Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 14

Against the Letter of Parmenian. Book One. I have indeed, on other occasions, discoursed much against the Donatists — partly by writing, partly also by disputation — with such strength as the Lord supplies. But now, since there has fallen into our hands a certain letter of Parmenian, once their bishop, which he writes to Tychonius — a man endowed with keen ability and rich eloquence, yet nonetheless a Donatist — since Parmenian judged Tychonius to be erring in this, that the latter was compelled to confess the truth, it has pleased me, at the request, or rather the command, of the brethren, to reply here to this same letter of Parmenian, chiefly on account of certain testimonies from the Scriptures which he takes otherwise than they ought to be taken.

For Tychonius, battered on every side by all the voices of the sacred pages, awoke and saw the Church of God diffused throughout the whole world, just as concerning her it had, so long before, been foreseen and foretold through the hearts and mouths of the saints. Perceiving this, he undertook to demonstrate and assert against his own people that no man's sin, however wicked and monstrous, can prejudice the promises of God, nor can any impiety of whatsoever persons established within the Church bring it about that the faithfulness of God concerning the Church that was to be spread abroad even to the ends of the earth — the faithfulness held in the promises to the fathers and now displayed — should be made void.

Therefore, though Tychonius argued this vehemently and copiously, and stopped the mouths of his adversaries with many, great, and manifest testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he did not see what ought consequently to have been seen: namely, that those Christians in Africa belong to the Church diffused throughout the whole world who are joined, not to these men cut off from the communion and unity of that same world, but to the very world itself through communion.

But Parmenian and the rest of the Donatists saw that this was the consequence, and they preferred to take up a most obstinate mind against the most evident truth which Tychonius asserted, rather than, by granting it, to be overcome by the African churches which rejoiced in the communion of that unity which Tychonius asserted, from which these men had separated themselves. And Parmenian indeed at first thought Tychonius should be corrected by a letter; but afterwards, they report, he was even condemned by their council. Accordingly, we have resolved to reply in this work to the letter of Parmenian which he wrote to Tychonius, rebuking him for preaching the Church diffused throughout the whole world, and admonishing him not to dare to do so.

Let us first, then, see of what sort this is: that he says the Gauls and Spaniards and Italians and their allies — by whom he surely wishes the whole world to be understood — are made like unto the African traditors through a commerce of crimes and a fellowship in wrongdoing. For to a man who brings forward from the holy Scriptures so many and so mighty documents, he himself speaks without documents, and wishes to be believed while proving nothing, inviting the man, of course, to imitate himself, since he too believed nobody but mere talkers, against so many churches established throughout so great a breadth of all the lands. And than such credulity, what more rash can be found?

For he says that certain men, discharging an embassy — as he himself asserts, most faithful witnesses — came to those same provinces; then, by a doubled arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord (as he himself says), the things they allege were published more clearly, more fully, and more truly. O man, thinking that more credit should be given to himself than to God! Tychonius brings forth the thunders of the divine testament, which was made in the promise to Abraham and the promise to Isaac and the promise to Jacob, whose God He testifies Himself to be, saying: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; this is my name forever. And this man sets against it the tales of his fellow-priests. What was said to Abraham? In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. What was said to Isaac?

And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, because Abraham thy father obeyed my voice. What was said to Jacob? I am the God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac; fear not. For the land upon which thou sleepest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and it shall be spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east. And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, and in thy seed. And lest they think this was said of the Jews, what the seed of Abraham is, in whom it was said that all nations should be blessed, let the Apostle expound: To Abraham, he says, were the promises made, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

In Christ, therefore, that all nations were to have blessing was promised with such great authority and displayed with such great truth; and those who wish to be called Christians contradict it. And what do they set against these things? Certain most faithful witnesses, he says, discharging an embassy, came to those same provinces; then, by a doubled arrival of the most holy priests of the Lord, it was published more clearly, more fully, and more truly. What, I ask you, what was published through these faithful witnesses, whom you wish to be more faithful than God? Was it that, through the African traditors, the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, was not permitted to reach unto all nations, and there dried up whither it had come?

Go, tell your colleagues that they are to be believed more than the testament of God, and while saying these things, boast that you have preserved from the flame that very testament which you try to blot out with your tongue. But let each one choose what he pleases; and if against the heavenly lightnings the earthly smoke of a lie has any power, then, with heaven dismissed, let it vanish into the winds. For if Parmenian did not favour his own throne, he would rather choose to believe the Scripture of God than his colleagues. For God says to Jacob: I will not forsake thee, until I have done what I have spoken to thee.

But it is surely much more credible concerning these men — because they had already been rejected by a just judgment — that they were not admitted to associate in communion in those parts where God was already fulfilling what He had promised to our fathers; and that therefore they boasted such things about the holy priests of God, by whom they had not been counted worthy of being received, in order that by false rumours they might agitate the weak souls of the peoples deceived by them, and tear away rashly credulous minds, ensnared by the pride of their own name, from the peace of the whole world. What more insane than this folly — nay rather, than this madness — can be found? Among so many nations of the world God has already, in great part, fulfilled it, and still fulfils it, until there come to absolutely all what He promised, who said:

I will not forsake thee, until I have done what I have spoken to thee; and yet these men already believe those who announce that what God promised is not being fulfilled, and therefore that from those parts of the earth in which it had already been fulfilled the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, had perished, and that the promises of God had been made void — because they themselves were not admitted to the communion of those among whom the world now retained this fulfilled promise. And it is not said to them: 'God alone is truthful, but every man a liar. These things you say of your own, for he who speaks a lie speaks of his own. You therefore lie as men, because you are angry as men.' This is not said to them; but on top of it, they are believed concerning the world, which He had already begun to possess, that Christ has perished from it.

