5. Wherefore, my brethren who fear God, remember what the Apostle Peter says: Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." [1980] When he cannot devour a man through seducing him into iniquity, he attempts to injure his good name, that if it be possible, he may give way under the reproaches of men and the calumnies of slandering tongues, and may thus fall into his jaws. If, however, he be unable even to sully the good name of one who is innocent, he tries to persuade him to cherish unkindly suspicions of his brother, and judge him harshly, and so become entangled, and be an easy prey. And who is able to know or to tell all his snares and wiles? Nevertheless, in reference to those three, which belong more especially to the case before us; in the first place, lest you should be turned aside to wickedness through following bad examples, God gives you by the apostle these warnings: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion, hath light with darkness?" [1981] and in another place: "Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners: awake to righteousness, [1982] and sin not." [1983] Secondly, that ye may not give way under the tongues of slanderers, He saith by the prophet, "Hearken unto Me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law: fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings. [1984] For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but My righteousness shall be for ever." [1985] And thirdly, lest you should be undone through groundless and malevolent suspicions concerning any servants of God, remember that word of the apostle, "Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise of God;" [1986] and this also, "The things which are revealed belong to you, but the secret things belong unto the Lord your God." [1987]
6. It is indeed manifest that such things do not take place in the Church without great sorrow on the part of saints and believers; but let Him be our Comforter who hath foretold all these events, and has warned us not to become cold in love through abounding iniquity, to endure to the end that we may be saved. For, as far as I am concerned, if there be in me a spark of the love of Christ, who among you is weak, and I am not weak? who among you is offended, and I burn not? [1988] Do not therefore add to my distresses, by your yielding either by groundless suspicions or by occasion of other men's sins. Do not, I beseech you, lest I say of you, "They have added to the pain of my wounds." [1989] For it is much more easy to bear the reproach of those who take open pleasure in these our pains, of whom it was foretold in regard to Christ Himself, "They that sit in the gate speak against Me, and I was the song of the drunkards," [1990] for whom also we have been taught to pray, and to seek their welfare. For why do they sit at the gate, and what do they watch for, if it be not for this, that so soon as any bishop or clergyman or monk or nun has fallen, they may have ground for believing, and boasting, and maintaining that all are the same as the one that has fallen, but that all cannot be convicted and unmasked? Yet these very men do not straightway cast forth their wives, or bring accusation against their mothers, if some married woman has been discovered to be an adulteress. But the moment that any crime is either falsely alleged or actually proved against any one who makes a profession of piety, these men are incessant and unwearied in their efforts to make this charge be believed against all religious men. Those men, therefore, who eagerly find what is sweet to their malicious tongues in the things which grieve us, we may compare to those dogs (if, indeed, they are to be understood as increasing his misery) which licked the sores of the beggar who lay before the rich man's gate, and endured with patience every hardship and indignity until he should come to rest in Abraham's bosom. [1991]
7. Do not add to my sorrows, O ye who have some hope toward God. Let not the wounds which these lick be multiplied by you, for whom we are in jeopardy every hour, having fightings without and fears within, and perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils by the heathen, and perils by false brethren. [1992] I know that you are grieved, but is your grief more poignant than mine? I know that you are disquieted, and I fear lest by the tongues of slanderers some weak one for whom Christ died should perish. Let not my grief be increased by you, for it is not through my fault that this grief was made yours. For I used the utmost precautions to secure, if it were possible, both that the steps necessary for the prevention of this evil should not be neglected, and that it should not be brought to your knowledge, since this could only cause unavailing vexation to the strong, and dangerous disquietude to the weak, among you. But may He who hath permitted you to be tempted by knowing this, give you strength to bear the trial, and "teach you out of His law, and give you rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked." [1993]
