and confidently assert, through the illumination of Christ, both that he who perished through fault could have been saved through grace, if he had not denied to grace itself the obedience of laborious service, and that he who, through grace, has reached the goals of good completion by compliant service could fall through negligence and perish through fault. Therefore, walking the middle path with Christ as our guide, we affirm the labor of dutiful service after grace, without which we are nothing. But we utterly exclude arrogance and presumption of labor, so that, sweating with all our strength lest grace be emptied in us, whatever we have received from the hand of the Lord we declare to be a gift, not a reward, knowing that the fruit of that labor itself is a matter of duty, not of merit, saying with the evangelist: we are useless servants; we have done what we ought to have done.

These things, which have been briefly recalled in accordance with the brevity of a letter, let your unanimity answer, with a recurring discourse, whether it accepts or rejects them. Moreover, whoever does not follow this measure of truth, with grace preceding and effort rising up, will be worthy of being kept away from the sacred thresholds. Yet I, retaining your undivided goodness to myself in the whole embrace of sincere benevolence along the way, desire that you remain within the bosom of mother Church, having rejected this error. If it is quickly repudiated, it will seem to have been ignorance; but it will be considered blasphemy if it is stubbornly defended. For we turn back a grave reproach upon the author if we say that he did not wish to give the possibility of seizing salvation to the one who perished, [to him, that is, who could already grasp the freedom of the will,] when we can by no means deny that he will condemn the transgressor of the mandate in the examination of his own judgment. For he who is not liable for what has been undertaken, I know not how he can be guilty for what has been lost. And thus, sinning against God, whose grace we at first rather incautiously assert, we will in the end seem to attack his justice.

I keep a copy of this letter with me, to be produced in a gathering of holy bishops if necessity should arise. If your fraternity judges that it should be accepted, either send it back immediately, signed by your own hand, or reply in subsequent writings that you entirely reject it. But if you are unwilling to transmit it signed, as I have said, you will clearly prove by your very silence that you still persist in error, and thereby you will impose upon me the necessity of exposing your person in public assemblies. And therefore, according to what has been directed by me, write back whether you acknowledge or reject these things, without any circumlocutions. [Auxanius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read and subscribed; Faustus, I have read the copy of my letter; and Paulus, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read; and Eutropius, bishop in the name of Christ; Pragmatius, bishop under the sign of Christ; Patiens, bishop in Christ; Eufronius, I have read and admired the holy fullness; Megethius, bishop, I have read; and Eutropius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read; and Leucadius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have read; and Iulianus, bishop in the name of Christ; Lucidus, presbyter.] In another hand: Faustus, I have read the copy of my letter and subscribed.

II. COPY OF THE LETTER OF LUCIDUS THE PRESBYTER. To the most blessed lords and in Christ most reverend fathers, the bishops Eufronius, Leontius, Fonteius, Viventius, Mamertus, Patiens, Verianus, Auxanius, Faustus, Paulus, Megethius, Graecus, Eutropius, Leontius, Claudius, Marcellus, Crocus, Basilius, Claudius, Ursicinus, Praetextatus, Pragmatius, Theoplastus, Leucadius, Viventius, Julianus, Amicalis, Ioannes, Opilio, and Licinius, from Lucidus the presbyter. Your correction is public salvation, and your sentence is medicine. Hence I consider it the highest remedy to excuse my past errors by accusing them, and to cleanse myself by a salutary profession. Therefore, according to the recent statutes of the council that has pronounced judgment, I condemn along with you that opinion which says that the labor of human obedience is not to be joined with divine grace; which says that after the fall of the first man the will’s free choice was entirely extinguished; which says that Christ our Lord and Savior did not undergo death for the salvation of all; which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish do so by the will of God; which says that after legitimately receiving baptism, whoever sins dies in Adam.

who says that some are assigned to death, others predestined to life; who says that from Adam up to Christ none among the Gentiles were saved by the first grace of God, that is, by the law of nature, at the coming of Christ, because free will was lost by all in the first parent; who says that the patriarchs and prophets or any of the highest saints lived in the abode of paradise even before the times of redemption; who says that fires and the underworld do not exist—all these things I condemn as impious and filled with sacrilege. But I assert the grace of God in such a way that I always join human effort and striving with grace, and I declare that the freedom of the human will is not extinguished, but weakened and enfeebled, and that he who is saved is in danger, and that he who perished could have been saved. Also, that Christ, our God and Savior, as far as pertains to the riches of his goodness, offered the price of death for all, and that, because he wishes none to perish, he is the savior of all men, especially of the faithful, rich toward all who call upon him.

and because in such important matters one must satisfy one’s conscience, I recall having said before that Christ came only for those whom he foreknew would believe, following the dominical sayings: as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, and that: this is the cup of my blood of the new covenant, which will be poured out for many for the remission of sins, or that saying of the apostle: just as it is once established that men must die, so Christ was once offered to drain away the sins of many. But now, by the authority of sacred testimonies, which are found abundantly throughout the spaces of the divine scriptures, and by the reasoning of the teaching of the elders made clear, I freely confess that Christ came even for the lost, because they perished against his will. For it is not right that the immense riches of goodness and divine benefits be confined only to those who appear to have been saved. For if we say that Christ brought remedies only to those who have been redeemed, we will seem to absolve the unredeemed, who are clearly to be punished for having despised redemption.

I also assert that, through the reason and order of the ages, some were saved by the law of grace, others by the law of Moses, others by the law of nature, which God wrote in the hearts of all, in the hope of Christ’s coming; yet none from the beginning of the world were freed from the original bond except by the intercession of the sacred blood. I also profess that eternal fires and infernal flames are prepared for capital crimes, because divine judgment justly follows human sins that persist to the end, which those who do not believe this with their whole heart justly incur. Pray for me, holy and apostolic lords. I, Lucidus the presbyter, have subscribed this letter with my own hand, and I affirm what is established in it and condemn what is condemned. III. THE LETTER OF FAUSTUS. You ask me, most reverend of priests, how to respond to the Arians, who with blasphemous mouth attempt to assert: “It cannot be,” they say, “that the begotten is younger than the unbegotten.” In accordance with this, as if ordered to break a total silence, I will presume, not so much for the instruction of the matter as for the confession of faith, first observing this, that I not obscure things obscure in themselves by the study of composed speech, but set forth certain indications of a poor understanding, which seem to serve not so much ornament as understanding. I therefore respond, as disciples are accustomed to respond to questioning masters. Thus, at the command of your blessedness, I speak to be examined; I confess my inexperience to be taught.

For if I remain silent even before the most learned man, I can scarcely know what I do not know. Concerning the "unbegotten," we ought to know that it is one thing to speak of the substances of things, and another to speak of the names of things; just as, for example, when you have said "gold" and "silver," you have not immediately uttered the metal itself, but the words for the metal. For gold is one thing in the property of its kind, another in the appellation of speech; it is one thing when we name it, another when we hold it. "Begotten" and "unbegotten" are a designation of the divinity, not the divinity itself; they are an appellation of nature, not nature itself. The naming of "unbegotten" and "begotten" serves this purpose: that you may understand from what each subsists, and that you may recognize that the Father is not from the Son, but the Son from the Father. A beginning from a beginning is both one and lacks a beginning, just as if you were to say: "God from God," yet not two gods, but one God. Therefore, "begotten," "unbegotten," and that which proceeds from both indicate persons, not natures. For the majesty, which is undivided in the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit, can be distinguished by names, but cannot be ordered by degrees.

At this point you must apply the intention of your mind with foreknowledge. You may say: because it is from that, it is posterior to that. Come, let us nourish our understanding with some comparisons. Let us see if any thing arises from another, which yet is not later in age than that from which it arises. For example, the very name "son" is believed to be derived from the name "father," yet it is not found to be later, because unless this one were born, that one would not be called father. Behold a name which is absolutely coeval with that from which it comes, and, although the son is from the father, the son makes the name "father" for the parent. The person being born acquires for its begetter the title of piety. While this is from that, neither is this later nor is the other proven more ancient. And when the son is called by the name "arm" from the virtues of works, behold the arm proceeds from the body and yet the age of the arm does not precede that of the body. The word is uttered from the voice and yet, when from the mouth

is not proven to be posterior in time by its voice. Fire and heat have an indivisible partnership, but although heat is understood to come from fire without doubt, yet fire is in no way known to be prior to its own heat. Behold a thing that seems to exist from another and yet is joined to that from which it exists without any interval of time. But when we come to God, this is what is begotten: what just and justice are, what wise and wisdom are, what merciful and mercy are. We understand absolutely that justice and wisdom arise from a just and wise God according to the Apostle. And just as the just was never without justice, the wise never without wisdom, so the Son is from the Father, but the Father could never be without the Son. Without doubt the Arians do not dare to deny our Savior, but while they call Him lesser, they cannot assert that He is God. For God naturally subsists with the dignity of fullness, and their impiety testifies in its first confession that it worships one God. But because it makes Him younger, through Him who is thought to be older, it makes two and cuts through the solidity of unity. For the very name "lesser" reveals another who is greater than Him. Who is older than Him who pronounces of Himself: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last," who, when asked by the Jews who He was, answered thus: "the beginning which I also speak to you," who confirms with a truthful voice through the prophet: "Before Me there was no God, and after Me there will be none"?

