Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 17

BOOK ONE. When Gaudentius, the Donatist bishop of Thamugadi, was threatening to burn himself, together with certain lost men joined to him, in the church, and when Dulcitius—a man of distinction, tribune and notary, to whom the most pious emperor had enjoined the execution of his laws with the care of accomplishing unity—was dealing, as was fitting, gently with the raging men, and had first sent peaceful letters to the same Gaudentius, Gaudentius wrote back two epistles: one briefer, and, as he indicates, hastily composed for the messengers who were in haste; the other, however, more lengthy, in which he judges that he had answered more diligently according to the Scriptures. Thus, then, by the Lord's help I have set myself to refute his writings, so that even those who are slower in wit may not doubt that I have answered everything.

For first I will set down his words, then I will subjoin ours—not in the manner in which I did when I answered the letters of Petilianus. For there, in each several place, when his words are inserted, it is put 'Petilianus said,' and when my words are given, 'Augustine answered.' Whence he has slandered me, as though I had lied, saying that he never disputed with me face to face; as though for that reason he did not say what he wrote, because I did not hear this in his words but read it in his letters, or as though I therefore did not answer, because I did not speak in his presence, but answered his writings in turn by writing. What are we to do with men who have such a heart, or who suppose that those to whom they wish their writings to become known have such a heart?

But let us satisfy even such men here, and, when we set down the words of Gaudentius, let us not say 'Gaudentius said,' but 'the words of the epistle'; and when we answer, let us not say 'Augustine answered,' but 'this reply.' Thus, then, let us begin to refute the earlier and briefer epistle of Gaudentius. Words of the epistle: To the honorable Dulcitius, tribune and notary, and—if you so wish—much to be desired by us, Gaudentius, bishop. To these the reply: We ought not to discuss even these matters, lest we linger, as it were, over superfluous things, since there are necessary passages which compel us to speak somewhat longer. Words of the epistle: I have received the writings of your religiousness through those whom it is manifest to be dear to all both by their character and by their conduct.

To these the reply: Neither will I discuss how you said 'your religiousness' to a man whom you rather think irreligious. You have indeed rendered honor, as you deemed it should be rendered, because he treated you more honorably in the letters which he addressed to you than a Catholic ought to treat a heretic, thinking that your mind could be made healthy by such conversation. Words of the epistle: In which, he says, so many things were said by your worthiness which for now meanwhile I pass over in silence. But since the keenness of your wit less perceived that you were able to assert us, in that same writing, to be neither full of the innocent nor guilty. To these the reply: How did he not assert them guilty, whom he said were badly gathered together?

How did he not assert him guilty, in that he said that, with you as leader, the souls of the wretched would perish by a wicked end, adding that you ought to understand what, both in this world by odium and in that final and desperate judgment by punishment, could await you? How did he not assert him guilty, whom, as best he could, he exhorted that, following the example of others to be imitated, with the error of your former heresy dismissed, you should betake yourself to the one and true faith of God? Nevertheless, we have undertaken not to defend the words of the tribune, but to refute the heretic. If, then, this man of ours, as a layman and a soldier, said anything too incautiously, who would not pardon him? Who would contend that a prejudgment ought to be made against the Catholic Church on account of his words?

Do you consider more carefully what you say, you whom the party of Donatus, in our conference which was held at Carthage, put forward—joined to six others—even as the defender of their division. Words of the epistle: But if, he says, you consider us criminals, the society deserving of condemnation is to be fled by you. To these the reply: Plainly the society of criminals is to be fled, but that of the corrected is not to be spurned. That, then, we so wholesomely avoid, as we wish, choose, and urge this with mercy. Words of the epistle: But if, he says, you think us innocent—which you yourself also said—we rejoice to endure persecutors, established as we are in the faith of Christ. To these the reply:

I have considered the letters given by the tribune to you, and nowhere in them have I read that he called you innocent; but rather that he had heard from others, or had learned, that you were prudent. And in the holy Scriptures not only the good, but also the evil are wont to be called so. For there even the serpent, the deceiver of man, received this name. For what some have interpreted as 'the wisest of all beasts,' the Greek codices rather have 'the most prudent,' from which that Scripture was translated into the Latin tongue. But if it is to be thought that they were called innocent by the tribune, whom he said were being held by you for their destruction against their will—what wonder is it, if he believed that to happen there also, which he knew to have happened in other places?

There is therefore no ground on which you may rejoice that you suffer persecution, since you cannot find any way to prove yourself innocent. But far be it that this should be called a persecution of men, since it is rather, for the deliverance of men, a persecution of vices, such as even the diligence of physicians works upon the sick. Yet even if you were innocent, you would from this be made guilty, because you desire to kill the innocent. For those who try to prove themselves innocent, and yet are unwilling to spare their own life, what else are they but convicted of killing the innocent? The words of the letter: 'But in this Church,' he says, 'in which the name of God and of Christ, His own—as you yourself have also said—has ever been in truth frequented, we either remain alive, so long as it shall please God, or, as is fitting.'

'It is God's household; within the Lord's camp we bring our life to its end'—namely on this condition, that only if force be applied, then it can come about. For no one is so mad as to hasten to death with none driving him. To these things the reply: Neither is it read in the tribune's letters that the name of God was by you invoked in truth, although he did say 'invoked.' And yet even had he said it, this could be understood not to your glory but to your punishment. For of the impious Gentiles too the Apostle said: those who hold the truth in unrighteousness—as you also do, who hold the truth of the divine baptism in the unrighteousness of human error. Wherefore, when we correct your unrighteousness, we ought by no means to rescind the truth of that sacrament.

