In the consulship of the most glorious emperors Honorius, for the twelfth time, and Theodosius, for the eighth, on the twelfth day before the Kalends of October, at Caesarea in the greater church, when Deuterius, metropolitan bishop of Caesarea, together with Alypius of Thagaste, Augustine of Hippo, Possidius of Calama, Rusticus of Cartenna, Palladius of Tigabis, and the other bishops, had come forward into the exedra, in the presence of the presbyters and deacons and the whole clergy and a most crowded congregation, Emeritus, bishop of the party of Donatus, being also present, Augustine, bishop of the catholic Church, said:
Dearest brethren, you who have been catholics from the beginning, and whoever of you have come to the catholic Church out of the error of the Donatists and have known the peace of this holy catholic Church and held it with a true heart, and you who perhaps still doubt about the truth of catholic unity: hear us, anxious for you with pure affection. When our brother Emeritus — still a bishop of the Donatists — came to this city three days ago, it was suddenly reported to us that he was present. And since, with a charity which God sees, we longed for his presence, we flew at once to see him. We found him standing in the street;
and when we had exchanged greetings, we admonished him that it was hard and unseemly for him to remain in the street, that he should come with us to the church. And he, without any refusal, consented to us; whereupon we supposed that he would not thus refuse catholic communion, seeing that he had either offered his coming of his own accord, or had by no means hesitated to come to the church. But while he lingered rather long, in his heretical perversity, though within the catholic church, I addressed your charity, as you deign to remember. I said many things which you heard, and which without doubt, so far as you can, you also remember — many things about peace, many about charity, many about the unity of the holy catholic Church which God promised and has granted.
In that discourse of mine I both addressed you and exhorted him, and, as far as the bowels of charity could avail in me, I travailed in that discourse of mine over all who are set in peril of their soul, in him, and desired to bring them forth unto the Lord. For this too the blessed apostle Paul said to certain men: 'My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you.' But even after our discourse, when he still persisted in that obstinacy of his, not even so did we think we should despair; nor do we think that any man is to be despaired of, so long as he lives in this body. For I did not say three days ago that I did not despair, so as to dare today to despair.
But the matter has been brought to this point: that, since he has come, and, as far as we have learned, has come of his own accord, his coming may not be fruitless for this church. For either — which we more greatly wish and desire — we shall rejoice with you even over his salvation in catholic peace; or, if — which we abhor and detest — he himself shall persist in that obstinacy, you ought, by his very presence, better to know what difference there is between catholic peace and heretical dissension. For he is a bishop of the party of Donatus, but ordained over the Donatists of this city; which Donatists, in the name of Christ, we have already for the most part received into the catholic bosom, so that we rejoice that almost all have been joined to catholic communion.
But since even those who have already communicated — not indeed all, but certain of them — seem, as I said a little before, to doubt about that very catholic truth, while others do not even doubt, but, still set in heart in the party of Donatus, present to us a bodily presence — whether men or women, in the flesh within, in spirit without — we judge it good to question their bishop himself, so that, if he has anything which he may yet say on behalf of that party, after the conference held at Carthage and known to all, if he has anything which he may yet say, let him say it — without prejudice to the party of Donatus — anything which he may nevertheless think profits us, in whose city he thinks himself ordained for your salvation in Christ; and we shall answer without prejudice to the catholic Church, since he has now laid upon us no parts of a defense — anything which yet, as we think and wish, may profit you who are present, against one present; so that, if he has been seduced, he may not seduce, but if we were seducing, then, he being present who perhaps boasts much abroad, we may be refuted, confuted, convinced, instructed.
This I have said for this reason, lest he refuse to speak on the ground that he can say: 'My party has now laid upon me no parts of a defense.' For it is not the case that after that very conference he did not go on speaking, or that after that conference he did not come to this city, or that he ever departed from this province, or that we believe he made no word at all on behalf of the party of Donatus to any man after that conference. I know what was said to us — I address you who have come from that very party — I know what was said to you: that we bribed the judge to purchase his sentence. I know it was said to you that he had been of our communion, and that therefore he did not permit these men to say all they wished, and that he suppressed them by power rather than accepted by uprightness what they were saying.
