Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 17 part 5/6

I have received your reply, Gaudentius—if indeed it ought to be called a reply—which you wished to make to me for this reason, lest, if you had kept silent, we should say that you had been refuted. But this is not to answer, that it is not to be silent. For if it were, you have plainly answered, but with this result: that even those who could hope anything from you may know that you did not find what you ought to answer, and yet answered so as not to be silent. And so, while you took care not to be called vanquished, you brought it about that you were exposed. For exposing that, your own writings suffice, if they be read by intelligent men and compared with mine by careful examination.

But in order that I may teach this by other writings, whereby even duller minds may be satisfied, a somewhat more extended discussion is necessary, which indeed I shall undertake, if there be need and the Lord shall will it. Now meanwhile, since you have attempted to affirm by the testimony of blessed Cyprian that you are rather the Catholics, attend a little to what Church he called Catholic when he was defending its unity. 'The Church,' he says, 'suffused with the light of the Lord, stretches out its rays over the whole world: yet it is one light which is everywhere diffused, nor is the unity of the body separated. It extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its plenty; it spreads its flowing streams more widely in generous profusion:'

'Yet there is one head, and one origin, and one mother abundantly rich in the successions of her fruitfulness.' Why then do you both deceive yourselves and wish to deceive others by shameless lies? If by the testimony of this martyr your church is the Catholic, show that it stretches out its rays over the whole world, show that it extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its plenty. For hence it is also named 'Catholic' by a Greek word; for what in Greek is called ὅλον is in Latin rendered 'whole' or 'universal.' 'Through the whole,' then, or 'according to the whole,' is καθ' ὅλον, whence it is called Catholic. If you know this, why do you feign not to know it? But if you are ignorant of it, why, before you speak of what you do not know, do you not ask those who know?

But if this displeases you, find some language—not Greek—by which you may teach that καθ' ὅλον does not mean 'through the whole' or 'according to the whole' or 'according to the universal,' and withdraw from the testimony of Cyprian. For he speaks against you—you who see what he says. He says that the Catholic Church is stretched out and extended 'over the whole world' and 'over the whole earth,' agreeing with its Greek name and definition. You are found to hold, think, and say something else; and while you lean upon Cyprian as your witness, by Cyprian as witness you lie.

From this true and genuine Catholic Church, then—which, suffused with the light of the Lord, stretches out its rays over the whole world, and extends its branches over the whole earth in the abundance of its plenty—what cause you had for going out, you find, when questioned, nothing just; you utterly cleanse your going out from this Church by no purgation of a plausible excuse. For what do you say but: 'Necessity compelled us, that we just men should leave the unjust'? The divine Scripture answers you: the wicked son calls himself just, but does not cleanse his going out. 'A going out,' he says, is his—that very one of which the Apostle John speaks: 'they went out from us'—he does not cleanse it at all, does not defend it, does not excuse it, does not purge it.

For it does not pertain to the just in the Catholic Church, but to bear most patiently the wicked whom they can neither correct nor condemn—not, on account of the tares, to go out from the Lord's field before the time, nor, on account of the chaff, from the Lord's threshing-floor, nor, on account of the vessels unto dishonor, from the Lord's house, nor, on account of the bad fish, from the Lord's nets—lest in vain they attempt to cleanse their going out. If you should wish by any argumentation to turn these evangelical sentences into another sense, you contradict that same blessed Cyprian whose testimonies you employ, just as you did in our conference. For these are the words of the aforesaid martyr on this question, in the letter which he wrote to Maximus and the companions of his confession:

'Although tares seem to be in the Church,' he says, 'yet neither our faith nor our charity ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive tares to be in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. It is only for us to labor that we may be able to be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's granaries, we may reap fruit for our work and labor. The Apostle in his letter says: 'But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay; and some indeed unto honor, but some unto dishonor.' Let us give our effort and labor, as much as we can, that we may be a vessel of gold or of silver. But to shatter the vessels of clay is granted to the Lord alone, to whom also the rod of iron has been given.'

