For if he says that these things are rightly done to the schismatics whom three hundred and ten Donatist bishops condemned, then let them not murmur when they suffer anything — although they have never suffered such things — they whom we convict of having made schism from the unity of Christ, not by the authority of three hundred and ten, but of the whole world. But if he says that what Salvius suffered was trivial, I ask whether, if an emperor were to compel some Donatist bishop to dance, and threaten him with beasts and fires if he refused, he would not rather endure those than submit to this; and whether, when he had suffered, these men would not recite him among the holy martyrs. Salvius therefore, with whom they danced, suffered graver things than if he had been burned alive.
For if these two things were set before any one of them — whether he would rather not dance himself but be danced around, than be burned alive — there is no doubt what they would answer that he would choose. But if he says that the Primianists obtained nothing else from the proconsul
except that Salvius should be driven from the basilica by means of the Abitinians, but that these latter did of their own accord whatever they afterwards did to him cruelly and shamefully — then why does he not say to himself that in the same way the Catholics too can ask nothing else of the emperors than that these men be excluded from the basilicas which they hold under a sacrilegious name, and that the Catholics, of their own accord, with royal power and honesty preserved, punish the sacrilegious far more mildly than the Abitinians, under no imperial law and no judicial command, punished Salvius of Membressa?
These things considered, let them attend first to what they do and afterward to what they suffer, lest, when they close their eyes to their own deeds and open their eyes to their own penalties, they both suffer temporal things here in vain and, in the last judgment of God, be punished with eternal torment even for this very thing — that He admonished them in vain with such troubles in order to correct them. I do not rehearse old matters, where they deceive whomever they can; I speak briefly, I press present facts, I point with the finger: the condemned Maximianists are received back, unknown nations are accused; the baptism of the Maximianists is accepted, the baptism of the whole world is blown away.
Behold the men of Assuras, behold the men of Mustis, behold Praetextatus, dead not long ago, behold Felicianus, still living, behold their names entered among the condemned by the Council of Bagai in the proconsular records; by such recent and present deeds they sufficiently show what sort of men they were from the beginning. If they suffer anything for perversities and iniquities of this kind, and if they are unwilling to be corrected, let them at least not dare to boast. (Page 151, line 8, ed. Knoell.) AGAINST THE LETTER OF PARMENIAN, THREE BOOKS.
In certain books against the letter of Parmenian — the Donatist bishop of Carthage and successor of Donatus — a new question is treated and resolved: whether, in the unity of these same men and in the communion of the sacraments, the evil contaminate the good; and it is disputed how they do not contaminate them, for the sake of the Church spread throughout the whole world, against which, by calumny, they made schism. In the third book of these, when it was being discussed how one should understand what the apostle says: 'Remove the evil from among your own selves,' that which I said —
— namely, that each person should remove the evil from himself — is not to be understood in that way, but rather in this way: that the evil man should be removed from among good men, which is done through ecclesiastical discipline, as the Greek language indicates, where it is written without ambiguity, so that it be understood as 'the evil man,' not 'this evil thing' — although even according to that latter understanding I did answer Parmenian. This work begins thus: 'Many things indeed have I said elsewhere against the Donatists.'