Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 17 part 4/6

To your frenzy you still add words of blasphemy, and you dare to say that the Catholic Church is a human figment—she to whom God says: 'For I am the Lord who make you; the Lord is His name.' And, that we may know that this very Catholic Church is spread throughout the whole world, He follows and adds: 'and He who has rescued you, the same God of Israel shall be called of the whole earth.' This most evident work of God you call a human figment, and you do not consider that from that Church, which God promised He would make to be in the whole earth, you would in no way be separated, unless you followed a man. We follow Him who said to Abraham: 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed.' We follow Him who said to His own Church what I have just now recalled:

'I am the Lord who make you; the Lord is His name; and He who has rescued you, the same God of Israel shall be called of the whole earth.' Therefore, holding the Church which is enlarged and grows through all nations and through the whole earth, we assuredly do not follow a human figment, but a divine promise and accomplishment. What do you follow, that, divided from the communion of this divine promise and divine work, you wish to be of the party of Donatus? Did a man or did God tell you that by the sin of Caecilianus the promises of God perished from the whole world and remained in the party of Donatus? If God, read this to us from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the apostolic and evangelical writings. Read, if you can, what in our conference you were quite unable to read.

But if men said these things—men of whom it is written, 'They have strengthened for themselves an evil word'—behold the human figment, behold what you worship, behold whom you serve, behold that for whose sake you rebel, rave, and burn. But Gabinius indeed and the rest, who came to know, chose, and held fast this Church—not a human figment, but a divine promise foretold and fulfilled—desiring to have it together with the faithful, were unwilling any longer to suffer for a human figment those very human afflictions. For whoever, for the sake of the truth and unity of Christ, shall have lost—I do not say his goods, but even this life of his, when others at least take it away and kill him—truly has faith, truly has hope, truly has charity, truly has God;

but whoever, for the party of Donatus, shall have lost even the fringe of his garment, has no heart. What wonder then, if wise men, when they saw that against the most stubborn antiquity of a hardened custom losses and exiles were set before them, considered whether for the party of Donatus, against the Catholic Church—that is, for a human figment, against a divine work—they ought to endure these things, and saw plainly that they ought not, and recognized that this which you call persecution was for them an occasion of correction, and did what is written: 'Give occasion to a wise man, and he will be the wiser.'

You see therefore how vainly you said to a man who, by the command of his most pious emperor, seeks your correction, that the office of an executioner did not befit his prudence. For what more befits a religious soldier than that, in that cause in which he weighs by whom you wish to be deceived, he himself should become the salvation of many to be corrected? The words of the letter: 'To teach the people of Israel,' he says, 'the almighty God gave the office of proclamation to the prophets; He did not command it to kings. The Savior of souls, the Lord Christ, to instill faith, sent fishermen, not soldiers.' To these the reply: Hear then the holy prophets and the holy fishermen, and you will not suffer the most religious kings to be grievous to you.

For I have already shown above that it pertained to a king's care that the Ninevites should appease God, whose wrath the prophet had announced. As long therefore as you do not hold the Church which the prophets foretold and the fisher apostles planted, so long do the kings who hold it most rightly judge it to pertain to their care that you should not rebel against it with impunity. For God had kings too among the prophets; for holy David, as you cannot be ignorant, was a king. Hear then the prophesying king, and you will dread no religious king who is angry. Hear, I say, the prophet-king speaking of Christ:

'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth,' and you will not fear the Christian king who is displeased with you for blaspheming this Church, which, just as it was prophesied by the king, is displayed unto the ends of the earth. For king Nebuchadnezzar too, although he was not a prophet, nonetheless restrained with religious severity those who blasphemed the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The words of the letter: 'God,' he says, 'never awaited the help of worldly warfare, He who alone can judge of the living and the dead.' To these the reply: God does not await the help of worldly warfare, when He rather bestows a benefit upon kings, whom He inspires to take care that in their kingdom the precept of their Lord be done.