'The servant cannot be greater than his lord, nor let anyone claim for himself what the Father has bestowed on the Son alone—that he should think he is able either openly to bear the fan for winnowing and cleansing the floor, or by human judgment to separate all the tares from the wheat. This is a proud obstinacy and a sacrilegious presumption which a depraved fury takes upon itself. And while certain men always claim for themselves more than gentle justice demands, they perish out of the Church; and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their very swelling, they lose the light of truth.' Surely now at least you see that in our conference you cried out against holy Cyprian and resisted him with contentions, by which you asserted that the field of Christ, of which He says:

'The field is the world'—that it is not the Church, but the world outside the Church, so that it might have those visible tares. For you kept saying that in the Church manifest tares cannot exist, as often as we cited this testimony of Cyprian, and you neither dared openly to resist him nor yet were willing to agree with him. Surely now at least you awaken, hear, and take note that, although tares seem to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our charity ought to be hindered, so that, because we perceive tares to be in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. Why then do you depart from the unity of this Church by a wicked schism, and persist in the same division by heretical presumption? Behold, Cyprian is before you: either agree with him, or answer him.

You see how, by these words in which he says that tares are and are perceived in the Church, yet that one ought not on that account to depart from her, he wipes out all the slanders of your writings, in which you advanced even to such precipices and, in your usual way, cast yourself headlong, so as to say that even those who did not know who had sinned could, out of the whole world, perish by others' sins—Christians, that is; because forsooth it is read in the holy Scriptures that one man stole from the accursed thing, and for this sin another people who did not know was punished; ignorant that those punishments of mortal bodies, that is, the deaths of men doomed to die, availed for the useful terror of the people, but that others' sins—especially those which they did not know—in no way harmed those same dead men unto any detriment of the future life.

Would you really say this? Would you dare to believe and say that anyone perishes before God by others' sins, even by unknown ones? Did you not fear even those your own colleagues, who—while you kept silent in our conference, and perhaps did not dare to say this because you already felt it—fought with such great flanks of disputation that the bad fish in the Lord's nets are unknown to the fishermen, lest, that is, they should perish by their contagion if they knew them? Did it not come into your mind, when we were disputing about the chaff of the Lord's threshing-floor—that is, the Church—to be tolerated in one commingling until the time of winnowing, that when Emeritus was pressed, he denied it and said: 'Do you not read of the threshing-floor?'

When he was admonished both more secretly by his own men and more openly by us, as we recalled from the Gospel that the Lord would come bearing the fan in His hand, who will cleanse His threshing-floor and store the wheat in the granary, but will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire, he at once corrected the error of forgetfulness by which he had denied that it was written; yet he did not turn from his schismatic and heretical perversity by which he denied that the wicked ought to be borne with by the good for the unity of the Church; and he said at once that by the name of chaff the hidden wicked were signified—so that you might keep this as the chief point of your case with special diligence, namely that the wicked, being unknown, could stain none of the good. Behold, the excellent patron of your party, with you opposing him, lost his own labors.

For he, in order to safeguard the salvation of the good, asserts that the wicked remaining in the Church are altogether unknown to the good, lest they should ruin them if they were known and tolerated; but you have said that the good perish even by the contagion of unknown wicked men, and you did not fear that so many of your own hidden shameless, criminal, and impious men from the beginning—who assuredly, according to your opinion, ruined you and all yours without your knowing it. But even now you trembled with no dread lest perchance any of you should sin without your knowing it and, while you say these things, ruin you. Or perhaps, while you understand that you have perished through your own known deeds, do you for this reason not fear to perish through others' unknown ones?

What should I wish for you, but that it may be permitted us to find you, lest it should please you to perish? For what hope will remain—not only to us, who agree with the Lord Christ, the prophets, the apostles, and holy Cyprian that even the known wicked, if we can neither correct nor punish them, are to be borne with for the bond of unity—but even to you, to whom, before the time of the harvest, the winnowing, and the shore, a bodily separation from the wicked is pleasing, if your opinion is true, by which you think that each man perishes both by his own sins which he commits and by others' sins whether they were done he knows not? For if this is so, then assuredly your forefathers too, who separated themselves, as you suppose, from the known wicked, perished through the unknown.

And not only to you—who, when you say that a man perishes by others' crimes whether knowing them or not knowing them, undoubtedly leave no one remaining innocent—but even to Emeritus himself, who, thinking far more tolerably, binds men in the communion of the sacraments to others' sins only when known, but looses them from the unknown, the venerable Cyprian answers with a far truer voice: that the wheat growing up together does not perish among the tares, tares set not outside the Church but within the Church, and not hidden and unknown, but plainly noted and conspicuous. For I think that he is blinded not in the flesh but in his very mind, who contends that what is discerned lies hidden.