All these things were bandied about after the conference, whether by himself or by men of his communion. What difference does it make by whom you are disturbed, you whom we wish to be tranquil in catholic peace? If he were absent, I would say to you concerning him: 'But he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be.' For these words which I have spoken are the words of the blessed Paul against those absent men by whom the simple were being troubled. But now he is present: let him deign now to tell us why he has come. Brother Emeritus, you are present. You took part in the conference with us. If you were vanquished, why have you come? But if you do not think you were vanquished, say wherein you seem to yourself to be victor. For then you were vanquished, if you were vanquished by truth.
But if you seem to have been vanquished by power, yet have conquered by truth, there is here no power by which you may seem to have been vanquished; let your fellow-citizens hear on what ground you presume yourself to be victor. But if you know that the truth was victorious against you, why do you still spurn unity? Emeritus, bishop of the party of Donatus, said: The Acts show whether I was vanquished or conquered, whether I was vanquished by truth or oppressed by power. Augustine, bishop of the catholic Church, said: Why then have you come? Emeritus, bishop of the party of Donatus, said: That I might say this which you ask. Augustine, bishop of the catholic Church, said: I ask why you have come. This I would not ask, had you not come. Emeritus, bishop of the party of Donatus, said to the notary who was taking down the record: Proceed.
And when he kept silent, Augustine, bishop of the catholic Church, said: If, then, you have kept silence under the truth, you have not come without cause, unless it be that you wished to deceive these men. And when he long kept silent, Augustine, bishop of the catholic Church, said: You see, brethren, one who is long silent; I admonish you to wish for him coming to his senses, and I entreat you not to follow one who is perishing. Nevertheless, since he has made mention of the Acts of our conference, where he said it could appear whether he was vanquished by truth or oppressed by power, there are indeed many places where they heaped up the record with superfluous and delaying prosecutions, doing nothing else with great effort than that nothing might be done; but, the Lord presiding and pleading his own cause, it came to the point they did not wish.
But if we should be willing to read all the Acts to you — though, in your presence, I bind my brother and fellow-bishop Deuterius, that, as is done at Carthage, at Thagaste, at Constantina, at Hippo, in all diligent churches, so hereafter he too may not be too slothful to do, namely that in all years, during the days of the fasts — that is, the forty days before Easter, when, as you are fasting most, you have more leisure to hear — those same Acts of the conference should be recited entire from beginning to end, year by year, in order — yet, as I had begun to say, since we cannot now read all of them to you, deign first to hear, before the conference, what letters we gave to the judge, wherein we promised either in what manner we wished to be received if we should be vanquished, or in what manner we should receive them if we should conquer, so that the victory might seem to lie not in contention, but in humility.
Alypius, bishop of the catholic Church, recited the letter: To the honorable and most beloved son, a man most distinguished and estimable, the tribune and notary Marcellinus, from Aurelius, Silvanus, and all the catholic bishops. By the edict of your Estimableness, whereby provision has been made for preserving the tranquillity and quiet of our conference and for the manifesting and safeguarding of the truth, we intimate by these letters that in all things we consent, as you have deigned to admonish.
Relying moreover on the truth, we bind ourselves by the bond of this condition: that if those with whom we treat can prove to us that — when, according to the promises of God, the Christian peoples, growing ever more, had already filled a great part of the world, and were spreading into the rest yet to be filled — the Church of Christ suddenly perished by the contagion of the sins of certain men, I know not who, whom these accuse, and remained only in the party of Donatus; if, as has been said, they can prove this, we shall seek among them no honors of the episcopate, but shall follow, for salvation's sake alone, the counsel of those to whom we shall owe the gratitude of so great a benefit for the truth made known.
But if we ourselves are rather able to show that the Church of Christ — of not only the African but also the overseas provinces, already holding the most fertile expanses of many nations with an abundance of peoples, and, as it is written, bearing fruit and growing in the whole world — could not have perished by the sins of any men mingled with it; if, finally, we can show that the very question of those whom they then wished rather to accuse than were able to convict has been settled — although the Church does not consist in them — and that Caecilian was judged innocent, but those men violent and calumnious, by that very emperor to whose examination they of their own accord sent their accusations by turning accusers; and lastly, if, whatever they shall have said about the sins of any men whatsoever, we shall have proved, whether by human documents or by divine, either that their innocence was assailed by false charges, or that the Church of Christ, to whose communion we cleave, has been destroyed by none of their offenses: then let them so hold unity with us that they may not only find the way of salvation, but not even lose the honor of the episcopate.
