The sermon comes down to us in two distinct recensions, the Maurist (M), and that of the Revue
244 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS
Have you got a wife, you that said that? "I have." So she, whether you like it or not, is a whore. Go and tell her, "The bishop has insulted you." If you have a wife and another woman sleeps with you, whoever that one is, she's a whore. But perhaps she's faithful to you, and knows no other man but you alone, and is not disposed to know any other. So while she is chaste, why are you fornicating? If she does with one, why must you have two? You're not allowed to, not allowed to, not allowed to. At least from this place let me enjoy freedom of speech.19 At least from this place allow me to speak out. At least from this place allow me to say what is true.20
People of this sort must put themselves right while they are still alive. Death only has to come suddenly, and there's no one there to be corrected. And we just don't know when the last hour may come, and yet you say, "I will put things right." When are you putting things right, when are you turning over a new leaf?
'Tomorrow," you say. Look, as often as you say 'Tomorrow, tomorrow, Cras, eras," you have become a crow.21 Look, I'm telling you, when you croak like a crow, ruin is staring you in the face. Because that crow, whose croaking you are imitating, went out from the ark, and didn't come back (Gn 8:7). As for you, though, brother, come back into the Church, which that ark then represented.
But you at least, you newly baptized, listen to me; listen to me, you that have been bom again through the blood of Christ. I beg you, by the name that has been invoked over you, by that altar which you have approached, by the sacra¬ ments you have received,22 by the judgment that is to come of the living and the dead; I beg you, I bind you by the name of Christ, not to imitate those you know to be such, but to ensure that the sacrament abides in you23 of the one who did not wish to come down from the cross, but did wish to rise again from the grave.24
NOTES
1. The scholars suggest, less precisely, 412-416. That is all that 414 here represents.
The sermon comes down to us in two distinct recensions, the Maurist (M), and that of the Revue Benedictine (RB) 179 (1969), which sometimes differ widely. The only fully satisfactory explana¬ tion I can think of is that they each go back either to different stenographers, or to some very early editing of what the stenographers took down in their shorthand. But there does appear to be some influence on copyists of similar passages from other sermons.
The text printed in the volume being translated is that of RB. But I have felt free to choose whichever I think more likely to have been what Augustine actually said, though each is very characteristic of him. The alternative version, wherever the difference is significant, is given in the notes.
Both editions give as title "On Easter Day. " But the first sentence saying that "today" the newly baptized "are to be mixed in with the people of God," points unmistakably to the Sunday after Easter, Dominica in albis.