For those to whom it was said, 'And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fear,' perceive that their power ought so to serve the Lord that by that power those be punished who will not serve His will. But as for the odium you cast upon soldiers, if indeed this care, as we have already taught, is shown in the holy Scriptures to pertain to kings, through whom are they going to carry it out against the rebel circumcellions and their madmen, whether accomplices or leaders, except through the soldiers under their command? The words of the letter: 'But this the squatters on others' property do not know,' he says, 'who do not even hear God saying: You shall not covet the property of your neighbor, nor the Holy Spirit saying through Solomon:'

'Then shall the just stand in great constancy against those who have afflicted them and who have taken away their labors. Seeing this, they shall be troubled with horrible fear, and shall marvel at the suddenness of the unhoped-for salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning through anguish of spirit: These are they whom we once held in derision and for a byword of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor. How are they reckoned among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints? Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice has not shone upon us. We have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and perdition, and have walked through difficult wildernesses, but the way of the Lord we have not known.'

'What has pride profited us, or what has the boasting of riches conferred on us? All things have passed away like a shadow. This faith therefore exhorts us to die gladly for God in this persecution.' To these the reply: Acknowledge your crime, and do not usurp for yourselves an alien name. The Scripture said: 'Then shall the just stand in great constancy against those who have afflicted them and who have taken away their labors.' It did not say, 'All who have suffered evils shall stand,' but 'the just shall stand'—just as the Lord too, when He had said 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution,' unless He had added 'for the sake of justice,' would signify not only those who are crowned for their patience in the Lord, but also those who are punished by just laws.

Wherefore, if you think that these words of the just which are written pertain to you, first show whether you are just. For you have great matters which you may parade among your acts of justice: the division of Christ, the rescinding of Christ's sacraments, the desertion of Christ's peace, war against the members of Christ, accusations against the spouse of Christ, the denial of Christ's promises. These are your acts of justice, for the sake of which forsooth you shall stand in great constancy against those who have afflicted you and taken away your labors. But indeed, when among your acts of justice you have begun to boast that you kill your own selves, what just man will be your equal? For then above all you will appear as ones to be avenged—but see by whom:

against those, assuredly, who killed you. Therefore, that you may be avenged, you will be punished, and thus you shall stand against your own selves. Above all shall you stand, you who, with the furnaces shut, confine yourselves in cruel straits, so that neither can one who would come to help enter, nor can one who would escape go out. Far be it, far be it, that they should stand with great constancy, who shall stand with so evil a conscience! Unless perchance you suppose that God can then spare you for your crimes for this reason, because you yourselves do not now spare yourselves.

Whence too certain of your consecrated women, being pregnant, threw themselves over the rocks, and, their wombs bursting open, betrayed the crimes of fornication as well as those of murder—supposing that, if in this manner they avenged themselves upon themselves, God would in no way any longer avenge. Just as you too suppose that whatever unspeakable things could be committed by you—by the sacrilege of schism and heresy, or by plundering, mutilating, blinding, killing, and finally even by rebaptizing Catholics and whatever else—could in this manner, whereby you kill yourselves, be expiated. But you are mistaken; Judas too supposed this. Or do you wish to add even this proof, whereby we may more surely know that your forefathers were rather traitors, because you imitate the death of the traitor?

Therefore, that which you were unwilling to deny contentiously at the conference, you thereby confirm as true deeds, records in which Secundus of Tigisis, who was then bishop of the first see in Numidia, pardoned confessed traditors, and released those whose crimes of surrender were manifest and confessed at Cirta though they were present, while at Carthage he punished, as though they were traditors, men who were neither convicted nor present. From this very crime not even Secundus himself was able to clear himself when Purpurius of Limata charged him with it, when this same Purpurius said to him: 'And what did you do, you who were seized by the curator and the council to hand over the Scriptures? How did you free yourself from them, unless because you gave up, or ordered to be given up, whatever it was? For they were not letting you off at random.'

Moreover Secundus confessed this even in his letter sent to Mensurius, which you yourselves produced and read aloud, admitting without ambiguity that he did not hand over the Scriptures, but that persecutors sent by the curator and the council came to him—the very ones Purpurius of Limata cast in his teeth—to make him surrender the Scriptures; and that when they demanded these from him, he answered: 'I am a Christian and a bishop, not a traditor,' and was wholly unwilling to hand over anything to them. You want us to believe this, though you yourselves see how incredible it is that, in that raging persecution, a bishop should be detained or summoned to hand over the Lord's Scriptures, and be released though he handed over nothing.