But when that most blessed man warns us not to withdraw from the Church on account of the tares that are within her, he is not warning us on account of those things that lie hidden, but rather on account of those that are plainly seen. For it is these very things which can disturb those who behold them, unless wisdom makes them patient. For how could we learn that we ought not to withdraw on account of things hidden, which we do not know to exist at all? 'Even though tares appear to be in the Church,' he says. He says 'appear,' not 'are believed by suspicion.' And lest anyone should suppose that it was said 'appear to be' as though they were not, but only seemed to be, in the words that follow he makes clear what he meant: 'Yet neither our faith nor our charity ought to be hindered,' he says.

That is, we should not ourselves withdraw from the Church merely because we behold that there are tares in the Church. He does not say 'we suspect, we think, we believe, we suppose,' but 'we behold.' Indeed even those men believed the tares to be not hidden but open, and beheld them plainly, who said to the head of the household: 'Wilt thou that we go and gather them up?'—of which tares it had been said: 'When the blade had sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares.' To whom he answered: 'No, lest while you would gather up the tares, you root up the wheat also with them,' and: 'Let both grow until the harvest.' And yet you say—wherein do you contradict anything other than the Lord?—that tares alone have grown throughout the world, and that the wheat has been diminished and perished in almost the whole world, though as yet the Church by its growth has not reached some nations.

Yet it is necessary that the Gospel should reach and be preached in the whole world, and that then the end should come—which the Lord foretold, without any ambiguity, would come to pass. You see that the Church, by the testimony of Cyprian, is called both catholic and spread over the whole world, and is not without manifest evils, on whose account he nevertheless admonishes that she is not to be forsaken. In her there are good men, in themselves many, but by comparison with the tares or the chaff assuredly few. For it is not outside her, but within her, that comes to pass what the Lord himself says: 'Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold.' But there too is the people diffused everywhere, to whom it is said: 'He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.'

But those who have faith like a grain of mustard seed, by which even mountains may be removed, are altogether very rare. For of such faith the Lord said: 'Thinkest thou that the Son of man, when he cometh, shall find faith on the earth?'—not concerning an apostasy of the whole world, as you most perversely understand it. Further, concerning baptism, which you think exists nowhere but in the Church, and on that account reproach us because we judge that those who come from the heresies, if they have already been baptized, are not to be baptized again—it is enough that you were quite unable to answer how the condemned Felicianus, set up outside your church, could baptize, whom you tried in vain to place among those to whom you granted a delay.

Read the Bagai sentence of your own council, in which, namely, after many most bitter things which were said against those men—far heavier than what was said against Caecilianus, when your forefathers condemned him though absent and innocent—their manifest and unquestionable condemnation is thus appended:

Know, therefore, that as guilty of a notorious crime, Victorianus of Carcabia, Marcianus of Sullectum, Beianus of Beia, Salvius of Ausafa, Theodorus of Usula, Donatus of Sabrata, Miggen of Elefantaria, Praetextatus of Assuras, Salvius of Membressa, Valerius of Melzita, Felicianus of Musti, and Martialis of Pertusa—who by the deadly work of perdition cemented together a filthy vessel from the collected dregs—and also certain clerics once of the church of Carthage, who, while they took part in the crime, lent their pandering to an unlawful incest, have been condemned by the divine judgment of God who presides, through the truthful mouth of the universal council. And then it begins to prolong the delay to the rest in these words:

But those whom the shoots of sacrilege did not pollute—that is, those who with a modest shame of faith drew back their own hands from the head Maximianus—we have permitted to return to their mother the Church. Now concerning these things, what needed to be said has been said sufficiently in my earlier letters sent to you. That you were utterly unable to answer this point, whoever reads and attends even a little will not be able to doubt. In vain, therefore, does it seem to you that the councils of Agrippinus and Cyprian are to be followed in this question, since you yourselves neglected them, when without any repetition of baptism you received those baptized outside your communion by the very men you were condemning—the men over whose exclusion from the basilicas you were contending.

But concerning the opinion of Cyprian and his colleagues, to whom it then seemed right that those coming from the heretics ought to be baptized, it would be long to argue as the matter deserves. But solve for me, if you can, this brief question. When Cyprian, bishop of the church of Carthage, was rebaptizing those coming from the heretics, then Stephen, bishop of the church of Rome, was receiving heretics in the very baptism which they had received outside; and both, doing these different things, remained in the catholic unity.

