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.