Or is there perhaps some special worthiness in being condemned by the three hundred and ten sitting in council at Bagai, so that therefore whoever comes to them from the whole world is re-baptized, because the whole world has not deserved that distinction of being condemned by the Council of Bagai? What then? Of those baptized by Maximianus and the rest of his associates who did not return to the communion of Primianus, whoever come, are they re-baptized, or are they spared? If they are re-baptized, the dignity of Bagai is violated—for in it the baptizers of these very men were also condemned;
but if they are spared, then these men must be asked to convene again at the town of Bagai, and, if perhaps that number of three hundred and ten has now been consecrated, to convene an equal number and there pronounce sentence against the whole world, just as they pronounced it against the Maximianists—so that, when they wish to re-baptize someone coming from some part of the world, he may defend himself by an equal privilege, asserting that he ought to be spared just as the one is spared whom a Maximianist baptizes, because now not the Maximianists alone, but even the whole world has deserved to be condemned by the Council of Bagai.
Then they will free themselves from so great an odium, so that, when they begin no longer to re-baptize those baptized in the Church which is established throughout all lands, if anyone raises with them the question why they no longer do what they formerly did, they may answer: 'When we did these things, we had not yet condemned the whole world by the Council of Bagai; but now, upon request, we have mercifully granted that we condemn them by such a council as that by which we condemned the Maximianists, whose baptism we do not repeat.' What great thing, then, what difficult thing is it to bestow upon all nations so great a distinction of condemnation? Or is it permitted to repeat the baptism of the whole world, and not permitted to repeat the condemnation of the whole world? On this score too let them be at ease;
we do not find by what council they have condemned so many nations and provinces. They condemned a certain few in Africa, by whom they were overcome in the judgment of the whole world, nor did they afterwards dare to condemn the judges before whom they were overcome. For what would be more shameless, what more insane? Much less could they condemn those established even in the other parts of the earth, who chose to trust such ecclesiastical judges rather than defeated litigants.
And yet the baptism of the Maximianists, whom the three hundred and ten Donatists condemned in the Council of Bagai, is acknowledged, accepted, admitted; but the baptism of the whole world—through which Christ's inheritance has been so displayed as it was promised, in which these very men themselves were but a few years ago, which they could condemn by no right, and which they condemned by not even any perversity of a council—is disapproved, blown away, repeated. O holy condemnation, which the Maximianists deserved! And O toilsome innocence of the nations, which among these men has for this reason lost the Christian name, because it could not find such a place of condemnation!
But if only those coming from the Maximianists are not re-baptized who return together with their own baptizers—as those who returned with Praetextatus and Felicianus—then first let them see how, in the case of the baptism of the same schism, given equally outside their communion, they confirm it in some and blow it away in others, in part honor it and in part violate it. For where they violate it, they become guilty; but where they confirm it, they are found to be witnesses of their own guilt. For if they were afterwards so to confirm it as now to cease from violating it, it would be called not discrepancy but correction; but when in certain cases they disapprove what in others they approve, in the former they are accused, in the latter they give testimony against themselves.
For I ask: why do you not baptize those whom Felicianus baptized in the schism of Maximianus? Is it because they received the baptism of Christ, or because they received that of Felicianus? If because it is Felicianus's, he gave it among the Maximianists as a condemned man, he gave it outside, beyond your communion; this is that same baptism as that of Salvius of Membressa and of others of that sort. But if because it is Christ's, then Felicianus among the people of Musti avails more with you for the baptism of Christ than does Christ himself in all lands; the man sitting at your side, who came from one condemned by you, avails more with you for the baptism of Christ than He who sits at the right hand of the Father, who came from the Cross for you.
因為我要問：你們為何不給那些費利奇安努斯在馬克西米安努斯的裂教中所施洗的人施洗？是因為他們領受了基督的洗禮，還是因為他們領受了費利奇安努斯的洗禮？若因為是費利奇安努斯的，那他是作為一個被定罪之人、在馬克西米安派中間施行的，是在外面、在你們共融之外施行的；這洗禮與門布雷薩的薩爾維烏斯（Salvius of Membressa）以及其他這類人的洗禮無異。但若因為是基督的，那麼在你們看來，費利奇安努斯在穆斯提（Musti）人中間、就基督的洗禮而言，比基督自己在萬地更為有效；在你們看來，坐在你們身旁、出自一個被你們定罪之人的，就基督的洗禮而言，比那坐在父右邊、為你們從十字架而來的祂更為有效。
In a very few cases the baptism of Christ is spared, lest Felicianus be offended, and it is not spared, lest Christ himself be blown away in so many thousands of the nations. But the blindness of men is incredible, and I altogether know not how it could be believed that there is in men so great a perversity, were it not laid bare by the proof of their own words and deeds that they hold the eyes of the heart so closed that, when they cite the testimonies of Holy Scripture, they do not observe in the deeds of the prophets how the words of the prophets are to be understood. Jeremiah said, 'What has the chaff to do with the wheat?' Would he himself withdraw from the chaff of his own people, among whom he was saying such great truths? Isaiah said, 'Depart, depart, go out thence, and touch not the unclean thing.'
