Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 11/17

For this I set down in that letter against which you speak: what stands in the holy book concerning the seed of Abraham, God saying to that father of ours: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed.' Which the Apostle calls a testament, saying: 'Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; yet a man's confirmed testament no one annuls or superimposes upon. To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He does not say, 'and to seeds,' as in many, but as in one, 'and to your seed,' which is Christ.' The fruitfulness of this seed was promised so abundantly that it was said to him: 'So shall your seed be, as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered.'

To this multiplication and abundance of the Church, which is spread throughout the whole world, which is believed thus to have been prophesied, thus displayed even to the eyes of all the unbelieving, so that it stops even the mouths of the pagans — who have remained against it in the smallest number — you dare to prefer the party of Donatus, saying that even outside Africa you have some men, I know not whom, who, though they do not appear, you do not deny that you are wont to send from Africa one or two bishops, or at most three; and you argue emptily against the most evident truth, that the whole world does not communicate with us because either there are still many barbarian nations which have not yet believed in Christ, or, under the name of Christ, many heresies estranged from the communion of our fellowship.

You neither attend, nor at least inquire of those who know, how many of those very barbarian nations you have mentioned are already made over to the name of Christ, and how the Gospel does not cease to bear fruit by growing among the rest, until, when it has been preached in all, the end may come. For thus the Lord Himself says: 'And this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the end come.' Unless perhaps insane pride so hurls you into such a precipice that you think this which was foretold must begin from the party of Donatus — not from those churches which the apostles planted, with which the party of Donatus does not communicate.

Or will it even attempt to rebaptize those churches too, in order to fill the world, while, with the Catholic Church growing throughout all things, that party is daily diminished even in Africa itself? O the mad perversity of men! You believe you are praised for believing about Christ what you do not see, and you do not believe you are condemned for denying about the Church what you do see, since that Head is in heaven, this Body on earth. You acknowledge Christ in what is written: 'Be Thou exalted above the heavens, O God,' and you do not acknowledge the Church in what follows: 'and Thy glory above all the earth.' You acknowledge Christ in what is written: 'They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones.'

'but they themselves have looked and gazed upon me; they divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots' — and you do not acknowledge the Church in what a little later follows: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and be turned to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in His sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and He shall have dominion over the nations.' You acknowledge Christ in what is written: 'O God, give Thy judgment to the king, and Thy justice to the king's son,' and you do not acknowledge the Church in what the same psalm testifies: 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. Before Him the Ethiopians shall fall down, and His enemies shall lick the earth.'

'The kings of Tharsis and the isles shall offer gifts; the kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall bring presents. And all the kings of the earth shall adore Him; all nations shall serve Him.' You acknowledge Christ where it is said to the Jews: 'I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord Almighty, nor will I accept sacrifices from your hands' — because indeed the coming of Christ took away all those sacrifices of the Jews — and you do not acknowledge the Church in what follows: 'For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure oblation. For great is my name among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.' You acknowledge Christ in what the prophet says:

'He was led as a sheep to the slaughter,' and the rest that is read there concerning him as though in the Gospel — and yet you do not recognize the Church in what he says a little later: 'Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate are more than of her who has a husband. For the Lord said: Enlarge the place of your tent and fix fast your dwellings — there is no reason to spare — stretch your cords farther, make firm your strong stakes, and again and again extend them to the right and to the left. For your seed shall inherit the nations, and you shall dwell in the cities that were deserted. There is no reason to fear — for you shall prevail — nor to blush that you were held in loathing.'

'For you shall forget the confusion forever, and shall no more remember the reproach of your widowhood. For I am the Lord who made you — the Lord is his name — and he who delivers you, he himself, the God of Israel, shall be called the God of the whole earth.' It was certainly in these Holy Scriptures that Cyprian learned to know the Church, so that he said: 'Thus the Church of the Lord, flooded with light, has stretched out her rays over the whole world; with the abundance of her fruitfulness she has extended her branches over all the earth.' At so great a manifestation of the divine oracles you, Cresconius, cavil, gazing upon the remnants of the nations which the Church has not yet occupied; but how much she has occupied, whence she is daily spread abroad to lay hold of what remains, you do not consider.

