Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 17/17

We therefore convict you, by manifest truth, as guilty of schism—you whom we see separated from us, your brethren, on account of alien crimes which were not then demonstrated to our forebears when they ought to have been demonstrated.' If the common people and clergy of those places—out of which came the three hundred and ten who established the Council of Bagai against the Maximianists—are going to say this most justly; if, I say, Africans are rightly going to say this to Africans, Numidians and Moors very many to a few Byzacenes and provincials, how much more justly does the whole world say this to the Africans concerning the crimes—even if they were true—of certain unknown traditors in Africa, especially since even in Africa itself the Catholic Church is so great, joined to the rest of the nations by the bond of unity!

which nonetheless cries out: 'The documents even of alien crimes, which you now try to show me, do not make guilty the peoples of the nations, to whom, when they ought to have been, they were not demonstrated—either because you could not, or because you did not care to. From which peoples, innocent in this case, if I dissociate myself for the sake of alien crimes, I shall not be able to be innocent of the sacrilegious crime of schism. Accordingly, may you fare very well, and now teach me that these things are true: We condemn dead traditors, we do not desert living innocent men.' When therefore I had said:

But if your documents were in any way true, you ought to have proved them to the Church—that is, to the Catholic Church—so that you might be within, while those whom you convicted would be driven outside—what is it that you wished to answer: that the separation was made because we were driven outside, whereas your people remained in the full and Catholic Church?

If the Maximianists say this to you in just as many words, what will you answer, except that they are not even worthy to be refuted, but only to be laughed at—those who dare to affirm a full Church, with bishops now fewer than a hundred, against so great a number and multitude over whom more than three hundred preside—since throughout all the regions of Africa where the Maximianists are, the communion of Primianus is likewise not lacking, whereas through the other far more numerous and wider parts of Africa no one finds a single Maximianist, except perhaps with difficulty one passing through as a traveler?

With what face, therefore, do you dare—against the Church promised and rendered by the voice of truth from the rising of the sun unto its setting—to call the party of Donatus the full Church, since it is nothing but of Africa, while that Church exists together with so many nations and also with Africa? 'But of course this one cast that one outside.' Do not, I beseech you, utter this saying outside: the forehead is on the face of a man, not under his armpit. Has this one, then, cast that one outside? Do you not see that, if that one be cast outside—she of whom God says to Abraham: In your seed all nations shall be blessed; she of whom it is foretold in Scripture that in the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be made manifest and all nations shall come to it; she of whom it is foretold in song:

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in His sight; of whom it is preached that in the whole world she bears fruit and grows, whom the Lord Himself says is spread abroad among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem—do you not, I say, see that, if she be cast outside, she is cast outside together with the law of God, with the prophets, with the psalms, with the apostles, with the Gospel itself, in short with the whole testament, and with the very Heir? If you consider this monstrous wickedness, if you shudder at it, if you tremble, see where you are and return within, since you did not cast others out, but you rather have gone outside yourselves. See what animated blindness does. It is said that Maximianus cast Primianus outside, and it is laughed at;

It is said that the party of Donatus has cast out the labours of the apostles, which bear fruit and increase throughout the whole world, and one does not shudder at it. Take care that you are neither deceived nor deceive, since — with regard to that which I have so often called to mind — you, either not noticing it or pretending that you did not notice, assert that I said that they are not the Lord's grain. But the Catholic Church, which I have defended in just such a way as the divine Scripture defends it, I have maintained thus: the grain alone is stored away in the barn, but now the Church is threshed like a threshing-floor together with the chaff. This is what presses and burdens you, and unless you are corrected it destroys you, because you are the chaff of this floor;

and you have shown yourselves to be what you have declared you could not tolerate, and you have shamelessly pretended to be purged grain, and so, turbulent with empty slanders, you have gone out from that very floor before the final time of winnowing, like the lightest dust of the threshing carried off through the void. That most arrogant and most false saying, moreover, is yours, not ours: 'What has chaff to do with the grain?' What Jeremiah said concerning the dreams of the vain and the revelations of the prophets, Parmenian writes as if it had been said about us and you. Ask Maximian too; he will say nothing else about himself.