You indeed profess plainly, O innocent man, though in other words, that you and yours are to perish together with the Church. For when you say 'in the Church,' what else do you wish to be understood but 'together with the Church,' since you are preparing to do this by fire? This is the innocence of the party of Donatus, that you should do this while adding your own deaths—the very thing which even at Carthage, to bring us into hatred, you are asserted to have done concerning the basilicas that were yours, as you were able and with whom you were able, but without your own deaths. For who would not believe that you did in zeal what you are now arranging to do even by dying? But if you did not do that, this at least is more frenzied which you are preparing to do. But you said: 'if force be applied,' and you added:

'For no one is so mad as to hasten to death with none driving him': how much madder, then, is he who, when he is driven toward life, hastens to death! The words of the letter: 'But those who are with us,' he says, 'I call God to witness, and all His sacraments, that I exhorted and most earnestly persuaded them, that whoever had the will to depart might safely and publicly declare it. For neither can we hold back against their will those whom we have learned that none is to be compelled to the faith of God.' To these things the reply: But why do you not most openly profess yourself, if not a detainer of the unwilling, yet an exhorter to a good work, if what you are about to do is good?

Or perhaps you yourself understand how evil it is, and threaten that you will do it rather to terrify than to fulfill it—being either faithless by lying, or cruel by telling the truth? The words of the letter: (and in another hand:) 'I wish you well and flourishing in the affairs of the state, and withdrawn from the harassment of Christians.' To these things the reply: We too can wish him both safe and flourishing in the affairs of the state, but not at rest from the correction of heretics. The words of the later letter: 'To the honorable Dulcitius, to be desired with all affection, Gaudentius the bishop.' To these things the reply: If you desire the man with all affection, why do you refuse to hold with him the unity of Christ?

Or, as if repaying evil for evil to him whom you think your persecutor, do you desire to rebaptize him? The words of the letter: 'They are wont,' he says, 'known to one another by report alone, to long either to exchange words when their gaze is at last mutually cast upon each other, or at least, though unknown, not to shrink from each other's presence. But your judgment—that finding me absent you congratulated yourself, and that because I have returned you are grieved—you have made known by letter.' To these things the reply: Not all who are known to one another by report alone wish to see each other, but only those whom that very report commends well. But it is truly a wonder what has happened to you: that you should call desirable one from whom you complain you are suffering persecution, while he who persecutes you would rather you were absent, and does not wish to find the one whom he persecutes.

But whence this, save that he preferred you to be understood rather as the persecutor of those whose salvation in Christ he believed to be hindered by your presence? The words of the letter: 'But since on the previous day,' he says, 'lest I should have kept silence by a reply of letters, on account of the delay of those carrying them, I made known certain things briefly and cursorily, now I must answer to the writings of your worthiness with the words of the sacrosanct divine law. The Lord says: You shall not slay the innocent and just, and by acquittal you shall not acquit the guilty. It is certain, therefore, that in the judgment of God they are bound by equal crime and equal guilt, both he who has acquitted the guilty and he who has slain the innocent. If before communion the one named by you, Gabinius, or the others faithless in that evil fall were guilty—'

'—being partners in it, according to the words of God they ought by no means to have been acquitted. But if they were received as though innocent or holy, why, while they remain in that faith on the ground of which you receive them as holy, do you slay the innocent?' To these things the reply: You speak enviously and falsely. For he to whom you speak did not receive such a command that you should be slain, but that you should be corrected; and if you refuse, then, lest you hinder the correction of others, you shall be sent into exile. But if this ought not to be done by the just to the unjust, why did you even falsely wish to glory, in our conference, over the exile of Caecilian, saying that he was sent into exile at the urging of your elders by the emperor Constantine?

But this tribune to whom you write, to whom the care of the laws enacted for unity has been entrusted, so much desires that you should live that he fears lest you should kill yourself. Behold, set before your eyes both him and yourself! He wishes you to live in the peace of Christ; you seek to slay yourself in the party of Donatus: recognize which of you is your own persecutor. But Gabinius, now ours, who was once yours, and very many others who from among you have crossed over to us upon considering the Catholic truth—let them not therefore seem to you not to have been cleansed from your contagion, because they were not by us rebaptized.

For those who have not yet been baptized are, in the Catholic Church, washed from all sins by the laver of regeneration; but in those who receive this sacrament outside not unto help but unto judgment—since we do not violate the royal mark even in a deserter—there comes to pass that which is written: charity covers a multitude of sins. Behold how those who ought not to be baptized can be cleansed by the very charity of Catholic unity, so that there begins not to be within them what was also within them without, but there begins to profit them within what was harming them without.

Not therefore do we receive from you people as though holy—for by crossing over to us they are sanctified, who by remaining among you can in no way be holy—nor do we slay you as innocent, whom we wish to live even though guilty. But you, who rightly recall the testimony of the divine voice and cast it up to us, that God said: You shall not slay the innocent and just—if you are innocent and just, why do you slay yourself? We do not call you innocent and just, and yet we do not wish you to be slain: you count yourself innocent and just, and yet you spare not the innocent and just. Surely you yourself said: in the judgment of God they are bound by equal crime and equal guilt, both he who has acquitted the guilty and he who has slain the innocent. Why then have you acquitted Felician the Maximianist, who was guilty?

Why do you slay the innocent, and yourself as well? But we neither acquit the guilty—rather, that he may deserve to be acquitted, we first desire that he be corrected—nor do we judge you innocent, whether you spare yourself or slay yourself, if you remain in the party of Donatus. For however much you glory in innocence, by slaying yourself, an innocent, you cannot be innocent—unless perhaps you answer me and say: 'When I slay myself, I do not slay an innocent, since by the very will with which I resolve to kill myself I am made guilty in soul before I slay the body.' If you say this, you speak the truth, and by accusing yourself in wondrous ways you defend yourself.

