forcing imperial decrees against the Donatists.
252 ST. /UGUSTINE by the blood of their enemies; for I know that in the case of the clergy in the valley of Anaiinia,^*^ who were slain by the Pagans, and are now honoured as martyrs, the Emperor granted readily a petition that the murderers, who had been discovered and imprisoned, might not be visited with a capital punishment.
B. The Right of Priestly Intercession: An Exchange of Letters with Macedonius, Vicar of Africa,
to the Deservedly Esteemed Lord, His Uniquely Cherished Father, Augustine.
I received the long-awaited letter of your HqUness through Boniface, bishop erf the holy law, whom I was the more deUghted to welcome as he brought me my heart's desire—word of your Holiness and of your well-being, deservedly esteemed lord and uniquely cherished father. Therefore, he secured what he asked without delay. But, as the opportunity has arisen, I do not wish to remain without my pay for this same slight service in which I accommodated him at your request. The pay I crave to receive is one which will be a gain to me without loss to the payer, or, rather will be my gain to the glory of the bestower.
You say that it is part of your priestly office to intercede for condemned persons, and to be displeased if you do not succeed, as if you thereby failed to carry out that part of your duty. I have
15. Anaunia, a valley not far from Trent, destined to be so famous for the Council held there. In the month of May, 397 a.d., Martyrius, Sisinnius, and Alexander were killed there by the heathen.
a. Letters, XLII (Schopp, III, pp. 279-280).
1. Vicar of Africa, entrusted with the duty of enforcing imperial decrees against the Donatists.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 253 a serious doubt about this, whether it is part of religion. For if sin is so strictly forbidden by the Lord that no opportunity of repentance is granted after the first, how can we argue that any crime, of whatever sort, should be forgiven us, and how can we approve it by wishing it to go unpunished? And if it is a fact that the one who approves a sin is no less involved in all the circumstances of a sin than the one who commits it, it is clear that we are implicated in a share of the guilt as often as we wish the one who is subject to the penalty to go unpunished. Besides, here is another point, which is even more serious. All sins seem to deserve forgiveness when the guilty person promises amendment, but human behavior has now come to this pass that men wish to have the punishment of their crime remitted and at the same time to keep the profit which they gained by their evil deeds. Your priestly office thinks that intercession should be made for these, also, although the fact that the same motive for the crime continues to be present gives no hope at all for them in the future. Whoever holds tenaciously to the object of his sin shows that he will commit the same again when opportunity allows. This is my reason for consulting your Prudence:
I earnestly desire to be freed of the doubt which weighs me down; do not imagine that I am consulting you for any other reason. This is what I have decided to do: to show gratitude to intercessors, especially those as highly esteemed as you are. Often, when I seem unwilling to do something on my own impulse, lest any relaxation of discipline should encourage others to commit crime, I long to give in to good intercessors, so that what I grant willingly may seem to be a con-
254 ST. AUGUSTINE cession to another's merit, while the severity of the verdict is preserved. May the eternal God keep your Holiness safe for a long time to come, esteemed lord and truly beloved father.
Bishop, Servant of Christ and of His Household, gives greeting in the Lord to His Beloved Son, Macedonius.
When a man is as much burdened with public duties and as devoted to the interest of others and to the public welfare rather than his own, as you are—and I congratulate you—it is not right for us to deprive you of our conversation nor to delay you with a foreword. Here, then, is what you wanted to learn from me, or to discover whether
I knew the answer. If you judged that it was a trifling or superfluous matter, you would see that there was no place for it among such great and such exigent cares. You ask me why we say that it is part of our priestly duty to intercede for condemned persons, and to be displeased if we do not succeed, as if we were failing to carry out that part of our duty. You then say that you have a serious doubt about this, whether it is part of religion. Thereupon, you add your reason for being disturbed and you say: "If sin is so strictly forbidden by the Lord that no opportunity of repentance is granted after the first, how can we argue that any crime of whatever sort should be forgiven?" You press the point still more closely and you say that we approve an act by wishing it to go unpunished, and, if it is a fact that the one who approves of a sin is involved in all the circumstances of it no less than the one who comb. Letters, CLHI (Schopp, HI, pp. 281, 293-303).