And those who believe these things, while they shamelessly say 'We are Christians,' dare to say 'We alone are.' Parmenian also says that hence it is proved that the whole world was made criminal by the crimes of the handing-over of the Scriptures and of other sacrileges, because, although many such things were committed in the time of persecution, no separation of peoples was afterwards made in those very provinces.

As if it could not have happened that some of the wicked lay hidden and were not accused, so that they could not be condemned without any rashness; while some, too, were both exposed and condemned, and because they were convicted by manifest evidence, ceased from disturbing and dividing the churches; and so it came to pass that — since certain men were not accused, while certain uncertain crimes were remitted to God for the sake of certain peace, and certain others were so made manifest and convicted that they were condemned in such a way that no condemned man could deceive the peoples by a feigned innocence — the bond of unity was by no means broken. For not even in Africa would this so monstrous evil of severance have come about, unless a faction of men fabricating falsehoods had prevailed over the true reasoning of those who convict by evidence.

Let those who wish read what Optatus, bishop of Mileve of venerable memory, of the catholic communion, narrates, and by what documents he persuades so many things: whether concerning Lucilla, then a most wealthy and most factious woman, whom the holy Caecilian, while still a deacon, had offended for the sake of ecclesiastical discipline; or concerning the rest of the associates of her faction, whether they were thieves of the church's silver, or grieved that they had not attained to the episcopate and, with such snares as they could, persecuted Caecilian who had been preferred before them; or concerning the Numidian bishops, whom that faction had summoned to the ruin of Caecilian, so that, when he was deposed, another might be ordained for them.

These men, coming with their primate, then Secundus of Tigisis, and with others to whom Secundus himself had pardoned their confessed crimes of handing over the Scriptures, as though consulting for peace — as the ecclesiastical records testify — judged the absent Caecilian, without any delay of more careful inquiry, no place being kept for a reply, to be a traditor; so that, of course, crimes of handing-over merely alleged might weigh against him in his absence, while they had, being themselves present, pardoned crimes confessed to their very selves.

Thus, against one seated on the throne, with whom the whole Christian world in lands across the sea and far remote, and among the Africans themselves — the graver ones and more robust against deceits of this kind — held communion in their churches, they ordained another bishop, so that by their own deed they might be able to contradict the promises of God, lest all nations be blessed in the seed of Abraham; so that they might say that even those parts of the world were defiled by the African traditors which had neither heard the name of Caecilian, or at any rate had heard, as of an innocent man, how his life stood — a life which nonetheless these men convicted of no crime. And what is more, against the world which says:

'That which you charge against your fellow-citizens, I neither could know nor ought to condemn what is unknown to me' — they bring forward the testimony of the Apostle, who says: Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those who do them. For it was too little to condemn so many and so great Christian peoples unheard, unless they also dared to bring out against the Apostle himself his very words, but not his meaning. For if this is to consent to evildoers — to be with them in the Church — then the Apostle himself consented to the false brethren, among whom he testified that he was in peril, and whom, preaching the Gospel not chastely but through envy without charity, he nonetheless permits to preach.

But if to consent to evildoers is nothing else than to approve and praise their evil deeds, then, by the example of the Apostle, the world would not consent to the crimes of the Africans, even if it tolerated them, once known, for the sake of the Church's peace — though these men do not prove that the world knew them, even if they could have proved them to have been true. In vain, therefore, does Parmenian say that traditors condemned in Africa were received into fellowship of holiness by the provinces across the sea. For this is what we ought not to believe, lest by a sacrilegious rashness we condemn the whole world, founded in the unity of Christ, on the ground of these men's false accusation, rather than love it on the ground of God's true promise. For which is more to be believed — what God said:

In thy seed shall all nations be blessed, or what these men say: In the seed — the seed of the African traditors — all nations are cursed, so that what iniquity has committed avails more than what truth has promised? Why then do we not rather believe that those who were received into communion by the provinces across the sea either could not, being innocent, be crushed by the slanderers — which can be more probably persuaded by many documents — or at any rate, since they could not be convicted, even if they were wicked, were believed innocent and received without any contamination of those who received them?

What of the fact that, even if through evil brethren — such as the Apostle tolerated in the unity of the Church, such as the martyr Cyprian bewails in his letter on the lapsed — even if, then, through such brethren, set even in the number of the judges, something had been done with some perversity, so that the traditors could not be excluded and convicted, and the Christian world was deceived by their feigned innocence, it would in no way have lost its own innocence? For as to what he said concerning Ossius, once a catholic bishop of Cordova, it must be demanded that they prove not only that he was such as they say, but that it was manifest to those with whom they assert he communicated that he was such.

For unless they prove this, they say in vain that they knew what sort of man he was; because he could not harm those who did not know, from whom these men, by separating themselves from innocent persons, cannot be innocent, on account of the very sacrilegious iniquity of the separation itself.

For this is more credible — if indeed Ossius, condemned by the Spaniards, was absolved by the Gauls — that it could have happened that the Spaniards, circumvented by false accusations and deceived by the cunning fraud of snares, passed sentence against an innocent man, and afterwards peacefully, in Christian humility, yielded to the sentence of their colleagues, by whom his innocence was proved; lest, by an obstinate and passionate perversity, defending their former sentences, they should rush by the blindness of impiety into the sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all crimes — as these wretched men did, and, so often divided and cut to pieces, do not even at last perceive what they have done.

And so they sufficiently declare whence they have become incurable: namely, lest they be compelled to condemn their own former sentences, which they rashly passed against the absent Caecilian, if they were to acquiesce, in consideration of truth and peace, in the judgment across the sea, where they were overcome by the present Caecilian — though they would have carried off a greater victory if they had overcome human passion at least after the judgment, than if they had overcome the man in the judgment itself. For that victory is more exalted and fuller with a loftier triumph than if it were reported not only of one man conquered, but of a whole subjugated city, since Scripture says: Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city.

