Letter 218: 1. Your life of eminent fortitude and fruitfulness towards the Lord our God has brought to us great joy. For you have made choice of instruction from your youth upwards, that you may still find wisdom even to grey hairs; Sirach 6:18 for wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age; Wisdom 4:9 which may the Lord, who knows h...

Augustine to Palatinus, greetings. I received your letter, and I appreciate your honesty. You say that you find my writings difficult, that my sentences are too long, that my arguments twist and turn until you lose the thread. You say you wish I would write more simply. I hear this more often than you might think. And I accept the criticism — in part. I do write long sentences. This is partly a fault of training (the rhetorician's habit dies hard) and partly a consequence of the subject matter. Theology is complex because God is infinite and our language is finite. When I try to express something that exceeds the capacity of human words, the sentences grow longer — not because I enjoy complexity, but because the truth I am chasing will not fit into a short sentence any more than the ocean will fit into a cup. But I also acknowledge that some of my difficulty is unnecessary. I am sometimes more enamored of the argument than of the reader, and that is a failure of charity. A writer who forgets his reader has forgotten half his purpose. So here is what I will try to do: I will continue to pursue the truth as far as my mind can follow it. But I will also try, more than I have in the past, to bring you along with me. Not by simplifying the truth — the truth is not simple — but by being more careful about the path I lay through it. Thank you for pushing back. A writer who is never challenged by his readers will eventually stop listening to them — and a bishop who stops listening has already stopped serving. Farewell.

Letter 218 (A.D. 426) To Palatinus, My Well-Beloved Lord and Son, Most Tenderly Longed For, Augustine Sends Greeting. 1. Your life of eminent fortitude and fruitfulness towards the Lord our God has brought to us great joy. For you have made choice of instruction from your youth upwards, that you may still find wisdom even to grey hairs; Sirach 6:18 for wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age; Wisdom 4:9 which may the Lord, who knows how to give good gifts unto His children, give to you asking, seeking, knocking. Matthew 7:11 Although you have many counsellors and many counsels to direct you in the path which leads to eternal glory, and although, above all, you have the grace of Christ, which has so effectually spoken in saving power in your heart, nevertheless we also, as in duty bound by the love which we owe to you, offer to you, in hereby reciprocating your salutation, some words of counsel, designed not to awaken you as one hindered by sloth or sleep, but to stimulate and quicken you in the race which you are already running. 2. You require wisdom, my son, for steadfastness in this race, as it was under the influence of wisdom that you entered on it at first. Let this then be a part of your wisdom, to know whose gift it is. Wisdom 8:20 Commit your way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass: and He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. He will make straight your path, and guide your steps in peace. As you despised your prospects of greatness in this world, lest you should glory in the abundance of riches which you had begun to covet after the manner of the children of this world, so now, in taking up the yoke of the Lord and His burden, let not your confidence be in your own strength; so shall His yoke be easy, and His burden light. Matthew 11:30 For in the book of Psalms those are alike censured who trust in their strength, and who boast themselves in the multitude of their riches. Therefore, as formerly you did not seek glory in riches, but most wisely despised that which you had begun to desire, so now be on your guard against insidious temptation to trust in your strength; for you are but man, and cursed is every one that trusts in man. Jeremiah 17:5 But by all means trust in God with your whole heart, and He will Himself be your strength, wherein you may trust with piety and thankfulness, and to Him you may say with humility and boldness, I will love you, O Lord, my strength; because even the love of God, which, when it is perfect, casts out fear, 1 John 4:18 is shed abroad in our hearts, not by our strength, that is, by any human power, but, as the apostle says, by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. Romans 5:5 3. Watch, therefore, and pray that you enter not into temptation. Mark 14:38 Such prayer is indeed in itself an admonition to you that you need the help of the Lord, and that you ought not to rest upon yourself your hope of living well. For now you pray, not that you may obtain the riches and honours of this present world, or any unsubstantial human possession, but that you may not enter into temptation, a thing which would not be asked in prayer if a man could accomplish it for himself by his own will. Wherefore we would not pray that we may not enter into temptation if our own will sufficed for our protection and yet if the will to avoid temptation were wanting to us, we could not so pray. It may, therefore, be present with us to will, Romans 7:18 when we have through his own gift been made wise, but we must pray that we may be able to perform that which we have so willed. In the fact that you have begun to exercise this true wisdom, you have reason to give thanks. For what have you which you have not received? But if you have received it, beware that you boast not as if you had not received it, 1 Corinthians 4:7 that is, as if you could have had it of yourself. Knowing, however, whence you have received it, ask Him by whose gift it was begun to grant that it may be perfected. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling: for it is God that works in you, both to will and to do, of His good pleasure; Philippians 2:12-13 for the will is prepared by God, and the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Holy meditation on these things will preserve you, so that your wisdom shall be piety, that is, that by God's gift you shall be good, and not ungrateful for the grace of Christ. 4. Your parents, unfeignedly rejoicing with you in the better hope which in the Lord you have begun to cherish, are longing earnestly for your presence. But whether you be absent from us or present with us in the body, we desire to have you with us in the one Spirit by whom love is shed abroad in our hearts, so that, in whatever place our bodies may sojourn, our spirits may be in no degree sundered from each other. We have most thankfully received the cloaks of goat's-hair cloth which you sent to us, in which gift you have yourself anticipated me in admonition as to the duty of being often engaged in prayer, and of practising humility in our supplications. About this page Source. Translated by J.G. Cunningham. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102218.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.