Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 15/17

These men, against whom that sentence was pronounced for this reason, because, as you yourself say, they were persisting in the schism of Maximianus — before, as you say, they were restored — where they were, there they celebrated the sacraments, there they baptized, and — to use rather the words of that plenary council — there they hatched with slow heat the noxious offspring of viperous seed, there they begot the teeming vows of crimes of their public wickedness and parricide, there they travailed with injustice, conceived labor and brought forth iniquity; there now, not in a confused thicket of crimes, were their names designated for punishment; there, at the end of indulgence, while the line of clemency was being let down, the cause had already found whom it should punish; thither the truth-telling wave, shipwrecked, had cast their limbs as upon rough rocks,

casting forth their perishing limbs; there were the shores full of corpses after the example of the Egyptians, not finding even burial itself; there the thunderbolt of the sentence had struck forth, out of the bosom of peace, not only Maximianus, the rival of faith, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram; nor did a just death condemn only the author of his own crime, but also drew very many to the consorting of the crime by the chain of sacrilege; there was the poison of asps under their lips, there their mouth full of cursing and bitterness, there their feet swift to shed blood, there destruction and unhappiness in their ways, there they knew not the way of peace, nor was the fear of God before their eyes; there lay the severed limbs, which

a pestiferous rottenness had so corrupted, that there was more of solace in the cutting-off than of remedy in the remitting; there were the guilty of notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabia and the rest, twelve with him, among whom Praetextatus of Adsuras and Felicianus of Mustis, concerning whose reception we treat, who present had ordained the same Maximianus — that is, by the deadly work of perdition had glued together a filthy vessel with gathered dregs — where the clerics of Carthage furnished pandering to so great a crime, as to an unlawful incest.

Such ministers of the sacraments, not yet corrected, not yet restored and given back to you, baptized in the schism of Maximianus; after such ministers of the sacraments were corrected, given back, restored, your people did not rebaptize. Why does animosity alone prevail in you? Let the truth also, at some time, be attended to, at some time be heard. Why are the most empty mists of a granted delay cast in? It was not granted to those very men of whom it was said, 'Know that they are condemned,' of whom it was also foretold what they had been, what they had done, why they ought now to be condemned without delay — namely, that being present they had ordained Maximianus with imposed hands;

for this is what they signified by saying that by the deadly work of perdition they had glued together a filthy vessel with gathered dregs. But delay was granted to those who were not present at the ordination of Maximianus, although established in his fellowship and schism — only because, since they had been absent, they did not impose hands upon him. For thus, by the same sentence of the council, they are distinguished from his condemned ordainers. For when they had said of those — whose names too they wrote down — 'Know that they are condemned,' they say, 'but those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute as seedlings' — that is, who withdrew their own hands from the head of Maximianus by a modest shame of faith — 'we have permitted to return to mother church.'

What could be plainer, what more distinct, what more open? Learn that those whom they call guilty of a notorious crime — those who by the deadly work of perdition glued together the filthy vessel from the accumulated dregs — have been condemned; but as for those whom, they say, the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile, that is, those who with the modest shame of faith drew back their own hands from the head of Maximian, these we have permitted to return to their mother the Church. And because two of those condemned men were afterwards received back with their honour intact, no way is found to defend this except by saying that a delay was granted to all. But granted that it was conceded to all.

Surely all who returned to you from that schism, before they returned, were there; there they baptized; and coming thence back to you without the loss of their honour or of their baptism — if you have any shame — they shut your mouths. For when we ask where they were before they had, as you yourself said, restored themselves to the Church and before the appointed day had been reinstated, what else does the very fact compel you to answer than: in the schism of Maximian, on account of which that sentence was pronounced against all? There, then, they baptized those in whom, when they came together thence back to you, you did not dare to rescind the baptism of Christ, because you were compelled to acknowledge it.

Whence by your very deed, by your own act, by your own judgment, it is rightly and justly concluded against you that the baptism of Christ must be acknowledged even if it was given outside the Church; and therefore that we piously recognize it in your case, while you impiously rescind it in ours. But perhaps you regret having set down such words, which press this truth too hard, since you said: «It came about that they restored themselves to the Church and, being reinstated before the appointed day, were not held bound by the definitive sentence» — so that this may be answered to you: How did they restore themselves to the Church, how were they reinstated to it, if they had not been separated from it?

