Fulgentius of Ruspe, Letters

effort must be made that we advance to better things, lest we fall into deadly pride, if we think our way of life perfect in every part.

CHAPTER VIII. We must weep in this life, that in the other we may live at rest. What the blessedness in heaven is like. — 14. Therefore let us groan and weep before the Lord who made us (Ps. 94:6), that He may free us from the concupiscence of the flesh, and from the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of the world, which is not from the Father but is from the world (I John 2:16), and may lead us to that subjection in which nothing may resist us from the defect of mortality, but by the gift of immortality the whole of whatever is in us may be made subject to God. For then there will be in us a true, perfect and lofty humility, when in our flesh and in our mind alike no perverse desire shall have remained; nor will the spirit be wearied by thoughts, nor the body worn down by labours: there will be no anxiety of conflict, but the security of peace will be perfect; we shall have no want of justice, but a full satiety with delight. For there we shall be blessed in perfect loftiness, because we shall be subject to God in perfect humility of flesh and spirit. There our love will not be less than our praise, nor our praise lower than our love. For our praise will be full, because then the love of God and of neighbour will be in us perfectly. Then we shall praise and possess, then we shall possess and love, then we shall be sated with delight, and delighted with satiety.

LETTER V.

TO EUGIPPIUS THE ABBOT.

On charity and the love of it.

To the most blessed lord, greatly venerable, and to be longed for with the whole affection of charity, his holy brother and fellow presbyter Eugippius, Fulgentius, servant of the servants of Christ, greeting in the Lord.

1. Would that, holy brother, so great a power assisted my speech that I might find words sufficient to set forth the spiritual sweetness which I received from the reading of your letter: since I wish this and am not able, I recognize that something wonderful has happened to me, seeing that the joy which I took from your words cannot be set forth in my words. For what you wrote to me, after it had been found and arranged in thought, you so put into letters that you either wrote it yourself by hand or dictated it by mouth. How then has it come about that my mouth cannot, by dictating, bring forth the delight which my heart conceived from the dictation of your mouth? What is this needy wealth or wealthy need, that speech suffices me the less, the more affection urges me on; and that what I speak because I am delighted, I utter less than I am delighted? What, I ask, is †this that I wish to signify in speech and cannot? Surely it is something which is so signified by bodily speech and pen that yet it is possessed not bodily but spiritually.

2. Charity the first fruit of the spiritual gifts. — Now in the spiritual gifts the first fruit is charity.

Hence not without order did the Vessel of election place it thus: But the fruit of the spirit is charity, joy, peace (Gal. 5:22), and the rest. In another place too he wished to signify something pre-eminent among the heavenly †charisms, when he said: Because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom. 5:5). This charity which we received by the gift of the Holy Spirit, when we were unworthy, is so good, so holy, so immense, that even he who has it in his heart can never set it forth in words. O what a charity, much to be wondered at, much to be praised, and much to be loved!

3. He does not love charity who does not have it. — Yet not all who wonder at and praise charity at once love charity; and therefore, unless each one loves it, it will profit him nothing that he wonders at it and praises it. But the wondering at charity, and the praising, is fruitful then, if love is not lacking in the one who wonders and praises. But can those who do not yet have it love it, just as those who do not have it can wonder at it and praise it? By no means; for charity itself is love: and how does he already love love who has not begun to have love? For see, we see many things with bodily sight, where the sight itself is not the same as that which we see by it: for the one is the sense by which we see, the other the sensible thing which we see; and when that which is seen is taken away from the eyes, if health is in the eyes, that which was seen is taken away from the sense of the one seeing in such a way that the sense itself is in no way taken away from the one seeing: so it comes about that the sense of seeing remains in the man, although the sight itself departed from that which was seen. But when charity is loved, since it is loved only by love, a man cannot, as he can turn the eye of the body from any visible thing, so turn the attention of love from charity that he can both not love charity and have love. For charity, that is love, is in no way loved unless love is had by which love itself may be loved. Love therefore is loved by itself, because it is loved when it is had, and is not loved unless it is had. And indeed it can be loved by us even when we ask that it be increased in us; but he does not love its increase who does not have its beginning.

4. Charity is not loved as money is. Charity is not loved as the other gifts of the spirit are. — Charity, then, is not loved as a coin is, or anything of that kind. For anyone can not have a single coin and yet love and desire a multitude of coins. This man, then, loves a multitude of coins when he has the means of not even one coin: he does not find one coin with himself, and seeks countless coins outside. This we find in other bodily things too, that some one of them can be loved in such a way that the very thing that is loved is in no part possessed. There is something of the kind in most of the spiritual gifts as well: as if someone should love (for example) to have the gift of prophesying, which no one denies is contained among the spiritual gifts in the apostolic letters: For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom (as the Vessel of election affirms), and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another

faith in the same Spirit, to another the grace of healings in the one Spirit, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of speeches. But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as He wills (I Cor. 12:8–11).

