Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 18 part 12/17

These things therefore being set aside, are there none among you licentious, none avaricious, none obstinately carrying on enmities, none contentious, jealous, animose, given to dissensions, envious, drunkards, addicted to revelling? Are there none among you such who are anointed and who die noted and manifest in these vices? If you say there are none, then, since out of zeal for contention you openly lie, see lest you yourself be of such. But if you are removed from such—not by separation of body, but by dissimilarity of life—and, groaning, behold such crowds around your altars, what shall we say, seeing that they are anointed with the holy oil and yet, as the apostle affirms with plain truth, shall not possess the kingdom of God?

Must a sacrilegious injury be done to the beard of Aaron and the hem of his garment, that we should judge them to be placed there? Far be it. Distinguish, therefore, the visible holy sacrament, which can be both in the good and in the evil—for the former unto reward, for the latter unto judgment—from the invisible anointing of charity, which belongs properly to the good. Distinguish these, distinguish them; may God distinguish you from the party of Donatus and recall you into the Catholic Church, from which they, snatching you away as a catechumen, bound you with the deadly bond of a fatal honor. Now, however you may take the dew of Hermon upon the mountains of Sion, you are not upon the mountains of Sion, because you are not in the city set upon a mountain, which has this certain sign, that it cannot be hidden. It is known therefore to all nations;

but the party of Donatus is unknown to most nations; therefore it is not that city. Petilian said: Woe therefore to you, who, by violating what is holy, tear apart unity—the prophet saying: If the people sin, the priest shall pray for them; but if the priest sin, who shall pray for him? Augustine replied: And a little while ago, when we were disputing about the oil of the sinner, I seemed to be anointing your forehead so that you might say, if you dared, whether you yourself were not a sinner. Behold, you have said it. O crime, O monstrosity! For because you assert yourself to be a priest, what else by this prophetic testimony have you said, than that you are altogether without sin? For if you have sin, who will pray for you according to your own interpretation?

For thus you peddle yourselves to the wretched common folk, quoting from the prophet: If the people sin, the priest shall pray for them; but if the priest sin, who shall pray for him?—so that they may believe you to be without sin and commit their own sins to be purged by your prayers. Great men you are, exalted, heavenly, divine, and now not men but angels, who pray for the peoples and are unwilling that the peoples pray for you! Are you then more just than Paul, more perfect than so great an apostle, who commended himself to the prayers of those whom he taught?

Be constant in prayer, he says, watching in it with thanksgiving, praying also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which also I am bound, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak. Behold, prayer is made for the apostle, which you are unwilling to have made for a bishop. Do you see how diabolical this pride is? Prayer is made for the apostle, that he may make manifest the mystery of Christ as he ought to speak. Accordingly, if you had pious peoples, you ought to have exhorted them to pray for you, lest you speak as you ought not. Are you more just than John the evangelist, who says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us?

Are you finally more just than Daniel, whom you yourself in this very letter so recalled as to say: 'the king cast most just Daniel to the bites of the beasts, as he supposed'? Which that king had not supposed, since, with a most friendly mind, as the context of the reading proves, he said to Daniel himself: Your God, whom you serve continually, he himself will deliver you. But of this we have already said much. Now, to the point at issue: surely Daniel was most just, not by your testimony—although this would suffice me for the cause I plead with you—but by the testimony of the Spirit of God speaking also through Ezekiel, where he named three men of the most eminent justice, Noah, Daniel, and Job, whom he said could alone be delivered from a certain most vehement wrath of God that hung over the rest.

A most just man, therefore, one of the three memorable ones, prays and says: When I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people in the sight of the Lord my God. And you say that you are without sin, because forsooth you are a priest, and if the people sin, you pray for them, but if you yourself sin, who will pray for you? Truly so, since by the impiety of such great arrogance you show yourself unworthy of one for whom that priest should intercede—whom the prophet, by these words that you do not understand, wished to be understood. For now, lest anyone ask why this was said, I will explain, as far as the Lord grants. God was preparing the minds of men through the prophet, that they might long for such a priest for whom no one could pray.