Tell me: at that time, when—according to you—the Church was receiving those guilty of all crimes without baptism, through Stephen and his innumerable colleagues throughout the whole world who shared in the same opinion—had the Church perished by the contagion of the evil, or had it not perished? For you cannot call these evil men hidden, although you assert that even the hidden ones do harm and bring death. Whoever, then, being a murderer or even a parricide, an adulterer, an incestuous man, an idolater, and finally a not-timid betrayer of the sacred books, or a cruel torturer to force them to be handed over, and a violent extortioner, and at last, by order or by his own hand, a burner of them—having been baptized among the heretics, came to Stephen and his associates—was, according to you, received without baptism.

You perceive, therefore, that all the crimes of men—if what you hold concerning baptism is true—were then gathered into the Church without baptism. Answer: was Cyprian defiled by these crimes in that same unity? Answer: had the Church perished, or had it not perished? Choose what you shall think. If it had already perished then, what gave birth to Donatus? But if, with so many gathered into her without baptism, she could not perish—answer, I beg, what madness persuaded the party of Donatus to separate itself from her, as if shunning the communion of the wicked.

But far be it that, because the most blessed Cyprian thought otherwise concerning baptism than the truth—both formerly by custom and afterward by a reason more diligently perceived—showed, on that account any one of us, who do not think as he did in this matter, should dare to set himself above him. For his many other great merits, and his soul most full of surpassing charity, through which he remained utterly at peace with colleagues who held different views, and his glorious martyrdom in the unity of the Church, have shown sufficiently that he was a fruitful branch in the root that is Christ—which the Father would even purge of that fault, that it might bring forth greater fruit. For thus says Jesus himself:

'The branch that in me beareth fruit, my Father purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit'—showing that even in the fruitful ones the husbandman who is in heaven finds something to purge. For which of us can be compared to the apostle Peter?—although we have never compelled the Gentiles to Judaize, as he did when he was not walking uprightly toward the truth of the Gospel; wherefore, corrected by a salutary admonition from his later fellow-apostle Paul, he gave posterity a more useful example of humility than if there had been nothing in him to be corrected. Established, therefore, in this Church, which neither could nor will be able to perish by the contagion of the evil—whether hidden or even manifest—we dread no slanders concerning any men whatsoever.

For if there are evil men, without doubt either the good do not know them; or, when they have been made manifest by their own evidence, they condemn them by ecclesiastical laws; or even, if they know them but cannot condemn men neither accused nor convicted before them, then for the peace of the Church they tolerate them not only blamelessly but even laudably, and do not, on account of the bad fish, damnably separate themselves before the time of the shore by breaking the Lord's nets.

For if they should wish to do this—apart from the innumerable testimonies of the divine Scriptures by which they are forbidden to do so—there surely restrains them the man whom you have brought forward as a witness, the most blessed Cyprian, crying out and testifying that, even though tares appear to be in the Church, yet neither our faith nor our charity ought to be hindered, so that, because we behold that there are tares in the Church, we should ourselves withdraw from the Church; admonishing us not only by his word but even by his own example—he who, for the bond of unity, bore with such men as his colleagues, who were seizing estates by treacherous frauds and increasing their gains by multiplying usury—men whose avarice he understood to be no light vice, but idolatry, according to the Apostle—yet was not made such by their contagion.

He departed from them by unlikeness of morals, not by division of the sacraments; and he did not touch the unclean thing, but by abhorring their deeds, not by gathering a separate people. But you, while you carnally understand what was said through the prophet Isaiah—'Depart and go out from the midst of them and be separated, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing,' and other things which are likewise said in the Scriptures—while, I say, you understand these things not spiritually but carnally, you appear altogether such as those are who, by the very prophet's proclamation, are condemned when they say:

'Touch me not, for I am clean.' In short, when you perversely judged that the sins of others were to be shunned, you committed sins of your own—a sacrilegious schism by dividing the peoples, and a sacrilegious heresy by holding, in a wicked spirit, against the manifest and fulfilled promises of God, a doctrine contrary to the Church spread throughout the whole world. For if, as you suppose and reproach us in a word, one and the same fellowship of the lost were both schism and heresy at once, the most blessed Cyprian would not have said, in this very letter from which I have taken this testimony concerning the tares set within the Church, to those confessors whom he congratulated on having been freed from the division of the Novatians:

'I grieved vehemently and was gravely distressed that I could not commune with those whom I had once begun to love, after schismatic and heretical error had seized upon you as you came forth from prison.' Do not, therefore, against the most manifest truth, either deceitfully evade both, or choose one of these which seems to you the milder, since you are both a schismatic by sacrilegious departure and a heretic by sacrilegious dogma. Nor should you flatter yourselves that we do not rescind your baptism. This is not yours, but the Catholic Church's, which we hold; whence, when you departed, you carried it with you—not, indeed, to your salvation, but to your destruction.

