Fulgentius of Ruspe, Letters

nature. For He is the one Christ, of whom the Apostle says what has already been set down above: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever (Rom. 9:5). Here, full of the Holy Spirit, he showed both the one Person of Christ and the twofold nature. For in saying: Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, blessed for ever, just as by the name of God and of flesh he showed beyond doubt the reality of each nature, so in the one name of Christ he taught one Person of Godhead and humanity. For Christ, who is of the fathers according to the flesh, is Himself over all, God blessed for ever. The nature which the Son of God has from the Father is not confounded with that nature which the same God took from the virgin. Nor yet did Christ ever have two Persons, because the same only-begotten God was both born of the Father according to the Godhead and came forth from the Virgin according to the flesh. And He who, the Word, God, was born of God, the same Word made flesh came forth as a bridegroom from His chamber (Ps. 18:6). He is one who, the distinctness of each nature being kept, both was crucified out of weakness and lives by the power of God.

CHAPTER XX. Conclusion of the book, exhorting to read through the writings of the saints. — 29. These things, dearest son, I have sent you in answer to your holy desire and love, so that from them you may be given a taste of instruction, and from this taste a desire for longer reading may grow in you, so that you may, God helping, advance the more, the more zealously you begin to seek out the sayings of the holy Fathers and to go over what you find more often and more attentively. Whence, God helping, may the grace of fuller knowledge come to you, by which you may be able not only to keep the true faith but also to refute the deadly falsehood of the heretics, believing and firmly holding one nature and three Persons in God the Trinity, and one Person and two natures in the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

LETTER IX.

Victor to Fulgentius, earnestly entreating his prayers and sending the sermon of Fastidiosus the Arian to be refuted.

To the most blessed lord, to be ranked equal with the apostles in merit, the holy father Bishop Fulgentius, Victor.

1. The time divinely appointed for the thing desired has come, in which our request may obtain its effect. For it would have been wrong that I, who had myself often asked your blessedness to answer a crafty contrivance, should put you off when you were willing; since among the most honourable manners whatever is promised by putting off is commonly reckoned a lie. But this, as your blessedness knows better than we, was not done by choice: rather the distance of different regions had brought a hindrance; [regions] through which we are led hither and thither to no purpose; where no profit for the salvation of eternal life is found, but rather the mind is called away by various occupations from seeking the very profit of the life to come; and when it is time

at the prompting of diabolical fear, each of us is by no means permitted to [do] anything that may profit for eternal salvation.

2. For we clothe ourselves with the various cupidities and desires of this world, which suddenly vanish like smoke, and our attention is so insatiably enslaved to worldly allurements that, as though we were to live in this world for ever and unchangeably, we give no thought at all to the eternity to come, or to the peril of life or of death, which is [set] on either side; but we busy ourselves only with what we know will in the present be at hand for our desires. For however great the advantage that accrues to our will, we think it too little, according to that saying of blessed Cyprian: What else is waged in the world daily but a battle against the devil? And a little after he continues: If avarice is laid low, lust rises up; if lust is held down, ambition succeeds; if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness entices, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship (Cyprian, On Mortality, a little after the beginning), etc. You see clearly, venerable man, that the soul is wounded daily by such great darts of the enemy, from which not its own virtue but only the divine mercy will be able to rescue it.

3. Therefore we beseech you with tears that, together with all those whom you have gained for the Lord and, rescued from worldly squalor, have caused to be converted to the spiritual life, you would deign to entreat His loving-kindness for us: that He may show us the light of His mercy, that He may not take vengeance for our sins, that we may not die in our offences, that we may be stripped of the snares and fetters of the enemy, that he may not rejoice to have gained a soul which the Lord redeemed with His own blood. But this we most earnestly implore: that you join our supplication to your just prayers, and our groans to your holy weeping, that through your intercessions we may deserve to bring back the support of the life to come, so that we who are dead in sins may rise again through your holy prayers. For otherwise the prophet Elisha could not have raised the lifeless corpse, unless, drawing in the lines of his limbs, he had made himself equal to that body (2 Kgs. 4:34). Greatness made itself a little less, so that, as it kissed the dead, it might plaster on the soul and render the boy alive. One stretches himself out, and two rise up; and at once he who revived by another's spirit is restored safe to his mother. And so I trust that through your intercession I am restored alive to Mother Church, I who seem to be held by the sting of death under the weight of sins. For I know that in the youthful age of [my] life, many years ago, you sought the salvation of our soul, and very often petitioned the Lord on this matter, that He would rescue me from the temptations of this life. And since, weighed down still by the mass of sins, I have not been able to deserve it, this I beg: that you deign to entreat the Lord for us with unceasing supplications, that in whatever manner or at whatever time [our soul] may obtain pardon for our offences.