5. The other gifts can be had without a good will; charity by no means. — Since, then, to say nothing of the other spiritual gifts, prophecy can be loved and not had, charity nevertheless is neither had if it is not loved, nor loved if it is not had. †These other gifts of the Holy Spirit, that is, tongues, prophecy, knowledge of mysteries, faith, the distribution of one's means to the poor, even the burning of the body itself: these can be had without a good will, to this end, namely, that they burden the one who has them, not honour him; but charity cannot be had without a good will, because it does not allow the will in which charity has been to become bad: For charity neither acts perversely, nor thinks evil; and since it does not rejoice over iniquity (I Cor. 13:4–5), it must make good the will in which it is.

6. The malevolent mind neither spends charity nor has it. — The malevolent mind, then, does not spend charity on another, because it does not have it for itself; but when it has begun to have the beginning, so to speak, of charity, it can be neither malevolent nor barren. And since, as long as one abides in charity, one abides in God, and God abides in him (I John 4:16), he will always have it if he always spends it; but when he does not spend it, he will not have it. For it is proper to charity, as far as the course of the present life is concerned, that it grows in him who has paid it out, but departs without delay from him who wished to have it for himself alone. He therefore will have it more who spends it more willingly: for just as the malevolent man can neither spend it nor have it, so no one has it or spends it unwillingly. The benevolent man, therefore, is the dwelling of charity. Now this name, that is benevolent, is compounded from well and to will: if then anyone wills ill to another, inasmuch as he wills ill he is not benevolent, and by this very fact he is malevolent: But into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter (Wis. 1:4); now that man is properly called malevolent, not everyone who desires or asks for something contrary for himself or for another, but he who bears the will to harm, whether what he desires can be good or evil.

7. A good will comes not from the act but from the end. — Now a will, whether good or harmful, is to be weighed not from the act but from the end of each thing: because each one shows the quality of his will not from what he does, but from that on account of which he does it. For Paul too wished something contrary to himself when he asked that the goad be taken away from him which he had received for his health against the vice of pride (II Cor. 12:8); yet he did not have a malevolent mind, although he bore a will contrary to his own advantage. For in asking that the goad by which he was buffeted be taken from him, he wished the health of his body to profit his preaching more than himself, seeking not what was useful to himself but what was useful to many, that they might be saved. He wished, then, his soundness to profit those whom he knew his life also profited. Finally

when he had the desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23), which would be much better, he knew nevertheless that to remain in the flesh was necessary, for the sake of those among whom he was ministering the office of the apostolate. The charity of Christ, then, pressed him, both when he asked that the goad be taken from him, and when, though desiring something else, he wished to linger in the flesh: for he was constrained by the breadth of charity both to desire to be with Christ and to wish to fulfil the duty of a loving necessity; he loved charity, therefore, in both, which he always breathed in a good will.

8. In the love of neighbour charity too is loved. The love of God and of neighbour is the love of charity. — Whoever therefore loves his brother according to charity (which is God) loves charity itself in him above all. Therefore, when our Saviour deigned to renew His apostles with a new commandment, saying: A new commandment I give you, that you love one another (John 13:34), commanding through Himself that the brotherhood be loved, He commands through the apostle Paul that the very charity of the brotherhood also be loved. For with Christ speaking in him, the Teacher of the gentiles wishes us to have love without pretence: Hating evil, cleaving to good, loving one another with the charity of brotherhood (Rom. 12:9–10).

9. Hence it is that in the eleventh book of the Confessions that eminent doctor, namely blessed Augustine, when he was confessing to God his love, which (that he might love Him) he had received from Him, says: I have said it already, and I shall say it: for love of Thy love I do this (Augustine, Confessions XI, 1). » Expounding also the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, when he was explaining the meaning of the place where it is said: I am a sojourner on the earth; do not hide Thy commandments from me (Ps. 118:19), after some things he speaks thus: « But what that is to be loved is loved, if love itself is not loved? Hence, consistently, this sojourner on the earth, having prayed that the commandments of God, in which love is commanded either alone or above all, be not hidden from him, proclaims that he wishes to have the love of love itself also, saying: My soul has longed to desire Thy justifications at all times (the same, on Ps. 118, discourse 8). » Does it not seem to you that the opinion of blessed Augustine on loving love is plainly drawn from the prophetic and apostolic sayings?

10. Conclusion: that out of charity we pray for one another. — Wherefore the love of God and of neighbour, which is the fullness of the law and the end of the commandment, both loves in God the charity which is God, and loves in the neighbour the charity which is from God: for then God and neighbour are rightly loved, if in God and in the neighbour charity itself is loved. So it comes about that we without doubt love both God Himself in God and God in the neighbour. For not in vain, after the love of God, has no other love been commanded us but that of the neighbour alone, namely that we may recognize that we ought to love that creature in which we can find charity itself. For every irrational animal, just as it does not have reason, so does not have charity;