Letter 110: Augustine thanks Severus but asks him not to overload Augustine with praise or requests.

To the Most Blessed and sweetest lord, the very venerable and deeply longed-for brother and fellow bishop Severus, and to the brothers who are with you: Augustine and the brothers who are with me send greetings in the Lord. My letter, which our dearest son and fellow deacon Timothy carried, was already prepared for him as he was leaving when our sons Quodvultdeus and Gaudentius came to us with your letter. That is why, though he left immediately, he did not bring my answer. After their arrival he stayed with us only a little while, and at every hour he seemed about to leave. But even if I had answered through him, I would still be in debt. Even now, when I seem to have answered, I remain a debtor: I do not mean the debt of charity, which we owe more the more we spend it, and of which the apostle shows us to be perpetual debtors when he says, "Owe no one anything except to love one another." I mean the debt of your letter itself. When will I ever satisfy your sweetness and the great appetite of your soul, which your letter announced to me when I read it? It told me something already very well known to me about you. Yet though it did not inform me of a new thing, it did become a new collector of replies. Perhaps you wonder why I call myself unequal to paying this debt, since you think so much of me, you who know me as you know my soul. But that very thing has made it very hard for me to answer your letter. I spare your modesty by not saying how great you seem to me; and by saying less, when you have bestowed such praise on me, what can I be but still in debt? I would not care about this if I knew that what you said about me to me came not from most sincere charity but from flattery hostile to friendship. In that case I would not become a debtor, because I ought not repay such things. But the more I know with what faithful spirit you speak, the more I see how great a debt weighs on me. See what has happened to me: in a way I have praised myself, since I have said that I was praised faithfully by you. But what else could I say except what I have reminded you of, you whom I know? See, I have made myself a new question which you did not propose, and perhaps you expect me to solve it. It was not enough for me to be a debtor unless I added to my debt by my own hand. Yet it is easy to show, and if I do not show it, easy for you to see, that true things can be said unfaithfully, and untrue things faithfully. The person who believes as he speaks, even if he speaks what is not true, speaks faithfully. But the person who does not believe what he speaks, even if he speaks true things, speaks unfaithfully. Do I doubt, then, that you believe about me what you wrote? Since I do not recognize these things in myself, you were able faithfully to say untrue things about me. But I do not want you to be deceived even by goodwill. I am debtor to that goodwill, because with such faithfulness and benevolence I can say true good things about you, unless, as I said above, I spare your modesty. When I am praised by the most brotherly and familiar soul of my soul, I feel as though I am praised by myself. You see how troublesome that is, even if true things are said. How much more because, although you are my other soul, indeed although your soul and mine are one soul, you are deceived about me by thinking that things are present in me which are lacking, just as one human being can be deceived about himself. I do not want this merely so that you, whom I love, may not be deceived, but also so that you do not pray less that I may become what you already believe I am. Nor am I in debt to you in such a way that, by the progress of goodwill, I must believe and say the same good things of you which you yourself still know are lacking in you. Rather, with a spirit just as benevolent, I should say only those good things of yours, God's gifts, about which I am certain in you. I do not refrain because I fear being deceived in them, but because, if I praised you, you might seem to have praised yourself through me, and because of that rule of justice by which I do not want this done to me. If it ought to be done, I choose to remain a debtor as long as I think it ought not be done. If it ought not be done, then I am not a debtor. But I know what you can answer me: "You speak as though I had desired a long letter from you about your own praises." Far be it from me to believe this of you. But your letter, full, I do not say of how true or how untrue praises of me, nevertheless demanded this of me even against your will, that I should correct it. If you wanted me to write something else, you were desiring me as a giver, not as a payer of debt. The order of justice requires that we first pay what is owed; then, if it pleases the one to whom we pay, we may also give something. Yet even the sort of things you wished me to write, if we think more carefully about the Lord's commands, we pay rather than give, if no one is to owe anything except to love one another. Love itself demands the debt, that in service to brotherly charity we help, where we can, the person who rightly wishes to be helped. But, my brother, I believe you know how many things are in my hands. Because of the various cares required by the necessity of our service, only the tiniest drops of time drip down to me. If I spend them on other things, I seem to myself to act against my office. What you want, that I write you a long letter, I do indeed owe; I confess it. I owe it entirely to your sweet, sincere, and pure will. But because you are a good lover of justice, I use that very justice which you love to admonish you, so that you may more gladly hear this from me. You see that what I owe both to you and to others comes before what I owe to you alone; and time is not enough for everything, when it is not enough even for the things that come first. Therefore all my dearest and closest friends, among whom in the name of Christ you are one of the first, will do the duty that belongs to them if they not only do not themselves impose other writings on me, but also restrain others as much as they can by their authority and holy kindness. Otherwise I seem hard when I do not give what each person asks, while I am trying instead to pay what I owe to everyone. Finally, when, as we hope and hold your promise, Your Venerability comes to us, you will know what literary labors occupy me and how much, and you will carry out more urgently what I have asked: that you also free me, as much as you can, from others who want to impose some other writing on me. May the Lord our God fill the wide and holy depth of your heart, which he himself made, Most Blessed lord.