He himself was foreshadowed in the times of the first people and the first temple, where all things were figures of us. Therefore the high priest alone entered into the holy of holies to pray for the people, who did not enter with the priest into those inner sanctuaries—just as that Priest entered into the secrets of heaven, into those truer holies of holies, while we are still placed here, on whose behalf he intercedes. Therefore the prophet said: If the people sin, the priest shall pray for them; but if the priest sin, who shall pray for him?—that is: 'Long for such a priest as cannot sin, so that he needs no one to pray for him.' And therefore for the apostles prayer is made by the peoples, but for that Priest, the master and lord of the apostles, no prayer is made.

Hear John here, confessing and teaching: 'Brethren,' he says, 'these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.' 'We have,' he said; 'our sins,' he said. Learn humility, that thou fall not, or rather that thou mayest sometime rise again; for thou wouldst never have said these things, hadst thou not fallen. Petilianus said: And lest a man who is a layman should claim exemption from wrongdoing, he is bound by this prohibition: 'Do not partake in the sins of others.' Augustine replied: Thou dost err, as the saying goes, by a whole heaven through pride, so long as thou art unwilling to have communion with the whole world through humility. For this was not said to a layman, and thou knowest not in what sense it was said.

When the apostle wrote to Timothy, he was admonishing this same Timothy, to whom in another place he says: 'Neglect not the grace that is in thee, which was given thee by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery'; and by many other proofs it is shown that he was not a layman. But as for his saying, 'Do not partake in the sins of others,' he willed it to be understood of consent and approval. Hence he immediately adds how one does this: 'Keep thyself,' he says, 'chaste.' For neither did Paul himself partake in the sins of others because he tolerated within the bodily unity those false brethren over whom he groans; nor did the apostles, his predecessors, share in the theft and crime of Judas because, when he was already the betrayer of the Lord and pointed out by the Lord, they shared with him the sacrosanct Supper.

Petilianus said: Likewise by this sentence the apostle himself reckons those of an evil conscience as accomplices: 'And they which do them,' he says, 'and they which consent to those that do them, are worthy of death.' Augustine replied: In whatever way thou hast said these things, I care not; they are true, and this is what the Catholic Church teaches: that there is a great difference between those who consent, to whom these things are pleasing, and those who tolerate, to whom these things are displeasing. For the former become chaff, since they follow the barrenness of chaff; the latter, since they are wheat, let them wait to be separated by Christ the winnower. Petilianus said: Come therefore to the Church, ye peoples, and flee from the traitors, if ye do not wish to perish together with them.

For that ye may easily recognize that, although they themselves are guilty, they nevertheless judge most excellently concerning our faith: I baptize those infected by them, while they receive mine — which God forbid — as already baptized. This they would by no means do, had they not acknowledged certain faults in our baptism. See therefore how holy is that which we give, which the sacrilegious enemy fears to destroy. Augustine replied: Against this error we have already said much, both in this work and elsewhere. But because ye think there is so great a bulwark of your vanity in this sentence, that thou didst suppose thy letter should be ended with it, so that it might remain, as it were, more fresh in the minds of the readers, I answer briefly.

We approve in heretics the baptism not of heretics but of Christ, just as in fornicators, the unclean, the lustful, idolaters, sorcerers, harborers of enmities, the contentious, the envious, the spirited, the eager for dissensions, the jealous, drunkards, revellers, and such like, we approve the baptism not of them but of Christ. For all these, among whom heretics too are placed, as the apostle says, shall not possess the kingdom of God, and therefore they shall belong to the left-hand portion with the devil. Nor are they on that account to be thought to be in the body of Christ, which is the Church, merely because they become bodily partakers of his sacraments.

For those sacraments are holy even in such men, and will avail unto greater judgment for those who handle and receive them unworthily; but they themselves are not in that framework of the Church which grows into the increase of God among the members of Christ through connection and contact. For that Church is upon the rock, as the Lord says: 'Upon this rock I will build my Church'; but they build upon the sand, as the same Lord says: 'He that heareth my words and doeth them not, I will liken him unto a foolish man which buildeth his house upon the sand.' But lest thou suppose that the Church which is upon the rock is in one region of the earth and is not spread abroad even to the ends of the earth, hear its voice from the psalm as it groans amid the evils of its pilgrimage. For it says:

'From the ends of the earth have I cried unto thee, when my heart was in anguish. Thou hast exalted me upon a rock; thou hast led me, for thou art become my hope, a tower of strength from the face of the enemy.' See how it cries from the ends of the earth; it is not therefore in Africa alone or among the Africans alone, sending a bishop to Rome to a few Mountain-men, and into Spain to the house of one woman. See how it is exalted upon a rock; therefore not among them are all those to be reckoned who build upon the sand, that is, who hear the words of Christ and do them not — who nevertheless both among us and among you have and hand on the sacrament of baptism.