Surely you contended that bishops could not gather at the city of Cirta to ordain a bishop in a time of persecution. How then was that persecution raging, if a bishop could be detained on account of handing over the Scriptures and, though he handed over nothing, be released with impunity?

And yet you cried out, describing the ferocity of the persecution of that time, that not even twelve bishops could be gathered into a council to ordain a bishop, they who drew up those records in which they mutually forgave one another the crimes of surrender and left them to the Lord to be judged for the peace of the Church; while you at this present time, saying that you are suffering such a persecution as never was—namely, that you lack places to which to flee and where to hide—nevertheless hold councils, ordain bishops, even in the place of those who perished in their own fires, again men of the same sort, ready to perish in their own fires.

But in a time of such persecution—as you suppose and boast—you were able to assemble even more than thirty in council, where Petilian too was present, the very one who cried out that in a time of persecution not even twelve could assemble. Further, in that same council you decreed that those bishops or presbyters who had communicated with us unwillingly, provided only that they had not offered sacrifice or preached before the people, should be granted pardon and be received back in their own honors; and thus by this very decree of yours you utterly cut away all the force of your own slanders.

For where now is that empty talk of yours, in which you say that even those who were not present became traditors through communion with us, because—as you slanderously allege—those men defiled us who, when the impious powers were then pressing them, handed over the ecclesiastical books? Why then do you now absolve from crime those whom you have come to know communicated with us unwillingly, provided they offered no sacrifice and made no address before the people? As though those first traditors, under the terror and horror of monstrous tortures such as no one at all has now brought upon you, did not unwillingly hand over the sacred codices, or offer sacrifice there, or make an address before the people!

You see therefore that, just as you were able to pardon those whom you most vainly accuse of becoming traditors through communion with us, if they did anything unwillingly, so also your forefathers, when the true traditors were surrendering the Scriptures under a far more severe necessity, could by the same rule have pardoned them. But in order to condemn others who were absent and unheard, they were driven by the faction of Caecilian's enemies, doing what the Apostle says of such men: 'For in that in which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge do the same things.' Wherefore, since the Donatists have always loved to kill themselves and were themselves traditors from the beginning, what wonder is it if they taught even their descendants to love the traitor's death?

But for the sake of avoiding this likeness they either never or only with the greatest difficulty killed themselves with a noose—yet wholly in vain. For it was that same one who compelled Judas the traitor to do this, who also often cast into water and fire that boy whom the Lord healed, and hurled the herd of swine into the sea, and with audacious presumption suggested to the Lord Himself the leap from the pinnacle of the temple. Therefore, although you cast yourselves into a voluntary death by various methods, yet by the prompting of that same devil you imitate the traitor in slaying your own selves. And even if you are not that traitor's kin, still you have learned, from the wicked instruction of those who were traitors and made the schism in which you gladly abide, to do also in yourselves what the traitor did to himself.

See now with what justice you will stand against those who have distressed you—so that, if your deaths are avenged, they can most justly be avenged only upon yourselves. But what are these labors of yours which you boast are being taken from you? Is it unjust that the churches which were yours, when they pass over into Catholic peace, should pass over together with their property? For if, when they pass over to us, you want to keep their property, you undoubtedly want to carry off property that is not your own. But the Catholic mother says to you what the blessed Apostle said to certain persons: 'For I seek not what is yours, but you.'

Yet how are you not self-contradictory, when you charge us with both—that we covet to possess your property, and that we violently compel you to be with us? You do not see how contrary these two things are to each other. For if we seek and hold you, though unwilling, unto our communion, how do we desire your property, which we certainly cannot have while you are in communion with us? But if we long to obtain that property, how do we seek you, only to lose it once you are in communion with us? But we confess to you: our coveting is called charity. It seeks you in us; it desires to find you, to correct you, and to unite you in the unity of Christ; so that, fearing lest you burn in your own furnaces, we may be fervent with the fire of this charity.