They therefore desired to conquer a man, they whom anger was conquering; and because they could not conquer the man, they were overcome both by the man and by anger: by the man, because they were vanquished in the judgment; by anger, because not even when vanquished did they rest, hearing or reading with a most depraved heart the sentence of the Apostle who says: For if I build again the same things which I destroyed, I constitute myself a transgressor. Which words, of course, if the Apostle himself had understood with so sinister a mind, he would neither have become a Christian nor an apostle, nor as a preacher have built up the churches which as a persecutor he had before been destroying.

Nowhere, therefore, have these men so openly shown why they refused to be corrected even when overcome, as when they detest the Spaniards for yielding, after their sentences had been otherwise pronounced, to the later examination and judgment of their colleagues. For as much as this was done out of Christian meekness, so much was that other done out of diabolical contentiousness; and therefore it is no wonder that by this humility peace was kept, while by that elation it was broken. Accordingly, to them is rightly rendered what they did;

for they taught such things to their descendants. For the Maximianists too, for no other reason, refused to yield to the council of the three hundred and ten of their own colleagues, by whom Primian — whom they themselves had first condemned — was judged innocent, than by opposing, with lost obstinacy, the apostolic sentence to the unlearned and saying: For if I build again the same things which I destroyed, I constitute myself a transgressor. For a hundred colleagues had destroyed Primian, and on that account refused to build him up again with the three hundred. Thus, while they pretend to beware lest they build up a man whom they had destroyed, they destroyed themselves in another schism by a greater sacrilege.

But nevertheless, if Parmenian were living, he would not now dare to reprehend the Spaniards and call them transgressors because they bent their own sentence into the sentence of their colleagues, lest he himself should offend his own colleagues — many of whom, after Primian had already been condemned by them, were corrected for the better and passed over to the council of the three hundred, preferring rather to go against their own precipitate sentences than against the peace of unity, even in the party of Donatus.

And Parmenian would most especially spare Praetextatus of Assuras and Felician of Musti, who, even though condemned by three hundred and ten of their own fellow-bishops, returned, out of zeal for concord, to those very men by whom they had been condemned, and, with the same zeal, were received for the sake of peace by their own condemners, without any detriment to their own honour; nor did anyone think that those were to be rebaptized who had been baptized by them outside, in the schism.

Or perhaps, because those who correct their own sentences greatly displease Parmenian, and, not understanding them, he calls them transgressors after the Apostle, he would detest these men because they wished to return within rather than remain without, and, joining to himself certain like-minded allies, would even create Parmenianists — just as already many fragments have been made from this great fragment throughout all Africa? So, so it must needs be: little by little, cut and chopped, they perish, who preferred the swelling of their own passion to the most holy bond of catholic peace. For the things which Parmenian charges are not so much to be feared as the things which he confesses are to be regarded.

For when he said that, through Ossius the Spaniard, help was furnished to Caecilian, so that the number of saints and untainted men should be forced into communion with them, and that the unimpaired faith of the servants of God resisted this impiety, he confessed of his own accord that his own men went even to Constantine, and that by his arbitration the case was heard by episcopal judges, over whom Miltiades, bishop of the city of Rome, presided. In which judgment, as the ecclesiastical records testify, because these men were vanquished and Caecilian was found innocent, they accuse this same Miltiades of the crime of handing over the Scriptures. And I ask, when did they come to know this?

For if before the judgment, they ought not to have prejudged their own case, so as to begin to plead their cause before such a judge and, by the command of the emperor whom they themselves had approached, to submit to such a judgment. But if after the case had been pleaded and the sentence pronounced they profess that they learned him to be a traditor, then men are mad to such a degree that, against the judges before whom they were vanquished, they believe the vanquished litigants? And yet in all these things, with however great rashness, they accuse the Italians and Gauls and Spaniards, leaving aside the rest of so many provinces and nations, from which they are separated by a wicked sacrilege, and to whom the crimes of the Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls surely could not be prejudicial, even if they were spoken truly.

For now they blame the other lands in a blind manner — or rather in a fury — and are angry with them because, when there were two parties in Africa — one, they say, of traditors and the other of the innocent — they chose to join to themselves the traditors rather than the innocent. Which vain accusation is most briefly and most truly refuted thus: that, when they had heard there were two parties in Africa, one of traditors and the other of the innocent, they believed that to be the innocent one which had obtained its case before the neighbouring ecclesiastical judges.

Therefore those men always remained innocent who, not knowing how these things were done in Africa, nevertheless believed what they ought peaceably and religiously to have believed; and from such innocent men no separation could in any way be innocent. Parmenian himself admits that at the town of Arles both the bishops as judges and the parties from Africa came together — namely Caecilian and the Donatists. There he entrusted everything to his own men, who, being defeated, could do nothing but complain about the judges; nor yet does he deny that they came again to Constantine, and, because there too they were overcome in the final judgement, he even charges the emperor himself with having been corrupted by favour.

When all these things have been considered, let whoever judges without partisan zeal choose whom to believe: whether the judges who pronounced the sentences, or the litigants against whom the sentences were pronounced and who refused to let the case be ended. And assuredly the whole world believed the judges. But those who agree with the Donatists and defend them confess that they believe those who, whatever their cause may have been, could nevertheless not win it in so many hearings overseas; and they take up the murmurs and accusations of these men against the judges with a credulous emptiness.

In this matter, if they call themselves innocent and refuse rashly to believe that those whom they see defeated were defeated by the truth, how much more innocent are those who refuse rashly to believe any evil of the judges themselves — of whom it is inevitable that the defeated should complain! For not only does he who has lost a good cause complain of an unjust or slow or negligent judge, but even he who has been most justly defeated murmurs, out of that same blindness, against an innocent judge, with the very blindness by which he was contending against an innocent adversary.