For it is not the sacraments of divine truth in them, but the fabrications of human error, that we detest; and these being removed, we shall embrace the brotherly heart joined to us by Christian charity, which we now grieve to be separated by diabolical dissension. For each of us shall be able, with his associate coupled to him in honor, to sit by turns more eminently, just as a colleague sits beside a visiting bishop. When this is granted on either side by alternate basilicas, each preceding the other with mutual honor — because, where the precept of charity has enlarged the hearts, the possession of peace does not become straitened — then, one of them being deceased, single successors may thereafter succeed to single seats after the ancient manner. Nor shall anything novel come to pass;
For from the very beginning of that separation, catholic love has preserved this among those who, having condemned the error of wicked dissension, came to taste—even if late—the sweetness of unity. Or if perhaps the Christian congregations take delight in single bishops and cannot tolerate the partnership of two, since it is a thing unaccustomed, then let both of us withdraw from the midst; and once the cause of schism has been condemned and the individual churches have been established in peaceful unity, let single bishops be appointed in single churches, in the necessary places, with the single bishops of the individual churches consenting to the unity thus achieved. And when this had been read, Bishop Augustine said: I will tell your charity and call to mind a most sweet and delightful thing, which by the Lord's help we have experienced.
When, before the conference itself, some of us brethren were conversing among ourselves about this matter—namely that, for the peace of Christ, we ought either to be bishops or not to be, which we must confess—as we looked around upon all our brethren and fellow-bishops, we did not easily find those who would be willing to undertake this and to sacrifice to the Lord out of such humility. We would say, as commonly happens, «this one can, that one cannot; this one consents to it, that one will not bear it,» speaking rather from our own suspicions, we who were quite unable to see into their hearts.
But when it came to the point that this should be made public, in the council of them all—so numerous a gathering, of nearly three hundred bishops—it so pleased them all, they all burned with such zeal, that they were ready to lay down the episcopate for the unity of Christ, not to lose it but to commit it more safely to God. Scarcely two were found there to whom it was displeasing: one an aged old man, who even dared to say so rather freely; the other signified his will by a silent countenance. But after the fraternal correction of all overwhelmed that old man who was speaking so freely, when he changed his opinion, the other too changed his countenance. Hear, then, by what means this very exhortation was made, on account of Him who says: «He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.» Again he read:
For why should we hesitate to offer to our Redeemer the sacrifice of this humility? Did He indeed descend from heaven into human members, that we might be His members, and shall we be afraid to descend from our chairs, lest those very members of His be torn by cruel division? For ourselves, nothing is more sufficient than that we are faithful and obedient Christians; this therefore let us always be. But we are ordained bishops for the sake of the Christian peoples; whatever therefore profits the Christian peoples toward Christian peace, that let us do with our episcopate. Bishop Augustine said: For our own sake we ought to be what you are. What ought you to be, whichever of you I address? A faithful, obedient Christian. This you for your own sake, this I too for mine.