EPISTOLA 110 Scripta paulo post superiorem. A. rescribit superiori Severi epistulae (n. 1), blandissime expostulans quaerensque se ab ipso nimium etsi sincere laudatum (n. 24). Veniam denique petit quod longas epistolas mittere nequit (n. 5-6). DOMINO BEATISSIMO ATQUE DULCISSIMO, VENERABILI NIMIUMQUE DESIDERABILI FRATRI ET CONSACERDOTI SEVERO, ET QUI TECUM SUNT FRATRIBUS, AUGUSTINUS ET QUI MECUM SUNT FRATRES, IN DOMINO SALUTEM. A. Severo debitum reddit officium. 1. Epistola mea, quam pervexit carissimus filius et condiaconus noster Timotheus, iam parata erat profecturo, quando filii nostri Quodvultdeus et Gaudentius ad nos venerunt cum litteris tuis. Inde factum est ut continuo proficiscens, non afferret responsionem meam, quoniam post illorum adventum quantulumcumque apud nos immoratus est, et profecturus per horas singulas videbatur. Sed etsi per eum respondissem, adhuc debitor forem. Nam et nunc quod videor respondisse debitor sum, non dico charitatis, quam tanto magis debemus quanto amplius impenderimus, cuius nos perpetuos debitores ostendit Apostolus dicens: Nemini quidquam debeatis, nisi ut invicem diligatis 1; sed ipsius epistolae tuae: quando enim sufficiam tuae suavitati, tantaeque aviditati animi tui, quam mihi lecta nuntiavit? Rem quidem mihi in te notissimam insinuavit; verumtamen etsi non mihi rei novae insinuatrix, nova tamen rescriptorum exactrix fuit. A. sincere sed nimium laudari se dicit. 2. Miraris fortasse cur me huius debiti persolutorem imparem dicam, cum tu de me tam multum sentias, qui me tamquam anima mea noveris: sed hoc ipsum est quod mihi magnam difficultatem fecit respondendi litteris tuis, quia et quantus mihi videaris parco dicere propter verecundiam tuam, et utique minus dicendo, cum tu in me tantam laudem contuleris, quid nisi debitor remanebo? Quod non curarem, si ea quae de me ad me locutus es, non ex caritate sincerissima dicta scirem, sed adulatione inimica amicitiae. Hoc quippe modo nec debitor fierem, quia talia rependere non deberem: sed quanto magis novi quam fideli animo loqueris, tanto magis video quanto debito graver. Severum laudavisse fideliter non vera. 3. Vide autem quid mihi contigit, ut me quodammodo ipse laudaverim, qui me a te fideliter laudatum dixerim. Sed quid aliud dicerem, quam id quod de te admonui. quem nosti. Ecce mihi novam feci quaestionem quam tu non proposuisti, et eam fortassis exspectas ut solvam: ita mihi parum erat quod debitor eram, nisi etiam me ampliore debito ipse cumularem; quamquam hoc facile sit ostendere, et, si non ostendam, facile tibi videre, et vera infideliter dici posse, et non vera fideliter. Qui enim sic credit ut loquitur, etsi non vera loquitur, fideliter loquitur; qui autem non credit quae loquitur, etsi vera loquitur, infideliter loquitur. Numquid ergo dubito quod ea de me credas quae scripsisti? Quae cum in me non agnosco, potuisti fideliter de me non vera dicere. Benevolentia falli nos posse. 