Why did he himself, in the midst of that people, in one assembly together with them, touch the uncleanness which he so gravely reproved? Let them read how great and how vehemently and truthfully he spoke against the wicked of his own people, from whom nevertheless he separated himself by no bodily severance. David said, 'I have not sat in the assembly of vanity, and I will not enter in with them that work iniquity. I have hated the congregation of the wicked, and I will not sit with the ungodly.' Let them read what manner of men he himself tolerated in his times among that people—he who paid such honor to the mystic sacrament of the anointing that he despised it not even in the most wicked Saul, nay, venerated it so much that he could not possibly have done so more.
Would they not, if we set their words against their deeds, answer us: 'We indeed had no fellowship at all in our heart with such men, nor did we touch the unclean thing where contact can defile—that is, by consent and the approval of conscience we withdrew and went out from them, because not only did we not do such things, but we did not even keep silence toward those who did'? But these seditious and insane men, who seek defenses for their cuttings-off from the oracles of the prophets, it remains only that with mad impiety they should, from the prophetic words, arraign the morals of the prophets. Or will they say this, that in those times it was not permitted for the just to withdraw from a wicked people, but in these times it is permitted?
What could be said more perversely—that in that time the good ought not to have been bodily separated from the wicked, when many sacraments were commanded to be observed bodily, but that now a bodily separation is necessary, when those things are already observed spiritually? Woe to the blind leaders and the blind followers! Do they not fear, in saying these things, lest perhaps throughout so great a breadth of the whole world, over which the faith and name of Christ is spread abroad, some just men in some part of the earth most remote from the African regions had already done this before these men separated themselves—and these men were still living in the contagion of that uncleanness which those others had fled?
For who assures them, who makes them secure—if such a separation from the wicked ought to be made—that before it was made by these men, it was never made so far away that the Africans were entirely ignorant of it, just as in the farthest lands of those parts the party of Donatus is utterly unknown? Perhaps they say that what they did not know could not harm them. So then, neither can what was done in Africa harm those lands which are ignorant of it, even if these men were telling the truth about the crimes of the Africans, which they falsely allege. But if they say that it could not have been hidden from them, if it happened, then let them now say how many schisms have arisen through all the parts of the earth. It is too much that I ask:
in Africa itself let the Carthaginian Donatists, or whoever are in the vicinity of Carthage, say how many parties have been formed throughout Numidia and Mauretania out of the very party of Donatus. Surely they ought to know the causes of all these, lest perhaps some just men in their own regions avoided the society and assembly of the wicked and went out thence, lest they should touch the unclean thing, lest they should enter in with them that work iniquity—lest perhaps these men, several years ago now, in some corner of Numidia or Mauretania, remained as chaff while the wheat separated itself, and they know it not.
But from what source are they secure, except that they hold it certain that those could not have been good who separated themselves from the unity of the communion of Donatus, which is spread throughout all Africa—because, if they endured certain wicked men in their own vicinity whom they could not point out to the rest, they ought rather to have tolerated them than to divide themselves from so many innocent men, to whom they could not prove the sins of others, even if they themselves knew them perfectly well? Why, then, is this innocence not granted to the whole world, among so great a multitude and breadth of nations wherever the inheritance of Christ extends—so that it may be certain and secure that those who call themselves good and sever themselves from the unity of the whole earth thereby demonstrate what manner of men they are?
For they seem righteous to themselves and despise others, and therefore they do not sing the new song, because they are lifted up out of the pride of the old man. For they are separated from that communion to which it was said, 'Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.' But if they were truly righteous, they would also be humble; and if they were humble, then even if they endured truly wicked men in the assembly of their own vicinity, whom they were not able to expel from the unity of Christ, they would choose to tolerate them out of the charity of Christ. But how can they hold a just judgment concerning those very men whom they charge with wickedness in their own vicinity, when with rash blindness they accuse men utterly unknown, set so far away from themselves?