Therefore, what you for your own sake and I for mine, we ought always to be; but what I am for your sake, let me be it if it profits you, and let me not be it if it harms you. Behold, give heed to what has been said. Again he read: If we are useful servants, why do we, for the sake of our temporal exaltations, begrudge our Lord His eternal gains? The episcopal dignity will be more fruitful for us if, laid down, it rather gathers the flock of Christ than, retained, scatters it. And as he was reciting, Bishop Augustine said: My brethren, if we consider the Lord, this place is the higher watch-tower of the vinedresser, not the pinnacle of a proud man. If, in wishing to retain my episcopate, I scatter the flock of Christ, how is the shepherd's honour anything but the flock's loss? Again he read:
For with what face shall we hope for the honour promised by Christ in the age to come, if in this age our honour hinders Christian unity? These things we have therefore taken care to write to your Excellency, and we ask that through you they be made known to all, so that, by the help of the Lord our God—at whose prompting we promise these things and by whose aid we trust we are able to fulfil them—even before the conference, if it can be done, pious love may either heal or subdue the hearts of men, whether weak or hard; and thus, with minds now made peaceful, that we may not resist most manifest truth, and may either lead the way to the disputation in concord or follow it. For we ought not to despair, if they recall that the peacemakers are blessed, since they themselves shall be called sons of God—
—it is far more worthy and easy that they should wish the party of Donatus to be reconciled to the whole Christian world, than that the whole Christian world should be rebaptized by the party of Donatus; especially since, when men were coming over from the sacrilegious and condemned schism of Maximian—men whom they took pains to correct even by persecuting them with the orders of earthly powers—they sought after them with such great diligence that they neither dared to annul the baptism given by them, and received some of those condemned men without any diminution of honour, while others they judged to be unpolluted in the fellowship of that division.
We do not begrudge their concord among themselves, but they ought to observe how piously the catholic root seeks out with such zeal the branch broken off from itself, seeing that the branch itself has laboured thus to gather back the small fragment cut off from itself. And in another hand: We wish you, son, to fare well in the Lord. When this had been recited, Bishop Augustine said: Hear, you who do not know; hear, I beseech you. Thanks be to God, for I speak in his very presence.
This case of the Maximianists, which I now wish to set forth to you—the very case in which they wrecked the ship of all their calumnies as of evil merchandise—this case, then, of the Maximianists, though we cast it up against them so many times in our conference, they could say nothing against it; that is, against our objection so often inserted, so often repeated, so often dashed against their brows, they could answer nothing at all, because they did not find what they might answer. Hear it therefore diligently. Behold, here he is; he hears me. If I lie, let him refute me, let him compel me to prove it. The records themselves are indeed not here, but let the case rest there. Let us bear whatever delays, that we may come to the necessary documents, if I shall prove what I say.
If, however, he still doubts of it, or—far be it—pretends to doubt, then, by his leave be it said, let him not commune, if I fail to prove it. But if he already knows that I speak the truth, and is aware that he refused to answer for this reason, because he could not find what he might answer, I ask you to judge for yourselves which is more tolerable: to receive in his own honour a man condemned by himself, or not to acknowledge as a brother one never at any time convicted by himself. Attend, I beseech you, hear the narrative. A certain Maximian was a deacon of Carthage in the party of Donatus. Whether by the desert of his own pride, or, as they think, by the desert of his own righteousness, he gave offence to his bishop, that is, to Primian of Carthage—unjustly, if being proud he offended a better man; justly, if being upright he offended a worse.
He was excommunicated by Primian. He went off to the neighbouring bishops, stirred up ill-will against Primian, accused him before them. They came to Carthage. The many Donatist bishops who came wished Primian to come to them, just as the elders of these men wished Caecilian to come to them. Recognizing the plot, Primian refused to come to them, just as Caecilian refused to come to those others. Primian was condemned by these men in his absence, just as Caecilian was condemned by those others in his absence. What an image of events did God wish to set before our eyes in recent time, since a too-ancient oblivion was already effacing the older ones! He was condemned in absence.
By other bishops of the party of Donatus Primian was restored to communion; nay rather, since they did not depose him, he was confirmed in his own see. The Maximianists were condemned, just as, when Caecilian had been absolved by foreign and overseas bishops, Donatus deserved to be condemned. Maximian was condemned together with his twelve ordainers. The faction itself indeed contained very many; there were perhaps a hundred bishops. But lest a greater rupture should occur, these men were unwilling, by casting out a few, to impose discipline on the many. They condemned only those who had been present at the ordination of Maximian, when contrary to his own bishop he was unlawfully raised up as bishop; the rest, established in that very faction, were, if they wished to return to the church, to be allowed to keep their honours.