Or if they had been separated, how did they baptize? But what else could you say, except what you had heard from those you consulted, when on this matter you were greatly disturbed by my letters? And yet perhaps they may accuse and reprove you for having incautiously set down such words. There is something that especially fortifies you against them and consoles your sadness. For they too put down such things in the decree of the same council; so that, if once this little work of ours has been read they should wish to reply to us that the words of their layman do not prejudge them, we shall at once recite their own words:

«But those whom the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile, that is, those who with the modest shame of faith drew back their own hands from the head of Maximian, we have permitted to return to their mother the Church.» For when it is said to them: «These whom you permitted to return to their mother the Church — before they returned, where were they?», they are pressed in the same way as you were pressed a little before by the words you set down. For where will they answer that these were, except in the schism of Maximian? But let them contend that they were wherever they wish: certainly those who were permitted to return to the Church were not in the Church.

Therefore they baptized outside the Church, and both baptizers and baptized, returning together to the Church, lost neither those honours which they had held outside nor that baptism which they had received outside. And you indeed, as far as you could in a bad cause, spoke cautiously when you said: «Yet it pleased the council by its decree that a delay of time be granted, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he should be held innocent.» But they said that those to whom that delay was given were not even to be corrected, but they speak of them as if they had been in the fellowship of Maximian wholly unpolluted and innocent, when they prolong that very delay. For what else is it that they say:

«But those whom the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile, we have permitted to return to their mother the Church» — what else does it mean but: «Those whom the company of Maximian did not pollute, we have permitted to return to their mother the Church»? And lest this be too little, see what they add: «For the more we are cleansed by the death of the guilty, the more we rejoice at the return of the innocent.» Why then do you say that it pleased them that a delay of time be granted, within which, if anyone wished to be corrected, he should be held innocent, when you see it given to the unpolluted and innocent? But evidently you feared lest it be said to you: «Why was a delay given to those whom Maximian had not polluted?» — and so you judged that they should be corrected by that delay. They feared lest it be said to them:

«Why did you wish to receive polluted men in their honours?» — and so they said that they had given the delay to unpolluted men. Accordingly you each feared different things, but the one is assailed by the other. For to you it is said: «How do you think those should be corrected whom your own men proclaim unpolluted?» And to them it is said: «How do you assert them to be unpolluted — even if not by laying hands upon the head of Maximian, yet stained by communion in his schism?» But whose mind, whose strength, whose tongue could suffice to utter so intolerable a grief? That the torn portion of Donatus may be patched up, Maximian did not pollute even his African allies in Africa; but that broken branches may not be permitted to return to the very root of unity, Caecilian polluted so many most remote nations away from Africa.

From the day of the Council of Bagai, that is, the eighth before the Kalends of May, up to the day of that granted delay, that is, the eighth before the Ides of January, eight months are counted. In this so long interval of time, were those to whom the delay was given being stained by fellowship with the condemned Maximian, or were they not being stained? If they were being stained, how is it said: «But those whom the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile, we have permitted to return to their mother the Church»? If they were not being stained, how could the contagion of the sins of unknown men — I will not say false ones — of strangers, pollute us and all Christian peoples wherever they are? But — you say — for this reason the delay was given, so that if it passed while they did not return, then they would be stained and would incur the penalty of condemnation.

Therefore it was not the sin of that fellowship, but the fixing of a day, that stained them. If then no day were fixed, they would surely remain unstained. What ill did the whole world deserve from you? Why do you declare it stained with the sins of others, when for it you fixed no day of delay — since so great is your power that men are joined to sinners when they wish, and are defiled whenever you will? Innocent and unpolluted were those to whom, on the side of Maximian, a delay was given, within whose day if they returned to you, they would have the foundations of unimpaired honour and faith;

but if that day passed while they did not return, then, polluted, then wicked, then lost, they would incur the punishment of condemnation, then they would be humbled, degraded through penance. O the wondrous reasoning of men who make proclamations — not now, as the old proverb has it, «what we wish is holy», but even «when we wish and as long as we wish»! Suppose it should befall one of you to pray with us aboard ship: at once he is called polluted, at once a traitor. The condemners of Primian share the altar with Maximian, the adulterer of truth, the enemy of mother Church, the minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram — and for eight months they persist innocent and unpolluted!