Wherefore these men are guilty, not because they refuse rashly to believe anything about defeated men, but because in the frenzy of schism they cut themselves off from those innocent men who, with far better reason, refuse to believe any such thing about the judges themselves. Let there arise, then, out of those seven, some most noble church of one of those parties in the name of Christ — and, if you please, especially Philadelphia, which by a mystic name in the Greek tongue signifies brotherly love. Let us therefore hear its voice; and let not its chaff speak, but its wheat. If, then, it should say to these men: 'Why do you accuse me, brethren, why do you charge me? By how great an interval, according to earthly place, I am removed from Africa, you have been able partly to know, partly to hear.

What was done there at that time — whether by traditors, or by the accusers or condemners of traditors, or by the calumniators or oppressors of the innocent — I am utterly ignorant. But that Lord of ours, who bought the whole world with the price of his own blood, whose holy transactions the prophet sang so long before, saying: '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' — he has not set between you and us empty spaces bare of Christians; he has filled all these with the sanctification of his name. For indeed in that very psalm of the passion it is declared not only at how great a price, but also how great a thing he bought. For there, a little after, it is said:

'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 his, and he shall rule over the nations.' Concerning your cause, then, perhaps I might be compelled to judge, if I were either near, or so remote that between us and you there dwelt no other Christians marked with the same name and pacified in the same unity. Many families of nations lie between us, bought together with me by his blood, in whose sight they worship equally with me. Through them the report about you passed to me; they themselves, being near, could have examined your cause. But if that was not done, you neglected it; for had you not been neglected by the rest, you would not have come even as far as us.

But if something has been judged, grant me pardon: I do not dare rashly to believe you who are defeated, and with the same rashness to condemn your judges. There is added to me another thing which greatly moves me: because, if you innocent men had been oppressed, you would at least love us, your brethren, who have done you no harm. But when in fact you try to tear us — who are well aware in our own consciences that your cause was committed to your neighbours by the right order of the Church, who know before God how they judged — to tear us, I say, with curses and to hound us with bitter hatreds, and, as though on your account Christ had lost his inheritance among us, you even attempt to rebaptize: what good can we think about that cause of yours?

For you who least hesitate to condemn brethren far removed by rash suspicions, thereby show how justly you were condemned by your neighbours. For why should I not believe that one could rightly be condemned by a neighbouring judge after being heard, when he does not hesitate to condemn me, a brother so far absent, unheard — laying this greatest charge against me, that, since I could not be present, I believed rather the judges to whom the case was brought than the defeated litigants? And if I had not believed those judges instead, then, even if those who were defeated were innocent, I could not be innocent.

For we would be entangled in a great sin if, since we could not see into human hearts and could not maintain ecclesiastical discipline, we were unwilling to believe those who were judging — beyond whom the case could not pass, and through whom the report could run down to us. Do you, rending yourself from these innocent men by an impious severance, call yourself innocent? And yet if you were, then, since you saw in the Holy Scriptures that the harvest of your Lord cannot, before the final separation and winnowing, be separated from the tares and the chaff, you would rather choose to be brave in tolerating the evil than impious in deserting the good. — For of how many churches far removed throughout the world do we think these voices are, and how most just, which I have figured under Philadelphia!

Nay more, Parmenian dares even to complain that Constantine ordered those men to be led to the field — that is, to execution — who, being defeated before the ecclesiastical judges and before the emperor himself, could not prove what they were saying, and were still being borne by sacrilegious frenzy into cutting off portions of the holy Church; and he charges the emperor with having commanded this savagely, at the suggestion of the Spaniard Ossius — condemning the unheard by his own suspicions, as always. As though, rather, another might not more humanely and more probably have believed that it was done at the suggestion of Ossius, as a bishop, precisely so that the emperor might bend his sentence toward a milder coercion of a crime most monstrous — that is, of sacrilegious schism.

For what do these men not justly suffer, when they suffer it by the most high judgement of God who presides and who, to guard against the eternal fire, admonishes by such scourges — and suffer it both by the desert of their crimes and by the ordered rank of the powers? For let them first prove that they are not heretics or schismatics; then at last let them raise a free voice about the unworthy penalties they suffer; then at last let them dare, when they suffer such things, to call themselves martyrs of the truth.

Otherwise, if whoever pays a penalty imposed by the emperor or by the judges sent by him is straightway a martyr, then all prisons are full of martyrs, all the chains of the courts drag martyrs, in all the mines there are wretched martyrs, into all the islands martyrs are deported, in all places of punishment martyrs are struck by the sword of the law, all are set out as martyrs to the beasts, or by the orders of judges are burned alive in the flames. But if, as the Apostle says, 'there is no power but of God,' and 'the minister of God is an avenger in wrath to him who does evil, he does not bear the sword without cause. Wilt thou not fear the power? Do good, and thou shalt have praise from it.'

For whoever is good, if he should suffer, praise accrues to him from the power of the one inflicting it; but whoever is evil should not impute to the cruelty of the power what he deservedly suffers for his iniquity. And yet what do these men suffer such as they do, except that the multitude of men has its heart not in the heart, but in the eyes? For if blood flows from mortal flesh, whoever looks on shudders; but if souls cut off and separated from the peace of Christ die in the sacrilege of heresy or schism, because it is not seen, it is not lamented — nay rather, a death fouler and more mournful and, to speak plainly, truer, is by the law of custom even laughed at, while the authors of so many deaths publicly insult, and do not even deign to hold discourse with us for the sake of making the truth manifest.

And if they have suffered some temporal trouble through the most certain and most rightful order of the powers — while they themselves, by private bands of madmen, commit far graver things everywhere and daily, under no royal, no ecclesiastical law — they call us persecutors of bodies, but do not call themselves slayers of souls, though by private licence they spare not even bodies. But because, through Christian gentleness, an eye plucked out in a brawl is avenged far more severely than a soul blinded in schism, they speak out and speak against us, yet will not speak with us; and while truth compels them to be dumb, iniquity does not permit them to be silent. Or is it perhaps not lawful for the emperor, or those whom the emperor has sent, to judge concerning religion?