4. And lest our tearful and lengthy speech breed weariness in the mind of your paternity, this must again be asked by us: that swift fulfilment may follow your promises; and to the malign work of him who

despising disdainfully the spiritual life of venerable monks, and as being, by the standard of the world, most worthless, boasts that he has reached even to the lofty cedars of Lebanon; whose name, if I am not mistaken, I seem to have expressed rather plainly by the order of the words above; whose treatise I have sent, who, with abusive words on this side and that, is seen to have barked against the right faith and the catholic truth, and, as it were wounding with the darts of his readings both the Homousians (as he called us) and the Donatists, has claimed the Catholic [Church] for himself as well, as your paternity will observe from a careful reading. Therefore we ask that from the honey-flowing fountain of your paternity this man's vanity be refuted, and that a lucid reply be at hand to the serpent who was his author, by whose prompting this man, having fed on evil pastures, is seen to have made sprout something like a new error; and that all wickedness devised against God be crushed, lest those who read him should think that he said anything right against the faith of doctrine. Let the cunning of the ancient serpent be confounded, for it has gathered such preachers to itself through the various allurements of seditions and pleasures; and do you scatter his viperish and venomous three-forked tongue with your holy replies. He was discharging at that time the office not of a teacher but rather of a flatterer of falsehood. Let the fabrication which he left to his followers, by which he wished to fight against the mystery of God, vanish from their minds as you reply. Therefore we ask that in this matter, with the Lord's help, you extend to all the merit of your good fame and your illustrious genius. And since the present heat seeks something new, I have boldly expressed the desire of my mind, possessed by the charity of an old familiarity; and as you shine above other bishops in the minds and eyes of those who behold you, so we desire that you appear, through flowering little works, frequently more shining still both to us and to all nations.

5. Relying on this loving affection, I, untaught in these matters, have written; thirsting with exceeding ardour, I have run eagerly with my rustic speech to the fountain of skill and learning. Hence we desire our thirst and our want of skill to be satisfied, so that I may deserve to obtain not only the reward of the life to come, as at the very front of the letter I sought the comfort of your prayers, but that we may also rejoice that this work has been satisfied in every respect: so that not only we, but the whole devout company of our fellow servants, your sons, who hang upon you with loving affection and await this from you together with us, — that I with them may render thanks [or: that it may render thanks?] for the divine gift. And we ask you to pardon our rusticity, you who yourself bade me dare these things. And although a teacher's knowledge has imbued us with little or none, it is added also that, if we retained anything conceived in the heart, entangled in other occupations we have almost lost the use of the Latin tongue, according to that saying:

Our breasts, admitting no two cares.

But pray that the Lord may grant and do what we wish. Govern, then, and adorn the servant whom you have nourished, and supply the teaching which you have so often taught. May the eternal Godhead keep your beatitude as you pray for us, as we desire, lord Father.

SERMON OF FASTIDIOSUS THE ARIAN.