POLITICAL WRITINGS 255 mits it, it is clear that we are implicated in a share of guilt as often as we wish the one who is subject to the penalty to go unpunished.
Anyone who did not know your gentleness and kindness would be affronted by these words. But we who know that you wrote this in order to raise the question, not to give an opinion, have no hesitation in answering. . . .
Surely, it is not without purpose that we have the institution of the power of kings, the death penalty of the judge, the barbed hooks of the executioner, the weapons of the soldier, the right of punishment of the overlord, even the severity of the good father. All those things have their methods, their causes, their reasons, their practical benefits. While these are feared, the wicked are kept within bounds and the good live more peacefully among the wicked. However, men are not to be called good because they refrain from wrongdoing through their fear of such things—no one is good through dread of punishment but through love of righteousness—even so, it is not without advantage that human recklessness should be confined by fear of the law so that innocence may be safe among evil-doers, and the evil-doers themselves may be cured by calling on God when their freedom of action is held in check by fear of punishment. However, the intercession of bishops is not a violation of this arrangement of human affairs; on the contrary, there would be neither motive nor opportunity for intervention if it were not for this. The more the penalty of the offender is deserved, the more gratefully the bounty of the intercessor and of the one who pardons is received.
It is for this reason, as I see it, that a more unyielding justice shines forth in the Old Testament
256 ST. AUGUSTINE in the time of the ancient Prophets, to show that penalties were levied against the wicked for a good purpose; but in the New Testament we are urged to pardon offenders with mercy, either as a saving remedy by which our own sins may be pardoned, or as a means of commending gentleness, so that truth, when preached by those who pardon, may not be so much feared as loved.
It is a matter of great importance what intention a man has in showing leniency. Just as it is sometimes mercy to punish, so it may be cruelty to pardon. For, to use a well-worn case as an example, who would not truthfully say that a person is cruel who would allow a child to play with snakes because he was obstinately set on so doing? Who would not call another kind-hearted who would restrain the child even to the extent of beating him if words had no effect? For this reason, restraint should not go so far as death, because there must be someone to whom restraint is beneficial. Yet it makes a great difference when one man is killed by another, whether it happened through a desire of injuring him, or of carrying off something dishonestly, as it might be done by an enemy, a thief; or whether it happened in the course of inflicting punishment or carrying out an order, as by a judge, an executioner; or through self-defense or the rescue of another, as a thief is killed by a traveller or an enemy by a soldier. And sometimes the one who was the cause of death is more at fault than the killer, as would be the case if a man were to default on the one who stood bail for him, and the latter should pay the required penalty instead of the other. Nevertheless, not everyone who causes another's death is guilty. What if a man were to seek to ravish someone and should
POLITICAL WRITINGS 257 kill himself because he did not get his wish? Or if a son, fearing the blows which he deserved from his father, should kill himself by falling? Or if someone should commit suicide because one man had been set free or to prevent another from being freed? Because these circumstances have been the cause of another's death, are we to consent to sin? are we to deprive a father of the authority to inflict punishment for wrong-doing—which is done through a desire of correcting, not of injuring or are we to forego the works of mercy? When these things happen, we owe them human regret, but we have no right for that reason to put restraint on the will of the doers to prevent them from happening again.
In the same way, when we intercede for an offender who deserves condemnation, there sometimes are consequences which we do not intend, either in the person who is set free through our intercession, so that he goes rioting about more extravagantly, because his unchecked boldness goes to greater lengths of passion, being ungrateful for the leniency shown, and his single escape from death may be the cause of many other deaths; or it may be that the object of our kindness changes for the better and mends his morals, but he may be the cause of another's perishing as a result of an evil life, because the latter, seeing that the former has escaped punishment, commits the same crimes or even worse ones. Yet, I think, these evil consequences are not to be laid to our charge when we intercede with you, but, rather, the good aims which we have in view and which we intend when we act thus, that is, to commend mildness so as to win men's love for the word of truth, and to ensure that those who are freed from temporal death