'Do not, dearest brother, other men's sins pollute others? And this it is not to have fellowship with the wicked—although thou associate with them, not to do their deeds.' And yet he did not say the whole. For it is too little not to do their deeds, unless they also displease; it is too little that they displease, unless they be reproved. For it is one thing not to do them, another not to have fellowship, that is, not to consent to those doing them, another again to reprove. Why then, when he had begun to see, did he at once turn himself away and refuse to reach the end, and scarcely lay down a third of the whole? Or, just as they did with the people, did he think the sentence of truth also should be cut short?
We say this: that he who does not do evil, nor consents to the doer, and reproves the doer, dwells firm and whole among the wicked, as wheat among the chaff; but he says only 'not to do their deeds.' And yet let us see how he refutes this third part of the whole sentence. 'That this is against the divine law,' he says, 'no one who venerates the law is ignorant.' Thus far these words can be said by either side. For another too can say: 'That this is according to the divine law, no one who venerates the law is ignorant.' But one must prove, not merely assert. Let us therefore observe how he proves it. 'For what does it profit,' he says, 'to have kept one's innocence, if thou art mingled with the guilty and liable?'
Truly, if it be so, it is not that to have kept one's innocence profits nothing, but rather that innocence has not been kept. For no one can rightly be said to be mingled with the guilty and liable except through the stained consent of conscience. But he who fulfils what is written, 'To the just man nothing unjust is pleasing,' wherever he be forced to dwell by whatever necessity, cannot be mingled with iniquities. Or, 'How,' he says, 'canst thou remain uncorrupted, who art associated with the corrupt?' Yes indeed, if he is associated, that is, if he commits any evil with them or favours those committing it; but if he does neither, he is in no way associated.
Further, if he add a third thing—that he be not slothful in punishing, but that the just man either correct in mercy and reprove, or even, if he bears such a person and the reason of preserving peace allows it, reprove sinners before all, that the rest may fear, and remove them either from some degree of honour or from the very communion of the sacraments, and do all these things with the love of correcting, not with the hatred of persecuting—then he has fulfilled the most complete duty not only of most chaste innocence, but also of most diligent severity. But where the rest is hindered, those two things always retained keep a man uncorrupted and chaste: that he neither do evil nor approve the deed done. Yet let us see whence this man teaches what he affirms. 'Since it is written,' he says:
'A little leaven corrupts the whole lump.' Parmenianus said this and departed; nor can it now be shown to him that in the party of Donatus there is not only a little leaven, but much poison from those broken eggs of asps and from serpents now grown strong—those condemned on behalf of Primianus and again recalled to Primianus. 'But they have been corrected,' he says. Thanks be to God. If it is true, I do not begrudge it. And would that it were done perfectly! For if to return from the Maximianists to the party of Donatus is some degree of correction, how much truer and more perfect a correction is it to return from the very party of Donatus to Catholic unity!
And indeed Tychonius said many things, whereby, both in those times and as one who knew from within, he showed how unwilling they were to confess that their whole lump was corrupted—not by a little, but by much leaven of their own—they who charged that the whole world had been leavened with the sins of the Africans. But I marvel at these men, if it still pleases them thus to understand these apostolic words, that they are so willing to defend Optatus the Gildonian as not even to concede that he was a little leaven. But if they concede even this, how great do they suppose their lump to be, that it could not be wholly corrupted? Or if it was corrupted only in those to whom Optatus was pleasing, let them learn by experience to understand what they read, that the whole lump is in those to whom pertains what is called 'the whole,' whether good or evil.