If the Father says this, he confirms that the inferior did not begin after him; if the Son, he declares that the Father was not at all before him. The prophetic word clearly intimates this: "This is our God, and no other will be reckoned to him," and after this: "He was seen among men and conversed with men." According to these things, therefore, between the begotten and the unbegotten there is neither order, because he is one, nor does time intervene, because he is first, nor is he to be postponed, because he is alone, nor is he to be called lesser, because he is full. Therefore God alone is of a perfect and simple nature, inestimable and impassible, even if we truly and salutarily confess that he suffered according to the flesh for us. After this, in the following place you ask me how, according to the substance of God, it was written in a certain letter: "He felt nothing with the sense of the one suffering, but he felt with the affection of the one sympathizing." First of all, this, which not even philosophers were ignorant of, is most ready to know: that in man diverse affections—that is, justice, mercy, sanctity, benevolence, piety—are adventitious things and are therefore called affects. God, however, is not passively affected by these, because they are known to be in him continually and naturally. Therefore, what in man is affect and grace, in God is virtue and nature.

For what was said: "He did not feel with the sense of one suffering, but with the affection of one suffering with," why should anyone not presume to say with that sense what the prophetic text also recalls: "Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chastise me in your fury," and "The Lord swore and will not repent of it," and again: "The Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance." And likewise, with a different affection, Jacob is described as having loved and Esau as having hated. He is said to grieve over our sins and to rejoice in his works, and, subject to affections, he himself says: "I repent of having made man." And from the highest seat of heaven he declares: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" For he also seems to show the affection of one suffering with when he says: "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink," and other such things, which abundantly come to mind. Therefore, just as if some priest, endowed with knowledge of many languages and placed among diverse peoples, were to instruct a Hebrew in Hebrew, a Greek in Greek, a Roman in Roman speech, shaping his words according to each one's understanding and adapting his utterance to each one's sense, and distributing the voices of one heart and [sinner's] breast into various hearings, so also God, when about to speak with man, deigns to take up the language of man, and, even about to take up human form, attests through the sounds of our understandings the affections of our ordinances.

For while describing the functions of the five human senses, it says: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears are open to their prayers," and again: "The mouth of the Lord has spoken," likewise: "and He has smelled the odor of sweetness," and: "My hand has made all these things. Heaven is my throne, but the earth is the footstool of my feet," it insinuates into our hearts the efficacies of things by the signification of His members, whereby, on account of His ineffable condescension toward the human race, which does not disdain to name and address servants as friends and sons, man converses with Him in turn with human mouth and custom. Moreover, the wrath of God is justice, the fury of God is the vigor of severity, God's having sworn is having determined, God's having repented is a sentence often changed, and when He says He is harmed by someone persecuting Him, He shows the crime of the one harming. The entire ministry of speech and every means by which God is either understood or proclaimed is cut off from us in every way, if these exchanges of human discourse are removed. Why, therefore, among these things can it not be said: "But He felt with the affection of one suffering with"?

If, therefore, a simple and open response has satisfied the inquiring teacher, let us move on to the third question, which you command me to answer: what in human affairs is to be understood as corporeal and what as incorporeal. To these matters I will set forth something not from the presumption of my own mind, but according to the opinion of the holy elders, especially since these things cannot harm the soul and can nourish the faith, and can avail to arm and raise up against the Arian depravities, even to the point where the Son appears equal to the Father. Therefore, when discussion concerns a higher treatise, the sense and the mind must be prepared for a more subtle understanding. Some of the most learned fathers assert that some things are invisible, others indeed incorporeal. They define that whatever is created is seen as matter and is comprehensible to its maker and is corporeal. For they assert that the nature of souls and angels is corporeal, because it is circumscribed by a beginning and by space. For as we read in a certain treatise of Saint Jerome: "They suppose," he says, "that the spheres of the stars are purified spirits," and again: "If angels," he says, "are said to be unclean even as celestial bodies in comparison to God, what do you think man is to be considered?" But among these things, you deny that the soul is corporeal because, according to the opinion of some, it is neither local nor subsists by quality or quantity, which is manifestly to be believed only of the majesty of God.

For we read in a very widely received treatise of the fathers: "To enter," it says, "and to fill all things is possible for the Trinity alone, which so becomes the penetrator of every intellectual nature that it not only encompasses and surrounds it, but also can glide into it and, as it were, be poured into a body incorporeally." For although we pronounce some natures to be spiritual, such as angels, archangels, and the other powers, and also our own soul, or certainly this subtle air, yet they are by no means to be considered incorporeal. For they have a body according to themselves, by which they subsist, although much and incomparably thinner than our bodies are, according to the Apostle's statement saying: "both celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies." From which it is clearly gathered that nothing is incorporeal except God alone, and therefore only He can be capable of penetrating all spiritual and intellectual substances.

Since these things are so, you object to me that the soul is not corporeal because, as has been said, it is neither local nor subsists by quality or quantity. The danger of which belief will be demonstrated in what follows. But now the outcome of this stage of our treatise will depend on the discussion held, so that if it is neither local nor subject to quantity, we may grant without doubt that it is incorporeal. But if I demonstrate that it is determined by quantity or confined by place, then you yourself will no longer doubt that it is consequently also contained by body. How is it not local, which, inserted into the limbs and bound up in the viscera, is held confined by the sole motions of a wandering condition of substance? But if you think the soul should be asserted as not local because it ranges through diverse senses and is dispersed by thoughts, first it must be understood that the state of the soul is one thing, and the affection of thought which arises from the soul is another. For this reason, it should rather be judged that, if it ever imagines something for itself, it is more occupied with its own motions within itself, and if there is anything else which it seems to behold, it is more described for it in the mirror of recollection. For when it thinks of an absent loved one, has it already satisfied its desires as if by seeing him? Or when, for example, it depicts the appearance of Peter or Paul within the secret places of the mind, has it immediately penetrated the innermost seats of paradise, where we know them to be?

Or when he has set before himself in his heart the punishments of that rich man from his reading, has he already descended to the places of his torments and to the inaccessible depths of the living hell? All these things, without doubt, he either fashions within the secret recesses of his breast through various likenesses, or certainly, if unstable thought, driven by a slippery motion, roams outside the seat of the soul, it does this locally. And whether he thinks of a city or any region, he is fixed there, with his sense dwelling only where he is carried by the intention of his mind. He can imagine something for himself, but he cannot grasp everything at once. Therefore, when the soul has thought of Alexandria or Jerusalem, if it was truly present there in its entirety, as you suppose, let it report to us the layout of the places, the faces of the people, the movements and actions of the populations. But this very thing, that we now exchange mutual conversation between us by the action of the spirit, I feel that I am speaking with you but within my own conscience, yet I do not feel that I have come to you. For if the soul is truly believed to be carried with its senses, and to present itself by its own thoughts to those whom it remembers, behold, through these moments of present time I think of you and see you with my remembering mind, and yet I am wholly ignorant of what you are doing and whether you are engaged in quiet, or in reading, or in prayer. But this happens because I reach you by the affection of my heart, not by the truth of my own substance.

For the nature of our soul does not consist in its movements, which we feel to be sometimes best and sometimes worst. For if it were believed to consist in its thoughts, why does it persist in its own vigor and alacrity when those thoughts sometimes vanish and perish? How many very frequent thoughts and cares even die salubriously in us and work more for the freedom of the inner life! If the soul consisted in them, it could without doubt not survive when they perish. Hence reason itself speaks to our consciences all the more that each soul either gives birth to manifold thoughts conceived within itself from the causes of things, or disperses its senses like certain offices or ministries to be occupied by diverse necessities, while it itself rests in the chamber of its body, about to depart from it once. Therefore, to offer a sufficient example that the soul itself is local, was not the soul of Lazarus, while life lingered, within the body, and when life departed from the dwelling of the body, did it not go into exile, and again, poured back into the lifeless body, did it not return, summoned back to that place from which it had been absent? Do you then contend that it is not local, when you see it both driven from the habitation of its lodging and again restored into the lodging from which it had been absent?