Why then did your envoys come to the emperor? Why did they make him judge of their cause, when they did not intend to follow what he should judge? But to what end are these things said? Even if they should establish that it does not pertain to the emperor to decree anything against those who follow perverse things in religion — does it therefore follow that, if he does so and punishes them, they will be martyrs? For in this way that plea will lie open to all heretics, against whom, out of the hidden dominion of God through the manifest dominion of men, many most severe measures have been established by which they might be coerced — and not only against heretics whitewashed in some way at least with the Christian name, but even against the pagans themselves.

For these pagans are certainly impious with a false religion — whose idols by recent laws have been ordered to be overthrown and shattered, and whose sacrifices have been forbidden under a capital penalty. If, then, any of them has been condemned in such a crime, is he to be held a martyr because he paid the penalty by the laws for a superstition which he thought a pious religion? Assuredly no Christian, in any way, dares to say this. Therefore not everyone who has been punished by the emperor in some question of religion is thereby made a martyr.

For those who hold such opinions do not see that they proceed to the point where they must contend that even the demons themselves can claim for themselves the glory of martyrs — because they suffer this persecution through Christian emperors, so that through almost the whole world their temples are overthrown, their idols broken to pieces, their sacrifices withdrawn, and those who honour them, if caught, are punished. But if it is most insane to say this, then it is not from suffering that justice is made certain, but from justice that suffering is made glorious. And therefore the Lord, lest anyone should spread mists before the unlearned in this matter and seek the praise of martyrs in the condemnation of their own deserts, did not say generally:

'Blessed are they who suffer persecution,' but he added a great distinction, by which piety is truly separated from sacrilege. For he said: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake.' But in no way do they suffer for righteousness' sake who have divided the Church of Christ and who, while with a feigned righteousness they, as it were, attempt before the time to separate it from the chaff and hound its wheat with false accusations, have themselves rather been separated from it, like the lightest chaff, by the various blasts of rumours. 'But,' they say, 'we did not do this.' Let them see, then, that they must first free themselves from this question, and only then dare — if they suffer any troubles or penalties from Christian emperors — either to lay them down in complaint or to take them up for glory.

On this matter — that is, the question of the schism itself — if I said nothing else, what has been said above would suffice. Or will they perhaps say that, even if they are convicted of a sacrilegious dissension, so that if they suffer anything for that madness they are not martyrs, nevertheless it ought not to pertain to the power of emperors to coerce or punish these things? In which case I ask what they say: is it because no care need be taken by such powers about a vicious or false religion? But we have already said much even about the pagans and about the demons themselves — that they suffer persecutions from the emperors. Or does this too displease them? Why then do they themselves, wherever they can, overthrow temples, and through the frenzies of the Circumcellions never cease to do such things or to avenge them?

Or is private violence more just than royal diligence? But these things I pass over. This I ask: since the Apostle enumerates the manifest works of the flesh — which are, he says, 'fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, the service of idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like' — what do these men think, that they hold the crime of idolatry to be justly avenged by the emperors, or, if they will not have even this, why do they confess that the force of the laws is justly exercised against sorcerers, but refuse to confess it against heretics and impious dissensions, when these are numbered by apostolic authority among the same fruits of iniquity?

Or do they perhaps hold that the powers of this human institution are not permitted to take care of such things either? On what account, then, does he bear the sword who is called 'the minister of God, an avenger in wrath to those who do evil'? Unless perhaps, as some of them, truly most unlearned, are wont to understand this, it was said of ecclesiastical honours, so that the sword should be understood as the spiritual vengeance which effects excommunication — whereas the most provident Apostle, in the ensuing context of the reading, makes plain enough of what he speaks. For there he added: 'For on this account you also pay tribute'; and then he subjoined: 'Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom, honour to whom honour, fear to whom fear.'

This, then, remains: that by these disputations of theirs they should forbid Christians to pay tributes — since the Lord also, to the Pharisees who held such opinions (whom these men imitate), having looked at the coin, answered: 'Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.' But these men, in both respects disobedient and impious, render neither to God Christian love nor to kings human fear; so blind and insane are they that, when they have excluded their own schismatics the Maximianists from the basilicas by powers sent from the Catholic emperors, and by the great force of orders and auxiliaries have compelled them to yield to them, they nonetheless accuse the Catholic Church if on her behalf the Catholic princes have ordered some such thing to be done.

But let the Maximianists themselves, before they were Maximianists — that is, while they were still held within one common fellowship of the Donatists — recall, and be silent about, what savage and bitter things that Rogatus the Moor suffered at their hands through the barbarian king Firmus; and let them not dare to complain if they suffer anything of this kind, whether from the Primianists on account of their own schism, or together with the Primianists on account of the schism of the Donatists — not for sacred religion, but for sacrilegious animosity. For perhaps they say that they have suffered graver things from the Catholic emperors than these men have done, whether through the barbarian kings against the Rogatists, or through the judges of the Catholic emperors against the Maximianists, or even do through the frenzy of the Circumcellions against whomever they can.

As though, indeed, the question were whether they suffer graver things than they do — which I would in no way concede. For many of their deeds, most savage and most bitter, are reckoned up — nay, they cannot be reckoned up — which, even if they were fewer, or afflicted those against whom they are committed less, would by that very fact certainly be graver, because they are not ordered by ordained powers, but committed by extraordinary frenzies. For not so many are the things which they did against the Maximianists through the judges of human institution. In that class of actions let them place, if they will, even the things done by them through the barbarian Firmus for the persecuting of Rogatus the Moor — and let them number that man, though a most monstrous enemy of the Romans, among the lawful powers.

But these are not so many as are the many things which daily, through the frenzied bands of drunken youths whom they set up as their chiefs — who at first armed themselves only with cudgels, but now even with iron — who under the most notorious name of Circumcellions roam and rage throughout all Africa, they commit against all order of laws and powers. And when their crimes are reported to them, they pretend to be ignorant of such a kind of men, or affirm with a most shameless mouth that these do not pertain to them at all — against what all men know.