提科紐確實說了許多話，藉此——既在那個時代，又作為一個從內部知情的人——他顯明他們是何等不願承認自己整團都被玷污了，並非被一點、乃是被他們自己許多的麵酵所玷污；他們竟指控說全世界都被非洲人的罪發酵了。但我對這些人感到希奇，若他們仍樂意如此理解這些使徒的話，卻又如此樂意維護吉爾多黨的奧普塔徒（Optatus the Gildonian），以致連他曾是「一點麵酵」都不肯承認。但他們若連這也承認了，那他們認為自己的團有多大，竟不能被全然玷污？或者若只在那些以奧普塔徒為喜悅的人中被玷污，那就讓他們憑經驗學會理解所讀的：整團是在那些關乎「全部」——無論善惡——之人身上。
But it pertains to those who consent; to those who do not consent it does not pertain at all, and therefore it must be corrected by ecclesiastical discipline, lest by persuasion it reach to many. But where the reason of peace permits this to be done and it is not done, the very negligence draws guilt, and one is in danger of consenting through slackness in correcting. From which rule that also is to be understood which he consequently sets against us, saying that it is written: 'Let it be to you a lawful ordinance for ever throughout your generations, to divide between the holy and the unholy, and between the clean and the unclean.' For each man does this the better, the more he advances in the Church. For when the herb had grown and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares.
And although the servants of the householder already distinguished and divided between the two by their knowledge, yet they are commanded to let them grow, and that even until the harvest. But so far concerning these matters. For the things that remain must be considered and treated somewhat more diligently from another starting point. BOOK THREE.
Since all pious reasoning and every measure of ecclesiastical discipline ought above all to look to the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace—which the Apostle commanded to be kept by bearing with one another, and which not being kept, the medicine of punishment is proved to be not only superfluous but even destructive, and therefore no longer a medicine—those evil sons, who not out of hatred of others' iniquities but out of zeal for their own contentions strive either wholly to drag away or at least to divide the weak common people, ensnared by the boasting of their own name; swollen with pride, mad with obstinacy, treacherous with calumnies, turbulent with seditions—lest they be shown to lack the light of truth—hold up the shadow of rigid severity, and those things which in the holy Scriptures, with the sincerity of love preserved and the unity of peace kept, are commanded to be done with a somewhat sharper cure for correcting a brother's faults, they usurp for the sacrilege of schism and for an occasion of severing, saying:
'Behold, the Apostle says: Put away the evil from among yourselves. And this evil, they say, if it did not injure the whole, would not be commanded to be put away.' Meanwhile let us consider whether perhaps it was not without purpose that the Apostle did not say, 'Put away the wicked men from your congregation,' but, 'Put away the evil from among yourselves,' because even when anyone is hindered from separating wicked men from the congregation of the Church, if he put away the evil from himself, he is not mingled with them in heart, and thus spiritually he is not only joined to the good, but also separated from the wicked. For just as in that passage to Timothy, when he had said:
'Neither have fellowship with other men's sins'—as though he were saying it might come about that one could not separate certain wicked men from the congregation of the Church and therefore would be compelled to tolerate them, and, as it were giving counsel how he might not have fellowship with their sins, he says: 'Keep thyself chaste'—for none but a wicked man can be mingled with the wicked, but a good man in no way, although he dwell in one congregation with them—so too here, to the Corinthians, when he had said: 'For what have I to do to judge those who are without?
Do not ye judge those who are within?'—lest perhaps they be troubled by some great number of the wicked so mingled with the wheat that they could not be gathered and separated without the harassing of the wheat, he says: 'Put away the evil from among yourselves,' so that, if perhaps they could not put away the wicked from their congregation, by putting away the evil from themselves—that is, by not sinning with them nor consenting to them to sin nor favouring them—they might dwell among them most whole and most uncorrupted; because through his own evil each man consents to the wicked, but if he put away the evil from himself, there is no ground on which he consents to another's evil.
Wherefore whoever even despises the discipline of the Church, so as to cease warning, correcting, and reproving the wicked, with whom he does not sin and whom he does not favour—even though he bears such an office and the peace of the Church permits him also to separate them from participation in the sacraments—sins not by another's evil but by his own. For in so great a matter that very negligence is a grave evil. And therefore, as the Apostle admonishes, if he put away the evil from himself, he will put away not only the boldness of committing or the pestilence of consenting, but also the sloth of correcting and the negligence of punishing, employing prudence and obedience in that which the Lord commanded, lest the wheat be harmed.