Accordingly, if any of these restored themselves to your communion before the ninth before the Kalends of January, you rejoiced at the return of the innocent — namely of those whom the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile. What did those eight months of days, from the eighth before the Kalends of May to the eighth before the Kalends of January, deserve from you, that you so sanctified them that through them whoever clung to the communion of the sacrilegious and condemned Maximian was not polluted nor made guilty? And what offence did that most holy day, the very birthday of our Lord himself, do to you, that it alone, by its coming and passing, should pollute the innocent — so that in those who baptized in that schism the baptism of Christ should remain holy through all those days, and become unclean through the birthday of Christ?

What would human rashness not dare, when it is hurled headlong into the opinion of an abominable error, which it is ashamed to abandon on account of vanity, and is not ashamed to defend against the truth? But why say more here, where any most obstinate man, who has hardened himself against all the voices of reason, must needs confess concerning those of whom it is said: «they restored themselves to the Church and were reinstated before the appointed day» — words which you yourself set down — those, finally, of whom it is said: «we have permitted them to return to their mother the Church», «we rejoice at the return of the innocent», «and lest the pressure of a narrowed span withdraw the hope of salvation from those returning within a scanty time, we open the door up to that day of recognition, that returning they may have the foundations of unimpaired honour and faith,

which if anyone through sluggish idleness has been unable to enter, let him know that the way to all the paths of pardon has been withdrawn from him» — «and for those returning after the appointed day, penance is fixed» (words which the three hundred and ten so often drove home in their sentence) — it is necessary, I say, that any adversary confess that those of whom these things are said, before they restored themselves to you, before they were reinstated to you, before they returned to you, before, on their return, they entered the door of the delay, were not with you, but outside your communion in that schism, in which they had separated themselves from you, and that they baptized there.

From there, restored and reinstated to you where they had been estranged from you, from there returning and coming back to you from where they had been outside you, they both kept their honours undiminished and brought in with them their own baptized persons, not to be rebaptized. Why do you still furnish so pertinacious a patronage to a most wicked cause? Yield at last, not to me, but to the very truth by which you are convicted. See how truly I spoke — what you have vainly tried to overthrow — «how great are the things to be endured for peace»; and, to use the very same words which I used in that letter: «For the peace of Christ return to the Church which condemned nothing unknown, if for the peace of Donatus it pleased to recall the condemned.»

For if out of those twelve whom they had condemned along with Maximian without delay, they afterwards received back Felician and Praetextatus, how is it false that they recalled the condemned? But if a delay was given even to those very men whom they said «know to have been condemned», then even if none of them afterwards returned, it still pleased them to recall the condemned, since after the sentence in which it was said «know that they have been condemned», a delay was given by which it was permitted to them, the condemnation being annulled, to return. These things said would suffice, even if what you say were true — that on this matter of the Maximianists, being greatly disturbed, you learned it from your bishops. But what will you do, seeing it is also false?

Seek out, or if you have it, inspect the day of the proconsular acts, on which the petition was made by Titianus against Felician and Praetextatus, that they should be driven from their places; and see how long after the day of that delay this was done. For the day of the Council of Bagai was, in the consulship of the Augusti Arcadius for the third time and Honorius for the second, the eighth before the Kalends of May; but the day of the delay was thence up to the eighth before the Ides of January; while that petition of Titianus was made after that consulship, on the sixth before the Nones of March. Accordingly it appears that nearly the third month was in progress when it was sought from the proconsul that Felician and Praetextatus be driven from their seats as colleagues of Maximian, whom he had joined to himself for his madness.

For when the aforesaid advocate had said concerning Maximian what seemed to suffice, he added in the same petition: «Those also whom the error of another's presumption had drawn away, having first set before them a haven of penitence, if they should desire to return within the time appointed to the path of religion, he restrained by an equal admonition of vigour. But iniquity delights in its own institutions and does not forsake itself, once it has fallen headlong. For the same Maximian nourishes the audacity he has begun and joins others to himself for his madness.»