See how its hope is God — Father and Son and Holy Spirit — not Peter, not Paul, still less Donatus or Petilianus; therefore it is not yours, that which we fear to destroy, but Christ's, which is holy in itself even among the sacrilegious. For when men come to us from you, we cannot receive them unless we destroy what is yours; for we destroy the perfidy of the deserter, we do not destroy the seal of the Emperor. Accordingly consider thou thyself, and destroy what thou hast said. 'I,' thou sayest, 'baptize those infected by them, while they receive mine — which God forbid — as already baptized.' For thou dost not baptize those who are infected, but, in order to infect them by the fraud of thy error, thou rebaptizest them.

But we do not receive those baptized by thee as thine own; rather we destroy thy error, from which they are thine, and we take up the baptism of Christ, from which they are baptized. And so it has been opportunely placed by thee in the midst: 'which God forbid.' For thou saidst: 'they receive mine — which God forbid — as already baptized.' For whereas thou didst wish it to be understood 'which God forbid, they receive them,' fearing that we receive thine, I take it that thou hast said, though without knowing it: 'mine — which God forbid.' For in very truth God forbid that they should be thine, who are now passing over to the Catholic Church — nor do they so pass over as to be our baptized, but so as to be our associates, while they are baptized of Christ together with us.

I have read thy letters, Petilianus, when I was able to read them, by which thou hast sufficiently shown thyself, on behalf of the party of Donatus against the Catholic Church, neither to have been able to say anything to the point, nor to have been permitted to keep silence. What surgings didst thou suffer, with how great a tempest of heart didst thou toss to and fro, when thou hadst read those things by which, to that part of thy letter which had then come into my hands, I replied with all the brevity and clearness I could! For thou didst see the truth which we hold and defend so strengthened by firmness, so illumined with light, that thou couldst not find what should be said against it, whereby it might be convicted and refuted.

Thou didst notice too that the expectation of many who had read those things was turned upon thee, of those desiring to know what thou wouldst say, what thou wouldst do, by what means thou wouldst escape, by what way thou wouldst break out from the great straits by which the word of God had hemmed thee in. Here thou, who oughtest, having despised the opinion of the vain, to have pressed on into a true and sound judgment, didst do that which Scripture foretold concerning such men: 'Thou hast loved malice more than kindness, iniquity rather than to speak righteousness.' Accordingly, if I too wished to repay thee curses for curses, what else should we be but two railers, so that those who read us should — some, in sound gravity, cast us both off in detestation; others, sweetly, drink us in with malevolent pleasure?

Whenever I reply to anyone, whether by speaking or by writing, even when provoked by insulting accusations, as far as the Lord grants me, having curbed and crushed the stings of vain indignation and taking counsel for the hearer or reader, I act not that I may be made superior to a man by reviling him, but more wholesome by refuting his error. For if those who consider what thou hast written have any heart at all, what has it profited thee toward the cause which is at issue between us concerning Catholic communion or the party of Donatus, that, having left the business which is in a manner public, thou hast, out of a certain private grudge, assailed the life of one man with reviling reproaches, as though that man were the cause which is under investigation?

Thou hast thought so ill — I will not say of Christians, but of the very human race — as not to believe that thy writings could come into the hands of any prudent men who would withdraw themselves from our persons and would rather inquire into the question which is being turned over between us, and would attend not to who or what sort we were, but to what we said on behalf of truth or against error. The judgment of these thou oughtest to have revered, the reproach of these thou oughtest to have guarded against, lest they should think that thou hadst found nothing to say, save that thou didst set before thyself someone whom thou mightest revile by whatever means.