But why do I speak these things about corruptible man, when He whose flesh did not see corruption possessed an immaculate soul indeed, but a local one, which He certainly had within Himself when He was affixed to the cross, and which He undoubtedly sent forth from Himself when He lay in the tomb? How is it not local, which the flesh contains, which life joins together, and which death separates? If, as you say, the nature of souls does not admit of local necessity, then are not those souls which are confined in the prison of hell also from the region of paradise? Tell me, please, if they are not local, how does that vast chaos, with its sad interposition, separate sinners from the gatherings and companies of the just, so that neither can they approach from here to there, nor cross over from there to here? Moreover, it is most evident that things which are contained in spaces are circumscribed by quantity. If you have acknowledged the soul to be local, grant that it is corporeal. Tell me, did not the soul itself of our glorious Redeemer leave the world when He ascended to heaven?

But I would not even doubt that angels are local, since it is certain that they are now contained in the heavens, now borne through the empty air, now sent down to earthly places—whom divine speech describes as ascending and descending in the vision of the patriarch, who certainly, if they were not local and were everywhere, could not be present and depart by ascent and descent. The most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before the Lord, when he announced the Lord of the heavens to be poured into the womb of Mary and when he stood before the eyes of the Lord’s mother, without doubt was absent from heaven, did not fly over the sea, did not fill the empty and diffuse vastness of the air, but occupied only that place in which he was present. Since these things are so, whatever occupies a place is a body, and I do not know how one who is sent from place to place and, like a body, is transferred by motion and approach, descends by mass, runs about by mobility, goes, returns, is absent, ascends, is not bound by local law. Or, I suppose, that one is local who, from the moment he was cast out of heaven, is not in heaven, and he did not prove himself to be local alone, who, when hurled from on high, dragged away with him a third part of the stars. Tell me, if he does not have a body, what fell in that casting down? Why do you deny a bodily nature to one whose ruin you dare not deny? And if, as you say, he does not have a body, he will not burn. But where, if not in a body, will he feel that fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels?

I consider it superfluous to say that he drew some thickness from the mixture of elements in the conversation of this air. Tell me, if he did not have a body, where in the air could there be a mixture, where could this very thickness, whatever it is, have gathered itself, if he did not bring with him something corporeal from that celestial citadel? He will, as I see, carry a foreign body to the torments. Therefore, recognize from your own assertion that it is a body. It is a body that is infected, that is stained, that is corrupted by any addition from an external source. Thus, he who was once the firstborn of the angels has now become the prince of darkness and, as if corporeal, once beautiful, now degenerate, once conspicuous with celestial splendor, now defiled with the foul horror of infernal sin. It is, I say, a body that is driven from its habitation, circumscribed by quantity, changed by quality, consumed by pain. Since these things are so, see into what deep crime those who call the soul incorporeal plunge themselves. First, since the creator God of the universe is reported to have made everything in number and weight, therefore the soul is believed to be excepted from the matter of the whole creation, which is not corporeal nor local; if it is not contained in place, therefore it is diffused everywhere, is said to enter, fill, and be present everywhere, and, as if the creature were associated with its creator and fragility with its author, it is joined not as a thing of God, but as a part of God to be esteemed. See where the high fall of error leads its assertors.

Indeed, those things that are above you are invisible to us, but all of them, just as they are comprehensible, so also are they corporeal, to Him who made everything from nothing, who, just as He established them by His work, so also did He incorporate matter into both the work and all things. Among these, the soul is also counted, just as He distributed weight, number, and measure, so also did He assign quantity. If, as has been said, someone should perhaps think it necessary to assert that by that angelic subtlety of nature some contamination collected from the mixture of this air will be found liable to flames, then only in the air, as he says, if it is airy that will burn, the punishment will rage not in that thing, but outside it. But without doubt, it is nothing other than the substance of a body where the force of pain will be able to hold sway. See where this imprudent and unskilled persuasion tends, which, when it speaks of the incorporeal, also confesses it to be incomprehensible, and thus ascribes to the created work what belongs solely to the Creator, and communicates to created things the privileges of majesty and an undue power of the creature, extending even to an injury against the Maker. If we inquire properly to what outcomes of things you direct your mind, this credulity especially cast the devil down from that station of the blessed seat, and because of this he lost the dignity of an angel, while he presumed to have the nature of God.

Therefore, the one God is incorporeal, because He is also incomprehensible and diffused everywhere; for He took no material beginning from any corporeal creation, and therefore the Son is coeternal with the Father, because He was established from no work and is circumscribed by no beginnings, and He is diffused with incorporeal majesty over all things which, comprehensible and corporeal by their own fashioning, He wrought within the body of the world; begotten from the unbegotten, that is, from the Father, but always with the Father, He rules over those things which He roused from nothing, in an undivided fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen. IV. TO THE LORD FATHER AND ALSO PATRON, BISHOP FAUSTUS, FROM PAULINUS. Writing to you from here is restrained by fear, but compelled by affection; and between the two, my mind is tossed about uncertainly, just as when a reckless sailor entrusts his sails to a doubtful fortune. But I, who have in you a sure harbor, often take upon myself the outcome of an uncertain course; yet I have chosen to generate annoyance rather than guilt. For I have learned full well that my lord Faustus receives my letters without disdain. But because my lord Marinus the hermit, a holy man to be feared for his extreme austerity, has imposed upon me such great fear with his stern severity, I approach as an inquirer.

I am entangled in carnal sins, I commit every crime of which a guilty man is capable; when I have fulfilled the day of human lot, I have obtained sudden repentance—whether it excludes sin in part or entirely, I wish to know. Or, if those who believe in the undivided Trinity are subjected to perpetual punishments and torments, whether those who do not sin in spirit are tortured by flames and all bodily torments for carnal vices. This is my opinion: that if a Christian accepts all these things, he can undertake nothing more. An Arian—or whether the soul, separated from the bodily bond, is consigned to some prison or held confined in a cell, or whether it is tossed uncertainly among the breezes. And because I know that in that hour all thought perishes, if you admit it, I respectfully ask whether both good and evil thought descend from the soul, which is proven to be immortal, or whether some sense and understanding are preserved, or whether it feels anything of honorable affection. And because we know that all things are granted to the good, so that even greater things can be bestowed upon the living after death, what is either given or taken away from the evil, let me learn; or whether the soul itself is harmed more when it is corporeal or incorporeal, let me be taught. And because the flesh is weak but the spirit is willing, what communion of sin the soul receives for bodily error, I, ignorant, desire to know; or, since it is immortal, how it is tormented for mortal vices; likewise, whether soul and spirit are the same or how they are separated, let me learn.

For the aforementioned man terrified me even by the interposition of an oath, that whoever succumbs to bodily vices can obtain no pardon, but is preserved in those same punishments even at the resurrection, nor can the torments of hell expiate what he contracted, being concreted with bodily vices through life. Yet, wretched as I am, I believe that whoever, once having received the sign of the divine name and the character of our Lord fixed upon the forehead, never, as one conscious of evil or a deceitful falsifier, breaks it, having lightly undergone torments for expiating his error, produces on the day of his death a pure aerial sense and the fire of a simple soul. For if we except sinners from all these things which my lord Marinus threatens, what greater punishment the impious deserve, I do not know. Grant pardon that I offer injury to your piety, while I, a new disciple, desire to be taught by a veteran teacher. V. TO THE DISTINGUISHED LORD AND HIGHLY HONORED BY ME WITH SPECIAL REVERENCE, PAULINUS, FROM HIS SON FAUSTUS.

The page of your letter, always admirable to me, now shines more abundantly with the twin light of eloquence and faith, as it inquires about the state of the soul and, with anxious fear, sighs over future judgments. Divine speech says in a certain place: wisdom will be accounted to one who asks rightly. For a certain portion of knowledge is to know what you do not know, and prudently to investigate those things which you do not understand in ignorance. In the first place, you thought it should be inquired whether, in the straits of extreme necessity pressing upon one, momentary penance can consume capital offenses. He lies to himself with a hostile persuasion who thinks that stains contracted over a long time are to be abolished by sudden and already useless groans. At that time, confession can exist, but satisfaction cannot exist. For because God is not mocked, he deceives himself who lived for death for a long time and rises up half-alive to seek life, so that he then appears dutiful when all the offices of body and soul are withdrawn from the Lord's service. For carrying out the health of the inner man, not only the will to receive is expected, but the usefulness of acting. For thus we read: if, it says, a sinner has done penance for his sins (it said *has done*, not only *has said* or *has received*), he will live in his own righteousness, which he has worked. You notice that this kind of medicine, just as it is to be sought by the mouth, so it is to be completed by work.

He seems to insult God who, at the time when he could, was unwilling to come to the physician, and now begins to wish for it when he cannot. Therefore it is necessary that the devotion in healing wounds be as great as was the abrupt and vigorous intention of the mind toward evil in sinning. Secondly, you asked whether faith alone and knowledge of the unity of the Trinity suffice for salvation. In divine matters, not only the reason for believing is required, but also for pleasing. Therefore, naked faith, without merits, is empty and void, as the apostle says: What good is it if someone claims to have faith, but does not have works? Can faith save him? For he continues and says: Faith, if it does not have works, is dead in itself. But someone says: You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith through works. According to this, it is not proven that credulity alone suffices. For knowing and believing in God is also found in the devil, as the same apostle says: You believe that there is one God; you do well, for even demons believe and tremble. Do you wish to know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not our father Abraham justified by works? And lest we place our hope solely in the part of faith, he concluded thus: For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so too faith without works is dead, without which he said a man is empty.