Among whom also a certain Felician, who at first followed the right path but is now darkened by the taint of this depravation, being established in the city of Mustis, believed that the walls consecrated to almighty God, the venerable church, must be held as if by a kind of siege. Praetextatus too imitates him in the parts of Assuras. Do you hear the most distinguished and most manifest words of the advocate, by which he says that these men, of whom we are speaking, because [they had spurned] the haven of penitence set before them —

while «iniquity delights in its own institutions, once it has fallen headlong» — [because these men, I say] spurned it — must be expelled from ecclesiastical places? Here, even if the day of the acts could lie hidden, it would shine out plainly enough to anyone however dull, that the proconsular power would not be approached against them in this way, unless either they had been condemned in that council — as is rather apparent concerning them — without any delay granted, or, within the day of the delay, if it was given to all, they had refused to be reinstated to you.

But since even the day of the acts strikes the eyes and ears of any obstinate man in such a way, it is thereby so clear that even after the day of the delay had passed they were not in your communion but clung to Maximian, that on this account the authority of so terrible a judicial command was obtained against them. What is said to this? What is still contended, against so plain a truth, with a wondrous blindness of shamelessness? Why is there still rebellion with such madness against the unity of Christ, on the part of those who, for the unity of the party of Donatus, refused to keep even concord with the sacrilegious condemned?

Why is the baptism of Christ, acknowledged with due veneration even in a sacrilegious schism, still spurned with impious presumption among so many Catholic peoples, violated by a sacrilegious repetition? I do not wish to inquire how long after the day of this petition — in which Felician and Praetextatus are so gravely accused by the words of Titianus's advocate — they were received into your communion. It suffices that this same petition proves that those men, whom you afterwards received, whose honours you in no part diminished, from whom you feared to rescind the baptism given even in a sacrilegious schism (as indeed was rightly to be feared), had, so long after the end of that appointed delay, been separated from your communion in the schism of Maximian.

Would the tongue of any most pertinacious man stir itself against us in this cause, if it perceived that it was being stirred in a man's mouth and beneath a man's brow? I clearly erred, I confess, in that which I set down in that letter about that sentence of the Council of Bagai, since I said: «When it was recited among them to be decreed, they applauded with widest mouth; but now, when it has been recited by us, they fall silent.» It is true what you said: «Behold, they do not fall silent»; for shame, in matters so manifest — or even shamelessness itself — can fall silent, but madness cannot.

And do not take this as said of you, who believed your bishops when they lied, nor of all those men — for you could not, being disturbed about this matter, consult them all — but of those who, though they knew how great things and when they were done against Praetextatus and Felician before the judges, dared to say to you what you inserted in your letter: that before the day of the appointed delay Felician and Praetextatus, being reinstated to your communion, were not held bound by the definitive sentence. Or if they too perhaps did not know these things, now at least, when you read these things, let shame fall silent, let even whatever shamelessness there is in a man fall silent; only let madness certainly be left, which alone cries out against so evident a truth.

And that will perhaps be curable, if it is checked by the sane. Now see how you have said of me: «A false witness shall not be unpunished», when you thought that I had lied in this cause of the Maximianists. I do not repay you this; for perhaps you spoke what you believed through incautious friendship, not what you feigned with a deceitful heart. We are human beings; with what vigilance, after all, can we bring it about that we do not slip in something, either in thinking or in speaking? But we ought not to grow deaf against the medicine of correction. Now attend to how much facility of answering this cause of the Maximianists affords me even in the other parts of your letter.

Whatever you thought must be said about the traditors as though they were ours — although your own men are rather shown to have done this, which I have more than sufficiently demonstrated in that work of three volumes — yet see and answer, if you can, whether this crime, whosesoever it may have been, could pollute, in the unity of so many nations, Christians either very far removed or very far in later generations, if the crime of Maximian's sacrilegious shoot could not stain even his African allies — to whom your three hundred and ten bishops, in giving a delay, said: «whom the branches sprung from a sacrilegious shoot did not defile» — nor you yourselves, who received with such concord not only those whom you called innocent, but even those already condemned in that sacrilege.