But doubtless through the levity and vanity of certain persons, who gladly listen to the quarrels of wrangling orators, so that, when they attend to how eloquently thou revilest, they may not consider how truthfully thou art convicted — at the same time thou hast, I suppose, contrived this also: that, being occupied with my own defense, I too might desert the cause I had undertaken, and thus, with men turned to the words not of disputants but of litigants, the truth might be obscured, which ye dread should shine forth and become known. I therefore, against such a design, what shall I do but rather, neglecting my own defense, hold fast the matter, concerning which let no accuser of mine shake out my intention? The house of my God, whose beauty I have loved, I will exalt with the proclamation of a serving voice. But myself I will humble and cast down;

for I have chosen rather to be an abject one in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of heretics. From thee therefore, Petilianus, I will turn my discourse for a little while, and I will turn it to those whom by thy curses thou hast tried to turn away from me — as though I were contriving this, that men should be turned to me and not rather with me to God. Hear therefore, whoever ye are that have read the curses which Petilianus, more angry than considerate, has spewed out against me. First I will address you with apostolic words, which certainly, whatever manner of man I myself may be, are true: 'So let a man account of us, as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here now it is required among stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's day;

but I do not even judge my own self.' Now, as for what follows, although I do not dare to apply it to myself so as to say, 'For I know nothing against myself,' yet confidently in the sight of God I say: of none of those things with which Petilianus has accused the time of my life, after I was baptized in Christ, am I conscious to myself. 'Yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall every man have praise of God. And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself, that no one be puffed up for one against another above that which is written. Therefore let no man glory in man;

all things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.' Again I say: let no man glory in man; more often I repeat: let no man glory in man. If ye observe anything praiseworthy in us, ascribe it to the praise of him from whom is 'every good gift and every perfect gift; for it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of a moment.' For 'what have we that we have not received? And if we have received, let us not glory as though we had not received.' And in all these things, whatever good ye know in us, 'be ye imitators of us, as we also are of Christ';

but if ye either suspect or believe or see any evils in us, hold fast that word of the Lord by which, secure of his Church, ye should not forsake it on account of the evils of men: 'What we say, do; but what evils ye think or know us to do, do not ye.' For it is not the time to purge myself to you, since, having neglected my own cause, I have undertaken to commend to you the wholesome matter, that no man glory in man; for 'cursed is everyone who putteth his hope in man.' This precept, both of the Lord and of the apostle, being retained and kept, even though I myself in my own cause be failing and overwhelmed — as the enemy wishes me to be reckoned — the cause which I serve will be victorious.

For if ye most firmly hold what I exhort and strive for — that everyone who puts his hope in man is cursed, that no man glory in man — ye will in no way forsake the Lord's threshing-floor on account of the chaff, which either even now, struck by the wind of pride, flies away, or at the last winnowing will be separated; nor will ye flee the great house on account of the vessels made unto dishonor; nor on account of the bad fish to be separated on the shore will ye go out through torn nets; nor on account of the kids to be set on the left by the shepherd who will divide them will ye abandon the good pastures of unity; nor on account of the tares mingled in will ye by wicked cutting separate yourselves from the fellowship of the wheat, whose head is that grain which was mortified and multiplied, and which grows throughout the world together until the harvest;

for the field is the world, not Africa; the harvest is the end of the age, not the time of Donatus. These evangelical similitudes ye surely recognize as given for no other purpose than that no man should glory in man, and that no one, puffed up for one against another, should be divided, saying: 'I am of Paul' — since assuredly Paul was not crucified for you, nor were ye baptized in the name of Paul (how much less in the name of Caecilianus or of any one of us?) — that ye may learn, so long as the chaff is threshed together with the grain, so long as the bad fish swim within the Lord's nets together with the good, before the time of winnowing rather to tolerate for the sake of the good the mingling of the bad, than to violate for the sake of the bad the charity of the good.

For this mingling is not eternal but temporal, not spiritual but corporal. In it the angels shall not err, when they shall gather the wicked from the midst of the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of burning fire. For 'the Lord knoweth them that are his,' and if from the wicked one cannot for a time bodily depart, yet let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity itself. For it is permitted meanwhile to be separated and to withdraw from the wicked in life, in morals, in heart and in will, which separation ought always to be kept. But the bodily separation is to be awaited faithfully, patiently, bravely, until the end of the world; and it is on account of this awaiting that it was said: 'Wait for the Lord, act manfully; let thy heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.'

For the greatest palm of endurance is, amid false brethren who have crept in secretly, seeking their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ, to have a love that seeks not its own things but the things of Jesus Christ, to disturb nothing by any turbulent and rash dissension, nor by proud and wicked contention to rend the unity of the Lord's dragnet, which gathers of every kind of fish while it is drawn to the shore — that is, to the end of the age — when a man thinks himself to be something while he is nothing, and thus deceives his own self and wishes his own judgment, or that of his party, to suffice for the separation of Christian peoples; who say that they most openly know certain wicked men, unworthy of the communion of the sacraments of the Christian religion, yet cannot persuade the universal Church, which is spread through all nations as was foretold, of whatever they say they know concerning them.