We omit many similar testimonies for the sake of brevity. The apostle Paul, from whose breast the Lord spoke as from His own temple, did he judge that faith alone could suffice for overcoming the evils of the world, saying: "I chastise my body and reduce it to servitude, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself be found reprobate?" Behold, he fears becoming reprobate through the vices of the body; already proven, he dreads becoming a vessel of contumely through the deadly contagions of carnal passions, he who has already been made a vessel of election. Let us see if faith alone defends the prodigal of his own life, and if the baptized, as you say, can no longer perish. I recognize how carnal evils make a man alien from God, a slave of shameful pleasures. The apostle says to the Galatians: "The works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, impurity, luxury, homicides, drunkennesses, revelries, and the like, because those who do such things will not obtain the kingdom of God." Or to the Ephesians: "Every fornicator or impure or avaricious person, which is the servitude of idols, will not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." "Serving idols," he says: when something is loved with that cupidity with which God ought to be loved, an affection of this kind is compared to idols. This one, without doubt, excluded from the kingdom, is consigned to hell and death. Moreover, it is manifest that many of the baptized, with faith intact, perish eternally through various kinds of sins.

The divine word does not accuse transgressors of the faith, nor violators of baptism, but those who neglected to be merciful, saying: judgment without mercy for him who has not shown mercy, and again: I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not take me in, I was naked and you did not cover me. If this number of the left-hand flock had been ignorant of the gift of baptism, it would have first charged them with unfaithfulness and impiety, but though baptized, yet empty of good works, it consigns them to death and abandons them to perpetual flames, and concludes the severity of the sentence thus: Depart, it says, from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; and again: He will gather the wheat into his granary, but will burn the chaff with inextinguishable fire; similarly: These, it says, will go into eternal life, those others into eternal fire. Amid these things, let each one see to it that he does not accuse God of falsehood regarding the promise of reward, who doubts the eternity of punishment. It is not so, for He who knows how to honor merits also knows how to punish sins. Therefore these three capital offenses—sacrilege, adultery, homicide—unless they have been expiated here by the remedies of perfect penance, will be consumed there by perpetual fires. Thus we do not read that these merciless ones deviated from faith and baptism, but we know from divine authority that they merited eternal death.

This too troubles your mind with provident care for the future: whether souls, once stripped of the body, do not also shed the vigor and affection of perception and understanding. Let us question that rich man in the Gospel—not wandering among the breezes, as the ravings of poets assert, but in the prison of hell, among those who, confined, await punishment, amid the flames of conscience before the appointed day of judgment—anxious for the correction of brothers who were still placed in this world, mingling conversations with Abraham across the vast intervening chaos with persistent entreaty, and stirred by lively remembrance of his kin, he pleaded thus for the living: “I ask you,” he said, “Father Abraham, that you send Lazarus to my father’s house; for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they too come to this place of torments, and if any of the dead goes to them, they may do penance.” Behold, imprisoned in the dungeon of hell, having no remedy for himself, he nevertheless preserves his ancient affection for his own, and while condemned, he prays for sinners, showing that great care for the welfare of their dear ones exists among the just breathing within the groves of paradise.

Now as to what you ask—whether evils are given or taken away after the end—for the wicked, of whom it is read: “the desire of sinners will perish,” once the lust for earthly things and the ambition for honors have been removed, only the weight of having to render an account and the dread of an unbearable judgment will loom; nor will the senses be taken away, but they will be rendered more unencumbered and alert for the contemplation of the other world. As to what you demand to be taught concerning the soul itself—whether it is corporeal or incorporeal—know this: that which is not included in times nor confined by the boundaries of places, that which belongs to God alone, is the only thing that is incorporeal. Just as one of the distinguished teachers, when discussing with someone who asked where God is, replied thus: “God is not somewhere; what is somewhere is contained in a place; what is contained in a place is a body.” Since this is so, every flesh is a body, but not every body is flesh, [and because not only the soul but also the invisible and celestial substance of angels is contained in local spaces, it is thereby proved to be corporeal and comprehensible in relation to its creator. For what is it, if not corporeal, that, thrust out from the heavenly seats, yielded to a place? What is it that felt the fall? What is it that, subject to eternal flame, is prepared for punishment?

But the blessed Lazarus himself—after the tongues of the dogs that served him, received by the hands of angels, of whom we read: "it happened that the beggar died and was carried by angels into the bosom of Abraham"—taught that his soul was corporeal, while he is borne by angelic ministrations into the bosom of Abraham, that is, into a remote and blessed secret place. Concerning his own soul, the holy prophet declares: "Lord, lead my soul out of prison," that is, from the narrow confines of the bodily dwelling. Hence, from its suffering—which is either wounded by the darts of sins or, through changed qualities, is raised up to the splendor of the divine image—it is evidently shown to be corporeal, since it can be grasped and transferred by God and by angels. But among these matters, it must be inquired what that is, that when both man—that is, soul and body—still sinned in the region of paradise at the persuasion of the devil, only the flesh received the penalty of death for the transgression, and the common guilt remained with the punishment of one. Therefore, it must be known that death does not reach the soul because the Lord placed His image and likeness in it.

For just as God is immortal, merciful, just, and patient, so the gifts of these virtues he pours into the face of our inner man, so that the more patient, the more just, the more merciful each one becomes, the more he would appear endowed with the gift of divine participation, as the apostle says: Christ dwells in the inner man through faith. You also ask why souls have something in common with their flesh on account of bodily error. Just as original sin, on account of the unity of the bodily lodging, embraces both, and each man is bound in like manner in the fellowship of sins, so they have one cause in the participation of crimes, just as there is equal glory in the reward of virtues. For the outer man would never fall into the abyss of lust unless the inner man gave its consent. Let us question ourselves, and within ourselves we will be able to recognize that the mind, as mistress, exercises command, and the flesh, as subject, performs service; the one supplies ministry, the other counsel. Obedience from the servant would cease unless the will from the commander preceded it. And they must recognize a similar condition in damnation, which they will together rejoice in at the time of reward.

You say further: that which is immortal, how is it tormented for mortal vices? Mortal evils indeed they are, but the torment of evils will be immortal, and the crosses of sins will remain when the vices fail. The better matter will thus deliver itself with the inferior to judgment, just as the admixture of lead compels gold to be smelted. Therefore man, for mortal evils, is about to die to God and to live for hell. This will be death there: that it is not permitted to die in pain. You extend your concern also to this: whether the soul and the spirit are the same or how they are separated. Let us know only two substances in man, that is, of soul and body. But spirit is sometimes found to be natural, sometimes accidental. For sometimes spirit is put for soul, sometimes it is understood as the appetite for virtue and spiritual affection. In this way, one and the same man is sometimes carnal, sometimes animal, sometimes even spiritual. Carnal are those of whom the Lord says: my spirit will not remain in these men, because they are flesh, and the Apostle: those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Carnal is he who serves the belly and throat with excess of eating and drinking and places the good of life in gluttony of the gullet and voracity.

But the animal man comes to be when, still thinking too little of God, he is moved by worldly prudence to provide for certain things, or when he delights in investigating, out of a curious vanity, the causes of hidden things or in philosophical studies, whence the Apostle says: the animal man does not perceive what is of the Spirit of God. But he begins to be spiritual when he desires what is honorable, holy, spiritual; when he rises to the cultivation of divine fear by the vigor of his heart; when he invites the Holy Spirit to himself through purity of body, through the keeping of chastity, so that the apostolic saying may be spoken of her: you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you. These things are not innate to man by nature, but are so joined to him by grace that they can be separated by sloth intervening through fault. Whence the same Apostle says: but he who has violated the temple of God, God will destroy him. Behold, through faith he is not only baptized, but also seems to be the temple of God, and yet through various crimes he will be destroyed by the severity of God. In this place let us know that the word "perdition" means the eternal destruction of the lost soul. Among the number of the baptized are without doubt counted those who are said to be members of Christ, and see how they are compared to the lost, how they degenerate from the nobility of sons by the working of shameful deeds, the Apostle saying: I will therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot.