For whether they have really known to be wicked either their own fellow-citizens or their neighbors whom they charge, is uncertain to the whole world; but that they are separated with rash blindness from those whose life, being set far away, they cannot know, is certain to the whole world; and that, with the praise of patience, known wicked men are tolerated lest unknown good men be condemned, is certain to the whole world. Wherefore the whole world securely judges that those are not good who divide themselves from the whole world in whatever part of the earth. Finally, if the prophets admonished their descendants to separate themselves bodily from the chaff before the time of the last winnowing, and by such separation to beware of touching the unclean thing and not to enter in with them that work iniquity, why did the Apostle Paul not do this?
Or were they not chaff who preached Christ not out of truth but out of envy? Or were they not unclean who did not preach the gospel chastely, whom he testifies to have been in the Church of that time, and whose most excellent charity, bearing all things, later men too have imitated? Or is not avarice uncleanness, which Cyprian did not touch in his heart, and yet lived most peacefully among avaricious colleagues? He had, no doubt, grown deaf to the words of the psalms, so as to sit in the assembly of vanity and enter in with them that work iniquity, so as not to hate the congregation of the malignant and to sit with the ungodly! Or was there not an assembly of vanity in those who, while their brethren in the Church were hungering, desired to shine with most lavish silver?
Or were they not workers of iniquity who seized estates by treacherous frauds? Or were they not most wicked and ungodly who by multiplying interest increased their usury? But he indeed washed his hands with the innocent and encompassed the altar of the Lord. For this reason he tolerated the harmful, lest he should forsake the innocent with whom he washed his hands, because he loved the beauty of the house of the Lord, which beauty was in the honorable vessels. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of clay; and some indeed are unto honor, but others unto dishonor.
And he cleansed himself from such things, that he too might be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, useful to the Lord, prepared unto every good work, and did not separate himself from the great house on account of the vessels that were unto dishonor, but, while reproving them, he tolerated in the unity of that house those from whom, by not imitating them, he cleansed himself. But Parmenianus knows how to set down the words of the prophet, who says: 'I have not sat in the assembly of vanity, and I will not enter in with them that work iniquity. I have hated the congregation of the wicked. I will wash my hands among the innocent, and I will encompass the altar of the Lord, that I may hear the voice of praise and tell of all thy wondrous works. O Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place of the tabernacle of thy glory.'
'Take not away my soul together with sinners, nor my life with men of blood, in whose hands are iniquities; their right hand is filled with bribes.' Parmenianus knows how to set these words down, and cares not to observe how these words are served without any sacrilege of nefarious division. For the beauty of the house and the place of the tabernacle of God's glory is in the vessels—as I said, not in all, which nevertheless are in one great house, but in those which are unto honor, sanctified, useful to the Lord, ever prepared unto every good work.
Among these, whoever has loved the beauty of the house of God and the place of the tabernacle of his glory, tolerates those things which are unto dishonor, and does not on their account leave the house, lest he himself become not a vessel unto dishonor—which is nevertheless tolerated in the house—but dung, which is cast out of the house; and, on account of that very temporal gathering with the wicked in one house, he prays, saying: 'Take not away my soul together with sinners, nor my life with men of blood, in whose hands are iniquities; their right hand is filled with bribes'—praying this precisely that he may not perish together with those with whom charity bids him to live together, whose sacrifice he sent before, saying: 'O Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place of the tabernacle of thy glory.'
'Because I have loved the beauty of thy house, and on account of that very love I tolerate the vessels that are unto dishonor—because charity beareth all things—take not away my soul together with them.' Does not the voice of those appear in these words, who were prophesied through Ezekiel to groan and mourn on account of the iniquities of the people which were done in the midst of them, and who, because they were vessels unto honor, deserved to receive a special mark, so that, when all those others began to be laid waste and destroyed, God might not destroy their souls together with the sinners?
But these unhappy men, who presume that they have been purged from the assembly of all the wicked as wheat from chaff, have through this vanity prejudged themselves, so that in the peoples over whom they preside they dare not rebuke the most iniquitous and shameful crowds that they may be corrected, lest thereby they be compelled to confess that they are wicked, and it be said to them: 'Surely you are speaking to purged wheat:
why do you confess by these words that so much chaff has been mingled into it?' And therefore, because they are not righteous, they do not amend and reprove in mercy, but with the oil of flattery they anoint the heads of those over whom they themselves wish to be heads—since they are unwilling to be under the one Head which is in heaven, in the unity of the body which is throughout all the earth—so that it may deservedly be said to their peoples: 'They that call you happy lead you into error, and disturb the paths of your feet.' He therefore who does not wish to sit in the assembly of vanity, let him not vanish away with the puffing of pride while he seeks assemblies of the righteous separated from the unity of the whole world, which he cannot find.