For with that intention whoever tolerates the tares among the wheat, by putting away the evil from his very self, neither has fellowship with them and distinguishes and judges them for the present, up to the day. For he does not know what shall be on the morrow. And therefore, with love preserved and not without hope of correction, whatever necessary severity even compels to be punished must be punished. And that this may sufficiently appear, let us more diligently review that whole passage of the apostolic epistle. 'What will ye?' he says. 'Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and the spirit of meekness?' Here now it appears that he speaks of punishment, to signify which he named the rod. Yet is the rod also without love, since he thus wove it together: 'Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love?'
But what follows, 'the spirit of meekness,' admonishes us to understand that the rod too has love. But charity of severity is one thing, charity of meekness another. There is indeed one charity, but it works diversely in diverse cases. 'It is reported commonly,' he says, 'that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.' Concerning so monstrous a deed, let us see how he bids them rage. 'And ye,' he says, 'are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.' Why 'mourned' rather, and not anger, unless because, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it?
And not 'mourn because he was being taken away,' but he says 'mourn, that he might be taken away,' that is, that the sorrow of the mourners might ascend to God, and He Himself might take away from their midst the man who had done this deed, as He Himself should know how, lest perhaps they through human unskillfulness should root up the wheat together as well. When therefore necessity compels to such punishment, the humility of the mourners ought to obtain the mercy which the pride of the raging repels. Nor ought the salvation even of him who is taken away from the midst of the brethren to be neglected, but one must so act that such punishment may be useful to him, and one must act with vow and prayers, if he cannot be corrected by rebukes. And therefore he goes on and says:
'I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though present, him who has so done this, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.' What then was the Apostle doing but taking counsel for spiritual salvation through the destruction of the flesh, that whether by some penalty or even bodily death—as Ananias and his wife fell down before the feet of the Apostle Peter—or through penitence (since he had been delivered to Satan) he might slay in himself the wicked concupiscence of the flesh? For he himself likewise says:
'Mortify your members which are upon the earth,' among which he mentions also fornication; and again: 'For if ye live according to the flesh, ye shall die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live.' Yet he does not separate brotherly love from him whom he commanded to be separated from the brotherly congregation. For this he says more plainly to the Thessalonians: 'But if any man obey not our word by the epistle, note that man, that ye have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. And count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.' Let these men at length hear and understand how apostolic charity is busied, that, bearing with one another, we may be zealous to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. For here too, when he had said:
'And count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother,' as though showing why he said this, he immediately subjoined: 'Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always in every way.' So also concerning this man, who had his father's wife, he enjoins mourning rather, and everywhere commends peaceful charity, as also he says of himself: 'Lest again, when I come, my God humble me among you, and I bewail many of those who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness and lasciviousness and fornication which they have committed.' And a little after he says: 'I have told you before, and foretell you, as if present the second time, and now being absent, to those who have sinned before, and to all the rest, that if I come again, I will not spare.'
Therefore by mourning he was judging, that the mercy of God, without corruption of the bond of peace—in which the whole of salvation consists—might crush and correct the sinners, as he is understood to have done concerning this very man who had committed fornication with his father's wife. For it is not found of whom else he signifies in the second epistle to the same Corinthians, when he says: 'For out of much tribulation and anguish of heart I wrote to you through many tears, not that ye should be grieved, but that ye should know the love which I have more abundantly toward you. But if any man has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but in part—that I burden you not all.'
'Sufficient to such a man is this rebuke which is inflicted by many, so that on the contrary ye should rather forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your charity toward him. For to this end also I wrote, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things. But to whom ye forgive anything, I also; for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes I forgave it in the person of Christ, lest we should be possessed by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices.' What can be done or said more moderate, more diligent, more full of pious solicitude and paternal and maternal charity?
Just as he applies amendment to the sinner, so to the one corrected and crushed and humbling his heart in penitence he wishes consolation to be given back, 'lest,' he says, 'he be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.' But what of that with which he concluded this sentence? 'Lest,' he says, 'we be possessed by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices.' For it is he himself who, under the image of a supposedly just severity, persuades to cruel savagery, seeking nothing else by his most venomous craftiness but to corrupt and burst asunder the bond of peace and charity; which being preserved among Christians, all his forces are rendered powerless to harm, and the traps of his snares are broken to pieces, and the counsels of his overthrow vanish away.