And those men also had most clearly received the gifts of a second birth, who even flourished with a diversity of charismata, concerning whom the Lord says in the Gospel: "Many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name? And then I will confess to them, that I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity." Who does not understand that those who are ordered to withdraw from the sight of the Father are rejected from salvation? Death will undoubtedly receive into its own lot those whom Life, which is Christ, has not known. Do you doubt that the baptized are handed over to perdition on account of their iniquities, when you recognize that baptism itself perishes through manifold crimes? But that, as the text contains, your speech borrowed from the poet esteemed the fire of the simple soul, it is fitting to say this only concerning the substance of divinity, to which nothing is added, nothing is conferred from a higher source, nothing is known to be joined. The just one is equally justice, the living one is life, the wise one is wisdom, virtue and the origin of virtues. For in its principal goods, it is itself what it possesses. Man, however, can be understood as twofold, who can be called living and just and wise, but cannot be called life and justice and wisdom, because he is so clothed with these that he is sometimes divested of them. What is given to man is innate in God. Man, for example, is gilded; God is gold, in whom power and grace are the same as nature.

For what you subtly indicated: if all these things which lord Marinus threatens befall sinners, I do not know what greater punishment the impious deserve; they have, under perpetual evils, their own degrees of punishment, so that one liable for grave sins, though infinite, is yet somehow tolerably tormented, while the impious is racked with unheard-of tortures. But then the grace of baptism could vindicate a man from eternal death, if in some its integrity and dignity did not perish. It is a grave crime that the heretic refused to receive, but no less grave is that which the Christian both received and lost. For that man also, who, trusting in baptism, had burst into the nuptial banquet as a violator of the sacred council, having lost the luster of purity, is expelled from the illustrious assembly of the just and thrust into the outer darkness. Is he to be believed to possess the snowy whiteness of holy regeneration, who is incestuous, a poisoner, and bloodstained, or who, cutting short his life by a precipice or hanging, passes over into the company of the impious?

We read that inextinguishable flames are prepared for capital crimes, but we do not read that a man living in his evils has been saved by baptism alone. A dangerous security promises itself what heavenly Scripture does not speak, and much more dangerously does it disbelieve what truth threatens. Some things, as you say, the most blessed man Marinus has set forth with threat, but just as that which the Lord promised to those who love Him does not, by the testimony of the apostle, ascend into the human heart on account of the magnitude of the matter, so the immensity of future torments exceeds the narrowness of the human mind—evils which the shadow of momentary penance does not remove, which faith without works does not repel, for which the course of the passing ages will not be able to set a limit in inextinguishable flames, among which unexhausted vapors the soul will slowly both feel and see itself corporeal. And therefore let us anticipate the last day with just, pious, and chaste works, and by fearing here what it will not profit to fear there, let us avoid it. Let us impose an end here by infinite contritions, and by now salubriously thinking of intolerable fires, let us procure for ourselves eternal coolness from those very fires.

I am certain, however, of your faith, that embellished with the composed splendor of speech, the salutary testimonies of sincere truth will be more acceptable to you. My son Eminentius, our sweet ornament, we greet with paternal affection. May our Lord fill your admirable magnificence with present goods and render you worthy of eternal ones. VI. TO the most pious lord and one to be cultivated with special offices, as I trust, forever brother and in all things master Felix, from Faustus. It is a great testimony of piety and faith that through such vast intervals of regions and through so many intervening perils of things you extend the breadth of your charity all the way to us. In this exile of ours, the mercy of our God, the artisan, exercises twin offices: it polishes away our rust with paternal diligence, it clarifies your faith concerning us, and it approves your piety. It refines us with benevolent care, it brings you forth; it constricts us salubriously, it expands you; we are reproved, you advance. Our losses pass over into your advantages. Although you are our creditors, you begin to be our debtors, since we are the cause of your devotion and the material of your reward. Your works gain profit from us; your merits borrow and obtain increase from our scourges. The affection of your solicitude reaches us; its fruit reaches God. And thus in a twofold manner, both from our chastisement and from your recompense, we are bound by divine benefits.

But the silence of my response had almost been imposed by the perfection of your consolation. For the very anxiety of questioning is already a form of living, which you daily draw sufficiently from the efficacious teachings and present examples of my lord, your father, the holy bishop Leontius. Nor do I wonder, if you also seek out my instruction, however superfluous, knowing as you do my singular affection for you. You believe that my teaching, as an aid to your faith, is as perfect as my desire is, but although my speech, which even now my infirmity renders slower, can scarcely suffice for your ardor, yet I will, in a few words, not so much instruct as review your way of life. For those who are anxious, the recognition of sin, the fear of judgment, and the terror of eternal fire provide great instruction. Therefore, for those who enjoy them, the silent hours of the night are friendly for offering the sacrifices of prayers, and these are followed by measured reading up to the third hour, so that spiritual exercise may never cease to be desired and may always be increased. Would that the Lord might provide at least two faithful companions, with whom you could carry out your daily and nightly duties, and that you might enjoy the offices of those who greet you for at least two days in the week. The things we discuss are difficult, given the fervor of the one who questions, but may the kind helper of those who labor make his yoke as light for you as his reward will be pleasant.

Therefore, if the somewhat more unsteady early stages permit, alternate winter days should be spent in fasting, which, just as it is fitting to moderate, so it is necessary to double. Double, I say. For there are two kinds of abstinence: one is to restrain the appetite of incontinence from food and drink and from the various enticements of carnal pleasures, and to subdue the soil of the outer self under the plow of the cross, and to serve necessity rather than pleasure with tempered moderation, taking a meal, if infirmity allows, on alternate days, until the force of long habit is gradually unlearned. As for the use of garments, gravity should gradually lower itself to lesser things, lest the very novelty of sudden mediocrity cause offense. For it must be observed that pride may arise even from excessive humility, and a vice be born from virtue. This, however, will easily be overcome if that shameful history of past conduct is brought before the eyes and the guilty conscience is presented to the trembling senses. Thus it will happen that, while through the recollection of past evils the presumption instilled by the devil is chastised, and while boasting, conquered by the strong weapons of faults, is repelled, the crimes which had generated death begin to serve for salvation, offenses become beneficial as a remedy, medicine is produced from wounds, and, as the apostle said, we labor from sin to condemn sin.

The other kind of abstinence is far more sublime and far more precious: to govern the movements of the mind, to subdue irrational disturbances and the rebellious tumults of thoughts contending among themselves under the command of the mind, to spit out the poison of malice like some deadly sorcery from the innermost recesses of the heart, and to steer the soul through the waves of various temptations with the rudder of constancy, and to join battle against hidden passions as against domestic enemies with the authority of an indignant faith, to drive away empty cares far off and to abstain from harmful conversations and desires by which the devil is fed, and through gentleness, patience, and tranquility to cultivate the image of God in the face of the inner man, so that a man thinking of spiritual and divine things is not broken by sadness nor dissolved by joy, but the equanimity of magnanimity shows a breast steadied in the fear of God, so that the famous beginning of that little book can be fitted to us: "He was a man abstaining from every evil thing." "A man," it says, "one," that is, always the same, because in him there was nothing doubtful, nothing double, nothing accidental, nothing variable, nothing diverse, but times did not change him abiding in an equal order of his virtues, nor did the diverse blasts of winds turn him, as is the custom with sea waves, into opposite directions. Thus also the anxious servant of God, founded on the immovable mass of faith, should be changed only in this, that Christ working in him clothes him ever with new virtues.

Above all, as far as we can with God’s help, let us storm in ourselves those enticements of the five senses. For whatever delights the sight, whatever flatters the sense of smell, whatever soothes the touch, whatever sweetens the taste, whatever charms the hearing—all these, if we misuse them, roll our intention down from spiritual things to earthly ones. And therefore, just as Abraham, the father of faith, conquered those five kings in the mystery of the three hundred and eighteen hidden within the letter, so let us fight against these principal leaders of the vices in the name of Jesus and the sign of the cross—for this is what both numbers express—that we may deserve to hear from the Lord: “To the victor I will give the crown of life,” and “He who conquers will not be harmed by the second death,” and “Because the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent snatch it away.” For the soul will do violence to itself, so that it may subject carnal affections to the spirit, prefer the cross to pleasures, set vigils before sweet sleep, conquer the adversary in its own members, and, changed from one thing into another, be found fit for that command of the Lord: “If anyone,” he says, “wishes to come after me, let him deny himself to himself.” If someone from being wrathful becomes patient, from being lustful becomes continent, from being cruel becomes gentle, from being envious becomes kind, from being greedy becomes generous, then we deny ourselves as often as we turn ourselves toward better things. And therefore, in order to rise up to what we ought to be, let us first strive to hate what we were.

It is necessary that he who wishes to be changed there to glory should first be changed here to life. VII. To the holy lord and brother most closely bound in Christ, the deacon Graecus, from Faustus. Honored by your office, honored by your judgment, provoked by your affection, I shall speak with you in sincere humility, in benevolent frankness, in unfeigned charity, in the word of truth. And although you could have imposed upon me a reason for silence, while with a kind and all too credulous mind you attribute to me almost as much skill and learning as to yourself, yet through the anxiety of your questioning you have laid upon me the necessity of replying, a necessity with which I think I must converse with you in your absence not without trepidation, because concerning matters so profound and exceeding both my strength and yours, there is no less danger in replying than in entrusting such great sacraments to an unpolished style, and therefore I ought rather to have corrected my dear friend, who has spoken all too rashly in these matters, by remaining silent. But in a consultation on so great a matter, in which you have left the royal road far behind, you ought to have questioned some men of proven knowledge, older in learning and in age, whom you could more easily believe, according to that prophetic saying: Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will tell you. But without doubt, whoever seeks a guide, however humble, wishes to avoid error. Moreover, in those things which we do or which we say, and finally presume to commit to writing, we ought to expect the fruit and progress of the work.

