A Common Quotation from Augustine?

Note on 1-28-2023: This content has been significantly updated since the original 2007 post to reflect the latest scholarship.

Have you ever heard the expression, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity”? Sometimes it is attributed to Augustine. While the general idea may be that old, the earliest references go back to either Martin Luther (1483–1546), Marco Antonio de Dominis (1560–1624), or Rupertus Meldenius (aka Petrus Meiderlinus; 1582–1651).

Luther:

Henri A. G. Blocher claimed that the statement, “In necessariis, unitas; in non necessariis (or dubiis), libertas; in omnibus, caritas [in articles of faith that are necessary, unity; in non-necessary (or doubtful) ones, freedom; in all, charity]” was coined by Martin Luther. Blocher remarked that the statement is “often ascribed to Rupertus Meldenius, whose Paraenesis votiva of 1626 (2) ends with similar words, but it comes from Luther’s sermon preached March 10, 1522 (Luther’s Werke, Weimar Ausgabe, vol. X [third tome], 14).” See Henri A. G. Blocher, “Jesus Christ the Man: Toward a Systematic Theology of Definite Atonement,” in From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective, ed. David Gibson & Jonathan Gibson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 541n1. The source by Luther seems to correspond to this English edition: Martin Luther, “The Second Sermon, March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit,” in Luther’s Works, Vol. 51: Sermons I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 75–78. While one might argue that the general idea of the phrase is in Luther, there does not appear to be any exact reference for it.

Meldenius:

The claim that it comes from Meldenius has been made popular among many evangelicals today by Philip Schaff. See his History of the Christian Church, 8 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 7:650–53. The specific section from Schaff’s book can be found here (click).

He wrote:

The authorship has recently been traced to RUPERTUS MELDENIUS an otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of such divines as Calixtus of Helmstadt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg, John Valentin Andreae of Wuerttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of Francfort-on-the-Oder, the brothers Bergius in Brandenburg, and of the indefatigable traveling evangelist of Christian union, John Dury, and Richard Baxter.

The author of this tract is an orthodox Lutheran, who was far from the idea of ecclesiastical union, but anxious for the peace of the church and zealous for practical scriptural piety in place of the dry and barren scholasticism of his time.

…Richard Baxter, the Puritan pacificator In England, refers to the sentence, Nov. 15, 1679, In the preface to The True and Only Way of Concord of All the Christian Churches, London, 1680, In a slightly different form: “I once more repeat to you the pacificator’s old despised words, ‘Si in necessariis sit [esset] unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in charitas, optimo certo loco essent rcs nostrae.’

But who was Meldenius? This is still an unsolved question. Possibly he took his name from Melden, a little village on the borders of and Silesia. His voice was drowned, and his name forgotten, for two centuries, but is now again heard with increased force. I subscribe to the concluding words of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Briggs: “Like a mountain stream that disappears at times under tile rocks of its bed, and re-appears deeper down in the valley, so these long-buried principles of peace have reappeared after two centuries of oblivion, and these irenical theologians will be honored by those who live in a better age of the world, when Protestant irenics have well-nigh displaced tile old Protestant polemics and scholastics.”

De Dominis:

Recent scholarship, however, has discovered that the phrase explicitly came from Marco Antonio de Dominis (1560–1624). See H. J. M. Nellen, “De zinspreuk ‘in necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas,’” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschidenis 79, no. 1 (1999): 99–106. I discovered this in Cosby’s work on Flavel. He helpfully noted:

The original source of this phrase, from the Latin In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas, may be attributed to Marco Antonio de Dominis (1560–1624), Dalmatian Archbishop-turned-apostate, in his De republica ecclesiastica libri X (London, 1617), 1.4.8 [p. 676]. See H. J. M. Nellen, “De zinspreuk ‘in necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas,’” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschidenis 79, no. 1 (1999): 99–106.

Brian H. Cosby, John Flavel: Puritan Life and Thought in Stuart England (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 53, n.18.

Wikipedia (which also helpfully updated their content on the issue relatively recently) cites the original Latin in de Dominis as follows:

Quod si in ipsa radice, hoc est sede, vel potius solio Romani pontificis haec abominationis lues purgaretur et ex communi ecclesiae consilio consensuque auferretur hic metus, depressa scilicet hac petra scandali ac ad normae canonicae iustitiam complanata, haberemus ecclesiae atrium aequabile levigatum ac pulcherrimis sanctuarii gemmis splendidissimum. Omnesque mutuam amplecteremur unitatem in necessariis, in non necessariis libertatem, in omnibus caritatem. Ita sentio, ita opto, ita plane spero, in eo qui est spes nostra et non confundemur. Ita sentio, ita opto, ita plane spero, in eo qui est spes nostrae et non confundemur.

See Marco Antonio de Dominis, De republica ecclesiastica libri X (Londini: Io. Billivm, 1617), 676; 1.4.8. For similar uses of the phrase, Nellen cited de Dominis’s De republica ecclesiastica, boek VII, hoofdstuk VI, § 21 (p. 104), boek VII, hoofdstuk IX, § 18 (p. 130), boek VII, hoofdstuk IX, § 27 (p. 132), boek VII, hoofdstuk X, § 204 (p. 197), boek VII, hoofdstuk XII, § 113 (p. 316).