Letter 245: 1. It requires more consideration to decide what to do with those who refuse to obey you, than to discover how to show them that things which they do are unlawful. Meanwhile, however, the letter of your Holiness has come upon me when I am exceedingly pressed with business, and the very hasty departure of the bearer has made it necessary for me t...

Augustine to Possidius, greetings. A brief note, old friend, about the book you are writing — my biography. I am told you have been gathering information, interviewing people who knew me, assembling a record of my life and works. I have mixed feelings about this. The life is God's to record, not man's. And any biography, however well-intentioned, smooths out the rough edges, fills in the gaps with guesswork, and creates a portrait more coherent and more flattering than the truth. But I will not stop you. If a record of what God did through a flawed instrument can encourage others to trust the same God with their own flawed lives, then the record serves a purpose. Just promise me this: tell the truth. Include the failures. Include the doubts. Include the times I was wrong — and there were many. A saint who seems perfect is a saint no one can imitate. A saint who struggled, failed, and was carried by grace is a saint who gives hope to the rest of us. Farewell, dear friend.

To Possidius, My Most Beloved Lord and Venerable Brother and Partner in the Sacerdotal Office, and to the Brethren Who are with Him, Augustine and the Brethren Who are with Him Send Greeting in the Lord. 1. It requires more consideration to decide what to do with those who refuse to obey you, than to discover how to show them that things which they do are unlawful. Meanwhile, however, the letter of your Holiness has come upon me when I am exceedingly pressed with business, and the very hasty departure of the bearer has made it necessary for me to write you in reply, but has not given me time to answer as I ought to have done in regard to the matters on which you have consulted me. Let me say, however, in regard to ornaments of gold and costly dress, that I would not have you come to a precipitate decision in the way of forbidding their use, except in the case of those who, neither being married nor intending to marry, are bound to consider only how they may please God. But those who belong to the world have also to consider how they may in these things please their wives if they be husbands, their husbands if they be wives; 1 Corinthians 7:32-34 with this limitation, that it is not becoming even in married women to uncover their hair, since the apostle commands women to keep their heads covered. 1 Corinthians 11:5-13 As to the use of pigments by women in coloring the face, in order to have a ruddier or a fairer complexion, this is a dishonest artifice, by which I am sure that even their own husbands do not wish to be deceived; and it is only for their own husbands that women ought to be permitted to adorn themselves, according to the toleration, not the injunction, of Scripture. For the true adorning, especially of Christian men and women, consists not only in the absence of all deceitful painting of the complexion, but in the possession not of magnificent golden ornaments or rich apparel, but of a blameless life. 2. As for the accursed superstition of wearing amulets (among which the earrings worn by men at the top of the ear on one side are to be reckoned), it is practised with the view not of pleasing men, but of doing homage to devils. But who can expect to find in Scripture express prohibition of every form of wicked superstition, seeing that the apostle says generally, I would not that you should have fellowship with devils, 1 Corinthians 10:20 and again, What concord has Christ with Belial? 2 Corinthians 6:15 unless, perchance, the fact that he named Belial, while he forbade in general terms fellowship with devils, leaves it open for Christians to sacrifice to Neptune, because we nowhere read an express prohibition of the worship of Neptune! Meanwhile, let those unhappy people be admonished that, if they persist in disobedience to salutary precepts, they must at least forbear from defending their impieties, and thereby involving themselves in greater guilt. But why should we argue at all with them if they are afraid to take off their earrings, and are not afraid to receive the body of Christ while wearing the badge of the devil? As to ordaining a man who was baptized in the Donatist sect, I cannot take the responsibility of recommending you to do this; it is one thing for you to do it if you are left without alternative, it is another thing for me to advise that you should do it.

EPISTOLA 245 Scripta versus a. 401 (sec. Maur.). A. Possidio de corporis externo cultu, de fucis (n. 1), de inaurium superstitione, de quodam in parte Donati baptizato non ordinando (n. 2). DOMINO DILECTISSIMO, ET VENERABILI FRATRI ET CONSACERDOTI POSSIDIO, ET QUI TECUM SUNT FRATRIBUS, AUGUSTINUS, ET QUI MECUM SUNT FRATRES, IN DOMINO SALUTEM. Qui corporis cultus deceat Christianos. 1. Magis quid agas cum eis qui obtemperare nolunt, cogitandum est, quam quemadmodum eis ostendas non licere quod faciunt. Sed nunc epistola Sanctitatis tuae, et occupatissimum me reperit, et celerrimus baiuli reditus neque non rescribere tibi, neque ad ea quae consuluisti, ita ut oportet, respondere permisit. Nolo tamen de ornamentis auri vel vestis praeproperam habeas in prohibendo sententiam, nisi in eos qui neque coniugati, neque coniugari cupientes, cogitare debent quomodo placeant Deo. Illi autem cogitant quae sunt mundi, quomodo placeant vel viri uxoribus, vel mulieres maritis 1. Nisi quod capillos nudare feminas, quas etiam caput velare Apostolus iubet 2, nec maritatas decet. Fucari autem pigmentis, quo vel rubicundior vel candidior appareat, adulterina fallacia est, qua non dubito etiam ipsos maritos se nolle decipi, quibus solis permittendae sunt feminae ornari, secundum veniam, non secundum imperium. Nam verus ornatus maxime Christianorum et Christianarum, non tantum nullus fucus mendax, verum ne auri quidem vestisque pompa, sed mores boni sunt. Inaurium superstitionem, diaboli servitutem, damnandam. 2. Exsecranda autem superstitio ligaturarum, in quibus etiam inaures virorum in summis ex una parte auriculis suspensae deputantur, non ad placendum hominibus, sed ad serviendum daemonibus adhibetur. Quis autem possit speciales nefariarum superstitionum prohibitiones in Scripturis invenire, cum generaliter Apostolus dicat: Nolo vos socios fieri daemoniorum 3; et iterum: Quae enim consonantia Christi ad Belial? 4 Nisi forte quia Belial nominavit, et generalem societatem daemoniorum prohibuit, licet Christianis sacrificare Neptuno, quia nihil proprie de Neptuno vetitum legimus! Moneantur interim miseri, ut si obtemperare nolunt praeceptis salubrioribus, saltem sacrilegia sua non defendant, ne maiori se scelere implicent. Quid autem cum eis agendum sit, si solvere inaures timent, et corpus Christi cum signo diaboli accipere non timent? De ordinando autem qui in parte Donati baptizatus est, auctor tibi esse non possum: aliud est enim facere si cogaris, aliud consulere ut facias.