For there is no other swelling of impious pride among all who cut themselves off from the unity of Christ than to boast that they alone are Christians and to condemn all others — not only those to whom their dispute is known, but even those to whom not even their name has been heard. Now as for that which you thought you were saying so elegantly: when I had said concerning the testament of God, 'Let it now be read out, produced from whatever source,' you thought it should be answered that this already contains a confession of the crime, and that I therefore said, 'Let it be read out, produced from whomever it may be,' because it is established in my view both that it was burned by our people and preserved and produced by yours.

But indeed, if, trusting in the truth, you were willing to have the codex of the law produced by Maximian, so that from it you might read out Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, who were swallowed up alive when the earth gaped open — to whom the sentence of the bishop of Bagai likened this man — would it not be read against him all the more firmly, precisely because it is found in his codex? Therefore, when I said, 'Let the testament be read out, produced from whatever source,' this is not a confession of a crime, but confidence in the truth. For what is more advantageous, what more excellent, than that, if it can be done, what is read against you should be produced by you? Not that I do not have it on my side, but the refutation is easier and surer if you should hold against yourself that which, if you are corrected, becomes something in your favour.

But since it pleased you to repeat empty things against the universality of the Church, here too I answer you. Just as in Africa you are the party of Donatus, from which it is evident that the party of Maximian has made a schism — since it does not exist throughout the whole of Africa where you are, whereas you are not absent even in the regions where that party is (for other schisms too have been made out of you, such as the Rogatists in Mauretania Caesariensis, the Urbanists in a certain corner of Numidia, and several others, but where they have been cut off, there they have remained);

and from this it stands out that they went out from you, not you from them, because you also are in those lands where they are, whereas they, wherever you are, are found only, perhaps, as sojourners — so likewise the Catholic Church, which, as Cyprian says, extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its fruitfulness, everywhere endures the scandals of those who are cut off from it chiefly by the vice of pride, some here, some elsewhere and elsewhere still, who, parading their own parties, say, 'Behold, here is Christ, behold, there' — against whom He Himself forewarned that they should not be believed. For they do not point out the way concerning which it was prophesied in the Psalms:

'that we may know Your way upon the earth, Your salvation among all the nations' — but rather they point to the regions of their own communion, 'behold, here, behold, there.' For where they fall, there they remain, and where they are separated, there they wither. Whence the very Church from which they are cut off is extended even into those lands where those fragments lie, each in its own region; but in those single regions, wherever it is stretched out, they do not exist — although sometimes the wind of pride scatters, into foreign parts, a very few most sparse leaves from their dryness. This Church, therefore, which — to use again the same man's very words — extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its fruitfulness, is destined, as it grows, to reach even many barbarous nations beyond the Roman world.

This, I think, you have both inquired into and discovered, so as to say: 'I pass over the peculiar religions of the barbarous nations, the rites of the Persians, the stars of the Chaldeans, the superstitions of the Egyptians, the gods of the magi — so that all these may be as nothing, since by the providence of God the whole world is daily being turned to the Christian name.' These things you said truly, and thus is fulfilled the promise that was spoken to Abraham: 'In your seed shall all the nations be blessed.' 'All the nations,' He says; He did not say, 'all the men of all the nations.' Whence it is necessary that not only by the fecundity of the growing Church, but also by the intermingled multitude of its enemies — through whom its piety may be exercised and proved — the whole world should be filled, right up to the end of the judicial separation.

So was this testament called to mind also to his son Isaac, when the Lord said: 'And I will establish My oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will multiply your seed like the stars of heaven, and I will give to you and to your seed all the land, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed'; so also to his grandson Jacob: 'And your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and it shall be spread abroad over the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east, and in you shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.' (When Scripture generally says 'over the sea,' the one who reads knows that the western part is customarily signified.) If you had been willing to consent to this testament when it was produced, you would not have remained in the south alone.