And while they flee, as it were, the communion of those whom they have come to know, they forsake the unity of Him; whereas they ought rather, if there were in them a love that bears all things, to tolerate in one nation what they had come to know, lest they divide themselves from the good whom they could not teach the evils of others among all nations.

Hence also, even with the case undiscussed — in which by the weightiest documents they are convicted of having slandered the innocent — it is more probably believed that they invented false charges of betrayal, they who did not hesitate to commit far more wickedly the crime of nefarious division; because, even if whatever they boasted concerning the betrayal were true, yet they ought by no means to have abandoned the fellowship of Christians, which divine Scripture commends even to the ends of the earth, on account of that which they themselves knew but the others did not know. Nor would I say this in order that ecclesiastical discipline should be neglected, that everyone be permitted to do what he wishes without any correction and a certain medicinal chastisement and a terrible gentleness and the severity of charity. For where will that saying of the apostle be:

'Rebuke the unquiet, comfort the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient toward all. See that none render evil for evil to any man.' When he certainly subjoined this — 'See that none render evil for evil to any man' — he sufficiently showed that to rebuke the unquiet is not a rendering of evil for evil, although for the fault of unquietness the penalty of correction is rendered. Therefore the penalty of correction is not an evil, since the fault is an evil; for it is not the iron of an enemy wounding, but of a physician cutting. These things are done in the Church, and that spirit of inward gentleness burns with the zeal of God, lest the chaste virgin betrothed to one man, to Christ, be corrupted in any of her members from the chastity that is in Christ, as Eve was seduced by the cunning of the serpent.

Nevertheless, far be it from the servants of the head of the household that they should be forgetful of the precept of their Lord, and should so blaze up with the flaming fire of holy indignation against the multitude of the tares, that, while they wish to gather them before the time, the wheat also be rooted up together.

Of which sin these men would be held guilty, even if they could show that they had thrown true charges against the betrayers whom they accused; since they have been separated by impious presumption at once not only from the wicked, whose fellowship they were, as it were, avoiding, but also from the good faithful established in all nations, to whom they could not prove those things which they said they knew; and they dragged with themselves into the same ruin many, among whom they prevailed by some authority and who were less able to understand that the unity of the Church spread throughout the whole world was by no means to be forsaken on account of the sins of others; so that, even if they themselves knew that they were charging certain men with true crimes, in that manner a weak one would perish through their knowledge, for whom Christ died, while, offended by the evils of others, he destroyed in himself the good of peace which he had with the good brethren, who had partly not heard such things, partly had feared rashly to believe things not discussed and not proved, partly had left them — of whatever sort those things were — with peaceful humility to the ecclesiastical judges, to whom the whole case was carried across the sea.

Of whatever sort those things were, they had left them with peaceful humility. Ye therefore, O holy offspring of the one Catholic mother, being subject to the Lord, guard yourselves with all the vigilance ye can against such an example of wickedness and error. With however great a light of doctrine and fame anyone may shine forth, and boast himself to be a precious stone, whosoever shall wish to draw you after himself, remember that that valiant woman, lovable to her one husband alone, whom holy Scripture describes at the end of Proverbs, is more precious than precious stones. Let no man say: 'I will follow him, because he himself made me a Christian,' or: 'I will follow him, because he himself baptized me.' 'Neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase';

and 'God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in him.' Nor is anyone, even preaching the name of Christ and bearing and ministering the sacrament of Christ, to be followed against the unity of Christ. 'Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have glory in himself alone, and not in another; for every man shall bear his own burden' — the burden, that is, of rendering account, since 'every one of us shall give account of himself.' Let us not therefore any more judge one another. For as far as pertains to the burdens of mutual charity, 'bear ye one another's burdens, and so shall ye fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth his own self.'

Let us therefore bear with one another in love, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, outside of which whosoever gathereth, gathereth not with Christ; and whosoever gathereth not with Christ scattereth. Accordingly, whether concerning Christ or concerning his Church or concerning any other matter which pertains to your faith and life, I will not say that we — who are by no means to be compared with him who said: 'though we' — but altogether that which he added following: 'though an angel from heaven preach unto you any other thing than that which ye have received in the lawful and evangelical Scriptures, let him be anathema.'