This charity kindles us, so that we not only do not covet your property, but wish that you together with us might possess ours as well. Acknowledge it, and come, and do not choose to perish. Or if you are ashamed to come of your own accord, we accommodate ourselves to your weakness, lest anything perish for charity's sake. Behold, we wish to hold you: why do you hasten to burn? We hold you unto life, we hold you unto salvation, we hold you unto the unity, truth, and sweetness of Christ; and to the supper of so great a Father of the household, if you will not enter of your own accord, we compel you to come in. The contest is about justice, not about money. Beware therefore lest perhaps, while you think that what is written pertains to you:

'Then shall the righteous stand with great constancy against those who have distressed them and taken away their labors'—lest this befall you concerning your labors, but rather that which is written in another place: 'The just shall eat the labors of the impious.' For neither shall the Maximianists stand against you, whose basilicas you took away where you were able, nor shall the pagans stand against you, whose temples you certainly overturned and whose basilicas you destroyed where you could—which we too have done—nor shall the musicians of the demons stand against you, whose pipes and clappers you broke—which we too have done. So neither shall you stand against us. For in all such deeds no plunder is coveted, but error is overturned.

Just as, then, the Canaanites shall not stand against the Israelites, although the Israelites took away their labors, but Naboth shall stand against Ahab, because a crime was committed, not a command fulfilled, when the unjust man took away the labors of the just—so heretics shall not stand against Catholics, since in the affairs of heretics the commands of Christian rule are fulfilled, and their property is not carried off by Catholics, but rather examined, and, when many of them are corrected as far as possible, kept to be restored to them. But Catholics shall stand not only against the heathen, by whom the true martyrs were despoiled, but also against the Circumcellions of the Donatists, because these too took away their labors.

But concerning these material labors the case is easier, since even those to whom they belonged pass over into Catholic peace. Behold, daily, if anyone makes his passage over to us, we restore to your people money, clothing, produce, vessels, lands, dwellings: how are you going to restore to us the limbs of our people? Surely at some time you awaken and perceive that neither are you those of whom it is said, nor are we those by whom it is said: 'These are they whom we once held in derision'—since rather it is you whom we hold as matter for weeping; nor will you be counted among the sons of God, unless, departing from the party of Donatus, you hold to this Church which the Son of God presents, as He foretold; nor is your lot among the saints, but among the heretics. For as to what you suppose that others will say about you:

'We fools accounted their life madness'—I marvel that you are so foolish as not now to say such things to yourselves. To the truly holy and faithful the unclean and unfaithful will indeed then say these things—namely to those whom they now think to be mad, because they are unwilling to enjoy the luxuries which they see, while they believe what they do not see. But you, if you do not account your life madness, at least this death which you wish to bring upon yourselves, if you do not account it madness, then you are more desperately mad. But those words, 'Therefore we have erred from the way of truth,' and the rest, will indeed be not only yours, but above all yours also.

For you err, which is manifest, from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness does not shine for you; you grow weary on the way of iniquity and perdition, and walk through difficult wildernesses, but the way of the Lord you do not know. And as for what follows: 'What has pride profited us, or what has the vaunting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow'—I do not know whether anyone among all the rest could say it more aptly and fittingly than your predecessor Optatus. Do not therefore think yourselves to be what you are not, and perish as being what you are, since it is not this faith, but your evil error, that urges you—not that you should willingly die for God, as you say, in this persecution, but that you should wickedly suffer persecution for the deeds of Donatus.

The words of the letter (and in another hand): 'I wish,' he says, 'that, the truth being perceived, you would soften your mind while safe, and refrain from the deaths of the innocent.' To this the reply: Rather do you, the truth being perceived, soften your own mind, lest it so rage as to spare not even yourselves. For what gentler man could easily be found than the one to whom you wrote these things, who both invited you to life and, if you were unwilling to spend it with us, gave you leave to flee? It is you who are harsh toward yourselves, you who are pitiless, you who are cruel without any regard for humanity, you who do to yourselves what lovers of error and persecutors of men are wont to do to their enemies—so that there may be that which persecutors of error and lovers of men most bitterly grieve over.