For the righteous, throughout the universal city which cannot be hidden because it is set upon a mountain—that mountain of Daniel, I mean, into which that stone cut without hands grew and filled the whole earth—throughout, therefore, that whole city diffused over the whole world, the righteous groan and mourn on account of the iniquities which are done in the midst of them. Let him therefore not seek separated righteous men, but rather let him groan in concord together with them in the temporal mixture with the wicked. For he will not sit in the assembly of vanity, because he will sit where his conversation is; and he will hear the Apostle saying, 'Our conversation is in heaven.' There he will not be with the workers of iniquity; there he will not endure the congregation of the wicked; there he will not sit with the ungodly.
Let him dwell in such hope that he may at some time deserve to attain to the reality of which he now has hope. For we have not yet risen again as Christ has, nor do we yet sit with him in the heavenly places; and yet, because he has given us such a hope and through that very hope we already in a certain manner have our conversation there, the Apostle says: 'If then ye be risen with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.'
In that life of ours, which is hid with Christ in God, we do not sit in the assembly of vanity, because, as the same Apostle says, 'he hath raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places'—but in hope, not yet in reality. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. This patience these wretched men have lost, and by hastening to separate themselves before the time as though from the chaff, they have shown themselves to be the lightest chaff carried off from the threshing-floor by the wind. Let us therefore hold what Wisdom says: 'But he that heareth me shall dwell in hope, and shall rest secure without fear from all evil.'
While therefore we dwell in hope, thinking not of what we are but of what we shall be—because we are indeed the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be, since when it shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is—dwelling in such hope, because this dwelling of the mind has no wicked men, we endure neither assemblies of vanity, nor workers of iniquity, nor the unjust, nor the ungodly;
and yet we endure them not in hope, but in the reality which is seen, in the Catholic congregation diffused throughout the whole world, until iniquity pass away, until in the time of harvest the tares be gathered, until by the final winnowing-fork the chaff be separated from the wheat, until the good fish be selected on the shore from the bad fish with which they were gathered together within the same nets, until the goats be at the last set apart on the left from the sheep, with which they fed so long under one shepherd in the same pastures. There is therefore no security of unity except in the Church declared from the promises of God, which, being set upon a mountain as has been said, cannot be hidden, and therefore must needs be known in all the parts of the earth.
Let us hold it unshaken and firm that no good men can divide themselves from her—that is, that no good men, even if they endure wicked men known to them, wherever they dwell, can on their account separate themselves by the rash sacrilege of schism from good men set far off and unknown; so that, in whatever part of the earth these things either have been done or are being done or shall be done, the very fact that the other parts of the earth, set far off and ignorant both whether they were done and why they were done, yet remaining with the whole world in the bond of unity, is itself the firm security—that none could have done this except those made frenzied by the swelling of pride, or maddened by the venom of envy, or corrupted by worldly convenience, or perverted by carnal fear.
By all which causes it comes to pass that either good men are defamed by false accusations, or false things are rashly believed about good men, or even that the wicked—who, being tolerated for the bond of unity, do no harm to the good—are most perversely fled from, the peace of the good being torn apart, while no sparing is shown to the vexation of the wheat, as men usurp for themselves before the harvest what the angels are to do in the harvest. Since these things are so, sacrilegious schisms and impious heresies even dare, if they are admonished by any scourge that they may correct themselves, to reckon the penalties of their own fury even among martyrdoms.
Reckoning it thus, Parmenianus too, at the end of his letter, exhorts Tychonius to remain in the party of Donatus and to endure persecutions, saying that he ought not to join himself by his own will to those to whom he was not joined when persecution compelled it; and he also brings forward the testimony of the scripture which says: 'Woe to them who have lost endurance and have turned aside into crooked ways! And what will they do when the Lord shall begin to look upon them?'—setting forth, after his manner, all things from the divine books against his very self.
For who have lost endurance, if not those who were unwilling, for the peace of Christ, to tolerate the men whom they could not convict of the crimes they charged, so that, thinking too late afterwards that their own party ought not to be split into many fragments, they tolerated even the most manifest sacrilegious persons — whom they themselves had condemned — when these were received back again, for the false peace of Donatus? And now let them at last, at long last, recognize and correct what they have learned they did impiously — learned at least from what they suffered at the hands of Maximianus. But of course they blush to be corrected by the most manifest arguments, because they resisted the emperors' commands, lest, once corrected, they should seem to have lost the very things which they complain of having endured. As if it were not better that they lose those things than that they themselves perish.