For the vessels of the Lord had remained holy even among foreigners, whence the king who dared to use them insolently was punished by the wrath of God; and the ark of the covenant, taken captive by enemies, in no wise lost the power of its sanctification. If, therefore, those holy things, which were then so among strangers that they ceased to be among their own people, could nevertheless in no way lose the power of their holiness, how much more do the Christian sacraments not lose it, when they pass over to heretics in such a way that they also remain among us! This is what I said in writing to you, and what we also said to you in the conference, and which you rather thought should be evaded, because you were unable to refute it, since, as the Apostle says of certain men:

'They hold the truth in iniquity'—so also you hold the truth of the divine baptism in the iniquity of human error; which truth, not being yours, we surely ought not to rescind on account of your iniquity. And because that same Apostle is understood to have said this of the idolatrous Gentiles: 'who hold the truth in iniquity,' you, as if answering me, demanded that I should prove what the Apostle does not rescind concerning the sacrilege of the Gentiles, what he does not condemn concerning their profane rite—as though he could fail to rescind and condemn what is sacrilegious and profane, as we condemn your schism and your heresy.

Yet certain sentiments of truth, which some of the Gentile philosophers hold concerning the unknown God, the Apostle not only did not destroy, but even drew from thence a testimony when there was need. For speaking to the Athenians he says concerning God: 'For in him we live and move and are, as also certain of your own have said.' This truth of wisdom, which the most blessed Paul not only did not destroy but even employed for their instruction, they held in the iniquity of their idolatry, which the apostolic doctrine overturned by apostolic devices.

So also we do not rescind the true things which your forefathers received in the Catholic Church and handed on to you, but we acknowledge them; while your sacrilege we either rescind at your conversion or detest in your obstinacy. And yet you have altogether solved the whole question and the whole matter that is in dispute between us, by one word of the tribune, sufficiently carefully expounded. For when I had said: 'Neither is it read in the tribune's letter that the name of God was invoked by you in truth'—because I had not read that very word there—you replied: 'You are mistaken, or rather you deceive; for the words of the tribune are:

"lest so great a work, the house of the Lord, where by you the name of God and of his Christ has more than once been invoked, be said to have been burned up through your religion there established." Understand that in truth it is called religion, in falsehood it is named superstition.' When did I ever advert to that, when did I so reason, when did I thus prove one thing from another? I confess, this escaped the edge of my slight talent, and therefore believe me that I could there have been mistaken—not, as you said, have wished to deceive concerning the word. And so the tribune, being as it were a military man, erred in saying to one whom he knows or believes to be a heretic: 'through your religion,' since heresy is not called religion but superstition, while religion, by its proper mode of speech, is spoken of not in falsehood but in truth.

Accordingly, by this exposition of yours, the true worship of God is called religion, but the false is called superstition. Hear, therefore, your own self; obey your own self, and you will by no means refuse to follow us. For writing to that same tribune, in the very opening of your first letter you set down and said: 'To the honorable and—if you will have it so—too much longed-for by us, Dulcitius, tribune and notary, from Gaudentius the bishop'; and at once you added: 'I have received the writings of your religion.' Why, then, do you still hesitate to come over to us? Behold, the tribune Dulcitius, although he is a man of our communion, is nevertheless, according to your own testimony, not superstitious but religious; and by this, according to your exposition, he holds not the false but the true worship of God.

He, therefore, is in the Catholic Church rather than you, since you did not err in this word to such a degree; for you even expounded that religion differs from superstition by as much as truth differs from falsehood. But that man, as I have already said, being a military man and less learned in these proprieties of words, did not know what religion was; for far be it that I should say, 'He deceived you by flattering you.' But you, who reproach those against whom you dispute by quoting the prophet and crying out: 'Woe to them that call bitter sweet and sweet bitter, that call light darkness and darkness light'—if it is superstition which Dulcitius holds together with us, why did you call it religion? But if you spoke truly, why do you, by holding a heretical superstition, spurn the Catholic religion?