By their very words indeed they showed those men to be outside the church; for whomever you exhort to enter is outside. Having therefore fixed a day, within which if they returned nothing of what was being said against Primian should stand against them, they confirmed it by the decree of Bagai: Maximian was condemned together with the twelve. It began to be enacted that the condemned should be expelled from the basilicas. The judges are appealed to, the proconsuls are appealed to, the episcopal council of Bagai is cited in judgment. They are declared heretics, they are shown to be condemned, orders are obtained, forces are gathered, and men come to eject from the basilicas those condemned men who stood fast in their obstinacy.
When those men had been condemned, the peoples who favoured them resisted; where they could not, they were overcome; and in the place of those who were overcome and expelled, others were ordained. Of these we know two, to say nothing of the rest: one Felician of Musti, the other Praetextatus of Assuras, whom, after two or three years, through Optatus the Gildonian, after many persecutions inflicted upon them by judicial prosecutions and with the whole harshness of the powers, they received into their own honours. After their condemnation, after their ejection, after the persecutions, they received them into their own honours, joined them to themselves as associates and colleagues.
For in the place of one of these, Praetextatus of Assuras, they had already ordained another named Rogatus, who is now a catholic, and to whom the army of these men—that is, the band of Circumcellions—cut off his tongue and hand. But those who, during the very time in which those men stood condemned outside—for nearly three years—had been baptized by the condemned, baptized outside the church of these men, were thus received. No one said, «You have no baptism, because you were baptized outside»; and yet one who comes from Ephesus, from Smyrna, from Thessalonica, from the other churches which the apostles planted by their own labour, and to which we read that letters of the apostles were sent, which we hear recited in church—such a one is rebaptized.
The sentence is preserved, and, as far as we have heard from our very brother—whom may God make our peaceable brother—the sentence by which they were condemned was pronounced by this same Emeritus. Let that very sentence be read, by which they were condemned, and let the sentence be read by which the elders of these men condemned Caecilian; and let us see who were made the worse guilty, who were punished by the graver sentence, who were condemned with the greater uproar. There he said: For although the womb of a poisonous belly long concealed the noxious offspring of viperous seed, and the moist clots of conceived crime had, by slow heat, evaporated into the limbs of asps, yet the conceived venom could not be hidden once its concealing shade had vanished.
For although late, yet their teeming vows of crimes brought forth a public parricide and their own villainy—that which was foretold beforehand: «She hath conceived injustice, brought forth pain, and given birth to iniquity.» But since now the fair weather shines out from the cloud, and the forest of crimes is no longer confused, when names have been marked out for punishment—for hitherto there had been indulgence—while we dismiss the boundary-line of clemency, the cause has found those whom it may punish. And among other things: Let us speak, dearest brethren, the causes of the schism, since we can no longer be silent about the persons: Maximian, rival of the faith, adulterer of the truth, enemy of mother church, minister of Dathan, Korah and Abiram. These are the words of the party of Donatus against the Maximianists, uttered, as we have heard, at this man's dictation.
Now you know who Dathan, Korah and Abiram are. They first made a schism, for whom the usual punishment did not suffice: the earth opened and swallowed them alive. «Minister of Dathan, Korah and Abiram»—these are his own words—from the bosom of peace he hurled the thunderbolt of his sentence. Hear still further: And, he says, in that the yawning earth has not yet swallowed him up, it has reserved him for a greater judgment above. For he who was snatched away had gained his punishment by the shortcut of his own burial; now this man gathers the interest of a heavier usury, since, being dead, he is present among the living. These are the words of the man condemning Maximian, or rather, as he himself says, thundering against him «with a truth-telling mouth.» And nevertheless they were gathered back—asps, vipers, parricides—nor is the baptism blown away which the asp, the viper, the parricide gave.
You have heard how great a fire of eloquence blazed up, when it found the hay that it could burn. Brother Emeritus, you have embraced your brother Felician, condemned by the thunderbolt of your own mouth: acknowledge your brother Deuterius, joined to you also by kindred. As often as, my brethren, we cast up against them this case of the Maximianists—which I have set forth to you as best I could—when we treated it with them in the conference, so much the more was he silent about it than he is now silent about all things. Let them not hide themselves by shuffling, not by defence but by flight. For they say that they granted them a delay, and within the delay received them. This is false: twelve were condemned together with Maximian, while the rest were not present at his ordination, when the hand was laid upon him.