For when you show that in slaying yourself you first become guilty by your very intention, then beyond doubt, once the deed is perpetrated, no one will convict you of having slain an innocent. By this reasoning, therefore, it is gathered that, although many innocent people are slain by others, no innocent person is slain by himself. For by that very thought with which he contrives to slay himself, he is first stripped of innocence, so that, when he slays himself, he dies not innocent. This would befall you if, before you prepared to slay yourself, you were innocent. But now, since even before that you were already, as a heretic, not innocent, it will not be, if you slay yourself, the beginning of your iniquity, but its increase. The words of the letter:

'For concerning holy Emeritus of Caesarea,' he says, 'a false report according to his merit has reached us. But if it were so, hear the Apostle saying: If some of them have fallen away from the faith, has their unbelief made void the faith of God? God forbid.' To these things the reply: Concerning Emeritus of Caesarea, what you feared to say must be said. A false report was indeed bruited about him, that he had become a Catholic; but just as you heard this, so you could have known all that was done. Why then did you wish to keep silent the praises of your fellow-bishop, whose name has been cast up to you for an example? Surely, if he did anything worthy of praise in so great a crisis, it ought by no means to have been passed over by you in silence.

But since, so that we may not believe you could envy his praises, why then did you keep silent, unless because you feared to blush on his account? Emeritus, then, came to Caesarea, we being placed and present there. But he came not seized by anyone's cunning, not led by another's power, but stirred by his own will he wished to see us. We saw him; we came together to the Catholic Church; a very great multitude was present: he could say nothing in his own or your defense, he refused to communicate, being put off he persisted, being convicted he fell dumb, being unharmed he withdrew. What could have been done more gently for our mildness, what more invincible for the truth of the Catholic Church, what more wholesome for your correction, if you were wise?

For since he had not come to us of his own accord except to say something against us on your behalf, assuredly he would have said it, had he found anything to say. For whatever things he had prepared to say as to why he came, by the help of the Lord's mercy they were refuted beforehand by our forestalling, before they were brought forth by his circumvention. And surely, if you think he could have answered but was unwilling, read what was transacted with him, and answer yourself. If Emeritus had crossed over into Catholic peace, you would say that he had consented not to the light of truth by divine compassion, but had yielded to the weight of persecution through human weakness. If, finally, he had been brought captive and unwilling, you would boast, according to your own opinion, that he had kept silence not from lack of what to answer, but from a plan of escaping.

But now, since indeed he came of his own accord, assuredly it was not his tongue but his cause that failed him in that he was silent; and that he was unwilling to cross over into Catholic unity, confusion made his proud soul most obstinate. But this, as much as it profited toward his own ruin and punishment, so much did it profit toward the confirmation and salvation of others. For if they had seen Emeritus communicating with us, they would have suspected a man in fear; but when they saw him both remaining in the party of Donatus and yet keeping silence against the Catholic faith, it appeared to them the more that by keeping silent against his own people he was crying out on our behalf. Or was not that Emeritus, when he stood with sound and free voice and mouth, a fit witness for our cause against you—that Emeritus, I say, both an enemy and mute?

But you thought you had well consoled your people by apostolic authority, forsooth. Not on account of Emeritus, who could do no more for you than that, not finding what to speak on your behalf, he nevertheless did not depart from you—but on account of others, who, having forsaken your error, are changed for the better and joined into the Catholic society—you mentioned that the Apostle therefore said: If some of them have fallen away from the faith, has their unbelief made void the faith of God? God forbid. In very truth this remains: that those who have believed God are said to have fallen away from the faith, and those who believe men are said to hold the faith. In your seed shall all nations be blessed, the Lord said: behold whom they believe, who from among us cross over to us.

That the peoples across the sea have perished by the sin of Caecilian—men have said this: behold whom they believe, who persist in your society. And you say that those have fallen away from the faith who have followed the faith of God, and that those hold the faith of God who have remained in the words of men. Where then is that which the Apostle straightway subjoined to this sentence cited by you: But God is truthful, and every man a liar—if those have fallen away from the faith who believe what God the truthful Lord has said, and those persist in the faith who believe what a lying man has said? The words of the letter: 'You persuade me to flight,' he says, 'as if from the law; but only the doer of the law is to be heard, for Paul the Apostle says:'

'Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For hear also the Lord saying that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, but the hireling, and he whose the sheep are not his own, sees the wolf coming and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.' To these things the reply: Behold how the party of Donatus understands the Gospel! Was the Apostle then not a shepherd but a 'hireling' when, lowered through the wall in a basket, he fled the hands of him who desired to seize him—and are you a shepherd, you who, the sheep whom you call the Lord's, so that they may perish in soul through error and destroy their body through frenzy, wish to ruin even along with yourself, seek to slay along with yourself, and do not hear the Shepherd and Prince of shepherds saying:

'The thief comes not except to slay and destroy'? To this have you come, you who had departed? To this have you returned, you who had fled? This is the work of a thief and a robber, not of a shepherd and a guardian. Yet even we, not compelling you, see that you were unwilling all your colleagues who fled to be understood as not shepherds but hirelings. But if the Lord's sheep were with you, either they would come with you, that they might have even you, once corrected, as their shepherd, or, leaving you, they would flee to the Shepherd.