They will not accept even this voice at least of the whole world, which says far more probably and truly that it does not know what has been done in Africa, whether by the party of Donatus or against the party of Donatus — if it is permitted, within Africa itself, for the Donatist bishops either not to know the deeds of the Donatist Circumcellions, or to say that they do not pertain to them. But, as I had begun to say, the question is not asked in this way — whether they suffer graver things than they do — but whether it is lawful for any such thing to be done against heretics and schismatics. For if they say it is not lawful, why do they themselves do it?

But if they confess that it is lawful, then — even if they should show (which they can in no way do) that they suffer graver things from the Catholic emperors than they themselves have done to their own schismatics through those emperors' judges or through the barbarian kings, or do to every kind of man through the madness of the Circumcellions — this is not to be wondered at either: if princes can do more than the judges sent by princes; if Roman emperors can do more than barbarian kings; and if the robber deservedly suffers graver things by the laws than he himself commits against the laws. Whence deservedly, by just decrees, the paymasters of the Circumcellions suffer graver things than the Circumcellions do. And yet so great is Christian gentleness, that their penalties are incomparably surpassed by their crimes.

But behold: three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned the Maximianists in their council, while those men, in the obstinacy of their perversity, refused to yield the basilicas. The judges were approached; their council was entered into the proconsular records. Then it was ordered that those who had been condemned by so great a number of bishops should yield the places. Those who easily yielded suffered not much; but as for those who attempted to resist — who is ignorant of how they were afflicted? Yet if the monstrousness of the resisters had been so great as to reach the point of injuries done to the judges, would they not have suffered far more bitter things by the Roman laws?

So too then, when after the conclusion of the case in which these men cut themselves off from the Catholic Church it began consequently to be pressed that they should not hold the basilicas — and they did hold them, resisting the imperial orders, and so resisting that the well-known force of the Circumcellions prevailed, adding moreover that they harassed with most turbulent and savage seditions those whom the emperor had sent going through Africa with the gifts of the Church — such laws were brought forth against them that they were not even permitted to retain those very basilicas which were not of the unity, but had been built by men separated and now established in their own schism. In this matter the royal power has now avenged its own injuries. For what avails it that the enemies of justice should justly possess anything?

Nor is anyone found to have promulgated anything on their behalf except the apostate Julian, to whom Christian peace and unity were exceedingly displeasing — since indeed the very religion from which he had impiously fallen was displeasing to him. To him these Donatists, as the records of the judges attest (in which they cited what they had obtained), made supplication in such words that perhaps certain men out of fear consented to him for the worship of idols more gently than these men praised him in their frenzy. For they said that with him justice alone had a place. What else, then, are they found to have said but either that Christian holiness is not justice — since with him it had no place — or that the honouring of demons is justice, since with him it had the first place?

But who is ignorant how vehement were the laws of other emperors passed against them? Among which one, general against all who wish to be called Christians and do not communicate with the Catholic Church but gather in their own separated conventicles, contains this: that either the ordainer of a cleric or the one ordained himself should be fined ten pounds of gold, and that the very place where the impious separation gathers should be forfeited to the treasury. There are also other general decrees by which the faculty is taken from them of either making wills, or of conferring anything by donations, or of receiving anything from donations or wills.

For in a certain case, when a nobleman had supplicated the emperors — because his sister, who had been of the party of Donatus, when she was dying had conferred very many things upon I know not what persons of her communion, and especially upon a certain Augustine, a bishop of theirs — it was commanded, out of that general law, that all things should be restored to the brother; where mention was also made of the Circumcellions, in case, after their manner, they should violently resist, and by what kind of auxiliaries and supports they should be repelled. For so well-known are they, so proven in many combats, that concerning them neither the emperor's suppliant nor the emperor himself could keep silent.

Since these things are so — since by both divine and human laws they are thus condemned — yet so great is Christian gentleness that not only do they hold the basilicas which they, already cut off, have built, but they have not even restored to the unity all those which the unity held from the beginning. And although they themselves have insistently excluded the Maximianists from basilicas pertaining to the party of Donatus, through judges sent by the Catholic emperors, nevertheless from many places which the Catholic unity formerly held they are not excluded even by the laws of those same Catholic emperors.

Finally, if perhaps at some time something was done against them more immoderately, so as to exceed Christian mildness, it displeases all the wheat of the Lord's harvest — that is, the Christians praiseworthy in Christ, who, whether with a hundredfold, or sixtyfold, or thirtyfold fruit, grow up in the Catholic Church throughout the whole world. Wherefore let them most abundantly accuse with us the tares or the chaff of the Catholic crop, but let them not refuse most patiently to bear it with us. For he who was unwilling before the time to root up the tares and to separate them from the mixture of the wheat said: 'Let both grow until the harvest.' And when he unfolded the wrapping of this same parable to the disciples who inquired, he did not say, 'The field is Africa,' but he said: 'The field, moreover, is this world.'

Throughout the whole world, therefore, this crop has been sown; throughout the whole, tares have been oversown; throughout the whole, both grow until the harvest. Was Donatus perhaps greater than the reapers, or had the time of harvest come at the time when these men separated themselves from the world — since the same Lord, lest it be permitted to anyone to interpret what he wished, said most openly: 'But the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels'? For such reapers cannot err, so as either to gather the wheat for tares or to reckon the tares for wheat. But these men, while they flee as it were from the tares, have shown themselves to be the tares, preaching in most manifest sacrilege against the sentence of the Lord: so that, while he says:

'Let both grow until the harvest,' these men contend that throughout so great a field — that is, the whole world — only tares grow, but that the wheat has been diminished and has remained in Africa alone, doing a sacrilegious injury to Christ our King and Prince. For it is written: 'In a broad nation is the glory of the king, but in the diminution of the people is the ruin of the prince.' But now it is time, as I judge, to attend carefully to the very testimonies of the Scriptures which by evil interpretation deceive the unlearned, and, as far as the Lord grants, to open them up according to the understanding of Catholic truth. THE SECOND BOOK.