But even if the Apostle spoke in the second epistle to the Corinthians about some other man, there too he signified with how great charity ecclesiastical punishment ought to proceed against anyone. This is that saying which these men, not understanding it, are wont to hold as chief among their calumnies: 'The just man shall amend me in mercy and reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head.' But because these men know not how to amend in mercy, they have both assailed the innocence of Caecilian with savage suspicions and anointed the power of Optatus the Gildonian with the oil of deceitful flattery.
For if, for the sake of the bond of peace, they groaned and mourned while tolerating the iniquity of Optatus, they would surely not have burst asunder the true and Catholic peace in the holy unity of the whole world; or at least, if it had been burst asunder by their forefathers through wicked blindness, they would so grieve over it that, having at least experienced among themselves how many wicked men they are compelled to bear for the peace of Donatus, they would extinguish the unappeased calumnies of those men by the peace of their own correction. But let us return to what follows in that first epistle to the Corinthians. When the Apostle had said, 'to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,' commending again and again that this ought to be done by the humility of mourners, not by the pride of the raging, he immediately subjoins:
'Your glorying is not good'—or, by way of upbraiding pronouncement: 'Is your glorying good?' For thus some copies, and especially the Latin ones, have it, since the same sense is held in either reading. For it is not to be feared that anyone should understand him to have said in praise, 'Your glorying is good,' since both above he had said, 'Ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned,' and here immediately subjoins, 'Know ye not that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?'—which can more fittingly be referred to that very corruption of empty glorying.
For pride, as it were from the oldness of the first man, who fell through pride, with a mind as though leavened and corrupted, makes men lifted up into one lump, who consent to it in a like vanity of boasting. And indeed to glory, not of one's own sins, but over another's sins, as though from a comparison of one's own innocence, seems a little leaven, since to glory even of one's own iniquities is much leaven; but that little too corrupts the whole lump. For the proud man falls by the desert of his pride, and begins even to wish to glory by defending his own sins. Foreseeing which, the same Apostle says:
'Wherefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.' And again: 'If a man be overtaken in any fault, ye who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ.' What is the law of Christ but: 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another'? What is the law of Christ but: 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave with you'? What therefore he here said, 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ,' this he says in another place: 'Bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.'
For even in that Pharisee there seemed to be a little leaven, since he not only did not grieve for the sinner, but exalted himself over his sins by his own merits. But the other went down, confessing his sins, justified rather than that Pharisee who boasted his own merits, since 'he who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.' The Apostle therefore goes on and says: 'Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.' What is 'that ye may be' and what is 'as ye are,' unless because there were there some such and there were there some not such, whom, that they might be such, he was admonishing by the example of such?
Yet he admonishes all in one, as though the same men, lest those who were such should despair of those who were not yet such, and think that they did not belong to the frame of their own body; for he admonishes them as though the same, when he says: 'That ye may be as ye are.' For both those who already were so knew, and, at the Apostle's admonishing, ought more and more to know, how to bear with those who were not yet so, that by bearing with one another in love they might preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and, bearing one another's burdens, might indeed fulfil the law of Christ.
And since our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach the way of humility, deigned to be humbled even unto the death of the cross, and, like a physician, so bore with the sinners as with the sick in love—of whom He had said, 'They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick'—He at once set forth the principal example, saying: 'For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,' that by the example of so great humility they might learn to purge out the old leaven, that is, whatever of the pride of the old man had remained in them. 'Therefore,' he says, 'let us keep the feast'—not indeed one day, but our whole life—'not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'
For malice and wickedness is, as it were, to glory over another's sin, as though then a man ought to rejoice in his own righteousness, when he has beheld another not to be righteous. But sincerity and truth is, even if a man makes progress, to remember what he had been, and much more to have mercy on the fallen, since he himself was raised up from his own fall through the mercy of Christ, who without any sin of His own humbled Himself for sinners. But lest other men's sins be perniciously left alone and, as it were dissemblingly, neglected—which is of no less cruelty than that pride—he goes on and says: 'I wrote to you in the epistle not to keep company with fornicators; not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters.'