8. I hear that some of you are more cast down with sorrow by this event, than by the fall of the two deacons who had joined us from the Donatist party, as if they had brought reproach upon the discipline of Proculeianus; [1994] whereas this checks your boasting about me, that under my discipline no such inconsistency among the clergy had taken place. Let me frankly say to you, whoever you are that have done this, you have not done well. Behold, God hath taught you, "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord;" [1995] and ye ought to bring no reproach against heretics but this, that they are not Catholics. Be not like these heretics, who, because they have nothing to plead in defence of their schism, attempt nothing beyond heaping up charges against the men from whom they are separated, and most falsely boast that in these we have an unenviable pre-eminence, in order that since they can neither impugn nor darken the truth of the Divine Scripture, from which the Church of Christ spread abroad everywhere receives its testimony, they may bring into disfavour the men by whom it is preached, against whom they are capable of affirming anything--whatever comes into their mind. "But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him." [1996] For He Himself has guarded His believing people from undue disquietude concerning wickedness, even in stewards of the divine mysteries, as doing evil which was their own, but speaking good which was His. "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not." [1997] Pray by all means for me, lest perchance "when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway;" [1998] but when you glory, glory not in me, but in the Lord. For however watchful the discipline of my house may be, I am but a man, and I live among men; and I do not presume to pretend that my house is better than the ark of Noah, in which among eight persons one was found a castaway; [1999] or better than the house of Abraham, regarding which it was said, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son;" [2000] or better than the house of Isaac, regarding whose twin sons it was said, "I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau;" [2001] or better than the house of Jacob himself, in which Reuben defiled his father's bed; [2002] or better than the house of David, in which one son wrought folly with his sister, [2003] and another rebelled against a father of such holy clemency; or better than the band of companions of Paul the apostle, who nevertheless would not have said, as above quoted, "Without are fightings, and within are fears," if he had dwelt with none but good men; nor would have said, in speaking of the holiness and fidelity of Timothy, "I have no man like-minded who will naturally care for your state; for all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's;" [2004] or better than the band of the disciples of the Lord Christ Himself, in which eleven good men bore with Judas, who was a thief and a traitor; or, finally, better than heaven itself, from which the angels fell.
9. I frankly avow to your Charity, before the Lord our God, whom I have taken, since the time when I began to serve Him, as a witness upon my soul, that as I have hardly found any men better than those who have done well in monasteries, so I have not found any men worse than monks who have fallen; whence I suppose that to them applies the word written in the Apocalypse, "He that is righteous, let him be still more righteous; and he that is filthy, let him be still more filthy." [2005] Wherefore, if we be grieved by some foul blemishes, we are comforted by a much larger proportion of examples of an opposite kind. Let not, therefore, the dregs which offend your eyes cause you to hate the oil-presses whence the Lord's storehouses are supplied to their profit with a more brightly illuminating oil.
May the mercy of our Lord keep you in His peace, safe from all the snares of the enemy, my dearly beloved brethren.
[1972] Rom. xv. 4.
[1973] Matt. xiii. 43.
[1974] Matt. xviii. 7.
[1975] Matt. xxiv. 12, 13.
[1976] John iv. 24.
[1977] 1 Cor. xii. 9, 10, 30.
[1978] Third Council of Carthage, A.D. 397, Can. 7, 8.
[1979] 2 Cor. xi. 12.
[1980] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[1981] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[1982] Aug. translates, "be sober and righteous."
[1983] 1 Cor. xv. 33, 34.
[1984] "Nor count it a great thing that they despise you."--Aug.
[1985] Isa. li. 7, 8.
[1986] 1 Cor. iv. 5.
[1987] Deut. xxix. 29. This verse is the nearest I can find to the words here quoted by the apostle. The reference in the Bened. edition to 1 Cor. v. 12 must be a mistake.
[1988] 2 Cor. xi. 29.
[1989] Ps. lxix. 26, as translated by Aug.
[1990] Ps. lxix. 12.
[1991] Luke xvi. 21-23.
[1992] 2 Cor. vii. 5 and xi. 26.
[1993] Ps. xciv. 12, 13.
[1994] Donatist bishop of Hippo.
[1995] 1 Cor. i. 31.
[1996] Eph. iv. 20, 21.
[1997] Matt. xxiii. 3.
[1998] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[1999] Gen. ix. 27.
[2000] Gen. xxi. 10.
[2001] Mal. i. 2.
[2002] Gen. xlix. 4.
[2003] 2 Sam. xiii. 14.
[2004] Phil. ii. 20, 21.
[2005] Rev. xxii. 11.