You say that the crimes of the traditors were known to the Orientals, when to you, an African, the schism of the Maximianists — committed in the very capital of Africa — was, before you read my letters and, greatly disturbed, consulted your bishops, unknown; and when you had consulted them, you were quite unable to hear the truth from them. If indeed you defend them, so as not to say they lied, you grant that they were ignorant; and yet you allow neither us nor so many and so great peoples of East and West even to be ignorant of the case of Caecilian — while these men are ignorant of that of Praetextatus and Felician, whom three hundred and ten, that is, either all or nearly all the bishops of the party of Donatus, Africans, condemned Africans in Africa; Africans received Africans in Africa.

You insert the opening of the Council of Serdica, from which you try to prove that the Oriental bishops, knowing the crime of the traditors, held communion with the party of Donatus — by this one great document, forsooth, that among the bishops to whom they write the name of Donatus is found. Yet nothing is there read of their having learned anything about the African traditors. And this council, lest it escape you, is one of the Arians, whom you have already named among other heretics; nor is it usually read with the names of the cities added, since it is not the ecclesiastical custom, when bishops write a letter to bishops.

Hence I do not know who this Donatus is; I should marvel if in your letters he has not been made a Carthaginian — although those men, separated by such distant lands from Africa, could at the very time they wished to write have inquired who was bishop of Carthage, and have found it to be Donatus. For I forbear to say that perhaps the Oriental heretics had in some way attempted to ally themselves with the African heretics. But you, a prudent man, when you wished to resolve the question, when it could be said to you: «If these things are so, that the Orientals wrote to your Donatus, how were the Orientals afterwards separated from the communion of your men?» — you answered and said:

«Because in receiving your men again they could not preserve constancy in a condemned cause.» And it is written: «He who is joined to a harlot is one body.» Here you have now atrociously accused your own men, if in this cause of the Maximianists they could not preserve constancy, execrably condemning the sacrilegious, honourably receiving the condemned. For that about the Orientals you by no means prove; this about your own men you hear and read and discern and judge. You bid me leave the church of the traditors, whom neither you among us nor your elders among our elders could convict and demonstrate to be such;

whom now, if you had demonstrated it, I would condemn their misdeed and crime, yet I would not on their account desert the Catholic society of so many nations to whom they are unknown. But see with what consideration you are unwilling that in our communion the memory should be kept of those dead men whose deeds we do not know, whose good repute even among their own we have learned by the succession of posterity, while in your communion there live without any degradation those whose evils you have felt, whose sacrileges you have condemned. You dare to say to me, a prudent man: «He who betrayed created you» — thus not knowing that he is our creator in that we are Christians, who is our creator in that we are men, although you have not even convicted of betrayal him whom you think my creator.

But I do not repay you this injury; I call neither your creator, nor your sons', nor your grandsons', nor your great-grandsons' — if they should be in the party of Donatus — Felician. Only, since you permit it, I admonish you: let not your Creator find you a deserter, running after the name of a man with impious vanity. Then you think you add plausibly: «From the fountain the stream is drawn, and the members follow the head. With a sound head the whole body is sound, and if there is any disease or fault in it, it weakens all the members. Whatever grows up in the stock looks back to its own origin. He cannot be innocent who does not follow the sect of an innocent one» — especially since it is written: «Walk not in the ordinances of your fathers.»

In all these words of yours I pass over that what you have compared from the human body is not similar; for it can happen that the foot ache while the head is sound, and the head while the foot is sound. I pass over too that you have forgotten what you said a little before; for this we too wish, this we urge, that Christ be the head of the Christian — you who now wish some traitor or other to be the head of unknown Christian nations, where you refuse to acknowledge the baptism of Christ given and received, as though the baptized were created by none but that traitor. I pass over also how much it aids me that you yourself have set down this testimony from Scripture, that it was said to the Jews:

«Walk not in the ordinances of your fathers» — since whoever then wished to observe this precept, as did the holy prophets and the seven thousand men who did not bend their knees before Baal, nevertheless did not separate themselves from their own people and from the common sacraments. This I say, this — whether you will or not — repeating it I drive home, however troublesome I may seem to you: do not so often make Caecilian, who has been absolved, the head for us who come after, since I for my part will not make either Primian, condemned by Felician, or Felician, condemned by Primian, the head for your posterity. But now concerning the odium of persecution, which you boast of suffering from earthly powers on behalf of the party of Donatus —