But the hireling whom the Lord signifies, on seeing the wolf, flees not in body but in mind, when he deserts justice through fear—as your Secundus of Tigisis fled, when he feared Purpurius of Limata, who had confessed to homicide and was the more terrible, lest he should lose his primacy or episcopate. But in body even those good shepherds, the apostles, fled in persecution, nor did they therefore forsake the sheep of Christ in care and mind. If then you too were a shepherd, first you would not be on the side of the wolf; then you would obediently hear the command of your Lord, who bade His servants flee in persecutions, through the mouth of anyone whatever, even a sinner, nor would you argue against your Lord and say:

'Only the doer of the law is to be heard, for Paul the Apostle says: Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.' Why do you twist plain words to another meaning? He denied that the hearers and not doers of the law are just before God: he did not forbid them to be heard by men, when they speak the truth—lest, like you, he should speak against his own Lord, who says concerning certain persons: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not. You see how Christ commanded that others should nonetheless hear the law even through men who were hearers and preachers of the law and not doers, and should be doers of it; and you say:

'Only the doer of the law is to be heard,' and, wishing to refute as it were your persecutor, you speak against your Creator. To the sinner indeed the Lord says: Why do you declare my justifications and take up my covenant through your mouth? But for this reason: because it profits nothing to him who says and does not do what he says; but it profits him who, even through an evil man, hears good and does what he hears. Praise is indeed not comely in the mouth of a sinner, but it is comely in the life and morals of the doer, even if he has heard it from the mouth of a sinner. Therefore, however much you esteem the tribune to be a sinner and not a doer of the law, yet hear obediently—not him, but Him even through him—who says:

'If they persecute you in one city, flee to another.' Why do you stand still? Hear and flee; Christ commands this, not the tribune. Unless perhaps you answer and say: 'Christ indeed says: If they persecute you in this city, flee to another; but why should I depart from this city, when neither is this man my persecutor, nor am I a hearer of Christ?' And by this, if you remain, you are a raging wolf, and if you flee, you are a fearing wolf. And since the Bridegroom says:

'If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flocks and feed your kids in the tents of the shepherds'—even if you glory that you are a shepherd, yet, because you have gone out from the Lord's fold, you feed your own kids, not the sheep of Christ. The words of the letter: 'Then,' he says, 'what places will there be that, in this storm of persecution, may receive as into a harbor the priests, harassed on every side and to be preserved for tranquility, since the Lord has said: When they begin to persecute you in this city, flee to another [city]. Then the apostles fled in safety, because the emperor had ordered no one to be proscribed on their account.'

'But now the harborers of Christians, terrified by proscriptions and dreading dangers, not only do not receive them, but even fear to see those whom they silently venerate.' To these things the reply: This plainly I praise, that you acknowledge yourselves, but that you do not correct yourselves I grieve. For what is more manifest than this profession of yours, by which you sufficiently declare that you do not belong to the fellowship of those to whom the Lord says: If they persecute you in one city, flee to another? Surely this is what I said a little before that you could most truly answer me, if you should say: 'Neither is this man my persecutor, nor am I a hearer of Christ.' Behold, most openly you say this.

For how are you a hearer of Christ, when He promises to His hearers, that is, His followers, that, even unto the end of the age, whenever they suffer persecution, there will not be lacking cities to which they may take refuge, saying: But when they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For amen I say to you, you shall not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of Man come? But you, in this persecution which you complain of suffering, now say that places are already lacking to you, whither you might flee and where, as in a harbor, you might rest from this tempest—speaking against the promise of Christ, who says that cities will not be lacking, whither His people who suffer persecution may flee, until He come, that is, until the consummation of the age.

Since therefore He promised to His own this which you do not find, assuredly He lies, if you are His; but since He Himself does not lie, you are not His. And by this, neither is the tribune to whom you write back your persecutor, but he is the persecutor of your persecutor, that is, of your error, by which, driven, you do such things that you are of that kind of whom it is written that they suffered persecution from their very own deeds. Accordingly, if you understand what those who love you persecute in you, without doubt you will flee your own evil deeds, from which you suffer persecution, and you will be joined to those who, that they may set you free, persecute your persecutors; for they persecute nothing but your errors. The words of the letter:

'Through the Maker of all things, the Lord Christ,' he says, 'Almighty God, having fashioned man to be like God, released him to free choice. For it is written: God made man and left him in the hand of his own choice. Why is there now snatched from me by human power what God bestowed? Consider, O most excellent man, how great sacrileges are perpetrated against God, that human presumption should take away what He granted, and vainly boast that it does this for God. Great is the injury to God, if He is defended by men. What does he judge of God who wishes to defend Him by violence, unless that He is not able to avenge His own injuries?' To these things the reply:

According to these most false and most empty reasonings of yours, with the reins loosed and let go, let all sins of human license be left unpunished; with no bars of the laws set against it, let the audacity of harming and the lust of wantonness rage in bacchanal frenzy; let not the king restrain his kingdom, nor the general the soldier, nor the judge the provincial, nor the master the slave, nor the husband the wife, nor the father the son, from the freedom and sweetness of sinning by any threats or penalties. Take away what sound doctrine, for the health of the world, wisely says through the Apostle; and, that you may confirm the sons of perdition in a choice so much the worse the freer it is, delete what the vessel of election says: Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.

For there is no power but from God, and the powers that be are ordained by God. Wherefore he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God; but they who resist purchase judgment for themselves. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Do you wish, then, not to fear the power? Do good, and you shall have praise from it; for it is the minister of God, an avenger in wrath to him who does evil. Delete these things, if you can; or these things, as you do, if you cannot delete them, despise. Hold about all these the worst opinion, lest you lose your free will—or at least, since as men you blush before men, cry out, if you dare:

'Let murders be punished, let adulteries be punished, let all the other crimes or vile deeds of wickedness or lust, however great, be punished: sacrileges alone we wish to go unpunished by the laws of rulers.' Or do you say anything else, when you say: Great is the injury to God, if He is defended by men. What does he judge of God who wishes to defend Him by violence, unless that He is not able to avenge His own injuries? Saying these things, what else do you say but: 'Let no human power gainsay and clamor against our free will, when we do injury to God'? O grief! Ancient times were cheated of such teaching, since you were not yet born, when holy Moses bore his own injuries most gently, but avenged God's most severely.