For how can you deny the future fulfillment of these prophecies, you who do not hesitate to deny the very progress to which that fulfillment is owed — I do not say against the divine utterances, but now even against your own? For concerning you too it was wrung out by the great force of truth itself, so that you said, not knowing or not heeding what you had said, that 'the whole world is daily turning to the name of Christian.' Why then does the party of Donatus not hold communion with this Church, which by its growth is spread wide over all the world? Doubtless lest it be defiled by sinners. And where is that which was said — not this Church of yours, which, remaining in Africa, cavils at the whole earth, or wanders out of Africa among a few who lie hidden, but that Church which 'has extended her branches over all the earth with the abundance of her fruitfulness'?

Cyprian was unwilling to abandon the Church, even though in its communion there were not only truly sinners but sinners plainly manifest, saying: 'For even if tares seem to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we see tares to be in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church.' Here you too make answer, if it pleases you to answer anything true. And how shall that which is written be fulfilled: 'The evil son calls himself righteous, but does not wash away his own going out'? Let him refute the evil son, let him condemn and persecute the Maximianists, and be reconciled to those he condemned and persecuted: let him thus either be convicted, or thus be confounded, or thus be corrected.

'How,' you say, 'is the whole world full of your communion, where there are so many heresies, none of which holds communion with you?' Nay, not only with heretics but also with the rest of evil men the world is full, and yet with the saints and faithful servants of God the world is full; for the sea too is full of bitter waves, and it is full also of sweet fish. 'Among the few,' you say, 'truth is often found; to err belongs to the many'; and lest by your words you should seem to contradict the fruitfulness of that great barren woman — to whom it was said, 'the children of the desolate are more than of her who has a husband' — you brought forward a testimony from the Gospel: 'for few are they who are saved.' Resolve, then, the question, how the Lord himself can say:

'How strait and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few are they who find it,' and the same Lord elsewhere say: 'Many shall come from the east and the west and shall recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven'? And how too in the Apocalypse is shown their multitude, which no one can number, out of every nation and tribe and tongue, wearing white robes and bearing palms, who had endured tribulations for the faith of Christ? How can the same be at once the few and the many? For neither of these is true and the other false, since both were uttered by the divine truth — except that these same good and true Christians, who in themselves are many, are likewise, in comparison with the wicked and false, few.

So we call the many grains, with which great barns are filled, few in comparison with the chaff; so also — to speak of that very covenant of God which was made to Abraham concerning his seed, which is Christ — the many stars, which we cannot number, by which so vast a heaven shines round about on every side, we call few in comparison with the sand of the sea. Perhaps the stars signified spiritual Christians, and the sand of the sea carnal ones, through whom and out of whom even heresies and schisms arise; yet with both kinds the world is full, since the same Lord says: 'the field is this world,' and you yourself, with the truth wringing it from you, said: 'the whole world is daily turning to the name of Christ.'

Throughout the whole field, therefore, that is, throughout the whole world, there is wheat, and throughout it all there are tares, since he who cannot be deceived said of both: 'Let both grow together until the harvest.' Let the impious deserters, then, restrain themselves from the wheat that grows in such great abundance throughout the whole world, and let them not dare to boast of the fewness of certain separated tares. But if they do boast, in this very thing those same Maximianists advance against them in the divine judgment, set as men appointed to confound them in all things and — if they be wise — to correct them; whom, though far fewer, they persecuted out of confidence in their own multitude, and by persecuting turned some of them back again to their own communion, and thus left the rest, most righteous, the very fewest.

'The East,' you say, 'does not hold communion with Africa, nor Africa with the East.' No indeed — not in the heretical chaff that has been separated from the Lord's threshing floor; but in the catholic wheat and in the inner chaff the East holds communion entirely with Africa and Africa with the East. For here are some heretics, and elsewhere and elsewhere still others, contending with the catholic unity that is everywhere diffused. For it is everywhere, that unity out of which came those who could by no means be everywhere, saying — according to what was foretold of them — 'Behold, here is Christ, behold, there,' the one in this place, others elsewhere, displaying the peculiar little fragments of their presumptions, or rather of their amputations, and by their impious pride denying the root from which they were broken off.