In this little work, however, which you deigned to send to me, there appears no eloquence, no learning, no reasoning, no edification of any ordered or pointed discourse, but testimonies heaped together in the most confused manner for the ease of memory accuse the rashness of an incautious heart. The Lord knows that I speak these things stupefied for the sake of your salvation, so that both your having asked and my having answered may profit the common good. In the writings of the holy pontiff Augustine, even if something is thought suspect among the most learned men, know that nothing which you judged to be condemned has been censured from these, but know that the sense of the faith, especially concerning the two substances or natures of God and man of our Lord and Redeemer, has been not only received by the authority of the fathers in the catholic church, but also consecrated by apostolic oracles. Therefore this word, which you say was made to you in a prophetic manner, as is certain, not by the spirit of God, is very damnable both before God and before men, unless you yourself condemn it first. Therefore, to pass over other matters, to constrain this twofold error, both born from heresy and dragging into the perils of heresy, in a brief discourse, as much as I can while absent, since for your holy sincerity the presence of many teachers, not of such a one as I am, would be necessary, in the first place it is ignorantly and quite dangerously—I do not say written, but thought—that it should not be accepted that man is the mother of God.

You know that it descends from the impiety of the Nestorian heresy, which with profane audacity did not fear to argue that the blessed Mary was only the mother of a man, not also of God, and therefore for this reason he was condemned by the strict judgment of the Catholic Church throughout the whole world. "It ought not," he says, "to be accepted that a man is the mother of God." But where is that either prophetic or evangelical saying: "Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel," which is interpreted: "God with us," and likewise in the Gospel: "That which will be born of the holy one will be called the Son of God"? Where also is that which, taken up by all the islands and churches, the authority of the fathers signs, speaking against Nestorius: "Cursed," it says, "is he who does not confess that the Son of God, true God, born of Mary recently for our salvation?" It followed that you would say that the nature of God and man is one, in this way one substance of God. You would have spoken correctly if you had spoken only about the Trinity, where the nature is one and the same under the distinction of three persons. But when it comes to the incarnation of the assumed man, just as we confess one person of man and God, so we know the substance to be twofold. Whoever, however, asserts that the Lord Redeemer is of one nature either denies the man in the divinity or the God in the body, since our redemption is perfected not from one or the other, but from both.

But in this place, one nature without the other—to the peril of our faith, if you say "of God alone"—means that the divinity was crucified in the substance of its own majesty, if you say it is the nature of God alone; in its own substance the majesty died or was buried. All these things God underwent not in himself, but in the nature of the man he assumed. For God felt nothing by the sense of one who suffers, but he felt by the affection of one who sympathizes; he felt nothing by reason of a difference of substance, but he felt by reason of the unity of person. He joined them in unity and consequently added: "We understand one and the same true man and true God," and he repeated: "We in no way doubt that the true man and true God must be confessed." Accept also from the hymn of the holy bishop and confessor Ambrose, which the Catholic Church throughout all the regions of Italy and Gaul sings on the Lord's nativity: "Come forth from your chamber, giant of twin substance.

Therefore, holy brother, flee the error of either side in these matters. If you say it is the nature of God alone, you have imposed the condition of passion and death upon God; if, however, you say it is the nature of man alone, you have taken away from God the glory of redemption, you have taken away from the author the power of the restorer. Hear how the sacred Scriptures explain both substances through one person. According to the divine nature, it speaks: "I and the Father are one"; according to the human substance, it confesses: "Because the Father is greater than I." According to the heavenly nature, it declares: "All that the Father has is mine"; according to the weakness of the earthly nature, it says: "But the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." As a man, he indicated: "My soul is sad unto death"; as God, he testified: "I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again." According to the nature of the flesh, he hung on the cross; according to the substance of the divinity, he bestowed paradise and the heavenly kingdom.

The Arians, with darkened hearts, utterly failing to see this—because presumption and pride cloud the mind’s insight—attributed to God what belonged to man, believing that a lesser divinity was speaking where only human weakness was being shown. Posing no distinction between the celestial and the earthly, while refusing to accept two natures in God and man, they divided the substance of God; and while looking only at the words of man, they lost the God who is the fullness of glory in the light of understanding. And thus, whoever denies that the Son of God is to be believed as man is stained with the impiety of Nestorius; whoever does not believe in two substances in the Redeemer is caught and entangled in the snare of Arius. But we, my dearest brother, let us believe in the Lord Christ with such perfect and inseparable distinction that we know the single person of God and man and the twofold substance. Just as soul and body make a man, so divinity and humanity are one Christ.

You, however, who, forestalled by a twofold error, thought it should be written that under the meeting of two natures it ought not to be accepted that God is the father of a man, that a man is the mother of God—we, confidently and salutarily asserting one person of God and man in him who was in the beginning and who, at the time of our redemption, was made in the likeness of the flesh of sin, that is, in the truth of a man and the likeness of a sinner—we, I say, so testify that God is the father of a man under the unity of person, just as under the embrace of that same unity we confess that the mother of God is a man, according to the authority of the creed, to pass over other things, by which we say: I believe also in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was conceived from the Holy Spirit, born from the Virgin Mary. For if such an error is to have believed in one and simple substance in the Lord Savior, what kind of error is it to have asserted a double person? For if in the union of the assumed flesh, which form of a servant God put on, there were not two substances, then God was not in the man, and the person of the man was separate from God, and thus under such a sense you will suddenly see a fourth person somehow added, and in this the consequence of depravity is precipitated into understanding, so that it is no longer necessary to confess the Trinity.

Listen rather to how the blessed Isaiah, with distinct order and conjoined distinction, sets forth the nativity of our Lord and Redeemer: "A little child," he says, "has been born to us, a son has been given to us." Receive the Son of God, born in the last age from an unwed mother, begotten by nature unknowing and by faith marrying, humbled by will, with the Holy Spirit coming upon the Virgin, man wonderfully filled into God and God mercifully changed into man, neither having emptied the magnitude of glory, but having shown the Lord's piety through the assumed condition of a servant. "A little child has been born to us, a son has been given to us." He was born to us who existed for himself. Therefore, given from divinity, born from a virgin; born, who would experience decline; given, who would know no beginning; born, who would be younger than his mother; given, than whom not even his father is more ancient; born, who would die; given, through whom life would be reborn. There he rules, here he is humbled; for himself he reigns, for me he serves. "A little child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and the principality has been placed upon his shoulder." The shoulder shows the manifest man, the principality speaks of the hidden God. Recognize the twofold substance under the unity of person.

It is from our own that he adds, from his own that he gives; from our own he had that from which he would fall, from his own that from which he would rise; from our own he had that from which he would be held, from his own that from which he would have mercy; from our own he had that from which he would pay for us, from his own that from which he would appear as a debtor in no respect at all; from our own he had that from which he would be crucified, from his own that from which he would be glorified; from our own he gave the victim of sin, from his own he bestowed the grace of forgiveness. From our own, therefore, comes humiliation; from his own, ascension is proven to be. From our own he offered a sacrifice, from his own he conferred a reward. Thus the man, capable of two natures, is recognized by infirmities, the God is approved by virtues. It irks me to produce a discourse in assertion of so manifest a matter. I know that I commit these things, even briefly and summarily recalled, rashly either to my letters or to your perceptions. But since you submit yourself with solicitous humility to the salubriousness of inquiry, you promise me much regarding a remedy for this error. Recall, I beg you, your foot from this precipice, before you are swept away into the irrevocable deep by the torrent of pride, and chastise the right sense of the mind, which does not sustain the weight of much reading nor knows how to dispense the treasury of knowledge, rather by the occupation of labor. Temper the immoderate rigor of abstinence, which also generates infirmity in the mind, which I think arises from the same source as the presumption of writing. Return to the royal road; flee the solicitude that is the nurse of pride.

and because we read: "eating too much of me is not good, for knowledge inflates a poorly founded mind more than it edifies," so beware of excessive reading, as for a heart of limited capacity you would stir up the dangerous intoxication of wine taken immoderately. Never trust your own thoughts, but rather imitate what you read than write down what you read, and in your mind speak to the Lord: "I have hidden your words in my heart, so that I may not sin against you." And if you desire to escape dangers that threaten not from without but from within, know that nothing is more useful for you than to fortify your life under a most proven abbot and to submit your will to the laws of a senior, and so that you may overcome the snares of the adversary, fear yourself. I thought that the little letter itself should be retained, indeed suppressed, lest it come into the hand and conscience of any other Catholic who might love you less. From this, however, you will be able to recognize that the depths of your heart are sound, if you still, as if free, listen diligently and willingly to me, your devoted one, humbly and lovingly admonishing you. Before the inquiry, the persuasion will seem rash; after the response, the intention will appear inexcusable. But if among these things you think something should be imputed to me, who desire your soul to be healed more by harsh than by sweet things, remember that the wounds of charity are to be preferred to kisses that are deceptively gentle.