But you now, more learned by heretical presumption, most enviously cry out: God made man and left him in the hand of his own choice. Why is there now snatched from me by human power what God bestowed?—demanding, forsooth, that for the doing of injuries to God, who made man with free choice, free choice may be left to you by man. But even those who, by the decree of King Nebuchadnezzar, with the penalty of their own destruction and the razing of their houses set before them, were terribly forbidden from blaspheming God—Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego—and would be sharply punished if they should despise it, could have said what you yourself have said: Great is the injury to God, if He is defended by men.

What does he judge of God who wishes to defend Him by violence, unless that He is not able to avenge His own injuries? These very words of yours those men too could have said, and perhaps did say—if not with the same liberty, yet with no dissimilar vanity. Free choice, then, was given to man when he was created, but on the terms that, if he were doing evil, he should become one suffering it. Finally those first men, when they had sinned, were condemned to death, and before even the final death of the body was accomplished in them, they were sent into exile out of paradise. The emperor has established milder measures against you on account of Christian mildness: he wished to inflict exile upon us, not death.

But you learned men, considering what is owed to desert and what is less in the punishment, add death—not out of his judgment, but out of your own. Do not perish forever, while you wish free choice to be granted you by men at this time for offending God. Hear the Apostle, and you will have a great shortcut by which the royal power cannot harm you: Do good, and you shall have praise from it. From it even before us the just had praise—not only those who faithfully obeyed religious kings, but also those who, for the truth of God, endured impious kings as adversaries: the former the praise of obedience, the latter the praise of suffering; both, however, from it, but by doing good, not by resisting the powers.

But what you do is not only not good, but a great evil: to rend asunder the unity and peace of Christ, to rebel against the evangelical promises, and against Him of whom it is said: He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth—that is, against the true and supreme King of Christians—to bear Christian standards as it were in a civil war. Let it therefore suffice you, as an occasion of correction, that for your so great evils you receive far milder and lesser measures, if you do not of your own accord bring upon yourselves what the emperor has not decreed; and do not wish free choice unto licentious impunity to be granted you by men, lest you fall more unhappily into the hands of God Himself.

For even your own elders judged that, in injuries of this sort against God, the free choice of man was not to be left unpunished by kings, since, although they had a bad cause, they nevertheless, by persecuting the bishop Caecilian, brought the matter even to the judgment of the emperor Constantine. The words of the letter: 'But our faith,' he says, 'which the Lord Christ left to the apostles, these persecutions alone render most welcome to us. Blessed shall you be,' he says, 'when men persecute you and revile you and say against you every evil thing for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven; for so they persecuted also the prophets who were before you—their fathers did.'

If it was said only to the apostles alone, the faith had its rewards up to them—and what did it profit those who were afterward to believe? Whence it is evident that it was said to all. Then the Apostle Paul says: They who wish to live holily in Christ must suffer persecution. But this the Lord said in the Gospel: The hour will come that everyone who kills you will think he is offering a sacrifice to God. But these things they will do, because they have not known the Father nor Me. To these things the reply: These things would rightly be said by you who seek the glory of martyrs, if you had the cause of martyrs. For the Lord does not say blessed are they who suffer these evils, but they who suffer them for the Son of Man's sake, who is Christ Jesus. But you suffer not for His sake, but against Him;

for you suffer for this reason, because you do not believe Him, and you endure for this reason, that you may not believe. How then do you boast that you hold that faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles? Or do you wish men to be so blind and deaf as not to read, not to hear the Gospel, where they may know what faith the Lord Christ left to the apostles concerning His Church? Divided and separated from which, you do nothing else than rebel against the words of the Head and the Body; and yet you boast that you sustain persecution for the Son of Man's sake and for the faith which He left to the apostles.

Let us pass over other matters and hear his last words on earth, where we may see what faith concerning the Church he left to the apostles, what kind of testament, so to speak, he made — he who was not about to end his life, but to live without end; not to be laid in a tomb, but to ascend into heaven. For rising from the dead, after he had appeared to his disciples to be gazed upon with their eyes and handled with their hands, he said: 'It was necessary that the things written of me in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms should be fulfilled.' Then he opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures, and said to them:

'Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' Likewise on the Mount of Olives, after he had said nothing further while set upon the earth, but commended this at the last as what had been most necessary. For there were to be many throughout every part of the earth who would claim for themselves the name of the Church and set themselves against that universal house which throughout the whole earth sings the new song, of which it is written: 'Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth' — men who from the corners of their own ruins would bark against it.

For the apostles desired to hear something else, and did not ask for what had been most necessary for them: 'Tell us,' they say, 'whether at this time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?' But he answered: 'It is not for you to know the times or the moments which the Father has placed in his own power; but you shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.' When he had said these things, a cloud received him. He added nothing further to these words: this he fixed the more tenaciously in the minds of his hearers, the more it came last. This bride the bridegroom, as he departed, commended to his friends. This faith, then, concerning the holy Church, he left to his disciples.