4. Sed nolo te vel benevolentia sic falli; cui benevolentiae debitor sum, quia et tam fideliter, et tam benevole ea quae vera sunt, possum de te dicere, nisi, ut supra dixi, verecundiae tuae parcerem. Ego autem quando laudor a germanissimo et familiarissimo animae meae, velut a meipso lauder, sic habeo. Quod cernis quam molestum sit, etiam vera si dicantur. Quanto potius quia etiam cum sis altera anima mea, imo una sit anima tua et mea, sic in me falleris putando mihi adesse quae desunt, quomodo et de se ipse unus homo falli potest? Quod non tantum ideo nolo, ne quem diligo tu fallaris, verum etiam ne minus ores ut sim quod iam me esse credis: nec in eo sum tibi debitor, ut eadem progressu benevolentiae credam et loquar de te bona, quae adhuc et tu tibi deesse cognoscis, sed ut animo tam quidem benevolo ea tantum dicam bona tua, dona Dei, de quibus in te certus sum. Quod non ideo non facio ne fallar in eis, sed ne tu a me laudatus, ipse te laudasse videaris; et propter illam iustitiae regulam, qua mihi fieri nolo. Quod si fieri debet, eligo esse debitor, quamdiu puto non esse faciendum; si autem fieri non debet, nec debitor sum. Iustitiae et caritatis ordo servandus. 5. Sed novi quod mihi ad haec respondere possis: ita ista loqueris quasi prolixam epistolam tuam de laudibus meis desideraverim. Absit ut hoc de te credam; sed epistola tua, nolo dicere quam veris, vel quam non veris, plena tamen laudibus meis, hoc de me ut reprehenderem, etiam te nolente, flagitavit. Nam si quid aliud volebas ut scriberem, largitorem me desiderabas, non redditorem. Porro iustitiae ordo sic habet, ut debitum prius reddamus; tum deinde cui reddimus, si hoc placet, aliquid et donemus. Quamquam etiam talia qualia desiderasti ut scriberem, si diligentius praecepta dominica cogitemus, reddimus potius quam donamus, si nemini quidquam debendum est, nisi ut invicem diligamus. Ipsa quippe dilectio exigit debitum, ut fraternae caritati servientes, eum qui se adiuvari recte velit, in quo possumus, adiuvemus. Sed, mi frater, et tu credo quod noveris quanta sint in manibus meis, quibus ob diversas curas quas nostrae servitutis necessitas habet, vix mihi paucissimae guttae temporis stillantur, quas aliis rebus si impendero, contra officium meum mihi facere videor. Non licet ministerii curis tempus detrahi. 6. Quod enim vis, ut ad te prolixam epistolam scribam, et hoc quidem debeo, fateor; debeo prorsus hoc tam dulci, tam sincerae, tam merae voluntati tuae. Sed quia bonus es amator iustitiae, inde te admoneo ut de illa quam diligis, hoc a me libentius audias. Cernis prius esse quod et tibi et aliis, quam quod tibi tantummodo debeo; et tempus ad omnia mihi non sufficit, quando nec ad illa quae priora sunt. Unde omnes carissimi et familiarissimi mei, quorum in nomine Christi inter primos mihi es, rem facient officii sui, si non solum alia mihi scribenda ipsi non imponant, verum etiam caeteros quanta possunt auctoritate et sancta benignitate prohibeant; ne videar ego durus cum a singulis petita non dedero, dum ea volo magis reddere quae omnibus debeo. Denique cum sicut speramus et promissum tenemus, ad nos venerit Venerabilitas tua, scies quibus operibus litterarum et quantum occupatus sim, et instantius facies quod rogavi, ut et alios quos potueris, mihi aliquid aliud scribendum volentes iniungere, a me demoliaris. Dominus Deus noster impleat cordis tui tam grandem et tam sanctum sinum quem ipse fecit, domine beatissime.