Therefore, as you say, the Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, Anthropians, Apellians, Marcionites, Ophites, and the rest — to use your own words — the sacrilegious names of nefarious plagues rather than of sects, do not commune with us. Yet wherever these are, there also is the Catholic Church, just as in Africa where you too are; but it is not the case that wherever the Catholic Church is, there either you are or any one of those heresies is. Whence it is evident which is the tree that extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its fruitfulness, and which are the broken branches, not having the life of the root and lying and withering each in its own place. But if they do not remain in unbelief, as the Apostle says concerning the Israelites, they shall be grafted in;

for God is able to graft them in again — not that they should receive again the sacrament of baptism, which, once drawn from the tree, they did not change, but that they should come to life again by that root of love and unity, from which, being separated, they wither in the barrenness of animosity; just as, in turn, you thought Praetextatus and Felician ought to be grafted in again, whom Maximian had cut off along with himself, and you did not reject the baptism of those cut off. To whom you would truly bestow something, if you were to restore, not to your fragment, but both yourselves and them, to the Catholic root. But now, what shall I answer to this: that I seemed to you to have said on your behalf that, since I said baptism does not profit those who depart from unity, it is nevertheless proved to be in them from the fact that it is not restored to them when they return?

For you have confirmed that you too say this: that baptism, which our forefathers had received there, did not profit them when they did not return to the Church. If you were to say this, nothing else would be sought between us except which is the Church where baptism profits. But you do not say that baptism exists in us and does not profit; rather you say that it does not exist at all, that which we received from those who, by departing, had lost it. Whence you were not able, nor will you be able, to answer that which was put by me: that baptism is proved to be in those who depart from here from the fact that it is not restored to those who return. For if Felician had lost baptism by withdrawing from you, why was he not baptized anew on returning, so that what he had lost might be restored to him?

Maximian himself, finally, if he should return to you, is not baptized — which he certainly ought to be, if he had lost baptism. For it is your own words that in his schism, being held by the sentence of condemnation, they lost both baptism and the Church at once. As therefore, when they return, the Church is restored to them, let baptism also be restored; let them be baptized, I say, on returning, if they lost baptism on departing. Since you do not do this, you too confess that in those who depart from the Church baptism is present and does not profit. They give, therefore, as they have — that is, so that even in those who receive from them outside the Church, baptism is present, yet does not profit.

Whence, just as to those returning there is not restored what they did not lose, so also to those there is not to be given what they had received; but one must deal with them so that, through the Church, that may profit both parties which outside the Church was able to be present but not to profit. And by this I neither said anything in favour of your error, nor did you answer what I said. You add also something about the enclosed garden and the sealed fountain, from what source it was said you do not at all understand. 'If,' you say, 'the garden is enclosed and the fountain sealed, how can one who is placed outside, without, and separated from the garden — that is, the Church — and from its fountain — that is, baptism — give what he does not have?'

Ask Felician whether he was in the enclosed garden, when the door of a delay of return was being opened to him, as if to the same enclosed garden. Or did he perhaps steal from there the fountain, where in the schism of Maximian he baptized his laymen? And if it is so, where then did your people wash their own? Or did they equally put them off by that same delay, until those thieves should return to the garden with the fountain? Were those men not then pseudo-prophets, when by lying about the crimes of Primian they led those deceived over to their own sacrilege — ravening wolves, when they dragged those seduced from the flock of Primian to the fragments of their own severance? You deny those tyrannical dominations of your people on other men's estates that I spoke of, and the bacchanals of drunkenness: deny it as much as you can;

I do not fear that on this account you will be loath to be reconciled with us. I have not said against you any such thing as the condemned Maximianists deserved to hear from you. You deny the frenzy of the Circumcellions and the sacrilegious and profane worship of corpses of those who threw themselves down of their own accord; yet you do not deny that, when the shores were full — very much after the manner of the Egyptians — of the corpses of the perishing, for whom in death itself there is a greater punishment, that they did not even find burial, you clung to those unburied corpses. For there lay Praetextatus and Felician; or if they came to life again among you, what do you do about the baptism which the dead then handed over?