Otherwise you would have had to depart from this world; that is, if you keep yourselves apart from the sinners of this world who are outside the Church, you would have had to depart from this world. For your work in this world is precisely this: to win over sinners to Christ for their salvation, which could not come to pass if you fled their conversation and company. But now, he says, I have written to you not to keep company with anyone who is called a brother yet is a fornicator, or an idolater, or covetous, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber — with such a one not even to take food together. For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are within? But those who are outside God will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves.
See in what manner the Apostle arrives at this sentence, the last clause of which Parmenian thought fit to cite, saying that it is written: Put away the evil one from among yourselves. And this, he says, if it did no harm to the good and the sound, would surely not be commanded to be put away. But the things said earlier, from which he came to this point, he passed over in silence — the very things by which he might have been aided toward what he desired to persuade, namely that a bodily separation from the wicked must be made, since the Apostle says: with such a one not even to take food together. Why then did he not mention what seemed most able to assist his aim?
For since he insists vehemently that he may persuade men that a bodily separation must be made from those who live wickedly, why does he not adduce the testimony of the Apostle, who says: If anyone is called a brother yet is a fornicator, or an idolater, or covetous, or a reviler, (or a drunkard,) or a robber — with such a one not even to take food together — unless because he saw that, if he said this, it could be answered to him: 'Do you then, even if you either have no fornicators and idolaters or do not know them, see and know no covetous man, or reviler, or drunkard, or robber among yourselves?'
Why then, contrary to the Apostle's precept, do you with such people not only take the food of your own table, but even share in the supper of the Lord's table?' This, then, Parmenian, as I suppose, tried to avoid, lest it be answered to him, and so he did not cite the passage that seemed to sound most strongly in favor of his cause. For if this chapter of the Apostle's letter had escaped him and not occurred to him, he would not have cited from its last part: Put away the evil one from among yourselves. But now, since we have said this, perhaps these people will dare to deny that they have among themselves covetous or reviling or drunken or rapacious men, and perhaps they will try to defend even Optatus himself, who was most notorious throughout all Africa, and whom they so long tolerated.
Let them say then, if they can, that they now have a better and more purified Church than was that very unity in the days of the most blessed Cyprian, who reproved his colleagues — from whom, however, he was separated by no bodily disjunction, naming none of them by name, but prudently and soberly applying the medicine of a most wholesome sharpness — with these grave words: that while brothers were hungering in the Church, they wished to have silver in abundance, that they seized estates by treacherous frauds, that they increased their usury with multiplying interest. And to show most plainly that he was speaking of those with whom he lived in the communion of one Church, he consequently added: What do we not deserve to suffer for sins of this kind?
For he did not say 'they would deserve' but 'we would deserve,' which he would in no way have said — since he himself was certainly not such a man — unless he wished to make plain that he groaned over the deeds of those who were joined to him not only by the unity of the Church but also by the fellowship of the college, although in life, in morals, in heart, in purpose they differed from him. Let these people say, then, that their Church is now better and that they do not have such colleagues as Cyprian had within that very unity. Let those who wish believe them, and against those evils which strike the face of men who dissemble their morals let them close their eyes;
I, however, will call them back to those very former times of unity, and will ask of them whether, when that so great man, Cyprian, bishop of the Church of Carthage, groaned over so wicked a college with the testimony of a free voice, even in those writings which would profit posterity, the Church of Christ existed or did not exist. If it existed, I ask how Cyprian and others like him fulfilled what the Apostle enjoined:
If anyone is called a brother yet is a fornicator, or an idolater, or covetous, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber — with such a one not even to take food together — when together with these covetous and rapacious men, who wished to have silver in abundance while brothers hungered in the Church, who seized estates by treacherous frauds, who increased their usury with multiplying interest, they ate the bread of the Lord and drank the cup of the Lord. Or are these perhaps small crimes and to be reckoned as trifling? For these people are accustomed to say even this, weighing such things not on the equal scale of the divine Scriptures, but on the deceitful scale of their own customs. For whatever wickedness and iniquity intoxicates the multitude loses the truth of examination.