An Appeal to Pammachius

It remains for every reader of this book to cast his vote for one or the other of us, judging as he would wish to be judged himself by God, and not to harm his own soul by unjustly favoring either side. Also, my beloved son Apronianus, go to Pammachius, that saintly man whose letter our friend puts forward in this Invective, or Bill of Indictment, of his. Adjure him in Christ’s name to lean in his judgment toward the cause of innocence, not toward the cause of a party. It is the cause of truth that is at stake, and religion, not party, should be our guide. It is a command of our Lord to “judge not according to appearance, but judge a righteous judgment.” And just as in each one of the least of his brothers it is Christ who is thirsty and hungry, who is clothed and fed, so in those who are unjustly judged it is he who is judged unrighteously. When some are hated without a cause, he will speak on their behalf and say, “You have hated me without a cause.” [a]

What judgment does Pammachius think will be passed on this cause, and on his own part in it, before the judgment seat of Christ? No doubt he remembers well how, when the man we are speaking of had written and published his books against Jovinian, and people were already reading them and finding fault with them, he withdrew them from the readers’ hands, and stopped their remarks, and blamed them for blaming his friend. And he remembers how, further, he sent the books back to their author, suggesting that he either correct the passages that had been found fault with, or set matters right in any way he would. But when what I had written fell into his hands, and it was not then a book but only a number of unfinished, uncorrected papers, taken by fraud and theft by some scoundrel, he did not bring it to me and complain of it, though I was close at hand. He did not see fit even to rebuke me, or to convict me of wrong through some friend, as might have been done, or even through some enemy. Instead he sent my papers to the East, and set to work the tongue of that man who has never yet known how to control it. Would it have been against the commands of our religion for him to meet me face to face? Did he think me so utterly unworthy to speak with him that it was not worth his while even to argue with me? Yet for us too Christ died; for our salvation too he shed his blood. We are sinners, I grant, but we belong to his flock and are counted among his sheep.

Pammachius, however, must be held in honor for his excellent deeds, done through faith in Christ, which should be an example to all others. For he has counted his rank as worth nothing, and has made himself the equal of the humble. That is why I did not want to see him carried away by human partisanship and strife, in case his faith should suffer harm in any way. At any rate, we will see how far he keeps a right judgment, when he sees that this great master, Jerome, taught, in the commentaries he picked out as satisfactory even after his repentance, the very things he condemns in others as foreign to his own teaching. We will consider his former action a mistake made in ignorance, if he recognizes it and sets it right. As for myself, though it was under the compulsion of necessity that I set out to answer the man who had attacked me with such great bitterness, I ask forgiveness for this too, if I have handled the matter too sharply. For God is my witness how truly I can say that I have kept silent on far more points than I have brought forward. I could not keep wholly silent in the face of accusations I know to be undeserved, when I heard from many that my silence would put their own faith in danger.