To those men they granted a delay; for his own words are these: And not only him, he says, does a just death condemn for his own wickedness; the chain of sacrilege drags also to the fellowship of the crime very many, of whom it is written: «The venom of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.»
We would indeed be unwilling to cut a joint as of our own body. But since the pestilent rottenness of a festering wound has more of solace in amputation than of relief in medicine, a more wholesome course was found, lest the pestilent virus should creep through all the members: that by a brief pain the risen wound might fall away. Therefore he names twelve as guilty of a notorious crime, among whom are both Felician and Praetextatus—but the names of them all do not come to my mind—and thus he infers:
Know that those who by their deadly work have befouled the sordid vessel of perdition with gathered filth, and also certain clerics at some time of the church of Carthage—who, while they took part in the crime, lent their pandering to unlawful incest—have been condemned by the truth-telling mouth of the universal council, by the decision of the presiding God. But those whom the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute in their nurseries—that is, those who withdrew their own hands from Maximian's head out of a modest reverence for the faith—we have permitted to return to mother church. They wished to pumice their own face smooth, because they were pardoning the sacrilegious and openly granting the schismatics a way of returning. What is this, I ask? Let him now deign to explain to me how the sacrilegious shoots did not pollute the nurseries.
Why do you grant those men a delay, if they could have had no part in Maximian's schism? But if they are associates of the faction, although they were not present at the ordination, how does Maximian—condemned once in his absence, absolved the third time in his presence—not defile them, while Caecilian defiles the whole world? Does an African not defile Africans, the living the living, the known the known, the partner his partners; and does Caecilian defile those overseas, defile those set far off, (defile the unknown,) defile the not-yet-born? He who was condemned by you sat with you, and did Felician not defile you? I did not see that man, you know him; I believe him innocent, you have condemned that man as guilty.
Or if you confess yourself to have been the receiver of an innocent man, you confess yourself to have been the condemner of an innocent man. And nevertheless, my brethren, we do not begrudge their concord. The diabolical hatreds stirred up among themselves they have ended—as they think—and returned into peace. But this I say: if a broken branch sought out the small fragment broken from itself, with what diligence ought the tree itself to seek the branch broken from itself? Therefore we sweat, therefore we labour, therefore amid their arms and the bloody furies of the Circumcellions we have been endangered, and we still tolerate the remnants of them with whatever patience God has granted, while the tree seeks the branch, while the flock from the sheepfold of Christ seeks the lost sheep. If we are endowed with a shepherd's bowels of compassion, we ought to squeeze ourselves through hedges and thorns. With our limbs
—torn limbs let us seek the sheep, and with joy carry it back to the Shepherd and Prince of all. We have said much, though wearied; and nevertheless our brother, on whose account we say these things to you, and to whom we equally say them, and for whom we do so great things, still stands obstinate. Cruel firmness thinks itself constant. Let it no longer glory in a vain and false fortitude. Let it hear the Apostle saying: «Strength is made perfect in weakness.» Let us pray for him. Whence do we know what God wills? «Many thoughts,» as it is written, «are in the heart of a man; but the counsel of the Lord abideth for ever.» (p. 187, 16, ed. Knöll). THE PROCEEDINGS WITH EMERITUS THE DONATIST, IN ONE BOOK.
Some while after the conference which we held with the Donatist heretics, there arose for us a necessity of going into Mauretania Caesariensis. There, at Caesarea itself, we saw Emeritus, the Donatist bishop—one indeed of those seven whom they had chosen for the defence of their cause, and who had laboured most in that same cause. What we transacted with him, in the presence of the bishops of the same province and of the people of the church of Caesarea—in which city he was both a citizen and bishop of the aforesaid heretics—the ecclesiastical records testify, which are contained in my minor works.
There, finding nothing to answer, he listened as though dumb to my whole discourse, which I unfolded concerning the Maximianists alone in his ears and in the ears of all who were present. This book, or these proceedings, thus begin: In the consulship of the most glorious Honorius Augustus, for the twelfth time, and of Constantius for the second time, most eminent men, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of October, at Caesarea, in the greater church.