To this Church, therefore, which with abundant success, as it is spread wide over the whole world, brings forth out of every nation, tribe, and tongue a multitude of the white-robed and palm-bearing — as is written in the Apocalypse — which no one can number: to this Church, I say, with which it is manifest that the party of Donatus does not hold communion, your elders ought to have proved whatever true documents they had concerning the traditors. And if they had done so, they themselves would be in her, while those they accused would be outside her. But now, since we see the accused have remained within her, what good ought we to think of the accusers, whom we see to be outside her?

And by this, in that fourfold division of mine, where I said that, when documents about the traditors are brought forward from both sides, either both are true, or both are false, or ours are true and yours false, or ours false and yours true — since you saw that in the first three you were most easily overcome, in vain did you choose this last as though thereby to escape. For however impudently it is said, yet even those true documents of yours, if any were merely human documents, ought to have been proved to that Church which the divine documents prove.

Tell me, I beseech you — but do not spread mists over the ignorant, so that, because you cannot convict the accused traditors, you keep wanting to accuse the dialectical arts instead — tell me, then, I ask you: was that cause of yours, together with your true documents, brought to the judgment of the churches beyond the sea, founded by apostolic labor, or was it not brought there? If it was brought, did you win in that judgment, or were you defeated? If you say you won, why did you not hold communion with those churches in whose judgment you won?

But if — as your communion, being alienated from them, sufficiently shows — you were defeated, why do you quarrel with us over a cause lost whether it be evil or good, holding this as your greatest crime: that with the crime of the traditors, whom, even bringing forward true documents, you could by no means convict in the judgment of the churches beyond the sea, you flood the Christian world? For in that cause, in which it could not be involved, the Christian world chose to believe the judges, not the defeated accusers. It is not, therefore, because you lost a good cause (to speak as you would) in the judgment beyond the sea that you are guilty, but because you do not in the least hesitate to cast the crime of the accused, and — to concede too much to us — even of the judges, upon so many innocent Christian peoples spread far and wide through so many nations;

whose communion, cleaving to it as to the Lord's wheat, you ought — according to the Gospel writings, with Cyprian too admonishing you — to have tolerated both those men, traditors as you say, and those bad judges, as you suppose, like chaff, until the time of winnowing, lest by deserting the threshing floor you should perish. But if that cause of yours, with the true documents which you chose for yourself, was not brought to the judgment of the churches beyond the sea, how could so many bishops, appointed among their own congregations, be justly condemned by them in a cause unknown and not at all referred to them?

Or how ought the African Christians — I do not mean those who had thought them innocent, but even those, if any there were, who knew them to be traditors — to separate themselves, on account of tares which they saw to be in the Church, from the wheat growing so far and wide and so manifestly innocent of these things and ignorant of them, so that, because of another's crime — by which, being tolerated for the sake of unity, they were not stained — they should be condemned for the crime of violating that very unity? What, then, does it profit your cause to have chosen this out of those four propositions, that your documents be true, while those which we bring forward against your side are reckoned false?

Behold, here too you are overcome, since by those documents of yours which you think true, the traditors could not be convicted where they ought to have been — whether the same documents were concealed by your side, or the traditors themselves by some cunning hid from the judges, or were hidden by those very corrupt judges. Look upon the seed of Abraham, which in the covenant of God grows through all nations like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea, and whether, on account of some African tares hidden by whatever causes, so plentiful a harvest could perish throughout the field of the world — dare to say it, dare to believe it, dare, if there is any fear of God in you, to think it.

You exaggerate the persecutions which you say you suffer — you who, while rebelling in such sacrilegious and manifest obstinacy against the peace of the holy Church, are spared with wonderful gentleness. And you say, in the first part of your letter, that when the crime of Caecilian was made manifest to the emperor Constantine, he too by his own sentence condemned him to spend his exile at Brixia. In this, who could doubt that you are either deceived or deceiving, when you also mentioned that Felix of Aptunga was convicted of tradition in the proconsul's court by a certain Ingentius? Behold, I insert the sentence of the proconsul Aelianus, by which Felix was cleared and absolved. If you wish to read the whole proceedings, obtain them from the proconsul's archive. Aelianus the proconsul said:

'From the declaration of Caecilian, who says that the records are false and that many things were added to the letter, it is manifest with what intention Ingentius did these things; and therefore he shall be received into prison, for he is needed for a more rigorous interrogation. But it is manifest that Felix, the religious bishop, is free from the burning of the divine instruments, since no one could prove anything against him — namely, that he handed over or burned the sacred Scriptures. For the interrogation of all the aforesaid persons is clear, that no divine Scriptures were either found, or corrupted, or burned.'