But what do you desire, that men should refrain from 'the deaths (exitibus) of the innocent'? You indeed are not innocent; yet he gave you a way out (exitum), whereas you yourselves wish to give yourselves destruction (exitium). For I think that ignorance of the word deceived you, so that, wishing 'destructions' (exitia) to be understood, you said 'ways out' (exitus). Since therefore you exhort by wishing that the executor of the imperial laws should refrain from the destructions (exitiis) of the innocent, what you are really doing is that he should spare the deceivers and permit the innocent to be deceived with impunity:

What else, then, but that he to whom you think you are wishing well should keep faith neither with God nor with his emperor—namely because, according to a justice not true but your own, matters of this kind ought not to pertain to the emperors' care, so that a slanderous division might be healed, but ought so to pertain that, once it had been made, it might be confirmed? If this teaching, which you have learned not from the holy Scriptures but from I know not where, seems just to you—that these matters do not pertain to the imperial power—then it would have come into the mind of your forefathers when they sent the case of Caecilian, by accusing him, to the judgment of the emperor Constantine. But now, because the lions did not harm Daniel on account of his innocence, you want them to spare those who by slander cast him to the lions.

But God does not judge as man does, in whose hand is the heart of the king, and He inclines it wherever He wills. But when the heart of the king is unfaithful, the good are either exercised or proved; and when it is faithful, the wicked are either corrected or punished. Which of these two things holds in your case we have already said sufficiently, and we have answered your letter sufficiently, omitting no passage—which answer, would that it profited you too! yet we trust, by the Lord's mercy, it will profit at least some of you. But if you are preparing to answer anything to this, read also those things which were transacted with Emeritus, to which he himself could not reply—lest perchance you should be able, as I already advised you above, that you might make the trial.

We also dealt with him concerning the case of the Maximianists, about which, though so often cast up to you by us at the conference, you answered nothing, since concerning a matter most manifest and most recent you could find nothing to reply: how Maximian, whom you struck with a far graver sentence than Caecilian—so that you called him a minister of Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed alive for the wickedness of schism—did not pollute the partners of his schism, to whom you gave a delay that they might return to your communion; how an African did not pollute Africans, a living man living men, a known man known men, a partaker his associates, and yet Caecilian polluted men beyond the sea, polluted men set far off, polluted the unknown, polluted the not-yet-born.

Find, if you can, what to say—how you received back into their honor Felician of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, whom together with Maximian and ten others you condemned without any delay; against whom, in order to expel them from their basilicas, you litigated before two, or if I am not mistaken before three, proconsuls; and, when you had already ordained another in the place of Praetextatus, after so long a time you received them back into their honors. By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery is a condemned Maximianist received back into his honor, while the Catholic world, unheard, is condemned?

By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery do you say caution must be taken lest Caecilian—long since dead and utterly unknown to you, condemned once by your forefathers as judges, thrice absolved when your forefathers were his accusers—defile you; and yet you thought no caution need be taken lest Felician defile you, condemned by the mouth of your universal council and received back by all of you, especially by the favor of your predecessor? By what justice, by what reason, by what effrontery do you rescind the baptism which the churches give that the Apostles planted with their labors, while you have received the baptism which Felician and Praetextatus, over so long a time when you were litigating against them as condemned men, administered outside your church?

For if, as you are wont to misunderstand and to cast at us, that which is written must be understood thus: 'He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?'—then these men were lying among those dead when they baptized, concerning whom your Bagai sentence resounded with so great a din: 'Quite after the manner of the Egyptians, the shores are full of the corpses of the perishing, for whom in death itself the punishment is greater, in that after the soul has been wrenched out by the avenging waters, they do not even find burial.' What will you say to this? Behold, the dead baptize those whom you receive, and you do not die; yet you slander us as though we were dead, so that, being unwilling to communicate with Catholic unity, you may truly die in your own fires. Answer this—you have leisure to consider what to say.

At least in this let us confer some benefit upon you, that, while you think what to answer, you may think less how to burn. But we do not want you, from lack of an answer, to suppose that you must still say to us that weary and battered thing which you are wont to say: 'If we are such as you say, why do you seek us?' For we answer: The Catholic Church ought all the more to seek you, because you perished, if you, being ruined, sought out the Maximianists who were ruined. For out of your own heart you say to us: 'Why do you seek men guilty of so many and so great crimes?' But out of the book of God we answer you: because charity covers a multitude of sins. THE SECOND BOOK.