What force at last, except the blindness and vanity of the mind, compels men, with closed eyes (as the saying goes), to hurl, as it were, at another something which straightway returns upon him who hurled it and strikes him with a reciprocal blow, while the one whom he wished to wound remains untouched — as these Donatists do with almost all the testimonies of the Scriptures, which, when they think they are bringing them forth against us, seem as it were to warn us how the Scripture itself convicts them of being? For what else does that do which Parmenian thinks is either for himself or against us — the thing that is written: 'Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter'? O most foolish blindness!

For what is so good and so pleasant as brethren dwelling in unity? Which those men call evil and put as bitter — those who have separated themselves from all their brethren, while they were unwilling either not to stir up their empty suspicions (not to say factious calumnies), or to tolerate them when stirred up. For if they hated the true chaff, and were not themselves chaff, they would not, on account of it, sunder themselves from the Lord's wheat, sown and growing throughout the whole field — that is, this world. Let them therefore cry out as much as they can: 'Woe to those who say that what is evil is good and what is good is evil.' We answer: 'This is true'; and we add another: 'Woe to those who have lost endurance, while they put light for darkness and darkness for light.'

For what is more luminous than the promises of God, who in our times has exhibited what he foretold thousands of years before — that in the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, all nations would have blessing? And what is more shadowy than the presumptions of men, who, on account of crimes of traditors rashly alleged and never proved — which, even if they were true, would never prejudge God so as to prevent him from fulfilling what he promised — say that the Christian name has perished from so many nations in the whole world and has remained in Africa alone? And this presumption of theirs they call light, while the promises of God, now illumined by the very effect of the events, they contend to cover over with the darkness of lies; and moreover against us they proclaim their own deeds, saying:

'Woe to those who put light for darkness and darkness for light.' Was Optatus, then, light, and did all Africa call him darkness? Or did all Africa rather perceive him to be darkness, while these men were calling him light — these men who 'do not put light for darkness and darkness for light'? 'But,' they say, 'Optatus was displeasing, in our communion, to all good men.' You did not, then, call him light — and yet you communicated with him.

Choose therefore what you will: either that in one communion the darkness does not harm the light, but that it is enough for the light to condemn the darkness and to tolerate it for the sake of unity, if it cannot expel it — and that thus there was no cause why you should be cut off from innocent brethren, to whom you certainly could not point out any evil men (even if you should say that such were known to you), by the dark sacrilege of schism;

Or, if it is not enough for the light to condemn the darkness which it cannot expel — that is, if it is not enough for the good to condemn the evil whom they cannot exclude or amend — then one single Optatus, most notorious and most manifest, has more easily stained the party of Donatus within the one province of Africa than any African traditor could have stained so many nations throughout the whole world, who (I will not say were accused of false charges) are yet — what is most shamelessly denied — unknown. And so, receiving the Scriptures with a perverse heart, they make them injure not us but themselves, when they suppose this to have been written: 'Woe to those who call what is wicked good and what is good wicked,' so that the wheat should not tolerate the chaff among itself until the time of winnowing; so that, when they understand ill:

'Woe to those who call what is wicked good and what is good wicked,' there may be fulfilled in them: 'Woe to those who have lost their endurance.' But if they were to understand that this was said against those who, deeming what is evil to be good, commit evils, or against those who consent to such men by praising and approving them — which two kinds the Scripture mentions together in one place, saying:

'Because the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does unjust deeds is blessed' — they would understand rightly and not be troubled, since among themselves too evil men are found (only that they tolerate for the party of Donatus those whom they ought to have tolerated for the unity of Christ); and through this obstinacy of their animosity these wretched men are compelled to bear in their own schism those whom they know, and to accuse throughout the world those whom they do not know. Whoever therefore either corrects by rebuke what he can, or excludes — while the bond of peace remains unbroken — what he cannot correct, or, when he cannot exclude it while keeping the bond of peace, reproves it with fairness and bears it with steadfastness: this man is a peacemaker, and is wholly free, utterly secure, and entirely a stranger to that curse of which Scripture says:

'Woe to those who call what is wicked good and what is good wicked, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and what is sweet for bitter.' Again they bring forward something similar with their accustomed blindness. 'Concerning you,' they say, 'the Scripture speaks: He who justifies the unjust and condemns the just, both are an abomination before God.' Why does this execration not rather fall upon those who dared to condemn the whole Christian world unheard — in which, among so vast a number of men, without any doubt there were and are men innocent of their crimes?

In this way, then, they judged what is just to be unjust and what is unjust to be just, when they held in communion Optatus the Gildonian — the ten-year groan of all Africa — honoring him as a priest and colleague. Or if they reproved him in their heart, but tolerated him for the sake of peace, let them learn that the patience of no peacemaker, unconsenting to evil, can be stained by any evils; and let them thus perceive into what perdition those men lie fallen who, on account of false or true — for that is not now in question — crimes of Africans, do not keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace with the whole world. And if they should say, 'We do not know whether there are good Christians among so many nations across the seas,' they would speak most shamelessly.