This faith, O Donatists, you resist, and you contend that you endure persecution for the sake of the faith which the Lord Christ left to the apostles. This Son of Man, who with such great care commended his Church, beginning at Jerusalem and bearing fruit and increasing among all nations, you contradict with wondrous shamelessness of blindness, and you cry out that you suffer evils for the sake of the Son of Man. Or do you perhaps say this because you have found for yourselves another son of man, by whose name you may be called, from whose party you may take your title? You are mistaken; he is not the same. When he said that to suffer persecution for the Son of Man was a mark of blessedness, that bridegroom was proclaiming himself, not an adulterer.

We too confess, as you say, that it was not said to the apostles alone: 'Blessed shall you be when men persecute you.' For this pertains to all — not to those who after them have suffered, or suffer, or shall suffer any kind of persecution whatever, but to those who suffer for the sake of righteousness, as they also did. For a little before he had said this: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' Then he added these words, which you have chosen to cite and to usurp for yourselves in vain. For in vain do you suppose this beatitude pertains to you, when you do not display in yourselves the righteousness to which a reward is owed.

Nay rather, on the contrary, you also suffer for iniquity — less at the hands of others, more at your own — so that even before the judgment of God which is to come, you yourselves may render to yourselves in some part what you deserve. Hence, since you yourself have said that this was said not to the apostles alone but to all — lest faith should seem to have had its rewards only down to their day — just as this, then, was said not to the apostles alone but to all who, even after them, were to suffer any evils for righteousness' sake, so also that other was said to all: 'If they persecute you in this city, flee into another.' Why do you not do this, if you belong to the fellowship of those to whom these things were said?

But even if you were to do it, you would not on that account belong to them, since even robbers can do this — robbers whom the public laws have commanded to be sought out. Yet because you are unwilling to do this, you show by a short cut that you do not belong to those to whom these things were said. And so that your very excuse may show you all the more plainly to be strangers to that number of true Christians, you now say that the places to which you might flee — which he promised would not be lacking until the end of the age — are wanting to you; in no way convicting him of having promised falsely, but showing rather that you do not belong to the fellowship of those to whom he promised this, and therefore that you are not truthful martyrs but deceitful heretics.

What further shall we say to you, when your own tongue overcomes you? For that also which you added the apostle said — 'All who wish to live godly in Christ must needs suffer persecution' — he did not indeed say 'must needs,' but he said: 'All who wish to live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.' But who doubts that you do not belong to these? For if you too are among those of whom the apostle said this, why do you not do what the apostle himself did? For if the gates were shut against you, you ought to have been let down by the wall, that you might escape the hands of your persecutors. The gates lie open, and you are unwilling to go out. What persecution do you suffer except from yourselves? Your persecutor loves you, and your own madness persecutes you:

the one desires that you flee, the other drives you to perish. But you so understand what the apostle says — 'All who wish to live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution' — that you must needs confess your own forefathers did not live godly under the apostate emperor Julian. For whoever became a Donatist in that time, if he died before the godly care of Christian emperors again rose up against your error, did not live godly, because he suffered no persecution.

But if the apostle said this for the reason that, as is written elsewhere, 'the life of man upon earth is a trial,' and it never ceases to try the godly and true Christians not only by the assault of adversity but also by the seduction of prosperity — so that the human mind may either succumb under affliction or grow vain through elation — then assuredly, as long as one lives here, all who wish to live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution, so as either, being conquered, to be seized by the devil, or, being proved, to conquer the devil. But those whom he already possesses, seized and captive, he does not persecute in order to obtain them, but, because he already possesses them, he uses them.

Furthermore, if he alone is to be called a persecutor who tortures another with some pain, or who wishes to hold him in order to torture him, let not the torturer of the heart seem to you lighter than the torturer of the body; and consider what kind of persecution he was suffering who said in the psalm: 'I saw the senseless, and I pined away.' This persecution the righteous Lot suffered in Sodom, even before the angels, his guests, were sought after for lust by the Sodomites in his house, when they were thought to be men. For the righteous man could not, without great torment of heart, behold them so publicly base, even before the injury to his own house. Hence the apostle Paul also, among his persecutions, mentions such things, saying: 'Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not set on fire?'

Accordingly, the greater the love of Christ within us, the greater is the grief of soul with which we see you holding the sacraments of Christ and being separated from the members of Christ and rebelling against the peace of Christ. But as long as you live in this body, some hope concerning you is given to us; yet when you die in that dissension, we grieve for you far more bitterly. Furthermore, when you slay your very selves — either by rushing upon the weapons of others, or by your own precipices and drownings and fires — it cannot be sufficiently expressed with how great sorrow you torment us. For the impious Absalom, dead, afflicted his holy father David more than when he was in rebellion. For David desired that he be taken alive, so that he who raged with malice might be healed by repentance.

Therefore that man was a persecutor of his father not only in dividing the people of God, nor only in bearing arms and waging war against the law of God and against the lawful kingdom of his father, but much more he persecuted his father's heart by dying in that impiety. And so the best of fathers wept for his worst of sons, slain — the son whom, while living, he had not lamented, because he had not despaired — but with hope now ended, he wept for him dead. Learn, therefore, what it means that the apostle says: 'All who wish to live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.'

If the Donatists had not plundered the houses of Catholics, if they had not burned Catholic churches, if they had not cast the holy books of Catholics into the very fires, if they had not afflicted the bodies of Catholics with most savage beatings, if they had not cut off the limbs of Catholics, if they had not put out their eyes, if, in short, they had not cruelly slain Catholics — this alone we would most truly say we endure from you as the gravest persecution: that we see you senseless, and we pine away; that we see you made weak, and we are weakened; that we see you made to stumble, and we are set on fire; that we see you lost, and we mourn.