For if not yielding to a commanding emperor has some shadow — however false and deceptive — yet some image of fortitude, what enticement even of human praise is there in contradicting the most manifest truth? Why with closed eyes do they bring forward so many testimonies from the Scriptures, which, when rightly understood and turned against themselves, they reject, and which, even if taken according to their own understanding, nonetheless convict them of their perversity? Is it not written: 'Contradict not the truth in any way'? And whom does one contradict except the truth, when one resists even a king who commands something out of the truth? Yet the man who is king — what he threatens or what he punishes is troublesome only for a time;
not so that King who is also called the Truth, who now too cries out to them through the prophet: 'In vain have I struck your children; they received not discipline'; who therefore now, through human powers, mercifully admonishes them, lest at the end He so take vengeance that the proud can no longer boast of their own condemnation. For under the vengeance of kings human obstinacy can wish to be praised under the false name of virtue; but to be burned up in eternal fires neither will be, nor will be called, fortitude.
For in that day there will be none who anoint the head with the oil of flattery, or, deceived by empty falsehood, dream up crowns for the condemned, saying 'Well done, well done!' and swearing by the grey hairs of men who had no sound head, and by the military boots of men who did not know the way of peace. Turning such crowds away from the unity of Christ and desiring to convert them to their own name, these men meanwhile dare to compare the temporal punishments of their schism to the sufferings of the martyrs, so that the birthday-feasts of their own penalties may be celebrated for them by a great gathering of frenzied men — among whose number are those who, even with no one persecuting, of their own accord hurl themselves headlong down the precipices of the mountains, so as to consume a bad life by a worse death. In that day there will be no foolish crowds to whom it is said:
'We are the righteous who suffer persecution' — and thus to the blind a reprobate stone is sold in place of a precious gem, that is, carnal hardness in place of spiritual patience. There will be none who recite at the altars the names of the leaders of their fury — whether those they divided off from the unity of Christ, or those they set up under the name of Christ against the Church of Christ. For these are the prices which these men, in order to obtain them, while they wish to have something to sell, stir up against themselves the severity of the powers through their spirited perversity; nor do those who are seduced by them and think them righteous on this account — because they pay penalties for iniquity — return to their heart and consider why they suffer what they glory in suffering.
For how little it would take that they should notice a little that Parmenian says such things to Tychonius about enduring persecutions and the glory of endurance — the very sort of things that all heretics say, against whom, to restrain or punish them, similar commands of kings are issued; the very sort of things that certainly even Salvius now says to his people of Membressa, on whom the Abitinians inflicted so many blows and insults — the Abitinians through whom these men had earned that he should be driven from his church, so that they tied even the carcasses of dead dogs to his neck, and finally made him dance with them to shameful cries and songs. What sort of sermon do we suppose he delivered, after he had endured such things, to his own people whom in their misery he had deceived, that they should build themselves another basilica?
How much he said about his own righteousness, for which he had deserved to endure such things — persuading himself that he was holy because he had suffered, and that they were utterly wicked because they had done it! The ancient cruelty of the Tuscan tyrants is recalled, that they used to join dead bodies to living ones — but human to human; that canine bodies, however, were joined to human ones, and this to episcopal limbs — I do not know whether anyone recalls ever having heard or read of such a thing. It is known to all that frivolous and shameful dances are wont to be restrained by bishops; who ever recalls that the men whom bishops sought for their aid danced together with bishops? Or perhaps Salvius was not a bishop at that time — since his condemnation is recited in the sentence of the Council of Bagai? What of it?
If he too were afterwards reconciled to Primianus — just as Felicianus was reconciled to him, though condemned by the truthful mouth of that same plenary council, as their very words are recited there — would he then be a bishop, or would he perhaps not be admitted, on the grounds that the sacrilege of schism, whomever it has defiled, can be cleansed (as Felicianus could be), but that the man whom dead dogs hung about his neck have made unclean cannot be expiated? I should like to know what they say to these things — so manifest, so public, so recent — who charge against us their own ancient calumnies as though they were our crimes. If any one of them thinks that I am boasting falsehoods, what great thing is it, what difficulty, that, taking care for his own soul, he should go to Membressa, inquire whether these things were done, and defend it, if he can?