For God bears witness to His own wheat, which, sowing it throughout the whole field, He foretold would grow even until the harvest, although with tares over-sown by the devil; whence, even if we know less of the men themselves, yet we know that they exist, because with most certain faith we hold that God could not lie. When therefore with sacrilegious impudence they say, 'We do not know whether there are good Christians in the rest of the world,' let them consider with what madness they dare to say — for daily they do not hesitate to say — 'We know there are no Christians there.' It is surely one thing to say 'we do not know whether they exist,' another to say 'we know that they do not exist': both are faithless and impious. But if he is to be detested who says:

'I do not know whether God has spoken the truth,' what is that man who says, 'I know that God has not spoken the truth'? I certainly judge that I ought to offend none of these men if I set God before Donatus. For however much they love Donatus, they fear God more; and finally, however much they may love Donatus, we know that God alone is truthful, but every man a liar. Christ therefore, who is over all, God blessed forever, and who most truly said of Himself, 'I am the truth,' when His servants asked of Him whether He wished them to go and gather the tares, said, 'Let both grow until the harvest.' But Donatus says that the tares indeed have grown, but the wheat has been diminished. Let these men choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the Truth, says:

'The field is this world.' But Donatus says that Africa alone has remained the field of God. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the Truth, says: 'At the time of harvest I will say to the reapers: First gather the tares,' and He explains it, saying: 'The harvest is the end of the world.' But Donatus says that, by cutting off his own party, the tares were separated from the wheat before the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe. Christ, that is, the Truth, says: 'The reapers are the angels.' But Donatus says that he and his colleagues did before the harvest that which He said the angels would do at the harvest. Let them choose whom to believe. Certainly they call themselves Christians: we set before them Christ and Donatus. If they give words to Christ but their heart to Donatus, let them consider who they are.

I spare them, I do not inveigh, I do not exaggerate; I press down my grief rather than pour it out. But if they say that they give their heart to Christ, then let them believe Christ when He says that throughout the whole world both the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one grow together — and not Donatus, who says that throughout the world only the children of the evil one have grown, but the good children have been reduced to Africa alone. But if they believe Christ, we now say: let them have peace, not with the churches of the world, but with the very Gospel — which they falsely boast they preserved from the fire, since they do not prove it by their deeds. And now, to what does that pertain which the same Parmenianus thought should be cast at us from the prophet Isaiah: 'Is not the hand of the Lord strong to save, or has He made His ear heavy that He should not hear?'

'But your iniquities have made a division between you and your God, and because of your sins He has turned His face away from you, that He should not have mercy. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquities; but your lips have spoken iniquity, and your tongue meditates injustice. No one speaks just things, nor is there true judgment. They trust in vanities and speak empty things, for they conceive travail and bring forth iniquity. They have hatched the eggs of asps, and they weave the spider's web; and he who was about to eat of those eggs, breaking one, found it addled, and in it a basilisk. Their web shall not serve for clothing, nor shall they cover themselves with their works.'

'For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run to wickedness, swift to shed blood; and their thoughts are the thoughts of the foolish. Ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.' Those whom Scripture describes in this passage, wherever they are, even among the good, do not harm the good — just as the chaff does not harm the wheat — until the Lord of the threshing-floor comes, bearing His winnowing-fan in His hand, and cleanses His floor, and lays up the wheat in the barn, but burns the chaff with unquenchable fire; just as so great a multitude of the wicked did not harm the good, which we have learned through the prophet Ezekiel — those, namely, who groaned and mourned over the crimes of the people that were done in their midst.

Whence, because they could not correct them, nor ought they in any way to separate themselves from the unity of God's people, they deserved — by the merit of their most innocent tolerance — to be marked and to be delivered in the devastation and destruction of those lost ones.

Yet these men who cast these things at the Catholics — why do they not look upon themselves, whose very hordes of raging bands, armed with iron and cudgels, fly hither and thither, and by so frequent slaughters, wherever they can, are in no way sated in such savagery — where, over the graves of their corpses, together with women (who, mingled with them promiscuously against the order of things divine and human, wander about by day and night), so great a drunkenness seethes that from it they conceive a daily madness, not only of persecuting others, but even of hurling themselves headlong? Do not their feet run to malice, and are they not swift to shed blood? Does not judgment depart from these men, who usurp for themselves even the most unjust license of disordered power?

Does not darkness come upon these men, while in a false martyrdom they endure the light? Do they not walk in the midst of night even by day, since the Apostle says: 'Those who are drunk are drunk in the night'? Do not these men fall at midday as though at midnight? This indeed belongs to all heretics, who cannot see the most manifest thing, set in the light of all nations — outside whose unity, whatever they do, however much it may seem to be done with great skill and diligence, profits them nothing against the wrath of God, just as the spiders' webs cannot defend from the cold.

What then do they put forward from this prophetic chapter that cannot be turned back upon themselves — unless perhaps concerning the eggs of the asps, of which the composer of the sentence of the plenary council of three hundred and ten had made much mention, when they gathered from all the provinces of Africa? This surely, if Parmenianus were now living, he would not say, nor would he set it against us from the prophet Isaiah: 'They have hatched the eggs of asps.' For he would consider Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, joined to his own college — men whom, out of the number of the condemned, as though for the good of peace (yet not of Christ but of Donatus), they received back afresh as if whole and sound — men who both were the eggs of asps and had hatched.

For thus do the three hundred and ten of the plenary council describe them with truthful mouth, just as their acts, alleged also in the proconsular records, bear witness. For these indeed are the words of their council: 'For although the womb of the poisoned belly has long concealed the noxious offspring of the viper-seed, and the moist clots of conceived crime have with slow warmth exhaled themselves into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived venom could not be hidden by a vanishing shade. For, though late, they brought forth the public wickedness and their parricide, the teeming vows of their crimes.'

These eggs of asps had now hatched, and now, horrible and foul-smelling with their venomous offspring, they had been cast out from their communion; but within there was Optatus the basilisk, who, by a certain royal nod (by which among serpents he is said to excel), would call back even the cast-out asps. But if these things do not harm for the sake of peace, why do they cast at the Catholics — whom they could not convict — that which they themselves committed, when they received back those whom with their own mouth they had condemned? If these things do not harm for the sake of peace, they yet harm for the sake of the peace of Donatus, which is greatly favored to the injury of the peace of Christ; and for this sacrilege, whatever bodily afflictions they suffer is a warning from God to beware of eternal damnation.