These evils of yours, which cast you into eternal ruin, persecute us more bitterly than those which are inflicted by you upon our bodies or our goods or our houses or our basilicas. You persecute us less when you rage against us than when you perish yourselves. For in that persecution wherein you rage against us, we rejoice with praise; but in this, wherein you perish, if we should rejoice, we perish along with you. Yet as long as you live in this flesh, we cannot despair of you;

but when you die in this impiety — most of all when you slay your very selves in the dreadful blindness of frenzy — our most bitter sadness is consoled by this alone, which consoled holy David: namely, by the people gathered together in the unity of God, which had been divided by the tyranny of a wicked son. For it is far more tolerable that your most obstinate, being far fewer, perish by their own precipices or drownings or fires, than that innumerable peoples, hindered from their salvation by these men, should burn together with them in the burning of eternal fire.

Never, therefore, has there been lacking, nor will there be lacking, to the Church of Christ that whereby, according to the apostle, those who wish to live godly in Christ may suffer persecution — either by enduring the malice of the impious while they live in guilt, or by grieving over them when they perish. Do not, then, be deceived, as though it was said of us: 'The hour will come, when those who kill you will think they do a service to God' — or, as you cited this testimony, 'will think they offer a sacrifice to God.' It is manifest that this was not said of the persecutions which the pagan nations inflicted upon the Church. For the pagans reckoned that they did a service to their many gods, who indeed are no gods, whereas they were doing this to the one God.

Hence this same thing which the Lord foretold to his own was fulfilled either through the Jews, who slew holy Stephen and many others while they thought they were doing a service to God, since they seemed to worship the one true God; or else it was said also of us, that is, of Catholics, concerning the various heretics raging on every side, who, where they can and when they can and in whatever way they can, by slaying Catholics think they do a service to God — and most of all concerning you, who have made yourselves a special name in Africa out of such sacrifices. For if it had been said of you, you would surely not slay yourselves, but would rather wait to be slain by us, who, as you say, suppose that when we do this we do a service to God.

But now, when you hasten to death lest you be held by our men, you fear to live, not to be killed, because you blush to be corrected or to be convicted of your error. Or perhaps are you those to whom both may pertain, because, since you are killed even by yourselves, you think you do a service to God and offer him these sacrifices out of yourselves? To you, then, pertains what follows and was cited by you. For the Lord at once added and said: 'But these things they will do to you, because they have not known the Father nor me.' Since, therefore, you slay your very selves, thinking you do a service to God, you have neither known the Father — whom you did not hear saying, 'You shall not kill' — nor known the Son, whom you did not hear saying, 'Flee.' The words of the letter:

'But,' he says, 'they boast themselves inhabitants of a war-bearing peace and a bloody unity. Let them hear the Lord saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. For the peace of the world is confederated among the discordant minds of the nations by arms and the outcome of war; but the peace of the Lord Christ, tranquil with a wholesome gentleness, invites the willing, it does not compel the unwilling.' To this the answer: You indeed desire to make a war-bearing peace and a bloody unity, either by our violent deaths or by your voluntary deaths — not imputing to yourselves what you do to us, and imputing to us what you do to yourselves.

But we are compelled both to endure what you do to us, and, as for what you do to yourselves, we can do nothing but grieve — provided only that the peace and unity of Christ come to pass for the salvation of many, as it does come to pass in very many, even if because of the frenzy of a few it does not come to pass in all. For if you were willing to attend not with an envious but with a faithful eye, you would see with what true peace and unity of Christ they rejoice who have come over from you to us — such and so great throngs of peoples, among whom, even if there are still some troubled by the very novelty, these too are little by little healed of this weakness.

And even if some feigned ones persevere, surely those whom we see to be true were not on their account to be left ungathered — some of whom, in your very regions, have shown themselves greater than certain of our own, when, that liberty of perdition being granted you, they refused to return to you. We ought therefore, lest we lose these true ones, to gather in even the feigned, since in the Gospel it is read that the servants gathered to the marriage of their lord guests both good and bad — especially since the wind of pride, like a wicked blast, has shaken you off the Lord's threshing-floor before the time of winnowing, whence we strive, as much as we can with God's help, to call you back to it.

And you surely know how, with the brooms of diligence, the wheat too is dragged along together with the earth when it is called back to the threshing-floor. But as for your opinion that the unwilling are not to be compelled to the truth, you err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God, who makes them willing while they are compelled unwilling. For did the Ninevites repent unwillingly, because they did it at the compulsion of their king? For the prophet had already, going about the whole city for three days, foretold the wrath of God to it. What need, then, was there of the king's command, that God should be humbly supplicated — God who looks not on the countenance but on the hearts — except that there were among them certain men who would neither heed nor believe the divine warnings unless terrified by an earthly power?

Therefore by this command of royal power — against which your voluntary destruction is set — an occasion is afforded to many for the salvation which is granted in Christ; for even if they are led violently to the supper of so great a Father of the household and are compelled to enter, yet within they find wherewith to rejoice that they have entered. For the Lord himself foretold that both would come to pass, and he brought both to pass. For when certain ones were rejected — who are surely understood to be the Jews, since they had before been invited through the prophets and chose for the time to make excuses — the Lord said to his servant: 'Go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame.' And the servant said: 'Lord, it is done as you commanded, and yet there is room.' And the lord said to the servant:

'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to enter, that my house may be filled.' We understand 'highways' as heresies, 'hedges' as schisms; for the highways in this place signify diverse opinions, but the hedges perverse opinions. Why then do you marvel, if whoever comes to this supper — neither gladly brought in nor violently impelled — dies not of bodily but of spiritual hunger? The words of the letter: 'We rejoice,' he says, 'in the hatred of the world. Under its pressures we do not succumb, but are glad. This world cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ, the Lord himself saying: If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also.' To this the answer:

