ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
「We receive you thus, if you are willing to be corrected, in the same way that the Church receives—the Church which the Lord Jesus said would begin from Jerusalem (and in the Acts of the Apostles we read that it did begin from there), and would go through all nations (and in the Acts of the Apostles we read that it went through many, before it came into Africa), and would go through all before the end comes, since the Lord Himself says, 「This Gospel shall be preached among all nations, and then shall the end come.」」 Behold its refuse: 「Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold.」 Behold its grain: 「But he who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.」 Where here is Africa named in the party of Donatus? Behold again its grain:
「That you may know,」 says the Apostle, 「how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth. And without doubt great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached among the nations, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory.」 Behold its refuse: 「But the Spirit,」 he says, 「manifestly says that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,」 and so forth. Where here too is Africa named in the party of Donatus, so that in it there should remain the pillar and ground of truth, or the mystery of godliness, concerning which it thus ran on unto the end, so as to say:
Let him who intends to answer this epistle search the Scriptures and either bring forth a manifest testimony concerning Africa—in which alone, or from which alone, is the party of Donatus—which he therefore cannot bring forth, because Scripture cannot contradict those so manifest testimonies which have been brought forward by us; or, if he seeks credulous followers of his own suspicions or accusations or calumnies, and wishes to lead them over to another gospel, which is not another, and to announce to us anything besides what we have received—even were he an angel from heaven, let him be anathema. For the devil too, who fell from heaven for this reason, that he did not stand in the truth, if he had been anathema to man when he announced to him something besides what he had received from the Lord God, the first parents of our flesh would neither have fallen into the penalty of death nor gone forth from the place of felicity.
Wherefore, beloved, to whom I write this epistle, hold fast with a most faithful and most steadfast heart the precept of the Shepherd who laid down His soul for His sheep and now, glorified and exalted, sits at the right hand of God the Father, saying: 「Those who are my sheep hear my voice and follow me.」 You have heard His most manifest voice, not only through His law and the prophets and the psalms, but even through His own mouth, commending His Church that was to be; and by reading, you perceive how the things which He foretold followed in due order in the Acts and letters of the apostles, which complete the canon of the divine Scriptures. It is not an obscure question, in which those may deceive you whom the Lord Himself foretold would come and would say:
「Behold, here is Christ; behold, there」—「behold, in the desert,」 as though where there is no throng of the multitude; 「behold, in the inner chambers,」 as though in secret traditions and doctrines. You have the Church spread abroad everywhere and growing until the harvest; you have the city, of which He who founded it says, 「A city set upon a mountain cannot be hidden.」 She herself, therefore, is the one who is most known not in some part of the earth, but everywhere. She sometimes suffers, in her own grain, temporary tempests, so that in certain places she is not recognized; but nevertheless even there they lie hidden. For the divine sentence cannot be deceived, since they grow until the harvest.
And so, in other nations too, some members of the Church have often been pressed and overshadowed by the prevailing seditions of heresies and schisms, and yet, because they were within, a little later they became manifest with no one doubting; and in Africa itself, after that seditious and turbulent council of Secundus of Tigisis at Carthage—where the corruption wrought also by the noble woman Lucilla was afterward recorded in the judicial proceedings—when letters had been sent from there through almost all Africa, where the churches of Christ had already sprouted, credence was given to the letters of the council—for it could not be otherwise—and it seemed as if, through some part of the field, the Lord's grain had failed;
but they had in no way failed—those which truly were grain, predestined and sown, and, with a deep root, fruitfully sprouting. For with a clear conscience they had believed the letters of the council; nor was anything incredible being said by men about other men, nor was anything believed by them contrary to the Gospel.
But after those men, with furious obstinacy, carried on a most stubborn contention even to sacrilegious dissension against the whole Christian world, and it became known to the good faithful, whom a false accusation had alienated from Caecilianus, they saw that, if they persisted in that communion, they would now hold a perverse judgment not about some man or about certain men, but about the Church spread throughout the whole world; and they preferred to believe the Gospel of Christ rather than the council of their colleagues. And so, leaving those men, soon many—both bishops and clergy and peoples—returned to Catholic peace; and even before they did so, they were reckoned among the wheat.
For then they were not doing so, when that contradiction of theirs strove against men who had been maliciously represented to them by their colleagues, not against the Church of God, which grows among all nations. And so in Africa too the wheat which the Son of Man had sown remained wheat, and from it it has grown until now, and grows, and hereafter will bear fruit until the harvest, and will grow, as in all the world. Some also of good will, through the fog of the flesh, wandered longer in that dissension even after the fury of the malignant had been confirmed against the Church of God, as though tender grain were still being trodden down and the vigor of the herb worn away with its living root.
Yet even these His own grain God knew, although they had to be reproved and rebuked in order to revive. For it was not said to Peter, 「Get behind me, Satan,」 in the same way that it was said of Judas, 「One of you is a devil.」 Some also, with an evil zeal, contradicted even the most manifest truth. But those men had been rooted up or cut off, yet, not remaining in unbelief—as the Apostle says of certain broken branches—they were replanted by the divine hand or grafted in again. For then each is unfruitful, but not yet cut off from the root, when with evil desire he does indeed those works of which it is said, 「Those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God」;
but when, on account of those very works, he begins to resist even the most manifest truth by which he is reproved, then he is cut off. And many such persons are in the communion of the sacraments with the Church, and yet are now not in the Church. Otherwise, if each is cut off when he is visibly excommunicated, it will follow that he is then again grafted in when he is visibly restored to communion. What? If, therefore, one approach feignedly and bear a most hostile heart against the truth and the Church, although that solemn rite be performed in him, is he perchance reconciled, is he perchance grafted in? God forbid.
As therefore he who is now again communicating is not yet grafted in, so also, before he is visibly excommunicated, whoever bears a hostile mind against the truth by which he is convicted and reproved is already cut off. Thus it comes about that both the good seed and the evil seed grow, each throughout the field, until the harvest—that is, both the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the malignant one grow, each throughout the world, until the end of the age—the former bearing fruit with endurance, the latter turning bitter with barrenness.
But you, relying on so many most evident testimonies of the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Lord Himself, and the apostles concerning the holy Church spread throughout the whole world, require of these men that they show, from Africa, so far as pertains to the party of Donatus, some manifest testimonies from the canonical books. For, as I have already said, it could in no way come to pass that the Church—which, as they say (and far be it), was so quickly to perish out of so many nations—should be proclaimed by so many testimonies so sublimely and so indubitably, while concerning that Church which they claim to be theirs, which they contend was to remain unto the end, silence should be kept. For remember what was said to that rich man, when he was tormented in hell and wished someone to be sent from the dead to his brothers:
'They have there,' he says, 'Moses and the prophets.' And when the other said that they would not believe unless someone from among the dead should go to them, he answered: 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one should rise from the dead.' Moses said that in the seed of Abraham all nations should be blessed; the prophets said: 'Thou shalt be called my will, and thy land the world,' and: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and be turned unto the Lord.' Yet by these and such prophecies, so manifestly pointing to the Church, these men refused to believe. The Lord rose from the dead, and said that in his name repentance and the remission of sins should be preached among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
Those who had not believed Moses and the prophets did not believe the Lord even when he rose from the dead. What remains for them, then, but to share the torments of that rich man? Flee these torments while there is yet time, before you depart from this life, by cleaving steadfastly to the divine oracles, so that you may neither be troubled in this life, and after this life may be counted worthy to receive what was promised to the seed of Abraham.