You say that I have not kept the peace and gentleness which I had promised at the beginning of my letter, in that I called Petilian a Satan. I compared to Satan not Petilian, nor any man in the party of Donatus, but the very error of the party of Donatus, from whose snares I desire that the men whom I love be delivered. For read more carefully, and you will find it so. And yet, even if I said something rather harsh, read what things you yourselves have said, not against the error of the Maximianists, but against the men themselves. Let Petilian therefore imitate Felician and not be angry at me who desire peace. As for you yourself, certainly I am not indignant that you thought the Manichees should be objected to me obliquely, on account of the error of my youth.

Whence I grieve not so much over my past unhappiness as I rejoice over the perpetual glory of my Deliverer. And yet, if it please you, I advise you to seek out and read what things, and how great, and in what manner I have written against the most pestilent heresy of the Manichees.

There you will see with what faith I have defended the Christian truth against them, and with what clarity I have demolished their deceits; and do not be incredulous towards me, since you believe that Felician faithfully clung to Primian — Felician who, on Maximian's behalf, pronounced so many crimes against him in a sentence of condemnation, and who, against that same Maximian, once separated from him, perhaps wrote something. Whereas I did not fall in upon those men as a young layman and catechumen — as you say I did — but an old man, a bishop, had made an old man, a bishop, the adversary of him to whom he is now joined.

Whence, since I shall read that the letter of our primate — because you had made mention of it under the same veiled indirection with which he, in anger, wrote about me, when in the council of bishops he was pressed to prove what he had aimed at — was condemned by the sentence of that very man correcting himself and asking pardon for this matter: do you seek whether you can read where Felician, corrected, condemned the things which, not accusing but condemning, he said against Primian; or at least whether Primian himself annulled the things which, condemning, he said against Felician.

But if you should find this, not even so will the case be equal, because he had instituted an accusation which, seeing clearly that it was false, he condemned with a request for pardon — not spurning the humility of amendment by reason of the dignity of the primacy, but rather, prudent, recalling that which is written: 'The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things, and you shall find grace before God'; whereas these men had not accused one another before others, but had sat as judges against one another. Accordingly they condemned one another, and, being condemned, they came to agreement. We do not envy the party of Donatus the peace of the condemned, if only they do not spurn the peace of Christ in the world. You now perceive, I think, how vainly you said that you seemed to yourself to have answered all the things which my letter contains.

For if you answered on this account, because you were unwilling to be silent, then not indeed to everything, but nevertheless you answered. But if you answered to this end, that you might do away with the things said by me, I see indeed that you have answered to many things, but I see that you have refuted nothing. When all the things said by me have been considered, I think you would most easily understand that it is not from a desire to avoid contention — which does not exist when truth is sought, nor is there any strife for empty glory — but from distrust in a bad cause that your people are unwilling to confer with us. For if we bring forward into the open this one cause of the Maximianists alone, perhaps now at least you already recognize that nothing can be contradicted.

Whence, not being arrogant — as you believe or slanderously charge — I wished to commend this cause as though it were an invincible eloquence; rather, that those who read might behold that the cause is such that, for asserting or rather demonstrating it, the patronage of no eloquence need be sought. Behold, now I do not call your error a three-headed beast, since you are a most refined corrector of words, but I say 'a three-part calumny'; nor do I say that we ought to resist it as with a three-pronged weapon out of this Maximianist cause, but I say 'with a three-part defence'; nor do I say 'fix them in the forehead or hem them in at the mouth,' but I say 'restrain their impudence and repress their speech.' Surely, because the words have been changed and turned from figurative into proper —

the Maximianist cause has therefore been changed, by whose brevity you are so overcome that, if you ever come to your senses, nothing remains for you except, having ended your stubborn animosity, to be reconciled? If the question is about communion — not with other men's sins, but with the divine sacraments — communion was held with the condemned, and it was said of other sacrilegious men, who were communing with the condemned Maximian, that the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the plantings; if it is about persecution, you have persecuted the condemned, you have corrected the obstinate by persecutions; if it is about baptism, you have received baptism given in a sacrilegious schism: why still, so that the truth may not be known and error may not be fled, are divine testimonies, not understood, brought forward? It is written:

'If any man thinks himself to be contentious, we have no such custom.' But not even Restitutus — who fought with Salvius of Membressa, in forensic uproar and controversy, over cells and small plots of land, in order to expel him from the premises — was reckoned contentious by you; how much less ought he to be thought contentious who argues faithfully, not for usurping or carrying off an inheritance, but for sharing the inheritance of heavenly things with those who think otherwise! 'It is written,' you say, 'Speak nothing in the ears of a fool, lest he deride your sensible words.'