This is contained in the records: that Felix, the religious bishop, in those times was neither present, nor lent his conscience to it, nor ordered any such thing to be done. I insert also the rescript of the emperor Constantine to Probianus, attesting this very thing and showing how troublesome accusers of the innocent your elders were in his sight. 'The emperors Caesars, Flavius Constantine and Maximinus and Valerius Licinianus Licinius, to Probianus, proconsul of Africa.'

'Your predecessor Aelianus, rightly, when Verus, the vicar of the prefects — a man of the most perfect rank — was at that time detained by ill health throughout our Africa, having performed the duties of that same office, judged that among other matters this business too, or rather this ill-will which seems to have been stirred up against the bishop Caecilian and the catholic Church, ought to be recalled to his own examination and command.'

'For when he had already caused Superius the centurion, and Caecilianus the magistrate of the people of Aptunga, and Saturninus, a former curator, and Calibius the younger, curator of the same city, and Solus, a public slave of the aforesaid city, to be present, he granted a fitting hearing — so much so that, when it had been alleged against Caecilian that the episcopate seemed to have been conferred upon him by Felix, against whom the betrayal and burning of the divine Scriptures seemed to be charged, it was established that Felix was innocent of this.'

'Finally, when Maximus contended that Ingentius, a decurion of the city of Ziqua, had forged a letter of Caecilian from among the duumvirs, we saw that same Ingentius hung up, according to the records which lay before us, and yet by no means tortured, because he had asserted that he was a decurion of the city of Ziqua. Wherefore we desire that you send this same Ingentius, under suitable escort, to my court, that of Constantine Augustus, so that in the hearing and presence of those who at present are pleading and do not cease day by day to make appeal, it may appear and be made known that they wished in vain to fabricate ill-will against the bishop Caecilian and violently to rise up against him.'

'For thus it will come to pass that, such contentions being set aside as is fitting, the people may serve their own religion without any dissension and with due reverence.' I insert further also the words of Constantine from his letter to Eumalius the vicar, where he testifies that he had inquired between the parties and had found Caecilian innocent. For when he had related, in what he said above, how the parties had been brought to his judgment after the episcopal judgments:

'In which,' he says, 'I clearly perceived that Caecilian was a man endowed with all innocence, keeping the due offices of his religion and serving it as he ought, and it evidently appeared that no crime could be found in him, as had been contrived against him in his absence by the pretense of his adversaries.' Why, most eloquent man, did you not insert the sentence of Constantine by which you say he was condemned and settled in exile at Brixia? How much more fittingly you would have inserted this than I know not what about the Council of Sardica, which can be shown to pertain neither to you nor to the cause which lies between us and you at all! For what was Caecilian at Brixia, which you most slanderously call exile?

— since he preferred that his presence should be lacking to the Church rather than its peace. What need is there for me to say it? You meanwhile recite no sentence of any condemning emperor, and yet you rashly think that Caecilian, condemned by the emperor, is not only to be heard or spoken of, but even to be written of. Nevertheless, according to your own words, behold, I see Caecilian in exile with the emperor condemning him: at least answer, by whom accusing; and now question me on what you likewise placed, empty, after many empty things in your letter: 'Who consents less, when the testament is produced — he who suffers persecution, or he who causes it?' These are certainly your own words. Look, then, at Caecilian suffering persecution and, as you yourself said, settled in exile; look also at your own men.