To the most pious lord and in Christ highest, singularly to be cultivated by me with honor, son Ruricius, Faustus. Although it is pleasant for me to converse through any person with the indivisible heart of your charity itself in words of affection and to embrace you with the zealous ambition of duties, yet now, as much more fitting as it is more eagerly, I have taken up the pledge of your mind by the ministry of a domestic bearer, in whose merit the report assigned less than recognition proved. And for that reason I have rejoiced that he has grown to your benefit, because in him a better life has abolished the condition of his first birth, and in him the blemish of lineage the manumission of religion has wiped away, and into the adoption of Christ the person of a slave faith has emancipated and transferred. But how we ought to act toward his or toward the milky sincerity of the remaining brothers, you have set forth with a ready discourse the very broad dispensation of the apostle, and although the most learned page asserts them to be less learned, we nevertheless in their cleansed morals have admired through the gift of gentleness and humility the fullness of reading.

For the generosity of grace overcomes the precepts of teaching. For even within a short time, into their lucid breasts and clear inner chambers, the candid purity and splendid simplicity of the mind has introduced itself, through which the mirror of the divine image shines forth in the radiance of the inner man. The divine image, I say, for thus we read concerning the Lord: pure, simple, subtle. But that divine simplicity indicates something far different, since in us a twofold substance inheres in spirit and flesh. What we have, we have received; diverse charisms of virtues have been joined to us, not innate. Without doubt, what is added can be taken away. That we may be good, we are borrowed from the goodness of our Author. Indeed, we live from Him, but we are not life, as He is. We can be just, we cannot be justice. He is simple for this reason, because nothing has been conferred upon Him by an added generosity. He who subsists from Himself has taken nothing from elsewhere. God is both living and life, good and goodness, merciful and mercy. In the glory of His virtues, He is Himself what He possesses. To speak figuratively, man is gilded, God is gold. What in man is grace, in God is nature, and for this reason, because nothing external has accrued to Him, nothing can be taken away from Him. He does not suffer diminution, because He knows no increase. He is Author both to Himself and to the Son, because there is one origin of both the spring and the river. From these things which they have without beginning, there is communion, not transference.

And because we read concerning the Son: he is the splendor of the clarity of God, just as God is never without splendor, so the Father was never without the majesty of the Son. And just as the names of both are coeternal—for unless this one were born, that one would not be called Father—so the antiquity of a single paternity holds them without separation. He is from him, but he is not later than him, just as the face is born from the head and yet is not found younger than its own head. And thus our God is neither mixed in his own persons nor divided, one power neither divided in power nor in time; just as he is threefold in subsistence, because each subsists for himself, so he is simple in substance, because one, not knowing how to precede himself, admits neither a later nor an earlier. Hence we too have received something of this simplicity, if in us there is nothing discordant, nothing variable, nothing diverse, if we strive always to be the same through praiseworthy pursuits and sentiments founded in Christ, so that, immutable in good, we are changed only by new daily advances.

Concerning that which someone, out of a love of provocation, has consulted, it is a salutary and perfect meditation to lighten the cares of the mind by dividing them through the governance of earthly property among several persons, and after this to consider with a threefold deliberation what is better: to lease, to administer, or to sell one’s own portion. Truly, the first would be good, that a servant of Christ should strive to walk entirely in the ways of Christ the poor, if it were permitted to seek out the perfect school of some great monastery or certainly the island militia of an angelic congregation. For to bring forth an eremitic institution in the midst of the world requires as much magnanimity as it entails difficulty. But to impose the burden of one’s own parish upon one’s own people is a gain for the relief of the soul, yet it must be seen whether any of the sons can be sufficient for so arduous a service, lest perhaps the authority of a father’s command turn against the father... It is best, in the second degree, to remain under a harmful administrator of benefits, if either the will is present or the resources have fulfilled the necessity of the annual payment.

The third is to govern the quantity of reserved substance through the chosen aids of faithful servants, under one's own and lesser concern, in the duties of the imposed stewardship, and to direct the course along the royal road with complete moderation. When I urge this, I seem to consider either our own advantage or that of the poor. In this order, there is no small gain if, with use reserved, the property is distributed. And so, briefly indicating what is first, what second, and what third, we have reserved the choice to the judgment or ability of the consulter. May he deign to suggest what is more fitting, what can be more readily fulfilled, for whose fear and love the consultation itself is undertaken. May our Lord God multiply his benefits in you with a happy and to him pleasing longevity, most pious lord and son, singularly to be cultivated by me in Christ with highest honor. IX. To the most bound lord and brother Ruricius, singularly to be cultivated with the whole virtue of piety, Faustus.

With the favoring divinity established in the fitting secrecy of religion and in the most tranquil silence, where the Lord has applied the salutary file of correction to the rust contracted by long security, in this, I say, great quiet, if we recognize it, granted as a vacation, while we acquire new citizens through the commerce of charity, while we rejoice in the salvation of those acquired, placed among these goods we insult the present exile and recognize that we have not lost our homeland, but have exchanged it. For while faithful servants of God exercise the goodness of their devotion in our necessities, we are possessors without a fixed abode, rich without possession; indeed, we enrich those who reap fruit from our consolation. In a wondrous way, our comforters trade from the poor and obtain perpetual gains from the needy. I, however, have received this first bounty with the Lord granting, that my most pious Ruricius, after the tossings of this life, turned the prow of salvation toward the port of religion, with the hand of the Most High guiding, that after the shadows of seductive vanities and the illusions of fleeting dreams, he desired what is lasting and solid, and, having at last despised the world, he rejected its great unhappiness, and equally faithfully acquired happiness and profit for himself from the perishing world, passing by the flight of collapsing things, by which he contributed wealth through his contempt, which could no longer contribute anything to his own use.

Hence, with as much eagerness as we once served in secular studies, let us now serve the Lord with equal devotion. And because your piety compels me to speak more severely with you for the healing of sins, and does not observe the ill will of that saying which states: “The just man is at the beginning his own accuser,” therefore, first of all, let us avoid the slips of the mouth and of the heart. But as for what we have said of the mouth, if you take care to apply guard to the heart, you will not labor to impose discipline on the mouth. Without difficulty, he who has been cautious in his senses will be able to set the door of circumspection before his lips; for that which is uttered by the voice is first shaped in the workshop of the conscience. The exterior renders what the interior dictates. The mind exercises command, the tongue service, and for this reason we are taught by the heavenly Scriptures: “The mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart.” What seems to be born from speech is first conceived in thought, so that the sound of the mouth may not utter unworthy things, and the mind may command what is just.

And because there are two kinds of fasts—one, to restrain the appetite of incontinence from the seductive sweetnesses of pleasures that flatter wickedly, so that the outer and earthly man, tamed by the plow of the cross, may wither with a convenient infirmity; the other kind of abstinence is far more sublime, far more precious, which no infirmity can contradict: to rule the movements of the mind and to restrain irrational disturbances or the tumults of conflicting thoughts by the inner judgment, and to join battle against hidden attacks or against domestic enemies by the authority of an indignant faith, and through benevolence, gentleness, patience, tranquility to cultivate the image of God on the face of the inner man, whose beauty the skill of the Creator impressed not upon the person of the body, but upon the form of the soul. A man thinking of spiritual and divine things—let sadness not break him, let joy not dissolve him; let his heart, steadied in the fear of God, show the magnanimity of equanimity, so that the notable beginning of that little book may be fitted to us, where that magnificent Elkanah, who is interpreted as "possession of God," is called by mystical speech a single man: "There was," it says, "a single man"—that is, always the same, because nothing in him appeared doubtful, nothing double, nothing variable, nothing diverse, but him in a state.

remaining in the unshaken order of the virtues, things coming against them from the opposite side did not move them, mutable times did not change them, nor did the light breaths of winds, as is the custom with sea waves, toss them to and fro. Thus also the anxious servant of God, founded on the vast mass of faith, is changed only insofar as Christ works in him, so that he is always clothed in new graces, useful things are planted in the field of his breast, and harmful things are cut down. And because the divine word commands its soldiers: "When," it says, "you have gone forth to war and among the other spoils you have sought a virgin, you shall cut off her nails and her hair and thus join her to yourself in marriage," so let us, girded with the fear of Christ, subdue the wisdom of the world, which was made simple, uncorrupted, and sincere by God, as a captive to spiritual wisdom, and let us cut off its superfluous vices, and join it to the breast in a chaste union. Above all, as far as we can with God's help, let us strive to overcome in ourselves the passions of the five senses. For whatever is beautiful to the sight, whatever is pleasing to the smell, whatever is alluring to the touch, whatever is sweet to the taste, whatever corrupts the hearing—all these things, if we misuse them, will turn the mind's intention from spiritual to earthly matters. And therefore, just as the father of faith overcame those five kings in the mystery of the three hundred and eighteen, hidden within the letter, so through the help of the Lord and through his cross, let us strive to conquer these allurements of the five principal vices.