How is it that, rejoicing in the hatred of the world, you do not succumb to its pressures but are glad, when you wish to slay your very selves lest you suffer any troubles whatever, and you choose to die not slain by others for the truth of Christ, but by your own selves for the party of Donatus? This is the insanity of the Circumcellions, not the glory of martyrs. Since, then, your deeds are plain to see, why do you usurp for yourselves words that are another's? 'This world,' he says, 'cannot love the servants of Christ, who is known not to have loved Christ.' We, then, do not belong to this world, because we love you;

but you are not the servants of Christ, who, rendering evil for good and turning your malice — when you cannot exercise it upon us — back upon yourselves, neither love us nor spare yourselves but kill yourselves. But when the Lord said: 'If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also,' he said this not to you, but to those to whom he gave the command that, if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into another — which you do not do. He spoke to those to whom he said that the cities to which they might flee would not be lacking until the end of the age — those cities which you complain are now wanting to you, yet are unwilling to confess that you are not the men to whom these things were said. The words of the letter:

'But even if persecution should be at rest,' he says, 'whence is the number of martyrs made complete? John saying: I saw the souls of the slain beneath the altar of God, crying out and saying: How long, O Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell upon the earth? And white robes were given to each of them, and it was said to them that they should rest yet a little while, until the number of their brethren should be fulfilled, who are about to be killed even as they.' To this the answer: If you wished to be martyrs beneath the altar of Christ, you would not, by burning yourselves, make a sacrifice to the devil. For who rejoices over this frenzy of yours except the devil, who inspires it in you, and those who are of his party?

It is he who used to cast that boy, of whom we read in the Gospel, now into water, now into fire; it is he who drowned that herd of swine, plunged headlong into the waves; it is he who, by a most audacious temptation, suggested even to the Lord himself that he should cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Without doubt you belong to the devil, when you frequent in your deaths the three kinds of death — water, fire, and the precipice. For if you did not lose your minds through madness, those very words which you set down from the holy book ought to call you back from this destruction which you bring upon yourselves. For what do the souls of the martyrs say beneath the altar of God? 'How long, O Lord, do you not judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell upon the earth?'

They demand that their blood be avenged upon those, surely, by whom it was shed — is it perhaps upon others? And by this, yours shall be avenged upon you. But what is more foolish than that you suppose this prophecy concerning the martyrs, who were foretold as about to come, was fulfilled only in the Donatists — as if, after blessed John wrote this, no martyrs were slain, up until the party of Donatus should arise, who, if ever they cannot slay others, slay themselves, who do the works of robbers and demons and claim for themselves the glory of martyrs?

But if, over so great an interval of time — that is, from John down to these men — no true martyrs had been slain, so that, to say nothing else, we would say they were to come in the times of Antichrist, in whom that number of martyrs would be completed, yet not even so would we believe that these men, guilty of blood whether another's or their own, are added to the number of true martyrs, to whom it was said that they should rest a little while until the number of their brethren should be fulfilled who were to begin to be killed even as they — by others, surely, not by themselves as these men are, and therefore these men are not as they. We can also most truly say that even the Catholics whom the Donatists slay in these their own times pertain to the completion of that number.

But since, after the apostle John, who wrote down those future things, so great a slaughter of martyrs has been made by the impious slaying them everywhere among so many nations, what do they mean, these extorters of their own souls and torturers of others', in boasting that what they read was foretold concerning the holy martyrs was fulfilled in themselves? Prepare yourselves rather, that your blood be avenged not upon those who desire either to seize you or to have you flee, that you may live, but rather upon yourselves. Or is it perhaps for this reason, lest this come to pass, that you do not shed it, but either dash it out by a precipice, or choke it by the wave, or turn it into ashes? But you err. It shall be avenged upon you, in whatever manner it be destroyed by you;

for it would be avenged upon you even if it were shed by others not in the Church of Christ but in the party of Donatus. Will you then so cry out to God, that he avenge your blood, and will he hear you unless he condemns you? For how shall it be avenged, unless he who dared to slaughter it be condemned? In this cry, therefore, you are nothing but your own accusers, because you are guilty of your own blood; nor will God do anything but condemn you, when he avenges your blood — dashed out by you, or choked, or burned up, or by whatever means slaughtered, or, if you should choose this, poured out. The words of the letter: 'Is not this persecution,' he says, 'which has driven so many thousands of innocent martyrs to death?'

'For the Christians, according to the Gospel, willing in spirit but weak in flesh, having found a short cut, snatched away their own souls from the sacrilegious defilement of the furnaces, imitating the example of the priest Razias in the books of the Maccabees, and not fearing in vain. For whoever fell into their hands did not escape. But let them do as much as they will: this is certain, that they cannot be of God who act against God.' To this the answer: Most openly and most truly you confess what kind of persecution you suffer; for it is that of which I have already spoken, which is expressed clearly enough in the holy Scriptures concerning certain impious men, of whom it is said that they suffer persecution from their very own deeds.

This indeed can most fittingly be said of you, even if the hands of others were slaughtering you on account of your sacrileges. For robbers too, and any men guilty of capital crimes, when they are punished by just laws, are not to be said to suffer persecution except from their very own deeds. But now clearly, when — while Christian meekness spares you — your own madness so rages against you that, as you say, having found a short cut of the furnaces, you snatch away your own souls, it is excessive shamelessness if you deny that you suffer persecution in every way from your very own selves, since you fulfill both — both that whereby you justly perish, and that whereby you perish.