— as the emperor himself testifies in his own words, they were the ones who did not cease day by day to make appeal against Caecilian. And answer me, questioning you in those same words of yours: Who consents less, when the testament has been produced — he who suffers persecution, or he who inflicts it? But when you have diligently read through everything, you will find that Caecilian suffered persecution from your side even before the emperor; yet you will not find him condemned by the emperor — nay, you will even find him absolved. Furthermore, if — which you chose for yourself as a great point, that the documents which you bring forward concerning the crimes of tradition be true, while those which we bring forward be false:

— even in this the truth of God overcomes you, which, as it foretold, so it renders the Church fruitful and growing throughout the whole world, since no other men's crimes prejudice her, even though they be true documents which — brought to the nearer bishops beyond the sea, through whom the report of such matters either passes into the more distant parts or does not pass —

— either were not demonstrated as they ought to have been, or were not believed by those to whom they could be demonstrated, or, believed and concealed, by no means reached others; nor can anyone, even a single man — how much less so great a number of Christians established among so many nations — be guilty of a share in another's crime, if either he has known no true documents of it, or someone with feigned innocence has deceived him with false documents —:

— if, then, as I had begun to say, in this which you chose for yourself as a great point — that the testimonies which you bring forward concerning the traditors be true, while those brought forward against you be false — you avail nothing against the catholic Church diffused over the whole world and against the providence of God, by which (to use your own words) 'the whole world is daily turning to the name of Christian': how much more do you fail in your accusations, when it is this very tradition — whose name they, as it were, shudder at, who made this schism, having, separated from the body of Christ, handed over their own selves to the devil.

— much more plausibly, as I said in that treatise and now say, do we cast it upon you, we who merely hear you speak the names and crimes of the traditors, whereas we display both the ecclesiastical records, in which they confessed of themselves, and the municipal records, in which they are read to have done this! But you, a clever examiner and weigher of words, teach us what force the comparative degree has, and exult as though victorious, because I could not say 'we cast tradition upon you more plausibly' unless I confessed that you cast it upon us plausibly. 'For if you,' you say, 'more plausibly, then we plausibly'; and teaching this:

— that 'plausibly' and 'more plausibly' stand as if you should say 'truly' and 'more truly'; and that this degree augments what was set before it, does not disprove what was previously said. You add other words by which we may understand this more evidently, and you say: so it is with 'well' and 'better,' 'badly' and 'worse,' 'horribly' and 'more horribly'; thus showing that 'plausibly' and 'more plausibly' stand so. Whence you think it can be gathered that, if I cast a false thing 'more plausibly,' it remains that you must confirm that you cast a true thing 'plausibly.'

Here do I by any chance say that in an ecclesiastical question or dispute you are trying to teach us the technicalities of grammar — what force the comparative degree has, since it augments what was set before it and does not disprove what was previously said? For I see how ineptly I should cast at you what you were unwilling to see, when you thought you must cast at me the anticategoria as though drawn from the rhetorical art — that kind of question in which it is said, 'It was not I who did it, but you who did it' — a thing which I demonstrated even in prophetic authority. Yet consider more diligently, lest perhaps you find, in the authors of Latin speech, whom the grammarians' technicalities serve, that this degree does not always augment what was set before it, but is sometimes carried above by contrast.

An example of this manner of speaking occurs to me meanwhile from the apostle's epistle which he wrote to the Hebrews. For when he was speaking of the blessing of the earth, which, having received rain, yields fruit, he then added: 'but bringing forth thorns and thistles, it is reprobate and near to a curse, whose end is in burning.' And lest he should seem to have wished this for those to whom he was speaking, he says: 'But we are confident concerning you, dearly beloved brethren, of better things, and things that cleave to salvation.' You surely observe how here he said 'better things' — not because those things were good, which above he had said, namely, to bring forth thorns and thistles and to deserve burning, but rather because they were evil, so that, those being shunned, they might choose and desire better things, that is, good things contrary to such great evils.

But perhaps you think the apostle is to be heard in the way he says of himself, as a man 'though unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge,' and therefore you think that not the authority of his words but of his matter and thoughts is to be followed, contending that 'good things' ought to have been put where he himself put 'better things.' What, if I too, now accustomed to these letters and having forgotten those I learned as a boy, said thus: 'You cast tradition at us; this very thing we cast at you much more plausibly' — as though I said 'plausibly,' putting the comparative for the positive, not because you cast it plausibly, but rather because implausibly, just as he said 'better things,' not because those things were good, but rather because they were evil?