For by the sign of the cross and by the sacred name of Jesus among the Greeks the era of both reckonings is impressed. With these arms, overcoming carnal pleasures, they will deserve to hear: “To the victor I will give the crown of life,” and: “He who conquers will not be harmed by the second death.” Hence you yourself easily despise earthly things or dispense them in the manner of a moneylender, while you ponder that time when sinners will be burned up like hay, when, with the perpetual fury of the seething Gehenna, whose smoke ascends for ages of ages, those who have neglected the offerings will be punished by such a death that it is not permitted for them to die in pain, but they will be dying of life and living without end in death; while, I say, you set that time before your eyes, providing in your future mind, of which we read: “I will enter your house with holocausts,” that is, when, laden with the fruit of good works and adorned with the insignia of righteousness, you will enter the gate of life with the triumph of conquered flesh; of which we read: “The daughters of Tyre will adore him with gifts,” that is, souls acquired for Christ from the Gentiles will offer gifts to their Lord with thanksgiving, saying: “Behold, I have multiplied the talent you gave. Receive with interest, Lord, your loan.” For there will then be a certain commerce of giving and receiving between man and God. Man will bring what he has labored, and God will restore what he has promised.

At that time, with your Sarah, one to be rewarded for the other, to be adorned with a double crown for mutual well-being, you will deserve to hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many; enter into the joy of your master." Then you will marvel that the use of present things has passed into the ownership of eternal ones, and, being glorified by your betrayers, you will rejoice with delight at the happy exchange of circumstances that makes you their debtor. We greet with pious duty our inseparable son Leontius and the whole household, the little ones along with the elders. May our Lord God multiply his blessings in you with a happy and pleasing longevity, most devoted lord and brother uniquely to be cultivated with all the virtue of piety. X. TO THE MOST DEVOTED LORD AND SPECIALLY TO BE CULTIVATED WITH DISTINCT HONOR, RURICIUS, SON, FROM FAUSTUS. Thanks be to the Lord, who by a general dispensation has granted that among those whom the intervals of places separate, the mind, free and confined by no laws of absence, might travel, and that nothing might be so impenetrable that it would not lie open to the eyes of the mind, but that through the intuition of the heart, with the grace of love intervening, they might see each other from where love itself abides.

Our inner self indeed has its own eyes, by which the witness of conscience looks within, by which, turned inward, it considers what is to be blushed at or rejoiced over, by which it sees through the final day, by which it sets before the face of its own soul, with provident thought for the future, either the shameful or, by God's granting, praiseworthy history of the whole life, and brings into the presence of anxious concern the time for rendering account, and paints, on the secret page of its heart with hope's imagination, what God has prepared for those who love Him. These eyes, I think, you yourself always raise at the nod of the awesome Judge, so that the prophetic saying may deservedly be spoken of you: the wise man's eyes are in his head. Hence it is—for I have there, my son, your betrayers—hence it is, I say, that you commend the transitory supports of present things, like a greedy moneylender through the price of captives, in the bosom of the Rewarder, in the manner of a sower, that you turn use into ownership and convert perishable things into everlasting treasures. Hence it is that, with your most faithful Sarah, under the one yoke of Christ, striving toward a common crown, a despiser of earthly things and a competitor for heavenly ones, a stranger to the world and a candidate for paradise, you secretly mock this world, which no longer has anything by which to deceive or seduce, a secret soldier of Christ. With your partner in the endless kingdom, you knock at the door of life with fasts and prayers and a certain hand of faith, by a pious conspiracy, so that you may seize the double palm from mutual well-being.

But among these things, whatever is done is too little, so that incurable causes are healed here, so that inextinguishable fires are extinguished here, so that inescapable necessities are overcome here, so that the arrows of sins are plucked from the depths of the soul here, so that wounds impressed deep in the very marrow are cured here, so that invisible stains are expiated here, so that eternal joys are prepared here by the labor of faithful endeavors. That life will indeed be the reward of this one, but it is necessary that this one be the price of that one. Therefore, after the dutiful services have been performed, I ask that, when a suitable opportunity presents itself, you make us rejoice over your safety and well-being. For my sons and deacons I offer abundant thanks; I greet my lady daughter, a mirror of religion and an example of piety, with due reverence and honor. May our Lord God fill your goodness, which I must magnify, with present goods and render it worthy of eternal ones, O most devoted lord and son to be especially cultivated with preeminent honor.

XI. To the Most Blessed Lord and Brother Ruricius, Bishop, Honored by Me Above All Others with Singular Veneration, Faustus. Such is my confidence in the kindness of your spirit that I am no longer content to draw from its purest fountain alone, but I also invite others, who may be refreshed with me by its use, especially since the extended generosity of this source passes into profit for the giver, and its good so rewards the receiver that it is not diminished for the one who shares it, but increases like interest on its own expenditure, most blessed lord and one honored by me above all others with singular veneration. And so I offer this inextinguishable payment of charity, by which the wealth of the one who pays is more enriched, and I presume to present material for good work on behalf of the recommendation of the suffering. I trust that my intercession pertains to your benefit, and therefore I could not deny the mercy, which ecclesiastical humanity customarily offers to the wretched, to the bearer of this letter, who endured captivity in the region of Lyon. Would that the generosity of the faithful could be as ready as this man’s need is all too evident! And because, though he himself is somewhat free, he is held in the servitude of captivity by his wife or children, I ask, by the duties I have set forth, that you maintain the custom of your kindness also in his consolation, and that you support him with letters before those set over you, wherever he may request.

My fellow servants, especially your admirer, my brother, the presbyter Memorius, are with me in most reverent good health. May our Lord God preserve your pious Beatitude, mindful of me, for the prosperity of His church with happy longevity, O most blessed lord and brother, honored by me above all others with singular veneration. XII. To the Most Blessed Lord, to Be Regarded with Due Piety and Most Worthy of the Apostolic See, Brother Ruricius, Bishop, Faustus. Thanks to you, as we write to you from our homeland, you who made a homeland for us in exile, who with tireless generosity tempered the longings for our homeland, bringing a certain force of divine justice through successive benefits, so that what it had inflicted for chastisement, it turned to honor, conferred for consolation, changed to rest, passing over our merits to heap up yours, forgetting debts and multiplying your gains, exercising the magnitude of its goodness on both sides, enriching us with your service, and you with our exile. Whence it came to pass that already in the present it dispensed the blessing of future things, impatient of delay, and raised its most faithful servant above the candelabrum of His house, with the cooperation of mercy, justice, sincerity, continence, and kindness—that is, with domestic advocates. Behold at what price my Ruricius purchased the highest priesthood.

Whence he bought it, that itself is what he bought, and with his own witnesses acclaiming him, he displayed the causes of honor, refuges of honor, upon himself. Therefore, he knows how to preserve such a gift in Christ's name, who knew how to acquire it. Now, I commend to you the bearer of this letter, the holy presbyter Florentius, known to me for a long time and adorned with the examples of his teacher and the flowers of his character, since he is traveling abroad for the absolution of his sister; he has presented himself to me as a timely and welcome mediator. We greet your entire household, elders together with the younger ones, with a fatherly affection. My fellow servants, your debtors and admirers, are with me in most reverent good health. May our Lord God preserve your Beatitude, which I must magnify, for the prosperity of His church and for our joys, with perfect longevity, most blessed lord, to be received with due piety and most worthy brother of the apostolic see. FRAGMENT OF A LETTER OF FAUSTUS. In the treatise which was added to the letter of Pope John II in the year given to Caesarius in the case of a certain bishop who was cast down from the episcopate because of the mark of a confessed crime, these words are read (cf. Concilia antiqua Galliae ed. Sirmond I 235):

And this must be carefully noted, that if, according to what is written above, those clerics who return to their own wives are suspended entirely from office, and if even digamists or husbands of women who have never been married, who are certainly doing something permitted, nevertheless cannot be ordained as clerics or, if they have been ordained, are deposed—concerning whom also the holy bishop Faustus says in his letter: "He loses the grace of consecration who still wishes to perform the office of husband."' Whether these words pertain to a letter, or rather to some sermon of Faustus, is uncertain to me. For sermons are sometimes designated by the name of letters, as, besides other evidence, the heading of the first sermon of Faustinus preserved in the Durlach codex demonstrates (cf. the note on line 3).