Do not speak to us in the ears, as though in secret, if you do not think us prudent — just as Christ did not speak in the ears of the Pharisees, yet nevertheless brought forth, in their very hearing, what was meant to refute them. Show us openly, so that, if we are not corrected, we may be convicted, how the Christian world defiles you — you who come to unity — whom the condemned Felician does not defile. It is written: 'Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him.' Does it not there follow: 'But answer him against his folly, lest he seem wise to himself'? Do this too; do not, by your answer, consent to what you consider our folly, but answer with that whereby it may be refuted.

Answer, I say, how you have received, without any destruction of it, the baptism which the Maximianists administered in a sacrilegious schism, and yet destroy the baptism given in the churches which Christ propagated through the apostles. Accordingly, since at the end of your letter you thought that all the things said by you above at greater length should be briefly run through, in order to refresh the reader's memory, receive them in the same order — in a way in which you ought to deceive neither yourself nor others. For it belongs not to arrogance either to seek or to assert the truth; and what you think could never have been settled has not only been settled by the prudent and God-fearing, but you yourselves, by receiving the Maximianists, have brought to an end the whole matter which you thought was without end.

And we call you not to contention but to a conference — you who have struck down the Maximianists even by forensic suits, and who, in those who were baptized in the schism of Maximian, although they ought by no means to have been baptized there, nevertheless acknowledged the baptism of Christ; and you have declared that the fountain of the Church must be understood otherwise — that fountain to which none but the good draws near — by accepting the baptism which sacrilegious men had given outside.

And you are compelled to confess that our forefathers, or the holy Church which we hold, could not have been polluted by the alien crimes of incense-offering and of handing over the Scriptures — although these were never proved by you — you who said that the sacrilegious shoots of Maximian did not pollute the plantings of the associates of Maximian, to whom you were granting a delay for returning. Whence we, born so long afterward, can much less belong to that same origin of traitors and incense-offerers, if at that time it could not defile the fellowship of our forefathers, who were living together in like manner.

And although you are wont to object to us persecutions most savage against the truth, nevertheless you in some part corrected the Maximianists by persecutions, and received them — although the delay was granted while they themselves were not yet condemned — nevertheless after the term of that delay; and the baptism which they had given outside your communion to those to whom you were opening the door of a delay for returning, you did not rescind even after that same delay, once it was recognized and approved.

Wherefore, since you see that nothing could be said by you which this one cause of the Maximianists does not refute and convict, grant pardon if perhaps by some word too harshly uttered I have offended you; and if you, an African in Africa, admonished by my letters, have so late inquired into the great cause of the Maximianists that arose in the very capital of Africa, and, having inquired, could not find it because your people narrate falsely — as you now perceive — then fear God: do not, with the unknown crimes of unknown Africans, drench so many Christian nations spread through the world in so wide a Christian unity; and for the peace of Christ return to the Church, which has not condemned the unknown, if for the peace of Donatus it seemed good to recall the condemned. (P. 162, 4 ED. KNOELL).

TO CRESCONIUS THE GRAMMARIAN OF THE PARTY OF DONATUS, FOUR BOOKS. A certain Donatist grammarian, Cresconius, when he had come upon my letter, by which I had refuted the first parts of Petilian's letter that had then come into our hands, thought that he had to reply to me, and wrote this very thing to me. To this work of his I replied in four books, in such a way, indeed, that I might carry through in three what the whole reply demanded.

But when I saw that from the sole cause of the Maximianists — whom they condemned as their own schismatics, and some of whom they afterward received back into their own honours, and whose baptism, given outside their communion, they did not repeat — a reply could be made to all the things he wrote, I added even a fourth book, in which I showed that very point as diligently and evidently as I could. Now when I wrote these four books, the emperor Honorius had already issued laws against the Donatists. This work begins thus: 'Being ignorant, Cresconius, when my writings could reach you.'