We speak, most prudent brethren, of what the Godhead deigns to bestow on our littleness. God is the author of justice and of life; nay, He Himself is our justice and our life. He made man neither for sin nor for death, as Scripture says: God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living (Wis. 1:13). What then? Death befell the man whom God had made. For it is said to be not the Creator's but the deceiving devil's. After, therefore, he was deceived by the devil, man, who willingly did iniquity, unwillingly incurred death: he transgressed unjustly, and was punished justly. But God, when He had seen these two things in man, guilt and death — the one which he had done wickedly, the other which he had justly incurred — since man was held bound with these two most strong chains, commanded that the Lord Christ should take flesh, not in which He might become a sinner and a debtor, but in which, without the debt of sin, He might undergo death undeservedly for debtors: not that the Son of God should be bound by the chain of iniquity, but that sinful man should be loosed from the chain of iniquity. This is what the Apostle says: Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit; it appeared to angels, was preached to the gentiles, was believed in this world, was taken up in glory (1 Tim. 3:16). And truly, most learned Christians, what greater godliness could there be than that, for carnal men, the Son of God, obeying the Father's command, should take human flesh, and, being Life, should undergo death for mortals? that He who is born before the ages, founded by the Father, should in the last time be born of a Virgin? that He who gives life to the world should lie dead in the tomb? With what tears, then, must it now be wept, or with what affliction of heart lamented, that many even until now will not abandon the stubbornness of a most hard obstinacy, while they desire indiscriminately to serve a harmful presumption? For when they in no way acquiesce in saving remedies, or cast away the will to be corrected, setting hostile hands against life-giving words as against the surgeon's instruments, they wound themselves with that by which they ought to have been healed, and turn the force of spiritual medicines against themselves, and so increase the corruption of their wounds by that through which they could have attained health. For a twofold error crept in long ago, which, binding until now the souls of the lost, does not allow them to breathe towards seeking the truth: the Homousians asserting an inseparable and undivided Trinity, and that the Son was not less than the Father, nor the unbegotten Father the maker of His Son; and the Donatists too preaching that the good are polluted by communion with the wicked, while they cast far from them the gift of holy Scripture, the remedy of salvation. Among these the holy mother, the Catholic Church, is known to sing with David's murmur, as we have sung in the present psalm: Lord, lead me in Thy justice because of my enemies (Ps. 5:9). For I am led in Thy justice when I believe Thee, almighty God, unbegotten and uncreated, to be the maker of Thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as John the Baptist testifies: After me comes He who was made before me (John 1:15). And as the apostle Peter preaches and says: Let the whole house of Israel know that

God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified (Acts 2:36). Solomon too had earlier declared in the person of Christ: Before the ages He founded me (Prov. 8:23). Behold, Scripture testifies that He was made, created and founded, whom the sacrilegious abhor to believe so. Again, they assert, as was said above, an inseparable and undivided Trinity. Now if the Son, of whom the evangelist says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14), with the power of His divinity concealed for a little while, entered alone the bridal chamber of the virginal womb, without doubt He is separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit. But on their absurd reckoning the Trinity, which is established to be in no way divided, could by no means be separated from one [Person]. Therefore did the whole Trinity assume flesh, the whole Trinity feel the injuries of the sufferings, the whole Trinity lie in the tomb, the whole Trinity penetrate the underworld, the whole Trinity rise from the dead on the third day, the whole Trinity ascend into heaven on the fortieth day? And at whose right hand does the whole Trinity sit? Or what Spirit did the whole Trinity send upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Or to what God in heaven could the whole Trinity say: God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me (Ps. 22:1)? Or to what Father did the whole Trinity say: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46)? Let them declare it, if they can. But if they cannot say it, they slay themselves with their own darts, they who contend that the Trinity is inseparable. The Donatist vanity, indeed, does not attend to this: that the benefit of baptism was conferred on men so that those who are by origin weighed down by the errors of others, relieved by the help of healing grace, should thereafter carry only their own; and that it is not communion in the sacrament but consent to sin that condemns each one. For as the Lord says that He will requite the sins of the parents upon the third and fourth generation, because earthly and carnal birth is shown to be liable to original sin, so in another place He testifies that as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is His, that the second and heavenly birth may be known to be wholly absolved from the sins of others. For at once [He says]: The soul that has sinned, it shall die (Ezek. 18:20). With this sentence the admonition of Solomon agrees, and shows that one is not weighed down by another's sins: Son, he says, if you are good, [you will be so] for yourself and your neighbours; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drain the evils (Prov. 11:12). Thus the Catholic faith, fleeing the precipices of every error, and, with the Lord leading it back, walking the way of the heavenly journey, sings with sober belief and says: Lord, lead me in Thy justice because of my enemies (Ps. 5:9). And thence, begging the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son, in the straightness of the journey, by whose free gift it has obtained the power of walking, just as it confesses that those not yet baptized are liable not only to their own but also to others' sins, since it knows them to have been conceived in iniquities, so it asserts that those washed in the generative water are free of others' iniquity, if the assent of the will is not held in the crime. For as many as believed in Him, says John the evangelist, He gave them power to become sons of God; to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:16). Just as, therefore, from